Mega Man Recommendations

As I learned from Siskel and Ebert, the best rating system isn't giving a game a number of stars or giving it a rating out of 10 or something like you see on so many websites and magazines. It's simply best to simply recommend or not recommend the game. Thumbs up or Thumbs Down. Here now is a list of my personal recommendations with a simple one sentence justification.

My criteria for getting into the Thumbs Up category was quite strict, and even a number of games I do like in the series I gave a Thumbs down on my recommendation because I just don't think they do enough for the franchise. Really, my in depth reviews of these games are too nice if anything. If you really like the franchise, just about all of these games are worth checking out with some small exceptions, but if you're just an average gamer looking for a good time, these are the games I recommend you try and get your hands on.

There are a number of games you won't see on this list, such as the LCD and Cell Phone games. I cut out a chunk of games I didn't see as significant to add to the list.

Thumbs Up

Classic Series

• Mega Man (NES): The start of the series and everything builds off of it. A piece of gaming history.
• Mega Man 2 (NES): The height of Mega Man's career as a gaming icon. It stands up well to any game still in this day and age.
• Mega Man IV (Game Boy): This game adds so many nice touches and interesting levels to the series that it's not worth missing it.
• Mega Man V (Game Boy): An entirely original entry into the Game Boy series and the last of the true classic era of Mega Man's gaming life. It's a fantastic title.
• Rockman & Forte (Super Famicom): Brutally difficult but wildly varied. Rockman and Forte is frustrating but incredibly fun.
• Super Adventure Rockman (Playstation, Sega Saturn): Although very simple in its gaming, SAR is enjoyable for its presentation overall. The actual game portions are surprisingly fun as well.
• Mega Man Powered Up (PSP): It plays well, and from a lot of different angles. There's so much to do you'll always want to take it with you where ever you go.
• Mega Man 9 (WiiWare, PSN, Xbox Live Arcade): A resurgence of classic gameplay with modern day game design theory. Do not miss out on this one.

X Series

• Mega Man X (SNES): One of the best games in the entire franchise.
• Mega Man X4 (Playstation, Sega Saturn): Fast and furious gameplay over shadow a ridiculous story.
• Mega Man X5 (Playstation): Flows very well with interesting platforming sections and fantastic boss fights.
• Mega Man Xtreme 2 (Game Boy Color): It plays extremely well and Zero is surprisingly as fun to play in this game as he is in the Playstation titles.
• Maverick Hunter X (PSP): Take one of the best games of all time, mix it up a little bit, add a little movie with decent voice acting and you have a really stellar title.

Legends Series

• Mega Man Legends (Playstation): A game so charming it over comes its glaring control issues.

Battle Network Series

• Battle Network 3 (Game Boy Advance): This game advances the ideas brought on by the first two games, as well as giving the player just a ton of stuff to do.
• Battle Network 6 (Game Boy Advance): The gameplay in this episode completely perfects the series. Beast-Out is a great new feature.

Zero Series

• Mega Man Zero (Game Boy Advance): Incredibly challenging, but a refreshing take on the franchise with a great art style.
• Mega Man Zero 3 (Game Boy Advance): A decent story with extremely exciting gameplay. The Cyber Elf system finally becomes useful without destroying a players rating.

ZX Series

• Mega Man ZX (DS): The fast paced challenge of the Zero series combined with a fantastic looking and colorful world with amazing music.

Star Force Series

• Mega Man Star Force (DS): A polished touch on the Battle Network system with some of the best writing the franchise has ever gotten.
• Mega Man Star Force 3 (DS): Expands Star Force's gameplay while continuing to develop the great cast of characters.

Thumbs Down

Classic Series

• Mega Man 3 (NES): New characters Rush and Proto Man just can't make up for the recycling of levels and tediousness of the second half of the game.
• Mega Man (DOS): Do you like sewers? This game is horrible.
• Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge (Game Boy): Completely unrelenting difficulty and a small lack of polish keep me from recommending this one.
• Mega Man 4 (NES): A few boring stages and the charged shot adds surprisingly little to the series.
• Mega Man II (Game Boy): Such a half-assed title that the developers never even bothered to fix the terrible sound and bugs.
• Mega Man 5 (NES): Useless weapons and mediocre stage design that fails to live up to the series former glory.
• Mega Man III (Game Boy): Better than Mega Man II, but stupidly hard. It'll eventually turn in to the better games, but it's not quite there yet.
• Mega Man 3 (DOS): CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP SHIT FUCK THIS GAME
• Wily & Light's Rockboard: That's Paradise (Famicom): An interesting idea that just isn't any fun.
• Mega Man 6 (NES): Really dumb looking bosses and ho-hum stages.
• Mega Man Soccer (SNES): A mediocre multiplayer game, and a bad single player one.
• Mega Man: The Wily Wars (Sega Genesis): Could have been a great compilation game if it was handled with better care. Wily tower is great, but not enough for the over all product.
• Mega Man 7 (SNES): Really big sprites slow the game down quite a bit. Mega Man's buster sounds like a pea shooter.
• Mega Man: The Power Battle (Arcade): Simple and good music, but nothing compared to the actual games.
• Mega Man (Game Gear): The screen size adds a bunch of blind jumps and the lack of continues makes this game more frustrating than it's worth.
• Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters (Arcade): More of the same from the Power Battle.
• Mega Man 8 (Playstation, Sega Saturn): Unlike X4, Mega Man 8's gameplay doesn't make up for it's terrible cutscenes.
• Mega Man Battle & Chase (Playstation): Play Mario Kart instead.
• Mega Man & Bass (Game Boy Advance): The small screen resolution leads to blind jumps like the Game Gear game. Music isn't as good as the original either, play that one if you can.
• Rockman & Forte: Challenger From the Future (WonderSwan): Better than you would think, but plays pretty slow with uneven character balance.

X Series

• Mega Man X2 (SNES): Not as good as X1, very tedious for 100% runs.
• Mega Man X3 (SNES): Boring levels, dumb mini-bosses, really stupid regular bosses.
• Mega Man Xtreme (Game Boy Color): A sort of "best of" from X1 and X2. Not enough originality to make it worth playing over the original games.
• Mega Man X6 (Playstation): Incredibly hard and tedious for really stupid reasons and bad design decisions.
• Mega Man X7 (Playstation 2): This game is truly god awful.
• Mega Man Command Mission (GameCube, Playstation 2): I don't think I've ever played a more boring RPG.
• Mega Man X8 (Playstation 2): Half the game is great, the other half is bad. Decent but you won't miss out a lot by skipping it either.

Legends Series

• The Misadventures of Tron Bonne (Playstation): A collection of mini-games, none of which are all that great.
• Mega Man Legends 2 (Playstation): Better controls, but it has some really tedious level design. Not as good as the first.

Battle Network Series

• Mega Man Battle Network (Game Boy Advance): The lack of tools from the games that come out later make this one extremely tedious.
• Mega Man Battle Network 2 (Game Boy Advance): New ideas like style change and subchips break up the monotony, but a good portion of the game is tedious and uninteresting.
• Rockman.EXE WS (WonderSwan Color): Not close to the standards Mega Man 2D platformers are usually at.
• Mega Man Network Transmissions (GameCube): The game is too complicated for its own good.
• Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge (Game Boy Advance): A boring game that won't let you play it.
• Mega Man Battle Network 4 (Game Boy Advance): A game with a terrible story and some artificially lengthened replay value.
• Mega Man Battle Network 5 (Game Boy Advance, DS): The liberation missions are some of the worst segments in the entire series.

Zero Series

• Mega Man Zero 2 (Game Boy Advance): Decent game, but does little different from the first game.
• Mega Man Zero 4 (Game Boy Advance): The Parts system is overly complicated and the Cyber Elf is pretty limiting. Hard as balls.

ZX Series

• Mega Man ZX Advent (DS): Gimmicky transformations, mediocre level design and bad voice acting.

Star Force Series

• Star Force 2 (DS): Not enough different from Star Force 1 and the story as a whole isn't enough to make it a must own.

That's my recommendation list, and with it this project has a proper end. I had a lot of fun doing it and learned a lot about the franchise that I didn't know before. There were a lot of times that got quite tedious with writing the articles but over all I enjoyed it quite well. As new Mega Man games come up, I'll try to stay on top of them, but I'm not the type of person that buys a new game right away either. God forbid if Legends 3 comes out as I don't have a PS3 or Xbox 360 at the moment. I might have a bonus article or two coming up, but officially I'm finished. I have an idea of what I want to do next, but first I'm going to go back to each article and clean them up a bit, add a few more links, do some better proof reading and the like.