Penny Arcade had a charming comic on Wednesday. It depicted Tycho and Gabe experiencing the simple joys of games from their childhood all over again. It’s one of the best Penny Arcade comics; I really liked it. It’s just too bad that I don’t experience the same joy playing the recently-released Mega Man 9.
I downloaded the demo from XBLA, and kept it for all of two days before I cleared up that hard drive space. I think it’s insanely cool that, in this day and age of photo-realistic graphics and abstract emotional themes in video games, there is a dev team somewhere willing to pay homage to gaming’s roots with a from-scratch 8-bit title; however, I never was fan of the Mega Man series for many of the same reasons that I never was a fan of the Contra series–put simply, the difficulty is just not fair.
Call me soft if you want, but so many of my childhood memories playing Mega Man on the NES (always a rental) was screaming “That’s not fair!” Many hours of my life were lost because of cheap hits, missed-by-a-pixel jumps, and timing being off by a millisecond. I gave up on every Mega Man game I tried simply because I felt like it all fell to just dumb luck instead of any kind of skill; even Double Dragon felt more balanced (of course, I had no concept of “balance” back then, but you know what I mean).
Unfortunately, playing Mega Man 9 drew the same response from me: frustration, frustration, frustration. It seemed as if nothing I did was right, as if the AI was adjusted for every shot and jump I made. I’m sure the X-Box 360 controller has much to do with my poor performance–the d-pad is too stiff, the analog stick too loose. Also, since I never was a fan of the series to begin with, I was less willing to stick with it and soldier on.
Never-the-less, I just didn’t experience any joy playig Mega Man 9, brief as my time was with it. Don’t get me wrong; I love retro gaming. I found more use out of the Wii’s Virtual Console than any of the original software for the console, the brief time I owned it, and I still consider Frogger one of the greatest games ever. I also appreciate how Mega Man 9 re-interprets the concept of retro gaming, of not playing old games but playing new games made in the old style, and I’d love to see more of it; but Mega Man 9 is just not my thing.
