Mega Man 2 (NES Review)

Mega Man 2
aka Rockman 2: Dr. Wily no Nazo
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Release: December 24, 1988
Directed by Akira Kitamura
Developed by Capcom
Included in Mega Man Legacy Collection

I cannot imagine what seeing this in 1988 must have felt like. It’s so epic in scale and has such massive sprites.

It’s been half-a-year since I reviewed the first Mega Man, and everyone has wondered why I didn’t do the sequel right away, or even a Definitive Review of the whole series. I had wanted to do a Definitive Review but quickly realized that I would run out of things to say well before reaching the end. As for why I didn’t immediately play Mega Man 2, just fire up Bubble Man’s stage. It’s one of many elements to Mega Man 2 not compatible with my epilepsy. Mega Man 2 also has tons of bright, white screen-wide strobe effects, including bosses that flash with every tick of damage they take. The famous dragon is the worst of them. The effect is so intense, multiplied by the fact that it takes place on a black background, that I realistically shouldn’t play this. Originally the plan was that my father would do the flashy parts for me. He did get past the start of Bubble Man’s stage, but then I reached the dragon. I hand him the controller and leave the room. Fifteen minutes later, he still hadn’t beat it. “Well it’s not like I had been playing this whole time to prepare myself for this!” Good point. Ultimately I just turned down the brightness of my screen, which doesn’t affect the quality of the screenshots. Anyway, HOLY HELL, Mega Man 2 is very, very flashy and it’s not in service to the game at all. It’s just annoying. Golly, am I happy that this type of sh*t wouldn’t fly in the 2020s.

The really weird thing about the dragon flashing with every hit of damage is that it makes no sense why it would do that. In theory isn’t the flash supposed to represent an explosion? If the pea shooter is that powerful, how come EVERY enemy doesn’t “explode” with a full screen flash? Not that I or anyone should want that. Again, it’s just annoying. It gives non-seizure havers headaches and nobody wants to get a headache from a video game. Just don’t do it.

Usually Mega Man 2 is cited as the first good Mega Man game. The one that improved the core gameplay so much that it makes the original feel like a proof of concept. I think the first game is wrongly vilified and is fine, but I also get why people wouldn’t like it. Plus, people act like Mega Man 2 is more clean and polished. It certainly has better graphics, but now that I’ve played it through the eyes of a game critic, guys, the jank is still here. Quite a lot of jank, actually. For starters, it has the single most overpowered weapon in the entire franchise in the form of Metal Man’s weapon. This is like the ultimate gaming example of failing upward because, like everyone else, I f*cking love Metal Man’s weapon. While Metal Man isn’t the easiest of the eight bosses, there’s an energy tank in his level, plus a second one if you want to sacrifice a life to get it, which I did. Even if you sh*t the bed in the fight, you should have more than enough life with the energy tanks to survive.

He’s called Metal Man because Nerf was a registered trademark of Parker Bros. at the time.

Once you beat him, you have an eight-way, highly destructive weapon that kills most basic enemies while also using the least amount of fuel. For every tick of energy, you get four shots with the Metal Blade. If you have a session like the one I just had with historically unlikely bad RNG and can’t get item refills from enemy drops, you would still enter a stage with 112 shots with this damn thing. ON TOP OF THAT, it’s the best weapon for three of the bosses. It’s just unbelievable that even in 1988 they could allow a weapon that has so much reward with so little risk to make it out of play testing. Oh, it’s fun as hell, which is why I’m not penalizing it too much. In fact, it’s so fun that it’s kind of amazing Capcom didn’t pivot and make all future Mega Man games have eight-way pea-shooting.

The variety of weapons is pretty fun. I enjoyed using Wood Man’s shield for making these screens in Crash Man’s stage a cinch. It doesn’t feel cheesy. It feels earned.

Mega Man 2 is full of other jank. Like the infamous Boobeams. They’re the fourth boss of the Wily stages and, in addition to a boring physical appearance, they’re only vulnerable to one item: Crash Man’s (in Japan he’s known as Clash Man). The problem is you only get seven shots with Crash Man’s weapon and there’s five total things to shoot. Two of them are hiding behind a shield that can also only be destroyed by using Crash Man’s weapon, meaning you have to go into this room with a full tank of that weapon AND not screw up a single shot or destroy any of the shields except the two that MUST be destroyed. If you do, you have to sacrifice yourself and then grind up weapon energy. Thankfully any of the shields you destroy the first time around will remain dead on the next life. Still, this is a boring design in terms of appearance AND a boring boss fight in terms of gameplay. I’m guessing they wanted to do a puzzle-style boss, but the parameters for that puzzle are too strict and the penalty too stiff to work. It’s the wrong kind of trial-and-error.

F*ck you.

But any nits I pick are just that. The truth is, Mega Man 2 blew the series up for a reason. In addition to historically awesome graphics and chiptunes (and that’s coming from me, someone who usually plays games muted), it just feels so much grander. The level themes are even more on-point here than in Mega Man 1, and there’s massive set piece enemies tailored to the levels. Combine this with far less cheap shots and a much better roster of basic enemies and it makes Mega Man 2 work as both a game and as experience. The level design is stronger. The bosses are better. The character designs are more memorable. The first Mega Man is completely earnest, while the second one feels like its tongue is firmly planted in its cheek the entire time. I can’t remember a lot of the enemies in Mega Man 1, but I’ll never forget the robo-rabbits, robo-chickens, the giant robot wolf or giant robot angler fish. Hell, as much as I hate it, I’ll never forget the alien finale. When people talk about Mega Man 2 being the first good one, I think they really mean it’s the first one where the personality is as good as the concept itself.

What is that water? Never mind. I don’t want to know.

If I have to make a complaint that isn’t a nit-pick, and I sort of do, I don’t like how they handle the three transportation items. You get them from beating three specific bosses. Item 1, which creates temporary rising platforms, is gotten by defeating Heat Man. Item 2, a very useful hoverboard that can take you over some of the more tricky sections of the game (very useful in Heat Man’s level) you get by defeating Air Man. Finally Item 3, a tricky to use platform that sticks to walls, is nabbed from Flash Man. The problem is, there’s no way to logic-out which bosses have the items. Since the game frames it like Dr. Light is working on them and finishes them after those levels, why not just have them come out in intervals of two? So you get one when you beat two bosses, another after four, and the last one after you’ve finished six? That makes sense to me and adds many more layers of strategy than tying them to specific bosses.

The Wily stages have several “you MUST use the item” instances. I’m fine with that as long as there’s item refills close by, but that’s not always the case.

And I also don’t think the Wily levels are particularly strong. While the Dragon and Gutsdozer make for epic-scale bosses, the stages themselves are kind of dull. What’s even the logic of them? They’re full of little reruns of previous levels, like the underwater bits or Crash Man’s platforms on moving tracks. And, of course, a full boss rush of eight characters. At least it’s not as bad as Mega Man 3, which has all that game’s bosses PLUS this game’s as well. You know, Dr. Wily, trying the same thing and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. You wouldn’t want people to think you’re some kind of mad scientist, especially when the robo-bats could nab you a Nobel Prize. Speaking of Wily, I’m sure fans of the series will sh*t a brick but I thought everything once you reach Wily’s machine was a huge letdown. The final “level” has no enemies. Just acid falling from the ceiling that you can easily beat just by holding right. I also think the alien finale was lame as hell (the final caption explains why) AND I can’t tell the difference between Wily’s ship in the first game and Wily’s ship in the second game. They look generic and samey to me. What do you think? Left is Mega Man 1, right is Mega Man 2.

Wily’s Ship (Mega Man 1)

Wily’s Ship (Mega Man 2)

Okay, yeah I can see the difference obviously but they both just look like hunks of junk to me. Sigh, that was even more nit picking, wasn’t it? Yeah, Mega Man 2 is f*cking awesome. Weirdly, it’s Metal Man’s weapon that really makes it timeless and possibly the best in the entire franchise. In addition to being the most overpowered and broken in the franchise, dammit, it’s just f*cking fun to use, and that’s all that matters. That’s why Metal Man’s weapon is a little bit of a heartbreaker. It proves beyond any doubt that Mega Man as a franchise would have been better off if they had just given up the crappy “only shoot straight ahead” pea shooter and gave players full eight-way shooting as a basic weapon. It absolutely would not take away from the other eight weapons, which I did use and experiment with a lot. Who wouldn’t? It’s human nature.

I think they were aiming for climatic since there’s no music. Just the sound of the droplets. Their heart was in the right place since what follows is the final boss, but it doesn’t work. I think a chase would have made more sense. After fighting robot gorillas and robot birds dropping eggs that unleash a dozen robotic baby birds, the game climaxes with a leaky ceiling. “Leaky ceilings do suck” Dad says. Yeah, but I doubt the embodiment of evil would base his lair around one. It’s his ceiling too, after all.

Not that the franchise screwed up badly by sticking to the basic pea shooter. There’s seriously over one-hundred Mega Man games that followed this one. Most of them are, at the very least, fun. But I think the fullest potential for that fun is shown with the nearly limitless eight-way combat. A lot of the enemy placement you’d swear is based specifically on Metal Man’s weapon. This is something I talked about in my Super Castlevania IV review: eight directions of attacking requires eight directions of danger. Mega Man 2 *nails* that, which is kind of insane since the main weapon is not eight-ways. Seriously, indie devs: study this one for enemy placement. It’s elite, all these years later. I’d love to play the franchise with ROM hacks for just the pea shooter’s direction and everything else left the same.

Funny enough, it wasn’t the dragon or Gutsdozer that was the most risky part for me. It was the intro to Bubble Man’s stage, which caused my family to literally reach over and cover my eyes. No joke: I almost had to pick a different game. Why it looks hazy in this screenshot is we tried to apply a variety of filters to soften it, but none of them worked. Dad actually cleared this part for me. He only lost two lives in the process too. Wow, Dad. I can see why you didn’t get deeply into gaming in the 80s.

For all its problems and jank, Mega Man 2 unambiguously aces the test of time. Solid action, excellent play control, and memorable character design help. But I think the real sweet sauce for Mega Man is decent level design paired with first-rate theming. Wood Man’s level doesn’t just take place in a forest but it has you fighting robot chickens that don’t show up in, say, Flash Man’s stage. Ironically for a game about robots, every effort is made to make the stages feel alive and populated with an ecosystem that belongs just to it. To complement this, the level layouts also feel unique compared to one another, so much so that they almost feel like characters themselves. The first game tried to do this, but Mega Man 2 perfected it, and along with it, the Mega Man formula. Mega Man 2 is fantastic, but it’s really the Mega Man formula that’s timeless. It’s an excuse to tour different settings and fight different themed cartoonishly impractical enemies with an increasingly absurd arsenal of weapons. It’s fun to imagine Dr. Wily hard at work on a robot frog that barfs out three small robot frogs and thinking “yep, this is the one! Soon, the world will be mine!”

I think the alien was a really lame final boss. Compare this to the epic scale of the dragon or the Gutsdozer and it just doesn’t work as a grand finale. Plus, it’s all or nothing, since if you run out of the ultra-lame Bubble Man weapon, the game is over. There’s no item refills in the level leading up to it and no other weapons work. That is the absolute f*cking sh*ts as far as final boss fights go. While I’ve never actually lost this fight, it’s not hard to imagine someone dying. You have to be right on top of the f*cking thing for the bubble to work, but the alien’s touch takes over half your life bar. If you think THIS is a bad finale, just wait until Mega Man 3.

It’s a formula so bulletproof that Capcom essentially just kept reusing the same game code from the first game, leaving things like the hero sprite mostly unchanged. I’m not even kidding about using the same code, either. Within the code of Mega Man 2, you can find whole stages of Mega Man 1, because that’s how they made the sequel. They just reworked the existing code from the first game. So for example, Metal Man’s stage contains within it, unseen by players, both data from Cut Man’s stage AND Wily Stage 1 from Mega Man 1. Bubble Man’s stage also contains Wily Stage 4. I’m pretty sure this is the only game in the series that contains the previous game’s data (basically garbage code), but you can just look at Mega Man games and see that a lot of asset flipping or slight retouching is done. That’s fine too. Hell, even Disney used to do that. As long as the games remain fun, that’s all that matters. Decades after Mega Man 2, they made two more Mega Man games using this style of art, Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10, sticking like glue to the formula perfected here, and people loved them! That tells me that, while the games might be fun individually, it’s the formula people really love. Mega Man is the McDonald’s hamburger of gaming: it’s the same thing every time, no matter where you get it from. I mean that as a complement, too. Do you realize how hard that is to pull off that kind of consistency across decades?
Verdict: YES!

AND NOW
GENERIC ACTION ONE-LINER THEATER

“Remember when I told you that I hate to burst your bubble? I LIED!” And here’s a random fun fact: Bubble Man was one of the two bosses that didn’t make it off the drawing board for Mega Man 1, along with Oil Man. Oil Man would be restored in the PSP game Powered-Up, but since Bubble Man made it into Mega Man 2, he was replaced with Time Man. Had he been in Mega Man 1, Oil Man’s weapon would have been his weakness.

“Paging Doctor Metal Man! Doctor Metal Man, you’re wanted……….. In the morgue!”

“He was a real flash in the pan!”

“How much life does Heat Man have left? ZIPPO!”

“I’m the Partly Crasher.” “Don’t you mean Party Crasher?” “No, PARTLY Crasher. As in I’ll crash you partly now, and partly during the boss rush!”

“You’re now both the quick AND the dead!”

“I’m not a big fan. I guess you can’t say the same thing!”

“Talk to your doctor if Wood Man lasts for longer than eight hours.”