Friday, May 6, 2016

Mega Man 6 (NES, 1993)

MEGA MANIA returns with the final NES installment. Did they save the best for last? No. No they did not. It isn't a bad game, though. I like it more than Mega Man 5.



The first annual King of Iron Fist King of the Ring ...Robot Tournament? No way this doesn't end in disaster.

The mysterious Mr. X is the newest bad guy in the Mega Man universe. Mega Man's outrage at his betrayal is hilarious. Usually there's some red herring bad guy in these games, but this time it's just lazy. Mr. X is... Dr. Wily with sunglasses.

Moments after this picture was taken, Rush went on a BLISTERING anti-Obama rant! I did NOT see that coming!

 The eight bosses du jour. There's a significant lack of boner-themed bosses in this one, unless you count Tomahawk Man. And if you do, then you should see a doctor right away.

Two of these guys were the result of a Nintendo Power contest where readers could design robot masters and send them in; Capcom would choose the best one to include in the game. They ended up choosing two:

One of the reader-created bosses is Knight Man. This guy is awesome, but when I was a kid I always wished he had a sword instead of a mace. Just seems more fitting for a Knight Man, and I can't think of any NES Mega Man bosses that had a sword.

Oh, and the music for this stage is pretty good. 

Knight Man's stage has some great colors. The palette in this game is about as good as it gets on the NES, which it should be given that this was one of the last NES games.

The middle section of the stage has lots and lots of spikes that move up and down. Watch where you jump.

 Flip-Top returns, and he's stingy as usual. Always exit the screen until he gives you an E-Tank. It's the same principle behind reloading until you get a good haul from a treasure pile in Elder Scrolls Arena.

Speaking of E-Tanks... dammit, this one is way out of reach. If only I had Rush Jet. Unfortunately, Rush is in jail for drug possession and threats against the President.

 "I thought this was America! What? I THOUGHT THIS WAS AMERICA!"

As I battle Knight Man, this would be a good time to mention that they really lamed up the charged shots again here. Getting hit disrupts your charge, which renders charged shots unusable during times when you're taking a lot of hits.

Luckily, Knight Man has an easily-avoidable pattern. He's a good choice for the first robot master, though many would suggest Plant Man since his weakness is hard to use against him. Nintendo Power, for whatever reason, starts their coverage with Flame Man. He's an awful choice for first boss.

 As usual, defeating these bosses nets you their special weapon. You know the drill by now; it's the same as all of the other games in the series.

I take on Centaur Man's stage next. I like the music in this one. This series has never stopped having great music. This might well be the best track in this particular game, at least in my opinion.

The miniboss (sorta) makes a return in this game... but not really. The minibosses tend to be smaller than usual and on the easy side.

The whole game is a bit on the easy side, with special weapons taking large chunks out of the bosses. Knight Crush decimates Centaur Man, whose special power is to stop time. No, I don't get it either.

Next up is the other boss from the Nintendo Power contest, the somewhat generic Wind Man. Now, Knight Man I get, he was an awesome creation. Wind Man, though? He's more or less just a redesigned Air Man. I think they should have given the nod to one of the numerous other good ideas they got. Optic Man comes to mind. That guy was rad.

Wind Man's stage is generic and full of fans. There are so many cooler things they could have done with this level...oh well.

Next, our hero battles Wind Man himself. He attacks by flying around and stomping, but for the most part he's easily avoided. Centaur Man's time-flash weapon dishes out a lot of damage to him no matter where he is on the screen, but you need to space out the attacks so as to not waste them during his invulnerable post-damage window.

Next up, I take on Flame Man's stage. It's one of the few difficult stages, filled with fire and spikes that all cause instant death. First stage MY ASS, Nintendo Power.

Flame Man himself is one of the more race-baiting Mega Man bosses, ruling over an oil field and wearing a turban. At least he doesn't throw bombs.

Next up, I take on Blizzard Man's stage. With Flame Man's weapon, you can burn through some of the ice walls in this stage. However, in this case you don't want to. That one-up IS A TRAP.

After lots of perilous sliding around, Mega Man reaches the lair of...

 ...Blizzard Man, who wears a pointy hat and skis while summoning blizzards. He's a slightly less-hot version of Shiva.

Next up... Plant Man. He's weak to blizzards, which actually makes a lot of sense. Fire would make more sense, but hey. I miss the old games in this series where bosses would have multiple weaknesses. In the later games, they have one weakness and take the same low damage from everything else.

Rather than Rush summons, in this game Mega Man fuses with Rush to create new forms. This one lets you break blocks by punching, but you can only strike at close range and you can't slide. It's only marginally useful.

Speaking of punching, the miniboss in Plant Man's stage is a punching mech on treads. It pops up several times.

 Plant Man is the shield-user of this game, and pretty much follows Wood Man's attack pattern. It's pretty clear Capcom was running out of ideas at this point, since most of the bosses are rehashes of old foes. So far we've seen a boss with a time stopper, a plant shield, a fireball, and an ice weapon. Wind Man was pretty much Air Man 2.0. At least Knight Man is new, in design and weapon. We've still got Yamato Man and Tomahawk Man on the way, and they're also new.

Defeating Plant Man first probably would have been a good call, since Blizzard wasn't that great against him and since he gives up the best powerup. Jet Megaman can fly short distances; this is hands-down the best iteration of Rush Jet in the series. It's also the one thing that this game totally does right.

 Also, it's a sweet jet-pack.

Another easy miniboss is this hard hat dispenser. It'd be a lot cooler if it were a hot girl dispenser. Just another wasted opportunity.

Tomahawk Man's stage looks particularly cool. Great music here, too. This is the sunset of the NES as a system.

 Since Tomahawk Man himself is a Native American, it's only right that I use all parts of the battle. Here's a video.

Yamato Man's stage is pretty similar to Tomahawk Man's. Except with more interior locations. So, what's a Yamato, you ask? According to The Mega Man Home Page

I asked some friends of mine who know Japanese—who double-checked with a Japanese college professor—and the answer was that Yamato basically represents Japan itself. To some Japanese, I was told, Yamato is “home.” It was originally a province in early Japan (4th to 8th century) where it was the center of Japanese cultural and political activities.


Yamato Man is awesome. He wields a spear, and jumps around spinning it before launching spear-heads at you.

 Said spear-heads are the weapon you get from him, and unfortunately they're pretty bland. That concludes the original eight bosses.

On to... heh... Mr. X.

Mr. X: No relation to X from Mega Man X. Which came out like a month after this game. Mega Man IV for the Game Boy also came out at about the same time. It was a trifecta of Nintendo Mega Man goodness.

Mr. X's fortress is your typical fortress level, so I'm going to be summing up. It starts outside, then goes inside for some tricky levels that require you to CONSTANTLY switch between Rush Power, Rush Jet, and normal mode. Given that it takes a few seconds to switch, this gets annoying fast.

 Case in point: You need Rush Power to break through that wall, and Rush Jet to get into it. Don't even try hopping over there normally, because Mega Man always hits the spikes.

 First boss here is this weird pair of pods. They're only vulnerable some of the time, and I waste a bunch of special weapon ammo trying to damage them. They aren't difficult, though.

These collapsing bridges would be no problem if Mega Man could dash or otherwise speed-boost.

 Since X is the letter after W, does this mean we'll see a Y before boss doors in the next game? No... no it doesn't.

 The next boss is this wall-turret. It moves around in just the right way to avoid most of your shots; the Silver Tomahawk does a lot of damage but I'm out of ammo for that one. So I rely on Rush Jet to jump high enough to reach it with my attacks, and it's a difficult fight.

 Next up, a hard hat tank that is only vulnerable in the obvious spot. It's a poor man's Skull Tank. Check out the rad Jet Megaman in action!

 Finally, Mr. X. He pilots a mechanical Spore Spawn, without the awesome music. This is one of the easiest fights in the game, and requires only that you pelt him with Flame Man's weapon.

But wait! Mr. X isn't done yet. He takes off his sunglasses to reveal...

...Dr. Wily, complete with an entirely new castle! So basically, this game does the exact same thing as the last two. Well, it certainly extends the gameplay a bit.

 Dr. Wily's Castle is virtually indistinguishable from Mr. X's Castle. Neither place is at all memorable.

 Here's the final inventory screen for me. I missed out on BEAT and the Energy Balancer, but I'll live. Not really wanting to spend any more time with this game than I have to; it's my least favorite of the NES six.

The Wily stage bosses are MUCH cooler than the X stage bosses, at least. This brontosaurus is up there with the dragon from Mega Man 2 as far as big, impressive bosses go. Jet Megaman makes quick work of this fight.

Not sure what this thing is, but it's fast and aggressive. I need to use E-Tanks to get past these bosses... luckily the game is giving me more of those than I'm using, so victory is never particularly in doubt.

 I fight the eight bosses again, now equipped with all of their weapons. Usually this is one of my favorite parts of any game in this series, but not so this time. None of these fights are particularly interesting.

BEFORE

AFTER

ARRIVE. RAISE HELL. LEAVE.

The Skull Tank in this game is more mobile than usual, and jumps all over Megaman. Yes, it jumps. Those are sweet hydraulics that would make Eddie Guerrero jealous.

Wily has not one, not two, but THREE life meters. His second form has him exposed, much like the first game. It still isn't difficult, especially with the abundance of E-Tanks I've got. Thanks to this game's awesome version of Rush Jet, you never really need to worry about him being out of reach.

 His final form is a teleporting saucer, as usual. He likes to appear out of reach and launch rotating spheres that cover most of the screen.

 As with everything else in this game, Rush Jet takes away his height advantage when he appears atop the screen, and the fight is over relatively quickly. The rest of the time, charged shots do a lot of damage when he flies low.

 It's worth noting that the final battle music in this game is really good; as far as the original series goes, it's the second-best final battle tune behind Mega Man 7. At least, in my opinion. So there's another thing this game has going for it.

Mega Man ties up Dr. Wily. Somewhere, someone is turned on by this.

Dr. Wily gets hauled off to jail... ah, hell. Who cares? We know he'll be back in the next game. In the immortal words of Dr. Evil's Son, "why don't you just kill him?"

Speaking of the next game, tune in tomorrow. Also, please leave a comment below, and be sure to share this site. Don't be a lemon, be a rosebud.


4 comments:

  1. I actually saw that Nintendo Power again a week ago. A number of the Mans in there show up in later games. There's one that looks just like MM10's Blade Man, even.

    Props to Jet Mega Man, but I would say that the soundtrack is the other thing this game totally does right!

    Ah, you did bring up the music as another thing for the rocking final battle track. It sounds very similar to one of the Destiny of an Emperor 2 boss themes, you can tell they were made around the same time, don't know if it was the same composer though.

    Hey now, it's fair game bringing up how MM4-6 do the same thing with the bait and switch for Wily, but give 6 credit for actually capturing him and sending him to jail! That /was/ new. As for Scott, Mega Man /does/ try to kill him at the end of 7 in a super out of character moment.

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  2. MR. X!! WHY!? Haha I remember this too, the most emotion I've ever seen out of Mega Man.
    You're right; Knight Man's stage looks great. A ton of vibrant colors.
    That contest was awesome, and they should do it more. One of the submissions they published in the magazine came from a kid in my town..who was ALSO named James. He recommended Glue Man. I was like WHOOA DID MY SUBCONSCIOUS DO THIS? IF NOT WHERE CAN I MEET THIS GUY? I still haven't.
    Stopping time might be something mythical centaurs could do. I could Google it but let's just assume that's correct.
    Optic Man..Optic Man..OK I have to look this up. YEAHH found it! Here's the whole list; ignore the snarky comments and just see the designs: http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/megaman-enemies/
    Soo Glue Man was made by James Yan. Nah, never met him, looks like none of my FB friends know the guy either. Too bad! Would be so weird if he's Taiwanese-American.
    You're right; this one was a bit short in the ideas department. Still, it exists.

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  3. I'm actually picturing Megaman and Mr.X being the bestest of friends ever ( well Wily is laughing his ass off but Megaman doesn't notice) which is why Megaman was so emotionally affected by Mr.X betrayal. I dunno if you have ever played one of these two hacks, MegaCrap and MegaFag. One of the them is a Megaman 6 hack and the intro is downright hilarious. Instead of being a TOURNAMENT it's just good old fuck fest 98'. And Megaman gets mad because Wily plans on raping his mom... Shit that actually fits more the intro then the actual intro, now Megaman has a reason to be mad even if he doesn't have a mom.

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