"Be careful! You haven't done this in a while!"

So what does Capcom do in order to revive interest in the Mega Man franchise, whose track record has been "Step 1, create new series. Step 2, milk the series to death with multiple games which are essentially the same game but with slightly different robot masters until everyone in their right mind has lost interest, Step 3, repeat"? I'll tell you. They make the ninth game in the original series which hasn't had a sequel in years, and they do it all in 8-bit graphics which are essentially rehashed from a game that came out in 1987.

And it works. Holy shit, does it ever work. It is literally the most perfect thing they could have done.

Seeing the title screen with the rockin' MIDI music playing and a copyright date of 2008 is mind blowing, and that's before you've even played any of the game. This game is freaking hard. You WILL die, a lot. A LOT. Because there is no way you can see some of the stuff coming. This is trial and error, or what I like to call "every NES game".

The game will beat you up, treat you like shit, do it again, and you'll be begging for more the entire time. It's obvious there were some people at Capcom who "got it", I mean, just take a look at the purposefully awful "box art" for the game:



So authentic it hurts.

It's ridiculous how simple it was for them to make it fun to take on EIGHT ROBOT MASTERS all over again, but here I am having a blast. Also, we missed you, Rush <3