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!
Nintendo Wii Rumor: Price Rollback
After having to listen to all the podcasts from episode 136 onwards to catch up due to being busy preparing for university and putting together my new gaming rig (Core i7 baby!), I can finally write an answer to a Question of the Week!
And so, without further ado, the first game that truly terrified me (and in many ways the last) was ‘Alien Trilogy’ for the PSX. Not in retrospect a very scary game, but I was only about 7 or 8 at the time and the game was rated as an 18… Not sure why I was allowed to play it. But after then, I never really got scared from games. Some games (like Systemshock and the Half Life games) managed to create a dull feeling of dread and foreboding, which in many ways is more ‘entertaining’ than straight shocking fear. In recent years the only game that managed to make me properly jumpy was when I was playing the Fear 2 demo, but the shock-factor soon wore off. None of the classically ‘scary’ games such as Resident Evil or the Silent Hill series ever scared me in the remotest, more often than not they merely bored me and so I got into the habit of simply ignoring games whose primary selling point is to create brown-trousered audiences…
As always, thanks for a brilliantly entertaining podcast, cheers and peace!
P.S: Monty Python quotes are always welcome… He’s not the Messiah!
After having to listen to all the podcasts from episode 136 onwards to catch up due to being busy preparing for university and putting together my new gaming rig (Core i7 baby!), I can finally write an answer to a Question of the Week!
And so, without further ado, the first game that truly terrified me (and in many ways the last) was ‘Alien Trilogy’ for the PSX. Not in retrospect a very scary game, but I was only about 7 or 8 at the time and the game was rated as an 18… Not sure why I was allowed to play it. But after then, I never really got scared from games. Some games (like Systemshock and the Half Life games) managed to create a dull feeling of dread and foreboding, which in many ways is more ‘entertaining’ than straight shocking fear. In recent years the only game that managed to make me properly jumpy was when I was playing the Fear 2 demo, but the shock-factor soon wore off. None of the classically ‘scary’ games such as Resident Evil or the Silent Hill series ever scared me in the remotest, more often than not they merely bored me and so I got into the habit of simply ignoring games whose primary selling point is to create brown-trousered audiences…
As always, thanks for a brilliantly entertaining podcast, cheers and peace!
P.S: Monty Python quotes are always welcome… He’s not the Messiah!
*clears throat* Okay, I was going to ask Jonah to back me up on this, but why drag him into my nitpicking, right? ‘;D
The resolution issue? Is not an issue. If you have a 1080p HD screen, it doesn’t matter whether your viewing area is 24 inches or 60 inches, you’ll get the same number of pixels. So the bigger the screen, the less tight those pixels (if they even call them that on TV screens) will be. The spoilage I alluded to is not so much console-related (considering the only console I have is a Wii), but rather the PC*, which has been “Hi- Def” resolution for about a decade now. ‘;D [* – Or the Mac, if you like.]
Maybe PS3 games scale up well on 50 inches, but I’m sorry to say that I don’t really know firsthand. ‘:( *sniff*
Of course, if your basement (er, gaming cave) is HUGE, then you can sit far enough away for it to still be enjoyable.
BTW, by “whatever’s ideal for Natal,” I of course meant an exact replica of the living room used in Microsoft’s tech demo/video, just off to a corner of the imaginary gamer cave (which I admit I got carried away with, but I thought I heard Don say money was no object, which I took a bit literally. [Or perhaps I just ran with the cave metaphor a bit far, since caves are typically for hibernating. ‘:D]
*clears throat* Okay, I was going to ask Jonah to back me up on this, but why drag him into my nitpicking, right? ‘;D
The resolution issue? Is not an issue. If you have a 1080p HD screen, it doesn’t matter whether your viewing area is 24 inches or 60 inches, you’ll get the same number of pixels. So the bigger the screen, the less tight those pixels (if they even call them that on TV screens) will be. The spoilage I alluded to is not so much console-related (considering the only console I have is a Wii), but rather the PC*, which has been “Hi- Def” resolution for about a decade now. ‘;D [* – Or the Mac, if you like.]
Maybe PS3 games scale up well on 50 inches, but I’m sorry to say that I don’t really know firsthand. ‘:( *sniff*
Of course, if your basement (er, gaming cave) is HUGE, then you can sit far enough away for it to still be enjoyable.
BTW, by “whatever’s ideal for Natal,” I of course meant an exact replica of the living room used in Microsoft’s tech demo/video, just off to a corner of the imaginary gamer cave (which I admit I got carried away with, but I thought I heard Don say money was no object, which I took a bit literally. [Or perhaps I just ran with the cave metaphor a bit far, since caves are typically for hibernating. ‘:D]
Interestingly enough, there’s an Amstrad emulator for the Wii!
http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Wiituka
(I mention this only for educational purposes, since everyone knows that it’s wrong to install unauthorized software onto a Wii.)
“Don’t Abuse Your Wii! Keep It Clean.”
Interestingly enough, there’s an Amstrad emulator for the Wii!
http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Wiituka
(I mention this only for educational purposes, since everyone knows that it’s wrong to install unauthorized software onto a Wii.)
“Don’t Abuse Your Wii! Keep It Clean.”
Two things about the original Pirates you didn’t mention:
1. You needed the cloth map to find out where you are, because you have to use a sextant to figure out how high the sun was in the sky at noon. (Now it’s just automatic.)
2. You could be the only member of your crew left during a fight, but so long as you defeated the other captain, you won. Picture you fighting a captain while 200 sailors are standing around watching. heh
Two things about the original Pirates you didn’t mention:
1. You needed the cloth map to find out where you are, because you have to use a sextant to figure out how high the sun was in the sky at noon. (Now it’s just automatic.)
2. You could be the only member of your crew left during a fight, but so long as you defeated the other captain, you won. Picture you fighting a captain while 200 sailors are standing around watching. heh