Retro gaming

Mega Man Zero Deep Dive - Story 2020-06-11

This post is an analysis of the storyline in Mega Man Zero. Here are links to the rest of the deep dives:

Spoiler Preface!!!

This post contains content that some may deem as spoilers. You have been warned

Mega Man Zero does not have a whole lot of story to it. At least I don’t think it does. Honestly, it is hard to tell.

Mega Man Zero - Review 2020-06-11

Title: Mega Man Zero
Release Date: April 26th, 2002
Original Platform: Game Boy Advance

I believe Mega Man Zero has flown under the radar over the last eighteen years, and not in a good way. This is not some diamond in the rough, but rather a pretty bad game that no one really notices because its two immediate sequels are considered some of the best Mega Man games of all time.

Why I'm (re)starting to play Old Mega Man Games 2020-06-10

I have to admit - my last blog post was part therapy for myself, and part table setting for _this _ post.

Everything I said about my past feelings regarding the Mega Man series are true, but here, now, in the year 2020, a part of me wants to go back and check all those old games out.

A lot of this is driven by my increasing desire to play retro games in order to document and analyze them as pieces of history. Some of it is driven by a desire to start critically analyzing video games again (something I did for a long time in my youth). I am not expecting any of these games to be unexpected gems that I will regret ignoring, but I also do not expect them to be as bad as I convinced myself they were. I am really trying to go into this without any preconceptions, and just take them as they are.

Why I stopped playing new Mega Man Games 2020-06-09

Spoiler Preface!!!

This post contains content that some may deem as spoilers. You have been warned

With Mega Man being on my mind so much lately, I found myself trying to take inventory of all the Mega Man games I have played. The results were surprising.

For this inventory, I am not counting stuff like the .exe games or the Starforce games.

Mainline series

Played: 1-7. 9

Not played: 8, 10, 11

So I’ve played most of these, and I don’t think I’m really missing out much with the ones I haven’t.

X series

Played: 1-3

Not played: 4-8, Command Mission

This one is a bit surprising. The original MMX is one of my favorite games ever, but apparently I don’t like the rest of them all that much!

Zero series

Played: 1 (on an emulator years ago)

Not played: 2-4

Yeah, this mostly passed me by.

ZX series

Not played: ZX, ZX Advent

This one completely passed me by.

Game Boy games

I’ve played some of these, but I can’t remember which ones

Legends games

Played: Legends 1

Not played: Legends 2 (but I own it, and will get to it eventually)

I like these games, but they are kinda rough to play on Vita. I need to be in the right mood for them.

Until doing this inventory, I never realized that there are just as many (or more) Mega Man games I haven’t played as ones I have. It looks less like I’m a fan of the Mega Man series, and more like I’m a fan of a few partcular games.

That’s not a bad thing necessarily, but it still feels strange. There is a formula that most of these games follow to a certain extent, a formula that I happen to like quite a lot. Even the worst of these games must offer something I might enjoy - so why are there so many gaps in my play history?

I wrote an earlier version of this piece that broke it down to a number of factors, but it didn’t sit right with me. I didn’t actually believe my own words. I put the post on ice, and then proceeded to write all of the other MM-related posts you have seen up to this point. Then one day I had an epiphany. I finally figured out the true reason for my Mega Man Gap.

It’s this jerk right here:

Meet Zero, AKA “Kenji Inafune’s Revenge”

Environmental Storytelling in Mega Man - Part 2 2020-06-08

Following up the last, we continue our look at how the Mega Man series uses environmental storytelling, this time by moving forward in time to examine the franchise’s run of Super Nintendo games.

Preface

This post contains examples from Mega Man 7, as well as Mega Man X 1, 2 and 3. It does not contain any examples from Mega Man & Bass, not only because I’m not fond of it, but also because I don’t think it has any particularly good examples.

Furthermore, writing this post helped remind me of just how gorgeous and timeless good Super Nintendo sprite art can look. I could stare at these screenshots for hours.

Spoiler Preface!!!

This post contains content that some may deem as spoilers. You have been warned

This post contains content that some may deem as spoilers. You have been warned.

Mega Man X

Mega Man X. Of course this game would excel at environmental storytelling. It excels at everything.

It all starts with its masterful prologue stage. We begin on an elevated highway:

Environmental Storytelling in Mega Man - Part 1 2020-06-07

One of the reasons I love Mega Man games is that, on a whole, the series is pretty good at environmental storytelling. Sure, it might be true that the majority of Mega Man levels are nothing more than high tech fortresses, but there are also plenty that take place in industrial or even residential districts overrun and overtaken by the enemy. These levels do a lot to emphasize just what you are fighting for, by making it clear how devastating the enemy’s attack has been on the civilian population. In this post, I would like to share some examples of this kind of visual storytelling across the original six NES games.

Preface

All of the pictures for this piece were taken by yours truly. Rather than using an emulator, I took photos of a variety of different displays, including a CRT, a Nintendo 3DS, and an HDTV. There may be some reflections of myself in some photos, and the quality of each is not consistent, but I think they get the point across.

Mega Man 1

The very first Mega Man does a surprisingly good job of environmental storytelling. The lore of the game emphasizes the idea that the Robot Masters were once helpful bots that were turned evil, so it plays off on the idea that robots who worked in civilian spaces might not stray too far from them.

Let’s start with my favorite example - Ice Man’s stage.

Sega Genesis Mini: Carrying Case 2019-12-26

As I mentioned previously, the Genesis Mini has no official carrying case, but there are plenty of unofficial solutions online. I picked one up from Amazon on account of it looking fairly close in style to the official cases of Nintendo’s Mini cases. Indeed, it does look the part, and it (mostly) gets its job done, but once you see it in person it becomes obvious that it lacks that certain level of quality that you get with licensed products of this nature.

First off, here is what it looks like:

Sega Genesis Mini 2019-12-26

The explosive success of the NES Classic in late 2016 led to a surge of miniature, plug-and-play retro console replicas, courtesy of rights holders who were interested in cashing in on the fad and making a buck. We of course saw the SNES classic, but also the Playstation Classic, the Turbografix Mini, the Neo Geo Mini, and even the Commodore 64 Mini. There might even be more that I forgot about.

That is a pretty substantial list of pre-HD video game platforms, but it is missing one crucial (and sadly, former) hardware manufacturer - Sega. To be fair, Sega has been licensing out the rights to make plug-and-play Genesis replicas for years, but these third-party devices have generally been cheap and low quality. The NES Classic added a level of quality and care that changed the game for these mini systems, and a lot of people wanted to see the same treatment be given to Sega hardware. It took Sega until 2019, three years after the NES Classic, to finally release their own Genesis Mini, just in time for the console’s 30th birthday.

Segaaaaaaaaaaa

So, is it any good? Did the quality in prove by bringing the design and development in house? Let’s find out.