It must have been weird to be the people making Mega Man 7. Coming in after X and especially X2 really pushed the boundaries of what Mega Man can look like with their additions to the verbset, shift towards exploration within levels, and increased focus on spectacle and narrative (?), it seems like a tall order to take that tech and make Normal Mega Man with it. I personally don’t love the item hunting elements of the X games I’ve played and I understand the appeal of wanting to have a more traditional Mega Man experience on the SNES but I do wonder if there were a lot of people asking for it at the time. So I’m sure it’s an unenviable position to be bringing Classic Mega Man forward technologically for the first time, especially given the turgid reception to the ports and demakes it had received over the years. Given how specific the play experience of these games is and how extremely important that feel is to everything that unfolds out of it, it can’t have been an easy task, and I think where we land with Mega Man 7 is an admirable try, if not wholly successful.
The cornerstone of Mega Man, the movement, is here exactly as far as I can tell. It’s true in X too, no matter what console MM you’re playing he’s gonna run at the same speed, jump at the same height, slide the same distance. There’s a degree to which this should feel perfect. It’s everything else that’s just a little bit off. The sprites in this game are enormous – they just take up a lot of screen real estate, which is nice because the sprite work in this game is uniformly incredible, but the level design doesn’t really account for it. You’re doing all the same Mega Man stuff, and the tricky platforming sections and instances of instant death spikes zooming in from offscreen would FEEL a lot less cheap if the screen was zoomed out to NES or even Mega Man X levels.
Additionally, the animations, while beautiful and elaborate, are maybe…too much so? For the kind of gameplay we’re doing here. SNES fidelity has enabled Mega Man 7 to look basically one for one exactly like all the official Mega Man art always has, and I wonder if maybe we overcorrected from the very stiff robotic animations we were trapped with on the NES. Everything has these super loose squash n’ stretch quality to their animations to match their new cartoonish art style, and this is fine for everyone except Mega Man himself, where this really extravagant animation work actually made it difficult to judge where I was at on a ledge or how far my jump might actually go. He’s got these floppy feet, it’s weird to look at! It’s not a huge problem, it’s mostly just a learning curve to adapt to and the game got easier as I did get used to it, but every now and then I would still misread my position based on uh, looking at my guy, which feels like it shouldn’t happen.
The good news, though, is despite those issues which do seem pretty big but I mostly spent so much time on because they are new and interesting and weird, they made Mega Man! And it’s a pretty good one imo! I don’t find 7 particularly appealing on an aesthetic level – cloud man’s music is the only one I can recall with any fondness, and I don’t find any of the level themes particularly exciting or nearly as attractively represented as the ones in the second NES trilogy – but the actual level design and play is here and it’s good. Lotta cool level gimmicks that don’t overstay their welcome or fuck around too much, more than one cool weapon that’s never been done by the series before, a sleight of solid bosses (who are rendered too easy by their weaknesses imo, but the fights are mostly fun, if not particularly challenging until the very very end where it suddenly becomes a nightmare), and a really gentle difficulty curve that might be the best ramp up the series has ever done, sure helped by splitting the robot master section into two sets of four instead of eight guys off the bat. If I had to guess I would assume that’s not a popular change among Fans but I think it’s fine, you get the same choice experience and it narrows down the guess work for people who really want to suss out the weaknesses. 7 brings back the multiple path and hidden area structure of 6, too, but it does so a lot more confidently and with a lot more finesse. Most of these areas are actually hidden, special items require some thinking or fancy fingerwork to get to, and the rewards are appropriate to the work you’ve done instead of outrageously skipping most of the level and pumping you with powerups for the incredible feat of “seeing a ladder and jumping up to it.” It definitely feels like some cues were taken and lessons were learned from the way Mega Man X hides secrets and in moderation I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all.
First tries are always hard, so I was ready to give Mega Man 7 some benefit of the doubt going in, but I was really pleasantly surprised by what a great time I had with it. My quibbles are real and I think they do affect the game pretty strongly but it’s ultimately difficult to actually ruin Mega Man if the core of it is strong, and this is one of the most solid core experiences in the series as far as I’m concerned.
Oh also Bass is here I love this guy he even has an edgy dog to counter Mega Man’s dog this rules so much I wish we lived in a world where EVERY franchise that ran long enough introduced a dumb fucking Knuckles character, things would be better.
The cornerstone of Mega Man, the movement, is here exactly as far as I can tell. It’s true in X too, no matter what console MM you’re playing he’s gonna run at the same speed, jump at the same height, slide the same distance. There’s a degree to which this should feel perfect. It’s everything else that’s just a little bit off. The sprites in this game are enormous – they just take up a lot of screen real estate, which is nice because the sprite work in this game is uniformly incredible, but the level design doesn’t really account for it. You’re doing all the same Mega Man stuff, and the tricky platforming sections and instances of instant death spikes zooming in from offscreen would FEEL a lot less cheap if the screen was zoomed out to NES or even Mega Man X levels.
Additionally, the animations, while beautiful and elaborate, are maybe…too much so? For the kind of gameplay we’re doing here. SNES fidelity has enabled Mega Man 7 to look basically one for one exactly like all the official Mega Man art always has, and I wonder if maybe we overcorrected from the very stiff robotic animations we were trapped with on the NES. Everything has these super loose squash n’ stretch quality to their animations to match their new cartoonish art style, and this is fine for everyone except Mega Man himself, where this really extravagant animation work actually made it difficult to judge where I was at on a ledge or how far my jump might actually go. He’s got these floppy feet, it’s weird to look at! It’s not a huge problem, it’s mostly just a learning curve to adapt to and the game got easier as I did get used to it, but every now and then I would still misread my position based on uh, looking at my guy, which feels like it shouldn’t happen.
The good news, though, is despite those issues which do seem pretty big but I mostly spent so much time on because they are new and interesting and weird, they made Mega Man! And it’s a pretty good one imo! I don’t find 7 particularly appealing on an aesthetic level – cloud man’s music is the only one I can recall with any fondness, and I don’t find any of the level themes particularly exciting or nearly as attractively represented as the ones in the second NES trilogy – but the actual level design and play is here and it’s good. Lotta cool level gimmicks that don’t overstay their welcome or fuck around too much, more than one cool weapon that’s never been done by the series before, a sleight of solid bosses (who are rendered too easy by their weaknesses imo, but the fights are mostly fun, if not particularly challenging until the very very end where it suddenly becomes a nightmare), and a really gentle difficulty curve that might be the best ramp up the series has ever done, sure helped by splitting the robot master section into two sets of four instead of eight guys off the bat. If I had to guess I would assume that’s not a popular change among Fans but I think it’s fine, you get the same choice experience and it narrows down the guess work for people who really want to suss out the weaknesses. 7 brings back the multiple path and hidden area structure of 6, too, but it does so a lot more confidently and with a lot more finesse. Most of these areas are actually hidden, special items require some thinking or fancy fingerwork to get to, and the rewards are appropriate to the work you’ve done instead of outrageously skipping most of the level and pumping you with powerups for the incredible feat of “seeing a ladder and jumping up to it.” It definitely feels like some cues were taken and lessons were learned from the way Mega Man X hides secrets and in moderation I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all.
First tries are always hard, so I was ready to give Mega Man 7 some benefit of the doubt going in, but I was really pleasantly surprised by what a great time I had with it. My quibbles are real and I think they do affect the game pretty strongly but it’s ultimately difficult to actually ruin Mega Man if the core of it is strong, and this is one of the most solid core experiences in the series as far as I’m concerned.
Oh also Bass is here I love this guy he even has an edgy dog to counter Mega Man’s dog this rules so much I wish we lived in a world where EVERY franchise that ran long enough introduced a dumb fucking Knuckles character, things would be better.
2 Comments
it is VERY funny to me that YOU are calling ME senpai when i think of YOU as the cool guy who has played a bunch of sick games and has all this knowledge of things that i am interested in getting more experience at hahaha
i haven't played any more of the GB mega mans beyond the first one, but I do want to return to them! And I definitely will at some point, probably sooner than later. There are so many of them I will probably want to start mixing them in with my remaining "main series" games. This is definitely interesting though, and it makes sense, with the gameboy studio eventually going on to make X3, that Mega Man teams would be looking at each other during the development process, especially in the more experimental games like 7, 8, and & Bass. I am also so excited to hear that they keep doing funny rival guys in those games this is one of my favorite types of guy in mega man
i haven't played any more of the GB mega mans beyond the first one, but I do want to return to them! And I definitely will at some point, probably sooner than later. There are so many of them I will probably want to start mixing them in with my remaining "main series" games. This is definitely interesting though, and it makes sense, with the gameboy studio eventually going on to make X3, that Mega Man teams would be looking at each other during the development process, especially in the more experimental games like 7, 8, and & Bass. I am also so excited to hear that they keep doing funny rival guys in those games this is one of my favorite types of guy in mega man
lpslucasps
1 year ago
The whole "intro, four easyish stages, intermission, four hardish stages, Wily castle" is taken wholesale from Mega Man II onwards. The item shop made its first appearance on Mega Man IV. The "rival robot that's just edgy Mega Man but actually not totally evil inside" is also a common motif of the GB series. Even the rocket punch from the Rush Adaptor made its first appearance on the tiny screen: it actually replaces the Mega Buster on Mega Man V!