Rate the series - Home consoles

[marurun]

Pierrot, I'm surprised you like the MD ports as much as you do. I found the music and sound to have been rather haphazardly ported, and the actual play control has an obnoxious bit of lag on it. Not to mention the physics also feel a tad off. The pretty graphics just aren't enough to win me over.

[Sarge]

I'm not a big fan of the MD version, either. It just feels off compared to the sublime NES games.

I'm going to take this in tiers, because there are certain games I find pretty equal to each other.

The Undisputed Champion: Mega Man 2

Barely Missed the Top: Mega Man 3, Mega Man 9

Still Awesome, But Not World-Beaters: Mega Man 5, Mega Man 6

Great Games, Worth a Play: Mega Man 4, Mega Man 8, Rockman & Forte, Mega Man 11

Good, but Best Left to Fans: Mega Man, Mega Man 7, Mega Man 10

Note that this means I think even the worst Mega Man game is still quite good. I'd probably put MM7 at the very bottom, but I surprised myself earlier this year and would give it a 7/10 (5/10 is average).

[prfsnl_gmr]

Don’t forget the, “Only Capcom can make real Mega Man games” tier: Mega Man (DOS), Mega Man 3 (DOS), Mega Man (Game Gear), and Mega Man & Bass (Wonderswan). All of those games are awful. Way, way worse than even the worst of Capcom’s output.

Also, this thread has revealed to me that more of you need to play the portable Mega Man games. Dr. Wily’s Revenge isn’t that great, but Mega Man IV, V, and Powered Up are all top-tier games, IMO.

[Sarge]

I thought we were just doing the main series. I didn't include the Rockman World games... but I can.

I played a bit of the Game Gear port, and thought it was okay? It didn't seem bad at all to me. Not optimal sure, especially with the zoomed in screens, but it plays alright.

Anyway, the Game Boy games!

Top-tier: Mega Man IV, Mega Man V

Still really good: Mega Man 3

Flawed, but still solid: Mega Man in Dr. Wily's Revenge

Okay, but very strange: Mega Man II

I like to pretend the DOS games don't exist. I have played them. I actually played them back in the day. I can't remember how I got them; they may have come with the awful Street Fighter II port I bought and promptly returned.

Mega Man II was odd because Capcom outsourced to another company for it. Minakuchi Engineering developed all the other ones, and they had a better feel for what the series is supposed to be.

[pierrot]

Pierrot, I'm surprised you like the MD ports as much as you do. I found the music and sound to have been rather haphazardly ported, and the actual play control has an obnoxious bit of lag on it. Not to mention the physics also feel a tad off. The pretty graphics just aren't enough to win me over.

I didn't grow up with an NES, and really hadn't played any of the NES Mega Man games for most of my life. If I were a speedrunner, then sure, the differences in the way Rock controls would bother me, but they don't bother me at all. I also prefer the Genesis six-button pad too much, compared to even the NES dogbones, that any minor annoyances from Rock still inching forward for a fraction of a second before running is alleviated by not having my thumb mangled. After playing through all of Rockman Mega World, I actually started to play all the NES games, but I got pissed off with Mega Man at Elec Man's stage, and stopped; played through Mega Man 2 on Hard Mode, and beat it, but enjoyed it far less; didn't want to ruin any of my love for Mega Man 3, so I just skipped to MM4, and still feel it's the worst Mega Man game that I've played. (I do feel like I may have unfairly panned 5 and 6 after that, though.)

Anyway, with the music, sure, the percussion in the Wily Wars versions is almost all just that maraca sound with the noise channel, so that's not terribly interesting, but a lot of the tracks on the NES just sound really shrill and whiny to me, by comparison. I really feel like the music in the NES Mega Man games isn't that great, despite the compositions being awesome. So, no, I don't think those compositions sound as good as they could in Wily Wars, but I do feel that they sound better, overall. I acknowledge that people who grew up hearing it on the NES want no part of that idea, though.

[Sarge]

If there is one thing I'd change about the Mega Man NES soundtracks, it's to add more bass to them. I love the way Konami's, Tecmo's, Sunsoft's, and Natsume's best tracks bring it with excellent use of either the PCM channel or awesome manipulations to get some heavy bass.

[marurun]

Capcom pretty much never used PCM samples in their music. Their sound engines were always pretty conservative. That said, the compositions were mostly expertly crafted around those limitations. Wily Wars also seemed to have some minor tempo inconsistencies that drove me nuts. Felt like the music was always right on the edge of going off the rails.

[pierrot]

Yeah, there are definitely a number of timing differences in various sections. They're still well metered, though, so I feel like it's probably down to interpretations by the sound engineer/programmer.

[pook99]

I'm pleased to see that MM 5 is getting some love on this thread, I always feel that it is the most under rated game in the series and , while not as good as 2, or 9, definitely is an outstanding game. I also agree gravity mans stage is wicked fun.

@prfsnl_gamer: I played power up this year and loved it, I also played gb MM 5 based on your recommendation and loved that as well. I just chose not to include them because there are just so many mega man games/ports/handhelds it would just make an already difficult process even more daunting.

I do think I should have included mega man and bass, but just forgot about it. I only played that game once in my life, in fact it was the first game I played after I discovered emulation when I got my first computer back in 2000. I definitely remember enjoying it but for some reason I never revisited it, I probably will soon.

I also think Mega Man holds the prestige of having the best fan games out there, there are lots of amazing fan titles and romhacks and some of them are easily on par or better than capcoms best, definitely worth checking out.

[Ack]

Can we talk about side games like Mega Man Legends, which is an old love of mine? I realize it's not in the scope of the main series, but some of the side games have contributed heavily to my love of the franchise.