Mega Man (1987 video game)

This article is about the Nintendo Entertainment System game. For Mega Man, see Mega Man (1987 video game) (disambiguation).

Mega Man (Rockman)
Mega Man box cover for the Nintendo Entertainment System
Developer(s)	Capcom
Publisher(s)	Capcom
Designer(s)	Tokuro Fujiwara (game), Keiji Inafune (character)
Series	Mega Man Classic
Platform(s)	NES/Famicom, PC, Mobile Phone
Release	NES version JPN December 17, 1987 NA December, 1987 EU December 13, 1989 MS-DOS version 1990
Genre(s)	Action/Platformer
Mode(s)	Single player

Mega Man is a video game developed and published by Capcom in 1987 for the Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom. It is the first game to ever star Mega Man (known as Rockman in Japan). Mega Man has been in several series and this is the first game in what is called the Mega Man Classic series. This first game established many of the conventions that would define several Mega Man series. Most notably, Mega Man established the setup of a number of stages, each with a Robot Master at the end that, when defeated, would pass on its unique power to Mega Man.

Later, it would be added to Mega Man: The Wily Wars for Sega Genesis, as well as the Japanese collection game, Rockman Complete Works in 1999 for the Sony PlayStation. In 2004, it was re-released in the anthology game, Mega Man Anniversary Collection for the GameCube, Xbox and PlayStation 2. There is also a remake called Mega Man: Powered Up (Rockman Rockman in Japan) for the Playstation Portable. It features full 3-D graphics and extra stages were added, making the Robot Master count 8 instead of the original 6. It also features a stage level editor. Another interesting feature of the remake is the super deformed style of Mega Man and other characters. (Keiji Inafune claimed in an interview that he originally planned to make Mega Man look this way, but couldn't, due to the hardware restraints of the NES)

Characters

• Mega Man — Tool assistant created and modified by Dr. Light to combat Wily.
• Dr. Albert W. Wily — The antagonist of the game, his goal is world domination. He appears as the final boss in a hovering ship (at first a tank-like machine in the remake).
• Dr. Thomas Light — Creator of Mega Man, aids Mega Man on his adventure to stop Dr. Wily.
• Roll — Mega Man's sister, she makes her debut in this game, though in the NES version her name is not mentioned. She is only seen at the ending of the credits in the NES version, but she can be downloaded in the PSP remake as a playable character.
• Robot Masters - The various industrial robots built by Dr. Light, reprogrammed by Dr. Wily to do his bidding. They become playable characters in the PSP remake. There were six in the original game, but there are eight in the remake.

Story

In the year 200X, master robot designer Dr. Thomas Light, and his assistant, Dr. Wily, worked on a project to create human-like robots with advanced intelligence. They created a robot, their first success, which was named Protoman. Protoman was a robot that was humanlike in all ways. With the success of the project, he then builds six more of the Robot Masters to be used for industrial purposes: Cut Man whose first purpose was to cut down trees for loggers, Guts Man whose purpose was to pick up huge rocks for building houses, Ice Man who was meant to be used for arctic exploring, Bomb Man who was meant to open blocked caves, Fire Man who was used to make fuel by burning logs ECT, and Elec Man, to help the price of electricity to drop, and after these robots, Dr, Light made two housecleaning robots, Rock and Roll (the remake has him creating two additional robots: Time Man and Oil Man). The project is a great success, and for his work on it, Light is awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.

Around this time, Dr. Wily grew envious of Light, and stole the prototype. This robot, named Proto Man (originally called Blues in the Japanese version), was in danger of having his energy generator going critical. Wily gave him a nuclear energy supply to extend his life, and learned much about creating robots from studying his design. (He also likely learned the means to reprogram Light's robots from this.)

Wily snuck into Light's lab one night and reprogrammed the robots, but he failed to reprogram Rock and Roll (who still operated on an earlier system,) and made his getaway. When Light found out that Wily had escaped with the Robot Masters, it was too late, as Wily had already sent his new robotic army out to conquer the city.

Rock, having a strong sense of justice, volunteered to be converted into a fighting robot to stop Dr. Wily and his minions and restore peace to the city.

Gameplay

Mega Man is made up of six stages, with a Robot Master at the end guarding a weapon. The stage select screen allows the player to choose from these six stages, and when they are all completed, the seventh and last stage appears in middle of the menu, replacing the text "Stage Select, Press Start". This last stage is in fact more like four regular stages linked together, some a bit shorter than average, but with very hard bosses.

Stages

Screenshot of Cut Man's stage in Mega Man

The stages in Mega Man are in the "platformer" genre. In each stage, Mega Man faces many enemies and obstacles. The enemies vary in size and behavior, and are defeated by one or more shots, either from Mega Man's plasma cannon or from one of the weapons he gains defeating a Robot Master.

Obstacles involve jumping from one platform to another. Platforms often move, or become insubstantial periodically, so that complex timing is often required.

Robot Masters

#	Robot Master	Weapon	Weakness
3	Cut Man	Rolling Cutter	Super Arm
4	Guts Man	Super Arm	Hyper Bomb
5	Ice Man	Ice Slasher	Thunder Beam
6	Bomb Man	Hyper Bomb	Fire Storm
7	Fire Man	Fire Storm	Ice Slasher
8	Elec Man	Thunder Beam	Rolling Cutter

Fortress bosses

After defeating all the Robot Masters, Mega Man is forced to face what are considered to be the final bosses.

Boss	Weakness
Yellow Devil (AKA Rock Monster in old American material)	Thunder Beam
Copy Robot (takes form of Mega Man)	Fire Storm, Thunder Beam, Hyper Bomb
CWU-01P	Super Arm
Wily Machine Number 1 (Phase I)	Fire Storm
Wily Machine Number 1 (Phase II)	Rolling Cutter

Note that with the "NES Pause Trick", every weapon except Super Arm can be much more effective against bosses like the Wily Machine, Yellow Devil, etc.

Changes in Mega Man: Powered Up

The "Old Style" version of the game included in Mega Man: Powered Up is more faithful to the original game, but is not a straight port. Changes include:

• All graphics are redone using the Powered Up graphics.
• All characters have voices.
• The Killer Bullet enemies no longer fly erratically. Instead, they fly in a straight line.
• Only one Tackle Fire shoots up at a time instead of three at once.
• Shots from the Mega Buster do not go through walls.
• Weapon Energy refills weapons not equipped, unlike the original.
• Sniper Joes are no longer vulnerable when jumping.
• Once the Magnet Beam is collected, the player will be notified that he/she will now be able to use it.
• All bosses have their own introduction animations. In the original, the Robot Masters just appear out of thin air, while the Yellow Devil and CWU-01P do not appear until after their energy meter is filled.
• Guts Blocks are no longer available when fighting Guts Man. Also, instead of waiting until a boulder falls from above, Guts Man pulls one out of the ground, as he does in the New Style mode in the game.
• Both Guts Blocks are placed in each side of Elec Man's lair, rather than on one side.
• All four Dr. Wily stages can be selected individually, rather than going through all four at once.
• When fighting the Robot Masters again in the Dr. Wily stages, the boss theme plays, rather than the normal stage theme continuing to play.
• After the room where the Magnet Beam must be used in the first Dr. Wily stage, the path to the Yellow Devil is made slightly longer. In addition, the Yellow Devil attacks with its eye shots as soon as the battle begins (as he forms before his energy fills), and there are two less blobs to dodge in his traditional attack.
• Instead of falling down before and after the fights with Cut Man and Elec Man in the second Dr. Wily stage, there are boss doors instead.
• In the third Dr. Wily stage, the player now falls down instead of going through the right of the screen before fighting CWU-01P. Also, instead of four Guts Blocks in the middle of the screen, there are now two Guts Blocks, one on each side. Finally, there are only five incarnations of CWU-01P instead of seven, and it always comes from the top of the screen, and never either side of it.
• In the fourth Dr. Wily stage, the first teleporter takes the player before a boss door, rather than straight to Bomb Man. This door leads to a boss tunnel in the same length as many Mega Man games after the first. After that, the player fights the four Robot Masters again as usual, only with boss doors leading to the next room rather than teleporters. The door to Dr. Wily instead leads to a tunnel in the standard Mega Man 1 length, which finally ends with Dr. Wily himself.
• The nature of the second phase of the final battle with Dr. Wily is slightly different. The Wily Machine now floats high and low, which makes shooting it slightly harder. Also, there is an extended period of invulnerability after shooting it, leaving the Rolling Cutter trick useless. Finally, his shots are now charged, leaving the player easily anticipating when he will fire it.
• While the ending text is the same (aside from spacing Mega Man's name), the credits used are, instead of the minimal credits from the NES version, the credits of Powered Up, complete with voice credits for Time Man, Oil Man, and Proto Man (all of whom do not appear in the original game). The only differences between the Old Style and New Style credits are that none of the bosses unlocked appear in the final scene, and visuals of Time Man and Oil Man are replaced with those of the Yellow Devil and CWU-01P, respectively.
• Bosses are able to preform super moves if their HP dips on normal mode or any time in hard mode.

Comparison to series

The first game of the Mega Man series produced, Mega Man differs from subsequent games in the series in a number of ways. It is the only game to feature six main stages; each of the subsequent games had eight. Some of Mega Man's actions were not implemented until later in the series. In this game, Mega Man can't slide under obstacles (he gains this ability in Mega Man 3), and he can't charge his "Mega Buster", which originally did not have any specific name (the "Mega Buster" was implemented in Mega Man 4). The powerups in this game look different than the rest of the 8-bit Mega Man games, as pictured below.

File:Mm1pwups.png

Items from Mega Man

File:Mm2pwups.png

The same items from Mega Man 2 - 6

Points

Mega Man was the only NES Mega Man title to feature a score counter. High point scores were a very common gaming convention during the mid-to-late 1980s, especially in arcade games, which is probably why they were included in Mega Man. However, other than the satisfaction of achieving a high score, the player got no extra incentive to collect points, nor did it affect gameplay in any significant way (nor was the player's score saved in any way after the console was turned off). While this was also true for some other games of that era, high scores were usually a more integral feature in games, especially in the arcade. The score counter was removed from future Mega Man games because it was unnecessary, and because there were a few issues with the counter that made it easier to remove than to fix. Specifically, the points that were awarded to a player for clearing a level were reduced to zero if that player ran out of lives, and since the game was very difficult, most players would be starting over from scratch more than once. There was also no high score sheet, which meant that you had to keep track of your own high score.

Yashichi

In the NES titles, the yashichi is exclusive to Mega Man, and appears only once in the entire game. It appears as a spikey sprite and refills all weapons and energy, acting like a Super Tank. The Yashichi also awards the player 100,000 points bonus. It is found in the very last level of the game, next to an extra life icon. The player must maneuver Mega Man across two rather challenging jumps to get it, and while certainly obtainable, is not very easy to get to.

The only other times it has made an appearance in a Mega Man game is Mega Man 8 and Mega Man Battle & Chase. The former has the Rush Teleporter, which, like Eddie in previous titles, appears and gives the player a random power item. In Mega Man Battle & Chase, it appears as a boosting item.

Death by spike

Throughout the series, if Mega Man is hit by an enemy, he becomes temporarily invincible to further attacks. From Mega Man 2 on, this invincibility would even protect Mega Man if he fell onto spikes. However, in the NES version of Mega Man 1, that is not the case. While the temporary invincibility is featured in this game, it will not prevent Mega Man from perishing if he falls onto spikes. This aspect of the Mega Man 1 play mechanics contributes greatly to the game's overall difficulty.

Difficulty

Mega Man is considered, by most fans, to be the most difficult NES game of the Mega Man franchise. There are several factors contributing to this. One is it lacks any sort of back-up (the game did not have passwords, nor battery or memory saving), so the player had to restart the game every time he or she wanted to play (and had to complete it in one sitting). This is alleviated if the game is played on the Anniversary Collection, as the player can save his/her progress then. Also, several of the levels are difficult to most players, especially Guts Man's level, where platforms running on rails have drop rails, holes in the rails that cause the platforms to fall. It takes skill and precision to get past these platforms.

Another major contributing factor to MM1's difficulty is lack of Energy Tanks, which, starting with Mega Man 2, are contained in every subsequent installment in the Classic series, with the exceptions of Mega Man 8 and Mega Man & Bass; these allow Mega Man to refill his energy at any time. How this affects gameplay readily becomes apparent in the very last stage of the game, where the player must fight four Robot Masters with absolutely no energy pellets to power back up.

Also, for the six NES games, MM1 is the only one that makes the player fight enemies after reaching the Robot Master's lair. In the other five installments, once Mega Man reaches the Robot Master's room, Mega Man goes into a short passageway into the next room to fight that particular level's boss. There are no enemies in these passageways, and are only one screen long. However, in MM1, the corridors are longer than one screen and there are enemies to contend with when bartering passage to the Robot Masters. These corridors might have been leftovers during development, during which Capcom originally was going to release the game on the Famicom Disk System. The corridors would have been used as "loading tunnels", allowing the disk to be accessed and load up the boss fight without any major pauses in the action. In the end, Capcom switched to cartridges instead, but the tunnels stayed, anyway.

Mega Man 1 is also the only NES Mega Man game that makes the player climb up or down once he or she reaches the inner chamber. In Elec Man's stage, the player must climb up a ladder to reach his lair; in Bomb Man's stage, the player climbs down a ladder to reach his lair.

At the end of every NES Mega Man game, the player must fight the game's Robot Masters a second time before going to the final showdown with Dr. Wily. MM1 is the only game that spreads these fights across two separate levels (Mega Man must fight Cut Man and Elec Man on Wily Stage 2, and then has to fight Bomb Man, Fire Man, Ice Man, and Guts Man on Wily Stage 4). MM1 is also one of the only two games in the Classic series (the other being Mega Man & Bass) that does not allow the player to select the order in which to fight the Robot Masters a second time. In Mega Man 2 through 6, after defeating each Robot Master the second time, a large energy pellet appears. In Mega Man 1, these do not appear, making the last stage considerably difficult.

Glitches

Mega Man contains one of the series' most famous glitches, which is known as the "Pause Trick". This trick arises because it is the only game in the series with two pause methods. When the player presses the start button, the gameplay pauses and shows the menu. When the select button is pressed, the game pauses and silences. Players tend to take advantage of the full pause when using the Thunder Beam weapon when close to hitting the boss. If done right, the pause will make the shot do multiple hits on impact. This method works well on the Yellow Devil and the two forms of the Wily Machine. Using this method, the Yellow Devil and both incarnations of the Wily Machine can be dispatched with a single shot. To an extent, even Ice Man and the Mega Man Clone can be defeated this way, too. Without this trick, both the Yellow Devil and the two battles against Dr. Wily are extremely hard (to many players, next to impossible, due to their difficulty and lack of Energy Tanks). This is seen in the eyes of some gamers as a cheat trick. Such glitches are also extensively used in the tool-assisted speedrun of this game.

This glitch takes advantage of two things. The first is the fact that the robot masters' weapons' projectiles pass right through (Throwing blocks from Super Arm creates debris while Hyper Bomb's explosions represented by expanding balls of plasma which act as projectiles), whereas in future Mega Man games, the projectile would be absorbed when they hit their mark. Because of this, it's possible to do this glitch with any robot master weapon. The second is that when the game is paused with the select button, despite that all movement stops, time still passes. When a robot master gets hit, normally, they "flash" and are temporarily invincible for a second. However, when the game is paused, time goes on and their invincibility wears off. When the game is unpaused, the projectile hits them again. Also, there appears to be a lag between unpausing and when the projectile moves again, with the hit registering at when or just before the projectile moves. So if timed right, a skilled player can do at least a couple of hits with any weapon. Possibly the reason why Rolling Cutter and Thunder Beam are the two recommended weapons to do this glitch with is that their projectiles are the slowest.

Dr. Wily's castle (or lack thereof)

Starting with Mega Man 2, the player is shown a visual representation of Dr. Wily's castle (or, in Mega Man 4, 5, and 6; Dr. Cossack's castle, Proto Man's castle, and Mr. X's castle, respectively, with Dr Wily's castle following each). Each stage is a dot on the map, and when Mega Man beats one stage and goes to the next, this progress is shown on the map. Mega Man 1, however, does not have this feature. In the PSP remake, Mega Man: Powered Up, it can be seen as the player loads one of four final levels, and is named "Castle Wily". Mega Man 1 is also the only game where the player selects Dr. Wily's stage and he appears like the Robot Master with the clear points listed next to him.

Trivia

File:Comparison of MM1 boxcover to real megaman.jpg

• The picture on the game's American box contains virtually nothing that can be found in the game. Mega Man himself resembles a mid-aged man rather than a boy, and he is holding a handgun instead of his Mega Buster. The game's cover is commonly ridiculed because of its inaccuracy; GameSpy placed it in first place of its Top Ten Worst Covers list.
• In the Mega Man manga (Rockman Mega Mix) and Super Adventure Rockman, all Robot Masters from this game became Mega Man's allies. In addition, the remake of this game, Mega Man: Powered Up, centers on saving them from Dr. Wily's influence over them, along with Time Man and Oil Man, both of whom Dr. Light also created in the game.
• Creator Keiji Inafune stated in a G4 interview that the concept of the game was inspired by Rock, Paper, Scissors; every weapon and Robot Master has a strength and a weakness.
• This game has been remade or ported more than any other game in the Mega Man series. All in all, there have been five versions of this game: the original, the Wily Wars remake, the Complete Works port, the Anniversary Collection re-release, and the Powered Up remake.
• Due to Nintendo of America's strict rules concerning religious references at the time, the Yellow Devil boss was instead named the "Rock Monster".
• One name proposed for the character was Rainbowman, as he would have seven different powers after defeating the Robot Masters. It bears mentioning that several years before the debut of the game, there was a televised superhero named Rainbowman whose trademark was having seven different forms, each of which had a different power.
• Guts Man and Cut Man have become some of the most commonly seen Robot Masters in the entire franchise. The characters were notably featured in every single episode of the Ruby-Spears cartoon. Cut Man (called Cuts Man) also appeared prominently in an episode of Captain N. Guts Man has been featured as a fortress-boss in several games, including Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 7. Cut Man has also been featured as a hidden boss in Mega Man 8 and Mega Man X8. Both characters also make a cameo in the "Cut Man 2" comic featured in the newspaper at the opening movie for Mega Man 7. Both also appear in the MegaMan Battle Network series, with GutsMan.exe featured as one of the main characters.
• HORSE the band did a song called "Cutsman", in obvious reference to Cut Man.
• The band The Megas play rock covers of songs from the Mega Man soundtracks, with lyrics that attribute personality quirks to each of the robot masters.
• In the original U.S. Instruction manual, "Dr. Light" is referred to as "Dr. Wright". Mega Man 2 officially establishes "Dr. Light" as being his official romanized name.
• In the original Japanese version of the story, Dr Wily was not Dr. Light's partner. Instead, he is simply a mad scientist who gets revenge on the world for not recognizing his scientific work.
• Elecman's mask was based off american comics and he was based off the Spiderman villain Electro

Adaptation In Other Media

The episode of Captain N: The Game Master Mega Trouble For Megaland was based on Mega Man and Kid Icarus. It is the second part to a previous episode Videolympics, in which Mother Brain steals three sacred treasures from Mount Olympus.

Kevin, Lana, Duke and Mega Man go to Megaland as Wily used the treasures to invade it. They are informed by Dr. Right (Light's chosen name for the series) that Wily is taking over Megaland again with the six robots they built together.

Mega Man decides they should start by entering Cut Man's world first. The entire layout involves climbing as opposed to the game's version, as well as being inhabited with Bladers, Beaks and a Big Eye. Also, the four of them share the same energy unit (6 lines of energy) which runs out on their first encounter with Big Eye.

They end up at the beginning of Cut Man's world again, according to Mega Man they have two more chances if they're not careful. After getting to the first boss door, they run into mini-version of the other five robots before their encounter with Cut Man (Whom is defeated by his own weapon). Similar to fighting the robots once more in the game, Wily is able to instantly recreate the six robots due to the power produced by the three sacred treasures.

• This episode also features the first and only appearance of Garbage Man.
• Cut Man is called Cuts Man in this episode and is colored green and orange, however most of the other six robots appear to be more accurate to their game counterparts.
• Though Videolympics is centered more on Kid Icarus, Mega Man and Dr. Wily compete in a ladder climbing competition in which both must navigate through the electric traps from Elec Man's stage. When Mega Man is hit by a blast and falls from the climb, he disintegrates in the same manner as he does in the games.

While not based on the game outright, the Mega Man episode The Beginning features all six robot masters onscreen.

The game has been pirated under the title, "Rocman" in Japan, and "Rockman" in North America

External links

• The Mega Man Home Page
• Atomic Fire
• Capcom official site, developers and publishers of Mega Man
• Planet Mega Man
• Rockman Perfect Memories
• The Mega Man Network
• Tricks and Glitches in Mega Man 1-6
• Megaman Legacy