Last Topic: 5:12:29pm, 03/12/2020
Last Post: 5:10:33am, 12/24/2023
Mega Man (WiiUVC)
Death is an interesting concept in video games. On the one hand, it is needed to create tension and the tension adds an important and exciting aspect to the playthrough. On the other, death breaks immersion. You're in the game, making it happen, living through it, and then you see a game over screen and you realize, "Oh right, I'm playing a video game."
Mega Man is not an immersive game. It hails from a time when games were just games, entertainment bits in the way you'd watch an episode of a TV show. And good for it too, as you will die a lot in Mega Man.
Modern video games are accused of having bloat; endless amounts of meaningless sidequests just to have content, just to pad out the game length. Mega Man, a game from 1987 also has bloat. The bloat is also part of the game design. Death is the bloat.
Other video games released at the time have their difficulties. Doing a deathless run on your first time through Super Mario Bros. or The Legend of Zelda is not easy...but it is not impossible (especially if you go to them now with experience in video games, back then it was far harder). Doing a deathless run on your first time through Mega Man is impossible. Every encounter with an enemy is basically teaching you what the enemy does and how it hurts you by hurting you. The flying cutters will hit you the first time they appear. The big hopper will hurt you the first time it appears. If not by their attacks, just the area where they spawn. Mega Man loves spawning enemies at points where you have to jump over a gap. It teaches you by killing you.
Doing a deathless run on your first time through Mega Man is impossible, but is almost required to beat the game. The game is unforgiving with health drops, throws enemies and bosses at you continuously and to beat it, you will need to know the level, spawn locations and boss strategies by heart.
And that is the bloat. If you use the Suspend Point function on the Wii U VC, you can get through this game in a short amount of time. If not, you'll probably spend months honing your skills, perfecting level after level of a NES video game.
Is that worth it? If you like bragging to your friends that you perfected Mega Man 'the right way', it is. You can pat yourself on the back afterwards for your skill. If not, Mega Man does not really have anything to offer you.
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How paralyzingly dull, boring and tedious!