If you look up "needs refinement" you'll certainly find the bizarre US boxart of the original Mega Man staring at you with his cold dead eyes.
The game's controls are both too heavy and too slippery, Mega Man himself takes a moment to either go or stop, and some of the level design is actual butt cheeks. Lookin' at you, Elec Man.
But you do see the trappings of brilliance underneath the poor controls and level design. Getting new powers is fun, the sound track is solid, and the graphics are great for 1987.
Mega Man is a solid enough game, but it's not the one I'd recommend you start the series with. Especially given the lack of healing items and poor control compared to later entries.

Start to a legendary franchise, admittedly I am bias when it comes to this one as I played it very young but I can see it has some very rough edges especially with difficulty but if you solider through it I think you will have a great time

Although there are only 6 Robot masters as opposed to the 8 that becomes the series standard, the 6 provided are iconic and fun to fight against and for a new player I think it is also pretty easy to figure out boss weaknesses, controls are probably as stiff as you can get with this series as Mega Man isnt able to do much other then run jump and shoot

This game (along with the rest of the franchise) is one I come back to almost yearly, do a quick run-through and end it off with a big smile on my face. For the time especially, Mega Man came out of the gate strong as can be, even with the first entry you've got that great OST the series is known for. Also with modern platforms you are able to use features such as save states and the rewind feature making it easier then ever to get into the franchise, that being said it is a very difficult game but not Ghosts N Goblins levels of unfair and this difficulty will be fine tuned as you make your way through the franchise

Solid 8/10

Mega Man did a lot of things well right out of the gate. The colorful and unique presentation of each level, coupled with themed enemies and bosses made for a great looking game. The excellent soundtrack just added a layer of polish to the overall package.

The gameplay laid a heavy focus on carefully timed platforming which could get frustrating fairly often, but rarely felt completely unfair. The bosses, with their unique abilities, elevated this above many of the action platformers of the day and allowed for a customizable level of challenge once you knew the correct order to tackle the stages in.

Overall Mega Man was a tough platformer with a great presentation that would go on to influence other games in the genre almost immediately after its release.

For a 1987 platforming side-scroller Mega Man hits the lofty heights of Super Mario Bros. and Castlevania. The game oozes personality with a cutesy aesthetic similar to Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy.

Mega Man also has a great level select formula with boss fights that benefit from Mega Man's ability to utilise enemy weapons upon defeat - just like a game of Scissors, Paper, Rock.

I feel the original is unfairly pitted against Mega Man 2 and 3 which yes, greatly streamline the experience and build the real gauntlet of Wily Stages as well as Robot Master Gauntlets (it exists here, but is fairly relaxed).

This is a title that originally served as a question for me, that question being if I wanted to dedicate time to going back and beating classic video games. Since my review reads "completed" you can probably guess what the answer was. This thought was conjured because this was my second attempt at playing the original Mega Man with the first attempt being marred by immense frustration and gawking at the old game design. My second attempt at the game started no better but it surprised me with how it forced me to take time with it and master its difficulty.

The first title in this series is built on the game design of old where making the game exceedingly difficult and time-consuming was the way to extend play time. It took me a while to align myself with this type of design, which resulted in a decently long playthrough as I memorized each level and all the tricks they threw at me. The Rock-Paper-Scissors nature of the stages is genuinely a neat way to have the levels relate to one another but I resulted in just looking up the intended order. This was a result of each of the levels being a little unfair on the first run-through. A lot of my first attempts resulted in my death due to poor signposting of enemy patterns and traps. Going in with the mindset that you will have to play the levels multiple times over does improve the experience but it does not fully redeem how unfair the game design can be at times. It is obvious through the design that this was Inafune and his team's first title like this.

Though I have grown comfortable with save states, it was interesting to go back to a title that does not hold back in making you do sections over and over again. It was kind of fun to constantly go through the first Wily stage to get a chance to fight the Yellow Devil. Having to go through a gauntlet every time to fight the hardest boss in the game was stressful but ultimately very rewarding. This sort of loop would usually not work on me but for some, I had a lot of fun slowly mastering the stages. It also helps that so much of the game soundtrack remains catchy to this day.

As an opener to a classic video game franchise, the first Mega Man is rough and I can easily see most people dropping it. I had my fun with it but I also had my fair share of frustrations with it leaving my experience a bit mixed. I am curious to see how this formula of Mega Man game evolves from here as I go through all the classic titles.