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Cover art for MEGA MAN

088 · MEGA MAN

October 4, 2019 · 2 hr 23 min

It's MEGA MAN versus the powerful leaders and fighting forces of Monsteropolis - that strange multi-layered land of robot-like Humanoids created by the wrongly-performed experiments with human beings by Dr. Wily. FOR MORE NESTALGIA as well as show notes and links check out www.NEStalgiacast.com

Show notes

  • Introductions
  • Mega Man Franchise
  • First Impressions
    • Just need to take my time
  • Objective
    • Work your xway through 6 stages in any order. Defeating each stage’s Robot Master unlocks a new weapon for Mega Man. Defeat all 6 to take on the evil Dr. Wily
  • Tales from the Manual
    • Terrible Box art
    • “Thermometer Shaped Meter”
    • Magnet Beam...
  • Gameplay
    • Jumping and Shooting
    • Difficulty
    • Stages
    • Robot Master Fights
    • Power Ups
    • Wily
      • Yellow Devil
      • Old foes
      • Imposter Mega Man
      • Only able to use power-up ONCE
    • Ending
      • Mega Man without gear!
    • Music
  • Development
    • Akira “A.K” Kitamura
      • After a period of study and working on various projects, the Mega Man development began. But as I thought about game design then, I started to wonder if designers had really thought deeply about enemy placement and behavior.
        • I decided to play a bunch of different games and study just those difficult sections, replaying them over and over.
      • Two of my personal goals for Mega Man were to create a game where all the stages could be cleared in an hour, and to make something that players would want to come back to again and again. To that end, I actually calculated the total number of stages by measuring Mega Man’s walking speed and seeing how long it would take to get through each stage. I then split that up so that the first half of the game would be the robot master stages, and the second would be the Wily stages.
      • On Enemy Placement
        • 1: Single, weak little enemies would appear in “waves” of 3 or 4 individuals (and to the extent possible, I’d avoid mixing up multiple enemies);

        • 2: they would all use the same attacks;

        • 3: I would use differences in terrain and enemy placement to adjust the difficulty of a given section;

        • 4: The difficulty of each enemy in the wave would gradually rise, but the last enemy to appear would be easier.

  • Sequels and Spinoffs
    • Mega Man 2-6 on NES
      • Now goes all the way to 11
      • Game Boy versions of each too
    • Mega Man X starts on SNES
      • Goes up to X8 on PS2
    • So many other games, let’s just talk about Mega Man 1
      • Mega Man: Wily Wars (Genesis version of the first 3 games)
        • Not great
      • Mega Man Powered Up on PSP
        • Parish says it’s the best
        • Chibi look
        • Adds Oil Man and Time Man
  • EGL (Mike, Sean, Joe, Sam)
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