With a few hours of Mega Man 9 under my belt I’ve got to admit, this game is FREAKING HARD. I’ve played many games since the original Mega Man series was released on the NES and later on the SNES and nothing compares to Mega Man 9 in terms of sheer difficulty. This new franchise title looks and acts like the original with all the glitches, colors, bleeps and effects of the original games.
This game is much like chasing your kids around the yard, you forget how “old you are.” Mega Man 9 challenges reflexes, hand-eye coordination, patience and persistence. You are constantly awarded with death upon death and level restarts. Just when you think you’re getting close to a leader you’re actually just encountering a harder portion of the stage.
Between the start of a stage and the final boss you’ll encounter larger single-screen microbosses who challenge your patience and skills. As it turns out, I’ve got very little of both attributes. Upon defeating a little boss I am handed another like boss which is a little tougher. Upon defeating this slightly tougher boss (after many level restarts) I’m rewarded with yet another more difficult microboss.
Mega Man traditionally allows you to wonder all of the selectable stages out of the gate but each one gets easier as you build your characters weaponry. The trick is finding that “easy” level to get you to a boss, defeat said boss and acquire a weapon of mass awesomeness. Alas, I’ve done none of these.
You can find online video walk-throughs on the Internet which can give you tips for getting around the stages but the end result is the same: patience, persistence and accuracy. Mega Man 9 teaches you that nobody is a game master without consistent practice.
The first time through a stage is a destructive mess of failure. As you restart the stage over and over you’ll learn some of the tricks to getting you through the initial enemies without taking damage. You’ll build up your arsenal of tricks for hitting enemies before they’re on the screen and mashing the fire button to freedom… until you hit your first spike.
Spikes are the bane of the Mega Man character. Mega Man isn’t a fan of little pointy objects which result in instant death. You can hit the jump button quickly for shorter jumps and longer for bigger jumps; jumping technique is required to move you through spike infested levels.
You learn quickly to never turn your back on an enemy. Turn around, ever so slightly, and walk back on the side-scrolling screen and forward again will result in the rebirth of all enemies you’ve killed. This includes bomb wielding birds, rock tossing baddies and hells fury in the form of red and green cannons.
If you’re looking to discover all the ways you can possibly lose in a game, feel your inner child emotionally crushed under the weight of 8-bit bad asses, Mega Man 9 is the game for you. The achievements will make you laugh and the difficulty will invoke that old controller tossing nostalgia.
Mega Man 9 is a challenge. If you wish to take on this challenge and prove your 8-bit weight in the world of high resolution graphic fairy tales this may be the title for you!
Hi guys!
First of all: congratulations to 500 episodes 🙂 There are not many (good) podcasts who have so many long episode. Long because nearly every podcast of your show is about an hour. It´s nice to hear Paul again on the show .. he has such a nice humor, i love it 😀
Regarding the topics in this episode: i really like POP Figures 🙂 I have all 11 from Magic The Gathering, all from Back to the future and all from Michael Jackson. i like them as decoration for my gaming room 🙂
These games like skylanders, Lego Dimensions and so on: i dont like it that much .. its too expensive and the game itself is not that … intersting in my opinion :/
It was nice to hear, that you are Star Trek Fans (or something similar like that ^^). Did you watch the latest series? Discovery? It think it was quite nice so far, even if it was strange to see the Klingons like that 🙂
To the question of the week: my choice of the Parker Boardgame would be Monopoly, because i played so often as a little kid (ok i did not have any other boardgame …).
Keep on the good work guys and thanks again for your Podacst!
Greetings from germany,
Ralf
sorry forget something: the new title song is way better then the one before 🙂 but not as good as the one you had very man epidsodes ago. I already told it Jonah, but i dont know which episode it was (not the Robocop or Mass effect one).