Ok, so I took any easy road tonight. And it was actually early today that I played this game, but I originally didn't play it for this project, but rather just because Mega Man has been on my mind and I wanted to rediscover how well the development team did of making this game look like it was made in the late 80's.

But due to a lot of distractions and unforeseen circumstances that greatly overshadowed my silly little gaming project, I was forced to use Mega Man 9 as my game of the day today.

Not the worst choice, but not ideal to me since I had another Mega Man game featured just a couple of days ago.

Yet after thinking about it, it sort of wraps up the themes of that blog entry nicely. The major thing it showcases, like I said earlier, was how amazing the creative team did in making this game look like it was made around the same time as Mega Man or Mega Man 2.

Sure the backgrounds are a lot prettier, the action is smooth and all the little bugs and quirks of old school NES games are eliminated in this installment in the franchise, but the fact that they had to make a game to look like it was made with 8-bit graphics is an accomplishment only appreciated by real old school gamers. I read that they physically couldn't do it with modern technology, so they had to build something to literally deconstruct the game's graphics to 8-bit levels. That's just amazing, however you butter your bread.

So this game was fun to play. It's a perfect homage to the series and the roots from which it sprouted, and it was fascinating to play this game after dusting off the original just a couple of days ago. I didn't quite beat it today, and wasn't nearly as efficient playing it as I was the original, but the bosses, levels and stages were are quite fun, if mainly because of their difficulty.

In reality, I could have just left the game on pause on each level and just listened to the music and been quite happy.

But alas, even though I'm not thrilled with picking a similar game this early into the year, it ended up not being a bad thing at all.

I made it.

I made it through the influenza from Hell, and am now on the upswing of recovery. Also, I managed to make it one week of successfully updating this blog for my project of attempting to play a different game and write about it each day over the calendar year.

One week. A small milestone, but a milestone none the less. I could go on and on about what just making a week means to me, why it is significant, so on and so on, but why bother? I am here to write about games, so let's get down to it.

Tonight, I played the classic Mega Man, released by Capcom on the original NES back in 1987. Now before I go any further, I want to explain just why I selected this game, of all the games I could have chosen, to play tonight. Over at IGN.com, my favorite writer/editor/personality is Colin Moriarty, who is part of the Playstation team. I've actually heard that it's scary how much him and I are alike in personalities, which may be why I enjoy his work over at IGN so much.

Anyway, long story short, he put up a video today showing his entire play through of the game, start to finish, while him and another editor, Andrew Goldfarb, did commentary over the video the entire time. It's no secret that Colin is an avid Mega Man fan, and has often bragged righteously of his speed runs through Mega Man 2 and 3. In this video he put up, he noted that it had been a long, long while since he played the original Mega Man, but you could hardly tell as he called out everything about to happen, before it happened, since Andrew wasn't too privy to game beforehand.

I watched in amazement. Not because it was a perfect or flawless run, but because as many times as I have played and beat it over the years, he enlightened me to how the game is supposed  to be played. As I kid, this was one of the first games I remember renting from Blockbuster over and over again, just because I loved playing it, despite how brutally hard it was.

After seeing Colin play the game, I had to give it a try, focusing on all the little nuances and tricks that he pointed out. Now, I do own an original NES cartridge of the game, but because I had just finished the system transfer process from my old Wii to the Wii U, I figured I might as well play it on the Virtual Console since I already had is downloaded and everything. And so I played.

Man oh man, did I play that game. I played that game hard. Granted, there was a little bit of rust early on, as I had to use a continue on the second stage, but then I got into a groove. I ended up beating the game after a little more than an hour, which is far faster than any time I could have ever dreamed of beating it before. Is it great time? No, not even close, but as a personal record? I'm floored by what I accomplished. The entire time I was playing, I felt like I had Colin in my head calling out each jump and shot I needed take before I needed to. He was my spiritual Game Genie tonight, and it felt great.

Did I use more continues then I could have? Of course I did. Did I suck compare to great Mega Man players? Without question. Did I use in-game "cheats" effectively like Colin did in order to beat the game quickly, efficiently? You're damn right.

Yet... was it the most fun I have ever had playing Mega Man? I can honestly say it was. Thanks, Colin, for enlightening me, and hopefully lots of others, in the ways of Power Blasters, Robot Masters, Magnet Beams, Rock-Paper-Scissors, and the Pause cheat.

(Oh, and one last tip I learned that made my head spin: Don't worry about getting hit, keep moving and don't worry about collecting everything that drops. Advancing is more important than collecting or being perfect.)

My Year of Gaming – Project Stats

Games played: 7
Systems played on: NES = 2, PS Vita = 1, PS3 = 2, Wii U = 1, Xbox 360 = 1
Total time played: 9.75 hours