Oh my god, you guys… You don’t know how upset I am that Capcom cancelled the production of Rockman DASH 3. Now we’ll NEVER GET HIM OFF THE MOON. Anyway… That freak out is over with. This Throwback Thursday’s entry is a classic, the one that started it all for my love of Mega Man; specifically THIS Mega Man. Mega Man Volnutt.
I’ve always been a fan of Mega Man since the NES days. Well… To be precise, my Mega Man days started on the GameBoy. But that’s irrelevant. When I first saw Mega Man Legends, I was super interested. His design was so different, he was in 3D, he could move on a 3D plane! His Buster didn’t charge… OH WELL!! He had other weapons! And it was the first time I’d seen an adventure game with him in it. It wasn’t a side-scroller Jump ‘n’ Shoot game. It was a blast! The Blue Bomber was back with a vengeance!
I booted up this game on the Playstation, and my heart used to well up with joy. At the time though, I was really scared to go into the Ruins. There was either no music, or the music made me feel really tense. The Reaverbots were really scary, and you didn’t know how to properly deal with them unless you got close. Moving all slowly and menacingly… … Well, I scared myself again.
Anyway, the story begins with a certain Mega Man Volnutt going through some ruins trying to find a Quantum Refractor to power their ship, The Flutter. You gradually learn how to play, and how to adjust your camera so you can fight effectively. The controls were really simply. Square to shoot, X to jump, and so on and so forth. Fighting the first boss was cake after a while. So you fight ‘im, you beat ‘im, and the story progresses!
Now, I know I’m probably weird for this, but when I got back to the Flutter, I was really excited to see Roll taking a more active part in this game. Considering the first time I actually saw was in Mega Man 7. And actual spoken dialogue was pretty new to this generation of gaming as well. To hear everyone having a voice was amazing. I was astounded, and I told all of my friends. (Well, actually, before I played Mega Man Legends, I played Mega Man 8, where there were fully animated cut scenes with bad voice acting, but I didn’t care.)
So as the intro progressed, weeventually land on Kattelox Island. And the fun REALLY began here. But skipping through this, needless to say, I had a lot of fun playing through and blasting up my enemies. The bosses were really hard too as the game progressed. And when we finally meet the Bonnes, oh forget it. Haha. I loved Tron, Tiesel and Bon. The Servbots as well. Everything about this game was just adorable and awesome.
Oops… sorry, those two on the right are from a spin off… Ah well.
The toughest part had to have been trying to find all the parts and play all the mini-games to get the items to make new weapons. Yeesh. Some of those Mini-games were really demanding. Like trying to beat the skating records. I screwed up sooooo badly at times. Even when it came to the little things like your reputation. You know… How you kicked the dogs in the factories area or kicked a can into one of the shops and you’d become darker? Didn’t know that affected you so with the townspeople, and your appearance.
Oh god, the last boss, though. Mega Man Juno? That’s when the story really got me caring. It was such a mind screw. Hahaha.
Overall. I have very fond memories of this game. I was playing it when I was younger, so a lot of the story was lost on me for a bit. But it was one of those games that you could play and play, and care about the story another time. It was just an great game. And I’m really glad Keiji Inafune, Mega Man’s creator, and his team had a lot of fun making this game. Truly it was a success, and so was its sequel.
What gives? I’m diggin’ and diggin’ and diggin’ and I’m still nowhere near the bottom. Maybe we do need those keys after all.
Article by Sebastian “Blibbles” Visconti
P.S. We’ll take a moment to say our prayers to Mega Man, whose currently stuck on the moon. We probably won’t see him again for… … Well, until Capcom feels like I guess.
