2017 Gaming goals and resolutions

[alienjesus]

MegaMan should be easy since I recently picked up the collection on PS4.

We'll talk about "easy" after you beat MM1.

Mega Man 1 is plenty easy.

My vote for the hardest one on the NES is probably Mega Man 3.

[Xeogred]

Are you joking? The boss rush in MM1 is insane even with the pause trick. Elec Man kills you in like two shots. The platforming more finicky (I think it's Guts stage with the green moving platforms that are super easy to die from if you don't time the jumps right).

MM2+ = cake walk for me.

[retrosportsgamer]

2. GEN = Beat a Season as Coach in Tecmo Super Bowl

Genesis - I am planning on doing this over the summer for my yearly Marathon game.

Ok you've peaked my interest here. Coach mode isn't something I've ever explored nor read anything about. Are you working off the original cart or did they do something special over at Tecmobowl.org with this mode?

Truthfully I feel like that is quite possibly the most boring gaming to do for a marathon, but I tip my cap your way sir.

[Exhuminator]

MM1 is not easy for someone who's never played it before.

The PAL version may be easier than the NTSC version though. If it's one of those NES games than ran 17% slower than the NTSC equivalent.

[alienjesus]

MM1 is not easy for someone who's never played it before.

The PAL version may be easier than the NTSC version though. If it's one of those NES games than ran 17% slower than the NTSC equivalent.

I played the 60hz version on Wii U Virtual Console. I played all 6 of them in a row, and I easily had the most trouble with 3. I had never played any Mega Man games other than 2, 9 and 10 before, so 1 was entirely new to me.

Elec Man is a bastard, but I don't find most of the other robot masters in Mega Man 1 to be particularly challenging.

I think the platforms in Guts Man's stages being so infamous is weird. I didn't think they were particularly noteworthy as being tougher than any other moderately challenging stage in a Mega Man game.

On the other hand, I had a hell of a time with the Doc Robots in 3, particularly the Quick Man doc robot - his tall hit box makes him even harder than the real Quick Man in 2 imo.

[Exhuminator]

I had never played any Mega Man games other than 2, 9 and 10 before, so 1 was entirely new to me.

Since the Mega Man games are so incredibly similar, your experience with 2, 9, and 10 gave you a good head start on 1.

What I meant was if someone had never played Mega Man at all, and started out with Mega Man 1, that would be challenging. I speak from personal experience, as MM1 was my first MM and it was quite challenging compared to other platformers I'd played before it.

However, what made MM1 so hard for me wasn't the challenges Xeogred cited, but rather the Yellow Devil. Not knowing about the pause trick or what weapon it's weak against, made it a roadblock for me as a kid.

[alienjesus]

I had never played any Mega Man games other than 2, 9 and 10 before, so 1 was entirely new to me.

Since the Mega Man games are so incredibly similar, your experience with 2, 9, and 10 gave you a good head start on 1.

What I meant was if someone had never played Mega Man at all, and started out with Mega Man 1, that would be challenging. I speak from personal experience, as MM1 was my first MM and it was quite challenging compared to other platformers I'd played before it.

However, what made MM1 so hard for me wasn't the challenges Xeogred cited, but rather the Yellow Devil. Not knowing about the pause trick or what weapon it's weak against, made it a roadblock for me as a kid.

Sure, I can understand that perspective. All I'm saying is that for me, 1 wasn't close to being the hardest game in the series, or even particularly noteworthy in difficulty compared to other popular NES games. It seems to have a reputation but I just don't get it. I legitimately find Super Mario Bros. to be more challenging than Mega Man 1.

I wondered if I might be misremembering, so I went and check my old reviews of Mega Man 1 and 3 from when I beat them in 2014. My thoughts then are nearly identical to now, although it seems I definitely agreed that the boss rush in Mega Man 1 was tough. On the other hand, I seemed to think Fire Man and Guts Man were more problematic than Elec Man was!

I've copied them in below if anyone is interested, but if not I've at least highlighted some noteworthy parts.

Mega Man 1:

I genuinely think this game gets a bad rap. Often shunned and forgotten about in favour of it's follow ups, MegaMan2 and Mega Man 3, the original game in the franchise holds up surprisingly well for me.

The graphics are not as polished and the art style hasn't found itself yet, but the game is still stunning for a reasonably early NES game. The music selection is great here too. The controls feel a little stiff sometimes, but nothing unworkable.

One complaint I hear about the stage is that the level design is tough - honestly, I didn't have too many issues with it. Gutsman and Elec Man's stages and the Yellow Devil are the ones that come up a lot, but I found both the stages relatively simple (Fire Mans was worse, but still not horribly hard) and Yellow Devil only took a few attempts too (legitimately too, no pause glitch).

The actual hard point of the game for me was the final level boss rush. With no health pick-ups like later games, Fire Man's unavoidable attacks (definitely the cheapest thing in the game) and Guts Man being hard to dodge, it took me quite a few attempts getting though to the final boss. Wily himself was easy though and I took him down without too many tries.

Really, the game is still great fun to play even now, much better than I expected from what people say about it. I'm looking forward to playing the other 5 NES games after this to see how they compare.

Mega Man 3:

OK, here comes the controversy - this is currently competing with Dr Wily's Revenge (the first Game Boy game in the series) for my least favourite of the Mega Man games I've played. It feels unfinished, and from accounts from Keiji Inafune, it probably is.

First of all, the difficulty here often feels cheap - not often in an instant death pit kind of way, but just hits that you won't see coming without knowing an enemy is there already, and particularly with the outrageous collision damage all the Robot Masters deal. Particularly the doc robots, who featured in horrible levels and were way harder than the Mega Man 2 versions due to their stupidly high collision damage combined with their overly large hitbox.

The weapon selection is subpar. They're more balanced than they were in 2, but they just don't seem to have many uses outside of boss encounters, with the exception of maybe the Shadow Blade or whatever it's called.

The stage design is also pretty uninteresting. Mega Man 2 had some gimmicky stages, but they felt distinctive and generally fit their theme well. Some of the stages in 3 are just dull. Top Man's stage is just...kinda leafy? There are lots of areas of flawed or glitchy game design too - Snake Man's cloud platforms killed me several times as they spawned underneath me by randomly flinging me into a pit. There are also several segments where you need to use the rush jet to proceed over a long pit, gathering weapon energy to refill as you go - but if you die even once on these segments, the level becomes unqinnable as the weapon energy is still gone. There are also numerous levels in Wilys fortress where dying on the boss sends back to the beginning instead of just before the boss as in other mega man games - including on the yellow devil fight.

As one final example of the general unfinished feeling of the game, the continue screen for the whole game gives you 2 options - continue and stage select. If you die on the last level, the continue screen loads....and the options are the other way up. Hit stage select and BAM, back to stage 1 of Wily's Castle for you. After falling for this the first time, I used a save state on the wii u to avoid it happening again (and believe me, it did), but I can only imagine the frustration if I'd been playing on original hardware.

I don't think I could ever understand how so many people rate this Mega Man game as their favourite. I'm not sure I could say I got a lot of enjoyment from it. I'd happily recommend 1, 2, 4, 9 or 10 over this one in a flash.

[Markies]

2. GEN = Beat a Season as Coach in Tecmo Super Bowl

Genesis - I am planning on doing this over the summer for my yearly Marathon game.

Ok you've peaked my interest here. Coach mode isn't something I've ever explored nor read anything about. Are you working off the original cart or did they do something special over at Tecmobowl.org with this mode?

Truthfully I feel like that is quite possibly the most boring gaming to do for a marathon, but I tip my cap your way sir.

So, I have basically done everything in Tecmo Super Bowl. At one point, I was close to winning the game with every team, but I lost my list.

Recently, I have taught my friend to play the game and he doesn't like sports games at all. To level the playing field, I would play as coach and he would play normally.

In Coach Mode, all you do is select the plays. That is it. You don't control the players at all, just picking the plays. And for a seasoned veteran, it was actually really enjoyable. It leveled the playing field and I was laughing/yelling at how stupid some of the players were.

Once a year, I do a Marathon where I play one game all day until it is beaten. So, I decided this year, that I am going to play through an entire season as Coach. Playing 16 games and then the playoffs all in one sitting won't be the most exciting thing in the world, but I think with the Coach mode it will be enjoyable. It will add a whole new wrinkle on a game that I have basically Mastered.

This is all my own doing and I will be doing this on the original cart.

[retrosportsgamer]

^ Like I said, I'm definitely intrigued. Especially if you can go through and win the Super Bowl like that. Very cool.

[Sarge]

Which version were you playing, Markies? TSB on NES is probably my favorite sports game of all time.