Biography of Mega Man

Mega Man 1

In 1987, Capcom introduced a game to its lineup with an uninspired title and totally appalling box art. It wasn't a huge success. Mega Man, the tale of a boy robot forged by Dr. Thomas Light to end the plague of rebelling construction robots liberated and controlled by his renegade assistant, Dr. Wily, opened up an interesting can of worms for Capcom. The largely nonlinear gameplay and the innovative idea of stealing the weapons of defeated bosses were what earmarked this series for longevity. Later we learned that the boring title and lackluster art were workarounds to the peculiar title of the Japanese original Rockman and the then-taboo anime-style artwork that adorned its cover. And now you understand why Guts Man isn't called Rockman!

Mega Man 2

Mega Man came into his birthright in this, the second title in the series. Unlike the first title, Mega Man II was wildly popular and earned the accolades of the mass consumer. Instead of facing a mere six robot bosses, Mega Man faced eight - which became the series standard. The next important innovation was the addition of passwords, which let you re-enter the game at a later date without starting from scratch. There were also three upgrade items from Dr. Light to augment Rock's powers. Add in the excellent music and the distinctive graphical style that surrounded the game - including portraits of the bosses - and the amazingly huge dragon in Dr. Wily stage 1, and we can assume that Capcom intended to make Mega Man its star.

Mega Man 3

Capcom decided to take everything that was Mega Man and polish it until it positively shone - Mega Man III was quite possibly the pinnacle of the series. Not only did Capcom manage to come up with some great bosses and excellent music, developers managed to give you a pretty long experience in this game. This game marked the debut of the mysterious Proto Man - Mega Man's brother. With Rock's canine pal, Rush, and the new handy-dandy slide move, and you had respectable innovations. OK, maybe Top Man wasn't the best idea, but this game held serious flair. If you're going to nit-pick, there are some titles coming up that are much more deserving of your scorn. In the end, this was a top-notch game.

Mega Man 4

Now, with this title, Capcom did something that annoyed people and would continue to annoy them for several years - the company let Mega Man stay put on the NES, where the cash lay, instead of graduating him to the SNES. The SNES was still fairly young when Mega Man IV hit the shelves - but here we saw the last, real, meaty game to wear the moniker for a good long time. While it never really got to the level of II or III, it was certainly not a complete slouch - although this was where innovation began to run sour. The innovations in this title included a chargeable Mega Buster, the requirement that you go back into levels to find random, hidden stuff (a play mechanic that would later dominate the X series), and the hollow storyline charade involving Dr. Cossack- as it unsurprisingly turned out, Dr. Wily is pulling the strings.