Stop Loving Mega Man 2

A few weekends ago I got together with a large group of friends from my college video game club for a gaming reunion. There were board games, and card games, and video games, and there were enough people for multiple games to break out at once. At one point, someone booted up the Wii and started playing Mega Man 9. Naturally, I couldn't resist getting in on the action, so we played through to the end and had a small audience for most of the time.

We went on to do other things afterwards, but there came a time when this same small group wasn't engaged in anything specific. I booted up the Wii again and we started through Mega Man 10. Later in the evening, someone else busted out the Mega Man Anniversary Collection for the GameCube and played through the original Mega Man. Followed directly by Mega Man 2.

I had no idea we'd be doing a spontaneous mini-marathon. I swear it wasn't planned.

This is the fourth time since the summer that I've watched or played through Mega Man 2 with someone. This is highly unusual, even for me; playing the same game twice in a year is pushing it, even for Mega Man. Repeated exposure over a short period of time has brought me to realize something about this game, which is so often cited as the best game in the series and the greatest NES game of all time: Anyone who makes such claims has forgotten what it's like to play Mega Man 2 for the first time.

There is no good place to start--all the easy bosses have tricky stages, and all the easy stages have difficult bosses. A Game Over will destroy your entire stockpile of Energy Tanks, which can be particularly devastating in the final two stages, which are nothing but boss battles. Sprite flicker is problematic, making one key boss battle almost impossible for a newbie to figure out what's going on. Several sections require some puzzle solving with one particular special weapon, and if you run out of energy while trying to figure things out, those areas are ALWAYS the worst areas of the game to grind for powerups.

Without exception, all four of my recent exposures to Mega Man 2 prominently suffered from all four of these problems, and all were nearly derailed entirely by at least one of these problems. It's striking to me that The Greatest Mega Man Game of All Time and The Best NES Game Ever contains such critical, game-ruining flaws that are apparently so routinely encountered, yet barely recognized in the reviewing community--it's not even that they're glossed over and forgiven; sprite flicker notwithstanding, they're not mentioned at all. Not even by the haters, of which there are about five (who evidently don't have a high regard for NES games in general).

There are games such as Chrono Trigger that have received universal acclaim and--after frequently being hailed as The Greatest Game of All Time--intense scrutiny. Even the most cynical and nitpicky reviewers, who have torn the game apart, called out every possible flaw, and stooped as low as to give Chrono Trigger an 8 out of 10, seem to agree that the game is at least "pretty good." After considering all the angles, the matter of Chrono Trigger being The Greatest Game of All Time comes down to little more than personal gaming preferences; inherently detracting design flaws or technical issues are nonexistent, or minimal enough to be overlooked.

How, then, does a game like Mega Man 2 go so long without anybody noticing its potentially game-ruining flaws? I've read or skimmed through numerous reviews on GameFAQs, GameSpot, IGN, and assorted other gaming websites and blogs, but I can't find any evidence that anyone else on the planet has ever dealt with these issues. This leads me to several possible conclusions, the most likely of which are:

- My experiences with the game in the past few months are just an improbable series of flukes, the likes of which have never been experienced by anyone else
- The reviewing community has been playing Mega Man 2 for so long that experience and nostalgia have blinded them to the presence of two decades of better games

I might be willing to accept the first conclusion if my only issue with Mega Man 2 was that, on at least two occasions in recent memory, someone ran out of energy for the only weapon that works against the final boss, and had to resort to standing under slow-dripping lava until they had died enough times to get a Game Over, and could restart the stage with full weapon energy (losing all their E-Tanks in the process). Unfortunately, I also take into account sound quality, graphics, play control, game balance, replayability, and overall polish, and Mega Man 2 is outclassed by too many of its successors in these areas for any truly objective fan to not take notice.

If we were looking solely at the first three Mega Man games, then I would tell you that, yes, without question, MM2 is the best in the series. It improves on its predecessor in almost every way, the weapon selection is excellent, the enemies are memorable, the music is immensely catchy, there's a lot of nice little touches, and it's just plain fun. Later games in the series manage to clean up and fine-tune any inherently detracting design flaws and technical issues present in MM2 so that one's opinion of the game can come down to little more than one's personal gaming preferences...but we're not counting those. We're only looking at the first three.

It's apparent to me that most of the reviewers are, in fact, only looking at the first three Mega Man games when deciding which one is best: MM3 is the only other game in over two decades of Mega Man to receive anywhere close to the number of votes for Best Game in the Series (I.e. more than one or two votes), and as anyone who's suffered through my whiny video playthrough of MM3 can tell you, that game is even less qualified to hold the title. Only nostalgia and lack of exposure to other Mega Man games can explain such allegiance to a game with so many unhelpful weapons, widespread glitchiness, and an incredible level of repetition--roughly 25% of the game is spent replaying old stages and refighting old bosses.

On a whim, I decided to hold a Mega Man-related poll on this blog. If MM2 and 3 are universally agreed upon as the two best games in the entire Mega Man series, then please explain these numbers to me:

I only voted once, I swear.

Join me next time for my analysis of these shocking results.