the US releases never had the subtitles of the games, but then again...I want to point out that I am reviewing these games in the order they came out in Japan, in case you were confused. This is because of the handy chart I have has them ordered this way, otherwise the very next game I'd be reviewing would be on the SNES, as it was released in North America sooner than this game. I think it is important to look into what Capcom was thinking when developing these games at the time, more than what they were thinking when they released them, so I'm sticking with the Japan release dates.
That said, it's 1993 in Japan, and Capcom is still developing Mega Man for the NES. Can we even defend this anymore by this point? Sure, it almost makes sense at first. I don't have the numbers, but we can assume that more people owned a NES even after the first few months of the SNES's release, so yeah, the possible user base is bigger. The coding and sprite library is also easily available, so making new games is easy with slight tweaking, but that was then. This is now, or rather, it was now, then, and not now now...The NES by this point is coming up on retirement in the gaming community, and Capcom knows this. They have to know this because the next Mega Man game (Mega Man X) would be for SNES, and judging by release dates, it was probably developed concurrently with this game. In fact, Capcom didn't even give this game the legs it needed to
swim in North America, and Nintendo ended up publishing it after the release of Mega Man X, which we'll talk about next. So why was this game made? Hard to say, but Capcom knows it'll be the last game in the NES series, and actually it's a fitting end to it.Look at the box art. Mega Man has a Jet Pack made out of his robo-dog. Doesn't that almost scream desperation? We'll lucky for us, Mega Man 6 has some unique elements to it that makes it worth playing, and it's better than Mega Man 5.
New Features
- This game is big on alternate paths, and you must use them to collect the Beat Parts this time. The Beat parts are found through alternate Boss Shutters.
- This is the first appearance of the Energy Balancer in the main series.
- Goodbye Rush Jet, hello Rush Jetpack. Rush has been altered to merge with Mega Man instead of assisting him as a separate helper this time.
The first annual Robot Masters Tournament is held by Mr.
X, a benevolent philanthropist millionaire. You know, because when you spend thousands of dollars to build these things, the first thing you wanna do is wreck them up by having them fight...? At the end of the tournament, 8 Robot Masters are reprogrammed by Mr. X and he announces his plan to take over the world! Mega Man must stop Dr. Wil... er Mr. X from...Ok seriously, if you can't figure out Mr. X is Dr. Wily I'm afraid you must be a moron. So you, as Mega Man, go and stop the 8 Robot Masters, Mr. X reveals himself as Dr. Wily to the surprise of no one, then you beat Dr. Wily and... what? Arrest him? Mega Man finally caught the bastard? Well about damn time right? Yeah so coming off the high that is Mega Man IV, Mega Man 6's story just plays par for the course.
Aesthetics
Not bad, but I prefer Mega Man 5 over this one in terms of visuals strictly on the levels. There are some cool touches here and there, but the environments are a lot blander, lack detailed backgrounds and are a bit duller in color.
Not to mention this is probably the worst line up of bad looking robot masters in the series. You got Flame Man, who is Fire Man with a turban; Blizzard Man, who rides around on ski's; Plant Man, a gigantic flower; Tomahawk Man; Yamato Man; and Knight Man, who pretty much blur together. Finally you have Centaur Man, the stupidest looking Robot Master in the series. Wanna guess his weapon? It's basically Gravity Hold, except it kills the enemies instead of taking them off screen.
On the flip side though, most of the bosses through Mr. X and Dr. Wily's stages are pretty cool. Most notably the Mechasaurus. These bosses put the Dark Man fights to shame.That said, I'm only comparing Mega Man 5 and 6 here because, this far into the series for the NES, they are at the full potential they'll ever get out of the console. In a larger sense, both of these games run together for me, and I often put a Mega Man 5 boss in the Mega Man 6 game and vice versa in my mind. Looking at the game analytically, these games belong in the top tier as far as looks go for the NES series.
Sound
I'd say better than Mega Man 5, but the subjectivity of the tunes in these games is a lot higher than previous games. Everyone loves Mega Man 2's music, but as far as what people like on these last games, it's all over the map. I love Yamaoto Man's stage and Mr. X's stage the best, but the rest of it isn't very memorable.
Design
This game trumps Mega Man 5 by trying new things. The Rush Jetpack and Power Pack are
both interesting changes to the game, and offer new challenges on how to handle the various levels. The weapons in this game, for the most part, are pretty useful too, especially compared to how useless they are in Mega Man 5. Mega Man 6 is superior to 5 on the fun factor, but it's still lagging behind everything else. I have to give them credit for shaking things up a bit, but it's clear they're running low on ideas. The branching paths to the levels opens up some new gameplay elements, but unless you're going out of your way to not get Beat, you probably won't change your game plan to much each run through.
The boss fights are a lot of fun in this one though, as each boss has a nice pattern to learn your way through, making buster dueling fun again. However, this is probably the easiest game in the series. There aren't any tricky jumps or bullshit traps to get in your way, E-tanks are a dime a dozen, and the game just doesn't demand as much out of you as the other games do. It's easy, but fun, and weirdly enough, the Mega Man games almost demand difficulty to make them more popular. I prefer it to Mega Man 5, specifically because I like having weapons that don't blow.Playability
Learning to play with the Rush Jet adapter is the newest thing
here. It's not difficult, but using it loses your ability to charge your buster or slide. In some places, it can be a little unwieldy, as your vertical descent can be too fast for your thrusters to handle, but it's a quick and easy thing to learn. Otherwise, there's nothing in this game you haven't had a million times before.Extras
- Boss Order: I start with Wind Man myself, as his pattern is pretty easy to me, and there is nothing essential to miss in his stage. A lot of other people start with Flame Man however, but it's really a matter of preference. In any case, you want to make sure you have both Rush Adapters so you can get the Energy Balancer and Beat Parts. The boss order from here is Wind Man, Flame Man, Blizzard Man, Plant Man, Tomahawk Man, Yamato Man, Knight Man and Centaur Man.
- The Energy Balancer is in Tomahawk Man's stage behind a rock you must destroy with the Rush Power Adapter just before the last stretch. Proto Man will give it to you making his only appearance in this game.
- Flame Blast is this games MVP. It kills just about every stage mini boss in just a few hits. A speed runners delight.
- Unless you are stingy with weapon usage, you'll find yourself running low on all your weapons by the boss re-fights. That is if you didn't game over. If you did a decent job of collecting E-Tanks however, you probably won't need them.
- For some reason, this game gives stats to the bosses. I'm not aware if this at all factors into gameplay or is just flavor text.
Playthroughs
Speed Run by Sattik 'Tiki' Ghosh
Tool Assisted Speed Run by Timo Taipaleenmäki (aka. Shinryuu).
Megaman 6 came out in the US March '94, MM7 was September '95. In Japan it was November '93 and March '95 respectively. They probably weren't concurrently developed unless I'm missing out on something here.
ReplyDeleteI should have been a bit more clear in my wording. What I meant to say was that if I was reviewing all the games (as in the entire franchise) in order of the North American release dates, I would have moved to the SNES with Mega Man X, which was released in January 1994, two months before Mega Man 6.
ReplyDeleteIn Japan, Mega Man X was released after Mega Man 6, but in the US, Mega Man X was released before Mega Man 6.
The link I posted was wrong, bah, I really need to proof read these better...