So Mega Man 9 is out and for all intents and purposes it seems that the majority of the community is in a state of retro euphoria. So much so that we have the usual love fest as is evidenced by the mass amounts of Mega Man 9 blogs: Look what woke me up at the wee hours of the morning?, This sums it up about Mega Man... so true, and my favorite that has made this post possible: Mega Man 9 Whiners Need to Shut Up. Now I wasn't going to give my impressions of this game because I tire of being labeled a flamebaiter just for offering my honest opinion but that last blog with the eloquent title just begged and pleaded inside my mind to offer a response.

And thus I begin. Mega Man 9 is not what I expected. I honestly thought it was going to be a ROM hack. What the powers that be instead created is a loving tribute to retro fans everywhere. It's beautiful in it's totality as a slice of 8 bit glory in our era. From the beautiful music to the graphics, all that is carried over to every facet of the game. Remarkable. But all is not well in the land of Mega Man 9. Quite simply this game is for masochists. Gamers who love old school games and invest time in the memorization of the game in order to move five feet within it. If you're a retro fan this is your heaven. Trumpets will announce your coming and gaming angels will kiss your feet while playing it. If you're like me, a regular joe who loves games but doesn't particularly like to work but instead play games, screeching nails on chalkboard will announce your arrival and gaming demons will tempt you to throw your controller on the wall.

I'm not going to sugar coat this like others who wrote this game is hard but can appreciate it raping them, haha. Fuck that. This game is an exercise in frustration. It will break you common gamers, hell hardcore gamers too, but unlike others here I just don't care to be kicked in the nuts and smile about it. This game is all about memorization and CHEAP deaths. That's it. I could stop right there because at its distilled essence that's what it is folks.


Here you go Penny Arcade. Fixed.

Now let me address this gentlemen's points on his Mega Man 9 Whiners blog..

Megaman 9 isn't even that tough. It's really scary that any game that is moderately challenging these days is "controversial". It's just plain absurd. If you are too chicken to play something that doesn't treat you like a little baby and requires a bit of effort and skill, then don't buy it. It's that simple.

Because he thinks it's not tough it must be so... CONFIRMED. Why I'm quite sure with his massive retro cock he didn't even need a controller to play the game. By wiggling his nuts he blazed through it with not a life lost.

Don't ruin it for the rest of us who have been waiting for this day to come for so long. Don't flip out at Capcom until they decide to never release a challenging game again. For the love of all that's gaming, REJOICE that SOMEWHERE, SOMEONE at these companies still cares about true hardcore gamers.

From my observation there really hasn't been any negative views of MM9. The majority positive. As for companies caring about hardcore gamers? Companies care about money. Protip: people who proclaim themselves to be hardcore gamers usually aren't.

I got out of gaming as the difficulty levels descended to something your 120 year old grandma can beat on the first try. Games like Megaman 9 offer that tiny sliver of hope for well-hewn gamers like me... they give us something to care about again, a challenge, something to feel good about conquering.

I love difficult even brutal games. I hate cheap games. I hate having to memorize a stage and its pattern in order to progress further. I'll chalk that up to genres of games you like and leave it at that. If this is your bag, more power to ya.

It's not just the 8-bit-style of Megaman 9. It's about precision control and reflexes. When you die it's your fault. 92% of modern games are sloppy affairs lacking this kind of precision and 1:1 ratio of player interaction. Instead they are 80+ hours of repetitive fetch quests and cutscenes. Forget it. I just want to PLAY games, not act like a wimpy vegetable being force fed lazy filler. Give me tight level design over 20 hours of rendered CG cutscenes any day.

Control and precision huh? Where is that when you're forced into taking leaps of faith into an abyss that at the end of it there are spikes? That's right, those "reflexes" are for you to hit the restart button to play it again after you died and learned the "precision" of the game. Playing an area, an AREA!, over and over and over and over and over again to get to the next area and do the same is beyond bizzaro. This is retarded to me. Always has been about older games.

One last thing: If you can't beat Megaman 9, take up a hobby more your pace, like stamp collecting, or perhaps bird watching.

Because I can't beat Mega Man 9 I'm not a gamer? Really?? I better start collecting stamp because your litmus step of being a gamer I just flunked.

To reiterate, I think that Mega Man 9 to the retro rabid and those select few that have that special wiring of loving trial and error games will salivate and drool about this game. The rest of us will think it's a great look back at what certain games of yesteryear were: frustrating, cheap and just not fun.