While I still think the Wii has come out as the weaker current-gen console, despite it’s ever-rising sales, the Wii continues to have a few surprises up its sleeve. The Homebrew Channel is a must-have for any retro-loving Wii owner, and there are a few titles on the horizon that look worth while, the WiiWare DLC has been less important than I had hoped. It has a few gems here and there, but overall it’s a pretty weak catalog. But that catalog got a big shot in the butt this week.

Mega Man.

Ah yes, quite possibly my favorite franchise that stars the little Blue Bomber and his friends. Capcom’s choice to make Mega Man 9 a) a WiiWare download, and b) take us back to the glory days with pure NES style, was just perfect. To be honest, I never (seriously) played any Mega Man in the post-NES days. I didn’t get into Mega Man X or any of the fancy Legends one-off titles. No, my memories of robot boy are nestled nicely in the 2-button era - right where he belongs.

Mega Man coming out this week was a blessing in disguise. I took this week off to care for the wife after her surgery and while “stuck” at home it’s great to have a fresh title to dig into. I’ve only just started MM9 and so far it’s exactly as I expected - hard. The challenge of Mega Man is still intact and all the robot goodness is there too. But one thing added in the days of wifi-ness are DLC, rankings, and achievements…each a valid addition that should help extend the game’s life. And they thankfully replaced the red dot password save system with straight up game saves.

While playing through some of the levels, however, I noticed something familiar - the levels themselves. Having played MM1-6 not too long ago, I am noticing a lot of level design similarities, sprites and backgrounds included. All in all that doesn’t really matter because they’re the same levels, they just share shades of previous games. The music and sound are just like you may remember as well. It’s not Mega Man 3 soundtrack, but pretty good all the same.

So if you have a Wii and want some wonderful new-old gaming experience, drop your next $10 on Mega Man 9. Awesome.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 10:03 pm and is filed under All, Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.