While this IS another one I've beaten before, I only kinda think I've beaten it before, as I remembered just about nothing at all about this game. It's very possible I've actually mis-remembered beating it as a kid, since there is SO little about this game I recalled compared to other games I've only beaten once like Mega Man 7. Nevertheless, I've beaten it here again, and it took me around four hours to 100% the Japanese version game.

Mega Man 8 was released quite closely to Mega Man X4, and it shares some similarities in its presentation and story in that regard. You have a lot of animated anime cutscenes that get you up to speed that are really well voice acted in Japanese and very infamously poorly voice acted (even for the time) in English ^^;. Investigating a "meteorite" that has crashed on a remote island that was a former Dr. Wily base, Mega Man finds a crashed robot from space, Duo, as well as shards of some horrible enemy he was fighting before he crashed. However, Dr. Wily gathers up the evil bits and plans to use them for his own devices, and Mega Man is here to stop him! Honestly, while he may be cool, Duo's presence in the story feels fairly contrived and unimportant, even for a Mega Man game ^^;. But the story isn't really why we're here. We're here for action and shooting, and this game thankfully delivers on that, albeit in its own strange way.

Made so much later and on the PS1 to boot, Mega Man 8 feels like a serious black sheep of the classic series, and in many ways it feels more like a spin-off of the X series. The stages are fun, and have two sections with a continue point in the middle (just like Mega Man X4), and they also have gimmicks quite frequently, such as a shoot'em up-style section, or the infamously difficult snowboarding sections.

I honestly have trouble articulating exactly how they don't quite feel like classic Mega Man levels, but I think it's down to the pacing of their design. Between the traversal gimmicks and even the traversal powers such as the grappling hook, the stages have a much different pacing to them. The move to much larger areas full of platforms and away from the very room/corridor-based quicker action of the previous titles also contributes to this. Heck, they even remove E-tanks (and give you different mid-stage healing), give you dedicated mega buster and special weapon buttons, and there's even the new weapon the Mega Ball which you can use to get up to some interesting platforming shenanigans. This isn't to say that Mega Man 8 is bad, so much as I understand why it is such a divisive entry in the series, as it is definitely not Mega Man as it'd been before. While I quite liked how the stages worked, I can easily understand people not gelling with how this game does its thing.

Another change they've thankfully done is made the camera zoomed out more and made Mega Man smaller, and that contributes both to better feeling stage design as well as better boss fights. The robot masters make for really entertaining and technical fights, and you can really feel the inspiration from the X-series in just how much you'll need to dash and utilize your special weapons in order to defeat them. Bosses are no longer quite so comically weak to their weaknesses, so even if you're fighting them "the easy way", you'll need to stay on your toes to win these fights. That approach to boss design as well as the removal of E-tanks does ultimately make this a bit of a harder game than a lot of the earlier Mega Man games, but it's thankfully more so a good challenging than a frustrating challenge.

The presentation is really well done, as you'd hope for with an early-/mid-life PS1 game. The animated cutscenes are, as mentioned before, very pretty, but the in-game sprites are also highly detailed and full of character. The VA for the bosses gives them just a bit more personality that brings them to life in a way previous bosses weren't. You also have a more electronic music-style of soundtrack, and while that isn't so much my jam compared to music in the older classic games or in the X series, it's still really quality.


Verdict: Highly Recommended. Mega Man 8 is a divisive Mega Man game and it really deserves that reputation. It's classic Mega Man as he'd never been (and, at least since then, never be in the future) imagined again, and I really understand people not enjoying that. It's so unique and quirky that it's actually pretty hard for me to feel super good about comparing it to other entries in the series, but despite that it's still a game I enjoyed a lot. It's not my favorite in the series, but I still enjoyed it way more than I thought I would, to the point I'm even considering trying to hunt down the hella expensive and rare Saturn version because it adds a couple extra optional bosses and has remixed music~

Special shoutout to my friend DogStrong for helping me through the game, and appreciating it even more ^w^ <3