May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favor (Mega Man 6)

(Well, here we are. Mega Man 6. The last one on NES, but not the last one proper. The Mega Man series would go on, but for Nintendo Project purposes... this is the last song for our hero in blue. Fitting, then, that the focus of this entry is from well after the NES was dead. The true last days of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Here are some memories of Mega Man 6 and the end of the whole mess, courtesy of a Mr. "CarpetCrawler". Fare thee well, Mega Man.)

Does anybody else miss Funcoland? Because I sure as hell do.

Hell, in that same regard, I miss GameStop. No, I know GameStop is still around, that's not what I mean. I'm not talking about this Power to the Players bullshit, or the cramped and overly-professional, fake, and completely impersonal look the store has now. But I miss the way things used to be. Wall-to-wall of older video games and also enough space to fit newer ones. I have so many memories of both Funcoland and GameStop and the retro goodies I got my hands on. The Power Glove. The Game Genie. Holy shit they made educational Mario games? No, I don't want your cleaning kit. Yes, I understand that you guys hawk them so much because you make commission on them, it doesn't not make them a ripoff.

This one Funcoland that was right next to our mall (which had a Planet Comics, Eletronics Boutique, and GameStop inside, which made no sense to me. Granted the only one that carried retro games in the mall was EB, and its “retro” was a bunch of really common Game Boy games) even had one of the coolest things ever, this really neat-o Mario statue doing his V-for-victory pose. Clearly from before Miyamoto decided that pose was too silly to have Mario keep doing.

Sadly, reality crept in and once it became clear that selling the older games was doing nothing profitable and taking away space from newer games, they changed their business model and started phasing the retro games out. All of those weekly trips to Funcoland by the mall, the GameStop nearby that really oddly designed pizza place, now they're gonna be a rarity or just a once in a blue moon kinda thing. And that's exactly what happened. The retro game collecting bubble didn't start to grow until the rise of using eBay and Amazon and other websites, so GameStop had no justifiable reason to continue selling their old stock. They had already destroyed the Mom and Pop used game shops in our area, and anything else that tried to start up in their wake died out because they just didn't have the game coverage. We even had a cool little game store that sold import games (the first shop I had ever seen that sold Japanese games. I was so tempted to buy Mario Story there before the game came out here, not knowing any better and not realizing the game wasn't going to work anyway.)

Now what does this have to do with Mega Man 6? Don't worry reader, we're almost there.

Other than hoping to find luck with thrift stores it was pretty hard to hunt for NES games for a bit for me. But then alas!! Hollywood Video, a now long-gone video/DVD rental chain that was Blockbuster's only competition, had opened up a little area next to their store for video games, and it even had old games!! Walls of neat accessories, consoles games hidden in a glass counter (a practice that I'm seeing everyone try now), it was like a nice new haven for the games I enjoyed the most. The place even had a silly name: GameCrazy.

I wish I had only happy memories of GameCrazy. I did get some good deals there, but the employees that worked there were miserable, greedy collecting misers. I am still angry that I was too young to put my foot down on the asshole that refused to sell me a "Not For Resale" copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time because they wanted it. No but like seriously, I was a coy 10, 11, 12 year old whatever my age was so I knew that that was a valuable little cartridge, but who does that to a little kid? What kind of grown-ass manchild do you have to be? I'm still salty over that. In general that was my main problem with the store, the employees either didn't know video games (later on I learned that they started putting main-room people in there to do shifts sometimes, which explains that) or were too busy being conceited gamers and it made for a miserable experience sometimes. Video game stores are always extremely intimidating. Employees are too judgemental and will lambast you for your taste in gaming, whether to your face or behind your back.

Good memories though are a-plenty. Buying Bubble Bobble!! Local Smash Bros. tournaments!! I don't know why but I even remember buying specifically The Adventures of Dino-Riki!! That game is one tough tamale. We even reserved new games from there. Dynasty Warriors games were my obsession for a brief while when I was younger (I still play 'em but holy jeez I used to play those games all day when I got home from school) and I reserved one or two from there!! And then there were the days when Mom felt like browsing the movies section, and me finally starting to introduce myself to horror movies I'd run over to the horror film rentals and read the boxes.

But my best memory is plopping down somehow only $15 to pick up today's Nintendo Project subject, Mega Man 6. And the sucker even had the instruction manual. Hell I was like 12 or 13 when I bought the game there and even then I realized they clearly weren't pricing it properly. But oh well, their loss is my gain. It won't be the first time I benefit from an improper game price in the future.

Now, before we get ahead of ourselves here, let me remind you all that I am strange with my Mega Man tastes. I cannot stand 4, it's my least favorite Mega Man and I'm happy that I finally beat it recently because it was the monkey off of back of the NES Mega Man games, the only one I had not beat. And I love, LOVE Mega Man 8. Most everyone agrees that 8 has one of the best soundtracks in the game, but to me everything about it is fantastic, from the gameplay to the mechanics, to the Robot Masters, and even the cheesy cutscenes have a place to me. Heck, 8 is better than Rockman and Forte to me. Yes I did go there.

When I purchased the game, I had already known ahead of time that 6 was considered the "weakest" of the franchise. And it's true, Mega Man was clearly running out of steam and Capcom was already planning out his cooler alternate, X. Heck, Capcom didn't even want to publish the game for North America. Nintendo of America had to do it. And looking at the plot of this game, I can understand the flak it gets. Like, are we really kidding ourselves here? Mr. X? Were they even trying anymore? At least 5 had the appeal of Proto Man going rogue, and 4 actually technically had a new villain in Dr. Cossack.

Sometimes I feel like they were trying to be ironically funny by putting no effort into making Mr. X look pretty much the exact same as Dr. Wily. But at the same time it's just... what does it accomplish? And knowing at Mega Man X was being made at the same time just adds to the overall feeling of "literally who cares, just finish the game already" from this game. And it's a shame too, because for all of its goofy cheesiness, the game's actually pretty... good?

This game was special even before it was developed. Japan had long been holding contests to let kids send in their own designs for robot masters, but this time Nintendo of America was also involved!! Nintendo Power held a contest where if you sent in your own robot master, there was a chance it would be featured in the game as well!! So which robot master came from North America? YAMATO MAN.

OK, OK, I may be full of shit.

Knight Man and Wind Man are the two that came from here. Knight Man is a pretty cool looking robot while Wind Man... well, his music is pretty cool. And he happens to be one of the easiest robot masters to beat.

Lamest looking robot master? Probably Centaur Man. Which is a shame because his game track is easily the best, and far and away one of my favorite tracks in the entire franchise. Just a super pretty chill tune that has been ripe for some AMAZING remixes, like this mix, which is just lovely.

In general this game has some strong music. Mr. X's theme is another track that stands out in particular. Sure it's kinda lazy of them to use it for all four of his stages, but I'm glad it's a legit good song. I don't mind hearing it for four straight levels to be honest. The Mega Man games are known for having good soundtracks, but this game everyone tends to sell short when it's honestly some of the best Mega Man music in the franchise. For real, give the soundtrack a shot, you won't be disappointed. It might be a little different from the other games (this feels like hard-rock-ish than the others to me) but it's still a great listen and I think the alternative style makes it a cut above some of the other Mega Man games.

If there's one thing I'm not happy with it's the loss of Rush. Rush is adorable!! How dare they get rid of him!! I like Mega Man's new power-up system (he has "Rush Adaptors" which allows him to fly for an extended period of time or give him a super-powered punch that is necessary to use if you want to find all of this game's secrets) and the Energy Balancer is INGENIUS and literally everything that Mega Man fans had wanted all-along, but it's all not the same without my adorable robotic dog. Capcom apparently understood this and brought him back for the future installments.

You also won't hear me praising this game's difficulty. Of all of the Mega Man games, this one is probably one of the easiest to gimmick. Buster-only, Power Mega Man-only, and various other gimmicks are pretty easy to do in this game. But I'm not one to think that if a game's too easy then it's clearly bad.

My cartridge of this game holds a lot of special value to me. My blossoming into a major collector of NES games is a period of my life that I kinda wish I could relive the experience of. Just the idea of looking eBay and various websites and being like, "I'm gonna have ALL of these!!" and finding the random NES game I don't have in a thrift shop or garage sale. I'm only about 60% done, but owning 493 NES cartridges is no feat to sneeze at.

Mega Man 6 is one of my first ever truly special good deals I've ever had as an NES collector. For both the cartridge and manual I paid only like, $15 for it, which was unheard of then, let alone now. It wouldn't be my last truly special deal, but it was the first one I was especially proud of. It was the first one that made me feel like a collector. Hence it holds a special value to me, as well as a special place in my heart.

Of course, the game is pretty all right, too. ;)