Ah, Mega Man.
What a trip it's been.
From the first entry in 1987, through the glorious Super Nintendo X days, and the oddly
satisfying Legends sub-series, to all of the recent titles, where… wait, what was that
recent Mega Man game?
Rockman Xover?
"...oh my god.
This looks like a disaster."
And a disaster it was.
Coming out in 2012 for iOS, ONLY in Japan, was Rockman Xover.
It… didn't do great…And that got us thinking here over at Treesicle: What was
the last good Mega Man game?
When was it?
And more importantly, "Whatever happened to Mega Man?"
First there was the face-melting, side-scrolling and then there was the mediocre expansion
to the third dimension but...have you ever wondered what really happened?
This is how a blue boy went from pile of pixels to accomplished revolutionary of the video
game art-form...and then sucked.
THIS GOES BEYOND THE OBVIOUS AND MEDIOCRE TRANSITION FROM 2D TO 3D OKAY THIS IS THE
STORY YOU NEVER KNEW AND I'M A MAN WHO RESPECTS HIS "BRAND" IF YOU WANNA CALL IT THAT
I FEEL DIRTY SAYING IT.
And I know I used the word artform which is kind of pretentious but hey...PREPARE YOURSELF
for the story of a franchise that was lost with the times, for the story it's genius
and the full details of its demise and also possible rebirth!
This is the story of Mega Man...the story...you never knew.
To begin on an unrelated note, according to wikipedia, there is a Brazilian Mega Man comic,
known for its, and I quote, "erotic and sexual innuendo", and if anyone out there
knows where we can get some copies, our writers need it for… research.
Anyway, so what happened?
Mega Man used to be hotter than the sun, and now it's just a series of (mostly) fond memories
Ever since somewhere in the X series, something happened to Mega Man.
A spark went out in the hearts of fans, as the blue bomber started to show his age.
Or whatever robots do.
Rust, probably.
Either way, things just haven't been the same.
Some of you kids out there might be wondering why anyone would give a crap about the series,
but there was a about a decade, from the late 80's to late 90's, where Mega Man was
cherished by many.
The Mega Man original series was incredibly, well, original.
When it first came out, it was the first game to feature the characteristic feature of being
able to choose your level.
Wow!
Then the next Mega Man added in a password system.
The one after that added in unique characters, and Mega Man was able to use Rush, his robot
dog (yes, there was a time where A. that was a thing, and B. that was cool as hell), to
help him in the middle of fighting.
The series was just full of good ideas.
And also bad ones.
The first major offshoot of Mega Man was the X series, starting off on the Super Nintendo.
Now, this was the series that got it right! for the first 4 games
It had better music, better robots, better hair
They were just plain ol' sick.
Rad even.
I mean good.
But then, as the X series kept coming out, things just got worse, and worse, and worse,
until….
Tragedy…
Sorry, but if you make a game that makes people want to scream for all of the voices to go
away (and your game isn't a psychological horror game) you have failed as a game creator.
If it is a horror game, you absolutely win.
Seriously, congratulations.
But for everyone else, that, and much more of the game, is objectively bad.
(X8 was better.)
Then we had the Zero series, and Battle Network… but then there was also Legends.
Legends had an interesting take on the series.
For those not familiar, Legends took place in the distant future, where everything about
Dr. Light and Wily, and the Reploids, and Mavericks, was all lost to the ages along
the way.
Wait, does this even count as a real "Mega Man" game then?
Well no, it's not.
Legends isn't even starring Mega Man, it's Mega Man volnutt.
It was simply a (poor) attempt at jumping into the 3d open space without committing
to it.
I don't know if they didnt feel like going in all the way, maybe they didn't have enough
money to give it their best and then decided to make a new Mega Man or what, but it comes
off weird.
It was an attempt at something new, but inevitably a failure as the series died with its sequel.
If more time and money was spent on this one, if they had the balls to make it Mega Man
himself in the game, this video may have a different thesis.
Oh Well.
This wasn't Mega Man's only attempt at doing something different however.
I mean there was Mega Man Soccer…
But also the The Battle Network and Star Force series which were actual games.
They both take many elements from the original and X serie, but battlenetwork is an action
rpg starring Mega Man exe.
They're really good games, but to be honest if they didn't have anything to do with
the Mega Man franchise nothing would change.
They are such a far departure from the core series of platformers that without the name
being Mega Man i wouldn't have known they were in the same universe.
Regardless, what defines a core series Mega Man game is fantastic and challenging level
design, rockin music, level choice, power ups, and bosses with weaknesses.
Your powerups may also affect traversal through stages depending on the game.
But just having these core designs doesnt make your game good, and taking them away
and adding in other things doesn't work well for consistency, and consistency is everything.
Usually.
But what you choose to be consistent about is also what counts.
Now you tell me, what would you prefer, consistent gameplay every single game? or consistant
awesomeness while trying to do new things.
While the first set of Mega Man games were great, time stops for no blue little android
robo guy. in 93 the x side series was born, and soon after the blue bomber hit a wall.
That being the transition from 2D to 3D.
For the younger audiences, let me tell you.
There was a time when this meant a massacre for franchises.
There were characters, and stories, forever lost because of this, And as for those that
made the transition, it wasn't always pretty…
But there's hope!
Since we can probably assume you haven't been living under a rock on the moon for the past
20 years, you're probably well-aware that Nintendo's Mario is alive and thriving.
So are games like Final Fantasy, and Grand Theft Auto.
What, you thought Grand Theft Auto was only in 3D?
Let's not forget the original GTA…
"Oh my god, it's like playing Motion Sickness: the Video Game…"
So we have some games that both did and did not transition well to 3D.
Yes, the third dimension.
Many would argue the BEST dimension.
And those would disagree are dirty flatlanders!
There are three things you must keep in mind when transitioning from the second to third
dimension: One must,
1.
Keep the pace and gameplay intact.
Nobody wants to play Sonic the Hedgehog at 5 miles an hour.
2.
One must ensure that the necessary field of view remains intact and appropriate.
How are you gonna take out those dirty commies when you can't see them?
And 3: Ya can't half-ass it.
3d does not make a game good so everything else you did before needs to transfer over
with additional camera fluidity.
We're talking detailed and exciting environments, solid textures, good lighting, shadows, you
get the picture.
Mega Man screwed the pooch on all three.
Legends, which was an attempt at 3d had terrible controls, muddy graphics, and lacked the mega
man appeal because it wasn't Mega Man, it was some future dude named volnutt.
Then Mega Man X tried to go 3d and it all went to shit.
Maybe up until then it was all luck for the franchise.
It didn't hurt that when Mega Man was conceived robot hype was at an absolute all time high.
Don't get me wrong, the original mega man games (especially 2) were masterpieces…
for the time.
AT THE TIME they were revolutionary.
Intense difficulty and precision platforming coupled with fair, fast paced gameplay.
When you died you knew it was your fault.
Instead of getting mad at the game you were encouraged to test yourSELF to push past your
limits.
There was no padding here, it was you versus the game in a perfect dance.
At least for the core series.
However throughout the decades this tried and true formula has been kicked in the balls.
Obviously traditional Mega Man games have always been sprinkled in but the fact I can
ask "What happened to Mega Man" and most people watching will be like, "Yeah what
DID happen to it" tells us the excitement for this once glorious franchise has waned.
There must be a reason for this!
Well gentle viewer, there are many.
Video games as media have changed drastically since the birth of Mega Man.
Even the ones that use a similar style or formula have to innovate or they simply don't
get off the ground.
Super meat boy (for instance,) uses a quick platforming style with incredible difficulty
and a focus on fairness and repetition.
The game managed to make its way into our hearts and minds without breaking the bank
on insane graphics or even getting out of the 2D field, it can be done.
However main series Mega Man games never strayed from the basic format of: "here's a set
of levels, pick the level, beat the level, beat the boss, get their power, move on.
When Mega Man was dropped on the world this was revolutionary.
Just being able to choose your level was unheard of, so you can see what kind of open playing
field they were working with at the time.
But the times have changed.
There are so many developers out there with amazing ideas and the capabilities to make
them a reality; that in order for something like Mega Man to shine in 2018 drastic measures
must be taken, and they simply weren't.
The games scaled well into the 16 and 32 bit era, by the time Mega Man 8 came out on ps1
it seemed like they had hit their zenith.
It looks like a beautiful hand drawn work of art, however by this time some of the rockman
solid gameplay had begun to wane.
Around the same time the MMX games were making their way onto 32 and 64 bit consoles and
were met with mixed to negative reviews.
The magic was lost, the speed was gone, the story was repetitive, and the use of 3D space
was poor.
At the same time other beloved classic characters were making a transition to 3d as well.
Mario and zelda's 3rd dimension debuts for instance became instant classics.
Zelda transferred nicely and naturally keeping the same formula as the rest but with greater
cinematic appeal and a chance to add more layers to it's world and puzzle solving,
but mario 64 was arguably a complete departure from the norm.
This game was a series of open worlds inside of an open world, no time limits and open
space to explore, a relatively lax and open story where you could more or less choose
what you wanted to do and when to do it.
But the Mega Man team refused to innovate, or at least to commit to it.
Something that people often overlook is that Mega Man X is not Mega Man, Mega Man legends
is not Mega Man, nor is battle network.
That's x, thats volnutt, and thats .exe.
This is Mega Man and he is the star of Mega Man, it's own solid series of games.
So while the franchise jumped into the ps2 era, Mega Man himself was left mostly on the
ps1 and that was it.
He didn't even reach the third dimension until a brief foray on the psp with Mega Man powered
up.
However this was just a remake of Mega Man 1 and was also given mixed reviews.
After that it was literally back to 8bit for Mega Man 9 and 10 on the wii in 2008 and 2010
respectively.
The X series died in 2004 with x8 and battle network followed suit the next year.
It's hard to say whether it was the mess ups of the x series that inevitably killed
mega man, but i'd say that it was.
X was arguably more popular in the 90's with it's edginess and when it's transition
to 3d was lackluster (at best) it probably scared the main series guys away from continuing
the vanilla games and or trying to innovate with them.
But to say the transition to 3d killed Mega Man would be wrong, Mega Man never really
went to 3d.
The franchise did, but the blue bomber was simply too scared to go himself.
Legends doesn't count (and was pretty mixed when it came to quality anyways) and the x
series never did anything different except get crappier as time went on.
What killed mega man was a complete lack of innovation.
The fear of killing the series killed the series, and when 9 and 10 came out they were
mostly rehashes of what had already been done 20 years prior.
This is something that still rings true today.
I'm sure 11 will be fun, it's taken a step graphically, but it won't change the
world.
With Video games (by enlarge) heading further and further in the direction of complexity
the blue bomber stuck to an archaic formula.
A formula that started an empire which refused to take the creative leaps it needed to in
order to sustain itself.
Somewhere out there is a universe in which Mega Man became the most revolutionary 3d
run and gun puzzle platformer in history.
However this is our world, and in it Mega Man is all but lost to the sands of time.
Thrown into the nostalgia dumpster with crash bandicoot, jak and daxter, and f-zero.
While the new mega man 11 may be fun, remember that because of the choices made by the people
behind one of the best classic games of all time, its still nothing but a budget title
and a time sync, it sure isn't spiderman on the ps4.
But it still looks cool.
That's the story of the Mega Man series, the story of a little blue android from a time
when robots were the hottest shit on the planet, the story of how one of the most influential
and impressive series in the history of one of the largest and highest grossing industries
of all time lost its way.
The story, you never knew.
And...that's my take on Mega Man.
If you ever wondered why the hype ain't what it used to be...now you know!
But hey!
Mega Man 11 looks dope.
Anyway if you liked this video you should hit that subscribe button and also hit that
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Think of it as an information download from the Treesicle collective consciousness directly
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Make sense?
Great!
You know what to do.
So I'll leave it up to you to do it.
I'm not much for making demands...more like strong suggestions.
Cough
That's all I've got for today.
My name's Grant and I hope you have a lovely day or afternoon or night depending on what
time it is for you right now.
I strongly suggest it.
Bye everyone!
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