25 Best Mega Man Games #15 – #6

This is another one of those games that was kind of a remix of past Mega Man titles. Originally released for the Gameboy, Mega Man: Dr Wily’s Revenge had you fighting a combination of bosses from Mega Man 1 and 2. It is also one of the only games to reward you with weapons after you defeat bosses during the Wily levels.

Did you know that Mega Man had his own fighting game series? Well, it wasn’t really a fighting game series. It was more like a “boss fighting” game series. It was called Mega Man: The Power Battle/Fighters and it allowed you to go up against several iconic bosses from Mega Man’s past. Yes, you still controlled this game like a normal Mega Man game, but it was all just boss battles. Also, it was multiplayer! You and a friend could team up as Mega Man, Proto Man, and Bass and take on the bosses all at once. It was an amazingly fun time and was really hard to find in arcades outside of Japan.

The game may have Street Fighter in the title but it’s a Mega Man game through and through. This free fan-game eventually got picked up by Capcom and released for Mega Man’s 25^th anniversary, and it’s amazing. You get to battle through eight Street Fighter themed levels, battling classic Street Fighter characters at the end and getting their techniques as your weapon! It also introduced the ultra meter, a sort of desperation attack, into the bosses normal patterns. Street Fighter X Mega Man does the 8-bit Mega Man series justice and is far better than many other titles in the series.

Mega Man X5 was the first game that let you choose between X and Zero from stage to stage. Unlike its predecessor X4, which made you choose a character and stick with it till the end, X5 allowed you to choose the character best suited for the stage or boss you were fighting. Also, it was the first Mega Man game that let you duck!

Mega Man 5 was the best “complete” Mega Man of the NES days. By that, we mean that it was the best game that gave Mega Man all of his abilities like sliding and charging his Mega Buster. It also let us play around with Rush and the mechanical bird Beat. The game also had some outstanding stage design, like the gravity flipping areas of Gravity Man’s stage.

Mega Man X3 marked the first time that Zero could be used as a playable character. However, at this point he was mostly relegated to being a support character has he only had one life. Also, as X grew more powerful, Zero became more and more obsolete, eventually only serving his purpose to die… again… and give X his Z sabre. X3 also introduced special “chips” which gave you extra abilities beyond your armor's original abilities.

The first Mega Man game for the SNES, Mega Man 7 absolutely wowed us with its graphics. Of course, this game came out after the Mega Man X series already began, so it was a bit of an adjustment to get used to not being able to wall stick or charge enemy weapons anymore. This game was also the first to introduce Bass and Treble, the first to introduce the Rush Adapter, and it was the only Mega Man game to include a versus mode!

The Mega Man Legends series was awesome. Pure awesome! It was an incredibly well done 3D action adventure remake of the Mega Man brand. It let you purchase items, forge weapons from scrap, explore a massive overworld, and more. It was one of the most loved and least played Mega Man games and was a great addition to the Mega Man franchise. The fact that Mega Man Legends 3 was canceled is still making Mega Man fans angry.

After Mega Man 8, Capcom decided to take Mega Man in a different direction, and by that we mean the same direction he was going before. Mega Man 9 was a return to 8-bit glory, with all the elements of prior Mega Man games that we loved. We once again had to deal with disappearing blocks. We once again had to use enemy weapons instead of charging our Mega Buster. Heck, Mega Man couldn’t even slide, and it was awesome.

All of the Mega Man Zero games were great, but Mega Man Zero Collection is easily the best. It includes a special mode that allows you to play through all of the MMZ games one after another in chronological order. This lets you experience the entire Mega Man Zero timeline all at once. Now if only they were able to let you keep your weapons from game to game, that would have made the collection really special.