iGamerz – XGE

Ahhh yes, the good ol’ days. The days of old. Back in the day. You remember don’t you? The Cavericci’s. The Hypercolor shirts. Thundercats, Transformers…..and best of all NINTENDO!!! I still remember when I almost threw my best friends matress across the room because I got to the last guy in Super Contra with one guy left, and died. I remember the weekends, the late nights, the early mornings of video game heaven. I remember when my friend and I would take turns playing games. And finally I remember how mad they would get when their turn came around and I wouldn’t give up the controller.

Nintendo had many good games as well as series. Castlevania has always been one of my favorite series, Contra’s series was pretty awsome too, and the Super Mario series…well you get the idea. In this mix of gaming awsomeness lied a very popular series. A series that would frustrate a nation of youths ready to take on an insane doctor with an arsenal of robots, while playing as a robot hero themselves. Thats right I’m talking about Mega Man (as if you didn’t know by the title anyway.)

Well, one day I got bored and opened up that old dusty box with all my old Nintendo stuff in it and got to playing the series. I wanted to see if I still had it in me to beat the first game. I did. And after I beat that one, I played part 2 and guess what…I beat that one too. Then after that I moved on to part 3, and so on. Before I knew it, I was up to part 6. I couldn’t believe that I had just beaten the entire series. Of course it did come at a price. I think my Nintendo is really broke this time. The series never changed, it’s still as frustrating and completely awsome as it was back in 1821. I guess I haven’t changed much either since I was awsome enough to beat them all (pat on the back time.)

While I was playing I noticed something strange. I was up to Mega Man 4 by this point and I felt like I’d been playing the same game the entire time. Logic told me that every time I beat one of the games, I was getting up to change the cartridge (which were approximately 6 foot tall and 4 foot wide, yea pretty big) but I’d forget and lose track of what game I was on. What I’m trying to say is that I never realized how completley the same every single one of those games are. Basically if you’ve played one of them, you’ve played them all. When I was a kid I didn’t see it that way. I just knew a new Mega Man game was out and that I had to beg my parents to buy it. Capcom must have died laughing every time they made a new one because of this. Kids are too easy to please I guess.

Every game starts out the same. You pick an enemy out of a line-up-you play his level-you beat him-then you get his power, and you do this until all 6 or 8 of them (the first game in the series has only 6 enemies to choose from) are defeated. After you’ve successfully defeated all enemies in the line-up you head to Dr. Wileys castle (this is in every game mind you) and play all his levels. Some of the games have about 6 new levels in Dr. Wiley’s castle and some have 8 I think. Ok so you’ve beaten all the line-up guys, you’ve beaten the levels in Dr. Wiley’s castle, now you have to fight all the old bosses again with all there powers at hand. Each enemy has a weakness that you picked up from other enemies, so if you pick the right weapon you can kill them in no time at all. After you beat them you fight a new concoction that the evil doctor has made in order to finally get to him (Dr. Wiley.) You kill him and that’s it game over.

With all that said, and even though every game is exactly the same I still have a soft spot for this series. I played through all the games and I wasn’t bored once. It was a lot of fun to replay all these old classics again and I recommend all you old schoolers to give it a try again. For the youngsters I would suggest maybe playing the Mega Man X series as it is more up to date with the times but it’s still a side scroller. The games today are so different from how they were back then that I’m sure that new gamers would get bored easily, but if your up to the challenge then go for it. Just remember one thing….if it wasn’t for the Nintendo and all its games todays games wouldn’t be what they are now. Nintendo was the pioneer of gaming history. I would say that Atari or Coleco Vision started it all, but I was too young to play those dinosaurs.