Alright. I beat Mega Man 2 a few minutes ago. Whew! Time to compare.
Mega Man 1:
+ Pretty simplistic, but challenging level designs.
+ Platforming is more than simply jumping from block to block, you have to memorize where blocks fall. which is pretty different from the other platforming I've seen in games lately. It was refreshing.
+ Wily section of the game is absolutely excellent.
+ Fun bosses.
+ It's fun seeing which enemy is weak against what attack.
+ ElecMan's stage music.
- It's pretty basic. Not that this is a bad thing.
- Many sections can be trial and error. This is by far the most trial and error based Mega Man I've played. Some bosses are impossible to beat without using specific weapons.
- Magnet beam!
I thought it was a really enjoyable game despite all this though.
But Mega Man 2 up the ants and improves upon its processor in a lot of ways.
Mega Man 2
+ The fact that most enemies can be taken care of in multiple ways gives the game a versatile, varied feel when compared to the original. The game based its gameplay entirely around the powers you gain from the bosses and the game benefits from this highly. Figuring out each weapons use is sooo fun. I even pretty much replaced my Buster shot in this game. I mostly used Metal Arm and Quick Shot instead. Sooo awesome.
+ The level design. Holy shit. There are only three levels in MM2 I do not like, those being Air Man, Charge Man (the ladder part is AGONIZING), and Flash Man. These levels are either a. annoying or b. just not fun. The slippery surface in Flash Man's level just make it plain annoying, on top of this the level is entirely too short. In Air Man's stage there are these birds that drop their eggs on you. One or two birds drop eggs on you on top of the clouds, making it impossible to see them with no warning at all. Every other level is AAA Mega Man. From Quick Man's stage to Wood Man's, and my personal favorite: Heat Man's stage. The boss fights, unlike MM1, feel like they can be taken out with your own personal play style. I know that Air Man's weakness is Leaf but I don't like leaf because it's boring and slow and shit. I use Quick Man's power instead, because it is as powerful as the buster (2 clicks taken off per shot with the buster) but twice as fast. I can take MOST bosses out with the P-shot if I want to but in MM2 it's not fun to do that. Further more, Wily's Castle is classic Mega Man at work except the platforming here is absolutely amazing. Way better than anything in X games in my opinion.
+ Bosses. The bosses are GREAAT. There's really only one boss I don't like and it's Air Man! Fuck Air Man! His attacks are IMPOSSIBLE to dodge for the most part. The boss designs are AMAZING and far more interesting compared to MM1's mostly dull roster.
I mean, look at this:
My personal favorite boss in the game is easily Heat Man. I love his flame animation where he shoots across the screen. That's some of the best animation I've ever seen for an NES game.
+ Difficulty. Oldschoolgamer disagreed, but I think MM2 is way harder than MM1. The only part in MM1 where I was stuck was the Yellow Demon. That took me an hour to beat. In MM2 there were multiple places. Puzzles: figuring out how to safely get past Quick Man's stage, the platforming bit in Heat Man's stage where I didn't have the jet to get across the river of lava. The 5th stage in Wily's Castle was hardcore awesome Mega Man traditional boss gauntlet. While the bosses were easy, Wily really tested me. It took me a long while to beat the guy. MM2 required mt to put forth a 110% effort in order to win. MM1 took me 50%.
+ The music. Holy shit the music. The only good thing about Crash Man's stage is the platform part and the THE SONG. OH MY GOD. And the Wily Castle music?! CLASSIC.
- The fact the game places emphasis on abilities is both its blessing and its curse. In Wily's Castle I ended up with 4 energy tanks by the boss gauntlet/Wily stage. Thing is, I entirely ran out of or almost ran out of my most important powers. Being metal, quick boomerang, and a few other things. The game put in a boss gauntlet and gave me no way to use my stuff against the bosses. I ended up having a game over. Furthermore, there is a section in Level (or was 3?) of Wily's castle where you have to take on wall sentries with the charge bombs. You have a limited supply of Crash bombs and you have to destroy those AND the walls in front of them. The general strategy I did was break the walls, die on purpose, and go back and kill the sentries. No one should have to do this. That is terrible boss design. If the game balanced this out and let you recharge your powers more, I'd enjoy it a lot more.
- The three levels mentioned above: Airman, Flash Man, and Crash Man. Their stages aren't really fun at all. If they were on par with the rest of the game and my above problem was fixed this would be THE definitive classic Mega Man.
I can understand why Mega Man 2 is revered as the best Mega Man. It certainly does enough well to deserve that claim, but the two things I mentioned above hold the game back. It's a great game, and I hope the Mega man games past 2 fix these two problems.
