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The Ten Greatest Classic Mega Man Levels, Part 3

Peter Smith — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:32:00 GMT

Shadow Man

As Pete said, Mega Man III started to strain the series' robot-masters-as-industrial-tool conceit. Silly as Top Man is, I have even more trouble getting my head around Shadow Man and his lair sitting at the bottom of a waterfall of lava. What was the civic-planning meeting like for this one? "Finally, we have used the remaining funds in 200X's robot-master budget to build a crazy-sweet ninja robot who lives in a rad fortress at the bottom of a lava flow. He will be protected by robot frogs and parachuting heads." "Madness! Why would you do such a thing?" "Because, sir. It is awesome." Know what? He's right. — JC

Bubble Man

A big part of the classicness of any given Mega Man stage is the music. Bubble Man's got one of the greatest tunes in the series, an unforgettable bit of melodic pop that builds quickly to a dazzling chorus of harmonized square waves and Van-Halen-esque arpeggios, all over an appropriately watery triangle-wave bassline. But let's not forget the stage itself, which follows our hero from a huge waterfall, down into a cramped subaquatic tunnel (some kind of refinery?) stuffed with giant robot lantern fish, then back out into the open air for a showdown with the local kingpin. As in so many classic Mega Man levels, there's a beautiful sense of the elemental here — the breeze, the cold metal, the spray of the sea. — PS

Crystal Man

You'd think Capcom's increasing ability to push the NES hardware would've made stages in the later Mega Man games even more memorable than their simpler precursors. Unfortunately, this usually wasn't the case. Many levels in Mega Man II and III gave you just enough detail to fire your imagination, and not enough to stifle it; the increased detail of IV through VI actually made the stages seem less like real places and more like digital constructions. Sometimes the most evocative background of all is just a sinister and inviting black. Still, the fancier graphics of later games did allow the occasional surrealist delight, like Crystal Man's stage, a jagged landscape of shimmering gems and glass-tube-enclosed machinery. For a brief and gorgeous section, the blue background switches to glowing hot pink like an animated bar sign. — PS

Dr. Wily's Castle, Part 1

This is the finest stage in the entire Mega Man franchise, spin-offs included. Mega Man II has four scenes of explicit narrative, and outside of the introduction's brief narration, they are wordless, used only to provide spatial context. What is remarkable about the first stage of Wily's castle is how it conveys scale and design independent of the cutscene that precedes it, how its propulsive music perfectly illustrates exhaustion, finality, and resolve. It is an assault, the scaling of a mountain using literally every tool at your disposal. The level concludes with actually breaching the fortress' walls and finding a chasm, the crossing of which requires precisely timed jumps across miniscule platforms. The castle's guardian, a screen-filling robotic dragon, destroys your footing in its pursuit. The stage, the music, the opponents reveal everything about this world and its stakes: you are fighting a madman on his terms and survival is not guaranteed. Remarkable. — JC

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What'd we miss? Tell us in the comments. For the record, we like Flame Man's arabesque oil well and Tomahawk Man's cod-western badlands too, but nothing from MMVI makes the top ten in fairness. MMVII and MMVIII are beneath discussion.

Previous Top Tens:
The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial
The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History
The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels
The Ten Greatest Fire Levels

The Ten Greatest Classic Mega Man Levels, Part 2

Peter Smith — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:31:00 GMT

Metal Man

More than your average Mega Man stage, Metal Man's feels collosal. Who knows why — maybe it's the giant screws and gears in the foreground, or the dense, heavily animated background (technically quite impressive) of pistons and cogs. Or maybe it's that Metal Man's stage actually has somewhat less variety than most of Mega Man II's stages, thereby suggesting a larger size. Whatever the reason, the scope seems massive. The stage itself is relatively short, but it feels like just a small part of a vast, rusted-out fortress of industry. — PS

Toad Man

For all of Mega Man IV 's missteps (downgraded music, overemphasized story, increasingly nonsensical characters), it's not without its highlights. Toad Man's stage bombards you with intimidating elements from the start, buffeting seemingly easy jumps with heavy wind and pouring rain. As you descend deeper into the sewers of 200X, waterfalls crush, overflows lead to bottomless pits, and robotic vermin (rats, slugs, snails) take full advantage of your decreased mobility. The stage is emblematic of the series' descent into comic absurdity, but it's flawlessly laid out and challenging. — JC

Spark Man Revisited

Mega Man II is an undisputed classic, but for a NES game, it's pretty damn easy, a fault that Mega Man III hastens to correct. By the time you get around to the "dark" versions of conquered stages, III is offering you no quarter. When you walk into Spark Man's second stage, you're at the bottom of a room with no ladder to the top; as you go to summon Rush Coil, just imagine Keiji Inafune giving you the finger. Spark Man 2 is also a long haul, with some truly nasty spike placement and two bosses to tackle; for an added touch of creepiness, it's also got a damaged background texture that suggests the whole place has been bombed out. Ominous stuff. — PS

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Click here for Part 3.

The Ten Greatest Classic Mega Man Levels, Part 1

Peter Smith — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Capcom, I don't really know how to say this. It's a little awkward, but damn it, it's the truth. We've known each other a long time, and you've always been a good friend to me, but this year, things have gotten more serious. With Street Fighter IV, HD Remix, Commando 3, 1942: Joint Strike and two versions of Bionic Commando, it's like you've gone out of your way lately to show me what I mean to you, and now that you've announced Mega Man 9, it's time for me to return the favor. Capcom, I. . . I love you.

Jesus, I don't know what came over me there. But with Mega Man 9 just unveiled in all its eight-bit glory, my old-school-gaming glands are all swollen and red, and I think it's squeezing out the blood flow to my brain. The early Mega Man games are masterpieces of their era, and they feature some of the most unforgettable stages on the NES — a series of giant constructions that, high-tech though they may be, maintain a playground-like innocence. World-building obsessives that we are, we couldn't let this glorious day go by without commemorating the ten greatest classic Mega Man levels of all time. — Peter Smith

Elec Man

Keiji Inafune's first attempt at Mega Man was promising but ultimately half-baked. The play was there but the world itself was still confused, its six core stages shuffling back and forth between "gamey" abstraction and eerie pastoral. Elec Man's tower was one of the series' first real successes, an ascent that felt like a true structure and not a background for a sprite to jump about, a dangerous place pulsing with energy that could obliterate our diminutive hero using the very power that fueled his mechanical innards. — John Constantine

Top Man

The whole premise of Mega Man was that each of the Robot Masters you were fighting had been conceived for an industrial purpose and therefore ruled over an area appropriate to his capabilities. (Guts Man is a construction robot, right, so he's in this construction zone... or something.) This whole idea kind of fell apart as the robots got weirder. By all rights, Top Man should probably have been in a giant robot toy store or something, and God knows that's how the series' increasingly corny later installments would've played it. Luckily, Inafune and co. were still capable of a curveball or two when Mega Man III came out, which must be why Top Man's stage isn't a toy store at all, but some kind of bizarre jungle/greenhouse/space station. With giant robot cats. Most fans would agree it's better that way. — PS

Gemini Man

As important as the future metropolises of classic Mega Man are the natural landscapes. Gemini Man's stage shows a world where even the harshest environments have been hollowed out, bent to the will of humanity, and overrun with intelligent machines that can work and survive where our fragile bodies can't last. Enemy placement is logical, functional in this arctic wasteland; drones spill fire digging into the frozen surface, giant penguins produce an adapted work force, robotic-tadpole pods shifting to maintain delicate structural integrity deep in the ice. The whole place is cold and sharp, beautiful and forbidden. I'd never survive there, but Mega Man can. — JC

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