If I could just have a brief moment of your time, I would like to discuss a new level of appreciation I have for Mega Man X5. I was afforded the opportunity to play it through it for the first time in maybe a decade over Father’s Day weekend, since my wife gifted me with a lazy weekend. X5 was a game I once considered one of the best in the series. My mind changed upon revisiting it, but that’s another story. My play through this time brought a deeper understanding of its design and how it can be manipulated. Continue reading “Mega Man X5’s Enigma Solved” →

After ten installments in the main franchise along with an extra stop on the SNES to include a fan favorite character, multiple portable iterations, an enhanced remake on a satellite service as well as one on a poor selling hand-held, eight installments of a darker and edgier yet similar series along with a remake of the first and a few handheld titles, four sequels to that series, and yet another two sequels that series, you’d think that Capcom would have the Mega Man series down to a science by now. What elements in a Mega Man game are, in short, the Mega Man-est. Not to mention the end results of the various experiments.

Capcom determined this back in 2008 when they released Mega Man 9 on then-current consoles. After years of bloat and experimentation, they returned Mega Man back to his basic elements: jump, shoot, collect and use Robot Master weapons, and have an occasional extra item or two. 9 is arguably in consideration for best game in the classic Mega Man series of games. It returned to basic functions and was designed tightly around that.

Mega Man 10 was a departure from that, somehow. Continue reading “Mega Man 11 and Excess in Design” →