Mega Man (NES) review "You are compelled to read this Mega Man review."

You could call me something of an old school gaming god, kind of like melding Odin and Billy Mitchell into a buff bearded Viking gamer, but somehow I've never gotten around to playing the original Mega Man. Everyone and their wrinkly old grandmother knows the right way to play Mega Man, even if you've never played the go!@#$! game. First you kill Bomb Man to get his hyper bomb power, then you use that to blow up Guts Man, then you take down Cut Man, then you become a brainless FAQ zombie who doesn't know how to do anything on his own. I'm a real man so I decided to pop my OG Mega Man cherry the real way, I like to call it the "NICE GUTS!" challenge. The idea is that you complete Guts Man's stage first and then play the rest of the game only using Guts Power. His ability sounds awesome. When you beat Guts Man you can pick up and throw giant boulders for massive damage, which is hella cooler than plinking enemies with little sperm bullets for just a dab of damage. Simply writing that sentence made me hard, so without further ado let's bust a nut.

Right at the beginning of Guts Man's level, there were a whole bunch of moving platforms that I had to jump across. One missed jump means death, and to make things tougher, the platforms occasionally swing downwards and send Mega Man tumbling to his doom (there's warning before that happens so it's fair). All those pansies who think Dark Souls is hard should try this shit out. It doesn't matter how patient or cautious you are, it takes reflexes to get through something like this. I'm man enough to admit that I fell a couple times, but the sweet taste of eventual victory made it worth the effort.

That part was rough, but otherwise the level felt a lot shorter than later Mega Man games. I made it to the boss and was like, that's it? After smashing Guts Man, easily I might add, I steeled my girthy loins for some boulder-tossing mayhem. Who would be my first victim? Obviously it would be Ice Man! I never liked that douche, I laughed when he got killed in that one X-Men movie. Some old lady in the theater gave me a dirty look but I didn't care. He got what was coming and I was gonna give it to him again, this time with a giant gutsy rock right up his frosty ass.

My throbbing excitement didn't last. When Ice Man's stage started and I turned on my Guts Power, I discovered I couldn't do jack shit. I was totally impotent, I couldn't shoot or even punch. Without any nearby boulders to grab, I was left holding my wilted (yet somehow still massive) dong. No worries. Based on a Nintendo Power walkthrough that my mom read to me while I was chilling inside her swank-ass womb, the boss rooms contain boulders. All I need to do is dodge like a butterfly so that I can get to the boss and sting him like an avalanche.

I sped through the entire stage, a stage that has zero giant boulders by the way, using only my manly dodging arts. That was rough, especially during the part where I had to jump across the tops of disembodied heads while avoiding explosive flying penguins. (Contrary to popular belief, penguins can fly like champs. They just do it when no one is looking.) Scenes like that, and also the part with disappearing and reappearing blocks, reminded me that the platform action in this series always was top notch. Some grad student in a bullshit ludology program should write a paper on the history of slippery ice floors. If Mega Man wasn't the first to do it in a platformer, I'd like to know what was.

A few minutes and a few bottomless pits later, I made it to Ice Man and there were no giant rocks around for me to throw at him. Fuck! Since Mega Man can't goomba-stomp the enemies, I bitched out and used the regular Mega Man gun for this fight. That was the end of the "NICE GUTS!" challenge. So yeah, this game promised an awesome creative power that does more than replace bullets with fire/ice/whatever, but it turned out to be one big dill-tease. If Capcom wasn't gonna put rocks in all the stages, then they should've made it so that Guts Power lets you pick up and throw enemies Super Mario 2 style. Fucking amateurs.

Like I said though, the platform action is so tight that I kept fighting like the mighty Nobunaga even after the game schlonged my gutsy ambition. Fire Man's stage in particular had some tricky flame bursts, it's like the ghost of Mitsuhide Akechi himself was trying to burn me alive but it just wasn't gonna happen. A few of the leaps were hard to make because jumping off the edge of blocks is a little less precise than the later Mega Man games, but otherwise it was good shit. OG Mega Man is probably great if you don't play the dumbass way, but it's still not as tight as the later games and honor demands that I dock points for that fucking useless Guts Power. Well that's a wrap. Peace!

Community review by JedwardRandy (June 06, 2017) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.