61 Frames Per Second : mega man 7

We Salute Halloween and the Greatest Mega Man Boss Of All Time

Nadia Oxford — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:00:00 GMT

It just so happens the two are connected!

I don't blame Mackey for pussying out on Berserk. We owned that game too and it was kind of pants-dumping scary. You, as Mr Stick Spaceman, had to crawl slowly through electrified caverns. Inch by inch, step by step; touching the wall meant death. It was tension at its most potent.

So you'd almost be clear of some narrow hallway and then your mom would pop in and ask you, "What would you like for lunch?" You'd scream and jolt and Mr Stick Spaceman would fry against the wall with a blinding flash of colours and a sizzling/clacking sound that was offensive to the ear in the worst imaginable way. Berserk did not get much playtime in our house.

It's mandatory for bloggers to give wordy offerings to Halloween on the appointed day and I was thinking about how I might do the same. I don't play survival horror games because honestly I already have a problem with vivid dreams and nightmares and further contributions are just not necessary. Then I thought about "safe" ghouls and vampires--the guys who are just fun to have around. I thought about Shade Man, the vampire-bot from Mega Man 7 and probably my favourite Robot Master of all time.

People sometimes say to me, "Nadia, why do you still like Mega Man games after all these years? Were you dropped on your head as a baby?" The short answer to that is "Yes." The long answer is that every Mega Man game, no matter how stale the gameplay happens to be, has some clever little thing in it that makes me smile. In Mega Man 7's case, I love Shade Man's entire stage. The music is great. You can opt out of it and go for a Ghosts and Ghouls remix, but eff that, I love the original.

There are two distinct paths you can take in the stage, depending on how you beat the, um, Great Pumpkin. If you take the low road, you get to fight knight-bots who morph into wolves when the moon comes out. Tell me that is not awesome. Just try it.

Also of note about Shade Man's domain is the gothic portrait of Dr Wily. Did he dress up for a cosplay session, or is it the portrait of some blood-sucking ancestor? I like the latter theory, especially since my own paternal grandfather is from the Carpathian mountains. Maybe they...met and built evil robots or something. Oh my God I'm delusional.

Shade Man's design is just cool. Nobody's ever given me a reason not to love a purple robot vampire, so I'm just going to go ahead and say he is among the upper Pantheon of Robot Masters.

Happy Halloween.

Related Links:

Irrational Gaming Fears
Running For Your Life
Question of the Day: How Do You Make a Horror Game Horrifying?

Klonoa: Careful, Namco. You Tread On My Dreams.

John Constantine — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:00:00 GMT

I’m not a purist. No, really. When it comes to classics being revisited, modernized, or remade, I don’t need every facet of the past perfectly preserved just the way I remember it in order to get a desperate nostalgic thrill. I delight in Mega Man 9 because it’s a great game whose presentation and technological limitations are carefully made design choices, not because it’s a new NES game. I’ll let you in on a secret: I actually like Mega Man 7 and 8. Yeah, that’s right. I think they’re good games. Not as good as their forebears, but all the same. When the new Bionic Commando was announced last year, even before Rearmed was revealed, I didn’t balk at Radd Spencer’s Adam-Duritz-makeover. I think the new look is cool, especially the way his dreads flow behind him like delicate willow branches as he soars through dystopian cityscapes and… oh! Excuse me. What I’m getting at is that not everything from yesterday is sacred. Some things, especially in games, should be changed. Final Fantasy III DS is a good thing. The NES original is just too slow now. Tomb Raider Anniversary preserves a revolutionary game’s best qualities while also making it, you know, playable. In with the new, out with the old may not be an all-encompassing maxim, but it’s more often than not good advice.

That said, Namco, if you go through with this, I will hurt you.

The Raw Meat Cowboy himself over at GoNintendo received a survey from Namco-Bandai today, the subject of which was their impending Wii remake of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile. RMC has smartly inferred that Namco is testing the waters to see if Klonoa should be localized for North America. One of the questions in the survey asks which of these two character designs is preferable:

Yes, there on the right is Klonoa, already slightly altered to more closely resemble his 21st century self than the Klonoa of 1998. It’s great, he’s looking good. On the left, is some monstrosity, a Japanese Poochie, his raised ears giving off a deliberate whiff of the EXTREME. He has just enough buckles and straps to satisfy a Nomura. The implication is that Namco thinks this bastard would be more suited to North America’s indelicate palette.

Now, there are going to be some vague spoilers here, so beware. Even beyond the fantastic platforming, level design, and soundtrack, what makes Door to Phantomile so special is that it subverts expectation. Klonoa himself, and his introduction in the game, portray complete innocence, a cutesy cartoon anthropomorphic at play in a pleasant fantasy world. But the game quickly becomes melancholic, and by game’s end, the pleasant Disney aesthetic is pulled away, violently, to reveal that the story is, in fact, a tragedy. The game is about a loss of innocence, and the character’s design is essential to that theme. This redesign places the character more firmly in a recognizable, and marketable, anime tradition, where existential angst is an expected component. Remaking Klonoa in this image completely betrays the point of Shuichi Sakurazaki’s story.

Don’t do this, Namco.

(Link: GoNintendo)

Related links:

Where is Shuichi Sakurazaki, Creator of Ninja Gaiden?
Klonoa's Truimphant(?) Return
Christmas in Nintendoland: The Tokyo Conference
The Tale of the Identical Box Art
Lowering the Standard: Why Nintendo’s Hardcore vs. Casual Commitments Aren’t the Problem
Abominations of Technology: Pre-Rendered Graphics

For Love of the Game: Rockman 7 FC

Peter Smith — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Most people agree that the Mega Man series went downhill around Mega Man IV. I'm with 'em. But Mega Man IV, V, and VI are pretty great all the same, which is more than you can say for Mega Man 7. Boy, do I hate Mega Man 7. Some people say Mega Man 7 is good, but they are charlatans with no taste. Everything got cutesy all of a sudden, the music sucks, and the feel is completely off, probably because the character sprites are so big that there's no room to maneuver.

Luckily, some enterprising soul in Japan put his programming (and art and music) skills to the test, and came up with Rockman 7 FC, the greatest thing I've seen all week.

My God. It is beautiful. It takes the raw material of Mega Man 7 and makes it, you know, good. This is pretty much the definition of "for the love of the game" — you can just feel the love here. I can just imagine this guy, overcome by love for classic Mega Man, properly disgusted by Mega Man 7, desperate to see things right. Just like me, except a dedicated craftsman instead of a bitter old crank. Look at the dedication and care that went into these perfectly-styled 8-bit graphics. (My sole complaint: this is actually a Windows-based game, not an actual NES rom hack... but that would be a lot to ask.) And if you want more evidence of the love on display, note that the Shade Man easter egg, which played the music from Ghouls N' Ghosts, is intact — 'cept this time it plays the music from the NES port of Ghosts N' Goblins. I'm almost crying over here. The best part of it? Apparently this same guy is working on an equivalent reverse-port of the equally loathsome Mega Man 8. If you're excited about the retro-styled Mega Man 9, you owe it to yourself to check this out. It's like a classic Mega Man game just dropping out of the blue.

Previous For Love of the Games:
Outcast 2
Street Fighter One
Metroid II Remakes

Related:
The Ten Greatest Classic Mega Man Levels, Part 1
The Ten Greatest Classic Mega Man Levels, Part 2
The Ten Greatest Classic Mega Man Levels, Part 3
Mega Man 9 Goes Back To Your Roots. Way Back.
New Mega Man 9 Trailer: I'm Drowning in My Childhood
Don’t Call It Retro: Mega Man 9 and Design Resurrection