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.