This December marks the 25th anniversary for Capcom’s beloved Blue Bomber, Mega Man. Through countless iterations and re-imaginings, this little robot hero has stood tall next to industry icons such as Mario, Link and Sonic the Hedgehog. At their core, the Mega Man games offer challenges based on pattern recognition and razor-sharp reflexes. Not to mention, the Mega Man games are home to some of the most energetic and catchy pieces of game music ever composed.
In honor of my personal gaming hero (some of my first memories are playing Mega Man games on my Nintendo Entertainment System), I’ve decided to rank his games from worst to best, according to my own personal feelings. For the sake of size, I’ll only be covering the 10 numbered games in the regular Mega Man series (excluding the Game Boy Advance’s Mega Man & Bass) and not the countless spin-offs (a number of which are quite good) or else this would be an amazingly unwieldy list.
NOTE: If you care about SPOILERS, this article could very well be rife with them. Also, all years are based on the North American release dates.
10. Mega Man 7 (1995)
Mega Man’s transition from the classic Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to the highly evolved Super Nintendo was unfortunately not as favorable as his other gaming counterparts. The art direction felt bulbous and weighty instead of the airy simplicity of the 8-bit era, the music was tedious, the robot masters were almost uniformly dull (with the exception of Shade Man a.k.a. We Can’t Call Him Bat-Man), and the story did little else than frame itself around introducing a new character, Bass. While Bass has become a fan favorite, I’ll always prefer Proto-Man’s mysterious and often tenuous ally status to Bass’ forced antagonism.
Its key contribution to the franchise is introducing an upgrade system which involved collecting screws from enemy drops that you could spend at an upgrade store. Otherwise, Mega Man 7 is the obvious contender for weakest in the series, and it doesn’t help that it’s overshadowed by its far superior spin-off Mega Man X. However, I’d take the worst Mega Man game over the best Call of Duty game any day. That’s right. Feed me your hate in the comments.
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5 Comments
I just wish for Megaman 2 you had a picture of him standing there with his hair blowing…. badass!
Haha, yes that is quite the iconic image of the Blue Bomber. I went with the robot master select screen since it’s another classic image from the game, and every time I see it, I hear that great music.
Did you only play the PS version of MM8?
I had the Saturn version and the extra battles with Cutman and Woodman would boost it up a bit imo.
I have only played the PS version, so that’s a good point. I actually really, really dig MM8 but objectively, I think that a lot of that love has nostalgia attached to it. That’s why it’s lower on this list. Plus, I have to side with the original 8-bit style over the art direction in MM8.
Sorry, but I have to place 3 top on the list. It has the reappearance of the robot masters from 2, Protoman battles, the slide move, the Yellow Devil, and of course, no weird alien hologram for the final boss, among so much other awesomeness. Sure, 2 has quickman’s stage and the dragon, but 3 has so much more. Still, if I listen to The Megas ‘Get Acoustic’ album enough times, I may yet change my mind…