LogFAQs > #957101260

9. Dr. Wily 1 (Mega Man 7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYqzaCkMFsA

Every time I watch this video, I'm always reminded of the top comment and I have a chuckle to myself.



I'm certainly prone to flowery sentimentalism, as evidenced by basically this entire list, but man Youtube comments are funny. It's *dark* and *brooding* because this is *truly Mega Man's last stand* and this is theme of Mega Man *being about to murder Dr. Wily* okay kid, chill out. But for some reason I can't hear this song without thinking of those words - "this song is the future." I think it accurately describes the sentiment with which this song was written. This is a newer, darker, edgier Mega Man, not like the cheery Mega Men of ages gone by (by which I mean like a year before this), and this song is a departure from previous Wily themes, having a kind of moodiness and ambiance to it that most of the NES tracks don't really have the ability to engage in. This was the age of the SNES and they wanted you to know that! This is the FUTURE we're talking about. This is Mega Man's last stand against Wily.

My stance on this song is this. If people are allowed to like Sephiroth or Shadow the Hedgehog or whoever, I am allowed to like this edgelord of a Mega Man theme. It's *brooding* and *melancholy* and it's the *future.* Okay, maybe that screechy MIDI guitar lead in the main section is a lot but I'm not gonna try to pretend like it doesn't get me kind of amped up. But the part I really like about this is that introduction - something about that repeated three-note jingle, the pad slowly coming in, and that first heavy bass note, it just fucking does it for me. My favorite part is actually when all that comes back at the loop after the drum fill at 1:12. I really can't overstate how nice the drum samples in MM7 are, they're as crisp as a corn chip. Listen to the fucking hats from 1:13 to 1:28! They have actual velocity to them. They're gorgeous. I'd struggle to make them sound that natural today. This really is the future.

Final Mega Man 7 Rankings:

1. Dr. Wily 1 (9)
2. Dr. Wily 2 (28)
3. Burst Man (36)
4. Slash Man (66)
5. Shade Man (Alt) (101)
6. Intro Stage (104)
7. Shade Man (123)
8. Dr. Wily 3 (161)
9. Junk Man (162)
10. Freeze Man (163)
11. Dr. Wily 4 (164)
12. Cloud Man (166)
13. Spring Man (167)
14. Turbo Man (170)
15. Robot Museum (192)

Thoughts: Ah, the duality of Mega Man 7. Although 10 and Soccer came close, this is the one and only game in the series that attained both a top 10 and a bottom 10 ranking. As much as I dumped nearly half of this soundtrack in the bottom half, it sort of ended up making pretty good for itself in the end - not a bad showing towards the top of the list at all. I did know that I always had a few favorites from this game, of course. I actually do think that as SNES games go, this one's got a pretty good chipset (a lot better than Soccer's that for sure - and probably better than X's as well), so while it doesn't have the purity of that beautiful 2A03 sound, it still sounds fine. I just wish that like, half its tracks weren't so grating.

Regrets?: Yep! I should have ranked some of those songs higher. Probably Freeze Man's theme especially - 163 was too low. In general, I really failed throughout this ranking to acknowledge how good the drumming and the drum samples in this game are. Really kind of the game's redeeming quality, I think. All of the drum lines in this game are really slickly written, even in tracks I'd otherwise have written off, and I should have highlit these where possible. Turbo Man's theme is a good example - it's not a theme I like, because I find most of the content to be grating, but just isolating and listening to the drums alone is a treat, they're classy as hell and again, the hi hats sound fucking great.