LogFAQs > #951040337

#16. Mega Man 9 (Xbox 360, 2008)



Mega Man games were kind of a big a deal to me growing up. I had been playing them since the NES days, and they had always been among my favorites. It was even around this time that I was starting to switch my online nickname over to a Mega Man-themed nickname (oops this old still exists here though). I still owned those old games and loved them. I was finding fun with newer Mega Man games as well, but really wanted more of the classic stuff I loved. Mega Man 9's announcement was a huge moment for a lot of people, and I was one of those people.

Mega Man 9 most heavily draws from Mega Man 2 as inspiration. There's no slide or charge buster, and several music tracks are just lifted straight from Mega Man 2. But that's okay, because Mega Man 2 is great!

There are a lot of smart design choices in this game that appeal to me and really make me enjoy each stage. One common thing people talk about is how the weapons seem to be balanced in strength, but it's not just that. They all have unique uses/properties, and often function in multiple ways, so that every weapon seems to have a purpose. The Hornet Chaser can pick up items, the Laser Trident breaks the barrier blocks, the Jewel Satellite reflects enemy bullets, the Tornado Blow allows for higher jumps, the Magma Bazooka can be charged up, the Black Hole Bomb can suck in surrounding enemies/projectiles, the Plug Ball travels along surfaces to hit in accessible enemies, and the Concrete Shot can create temporary platforms. The levels are designed such that each of these should be useful at some point, making your path easier and also more streamlined.

And that takes me to the second point, is that the levels flow so well. It takes some special weapon usage (and yes, bringing up the menu to switch), but stages can just be run through pretty continuously. There's very little stopping and waiting for an enemy to line up, or for an enemy to end yet another invulnerable cycle. With smart item usage, you can just kind of keep going. And it's not like, you just zip up some walls and skip whole chunks to move through quickly, there's still most of the game to navigate, you can just do it without feeling like you're wasting time for nothing.

As I mentioned before, there are a lot of callbacks to NES Mega Man, which are super fun, but there are a lot of things that are brand new, but feel entirely like what you would see on the NES. The whole game felt like a love letter to games of my childhood and slots in alongside the best of them.



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