Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride.
So I beat Mega Man 10 last night. I really adore those games–any given pixel arrangement, any carefully-placed bleep or bloop, can trigger a firestorm of fond associations and transport you instantly back to the heyday of 8-bit. When one plays MM10, it doesn’t seem very long ago that everything seemed so novel, yet simple; that games were done so right on all the most basic levels.
One might wonder, after 6 games on the NES and several more on later hardware, what refinements there could possibly be left to make to the original mould. Capcom would seem to answer this time and again, saying, “Since you asked, here’s your ass-kickingly awesome, eight-bit gamergasm. We trust you’ll find all the series mainstays, as well as the many design innovations, to be quite to your liking.”
Or, to quote Phoenix Wright: “TAKE THAT!”
The game stands a Light-beard above its predecessors in difficulty–even Mega Man 9. While this shouldn’t keep anyone from beating it (that is, with a careful application of items from the Shop), there were times that my Mega Man should have been hurling from over-imbibing of E-tanks. (Blade Man in particular made me a near a tankaholic.) A boss gauntlet in the Wily fortress will be the ultimate test of skill; the next worst thing may be the Purple Demon boss of the game… you really should see it for yourself.
With the development of your muscle and rote memory, you’ll eventually have the game begging you for mercy. In the meantime, Mega Man can just lean his head off the top of a ladder if he needs to.
problemgamer
