Now that Capcom has finally gotten around to making the 9th installment of the original Megaman series, I’ve decided to take a look back at the series and highlight some of the robots that couldn’t quite cut it, ones that were likely created by Dr. Wily while inebriated. For all intents and purposes I’ll stick to the 8-bit games (or else the robots from 7 and 8 will probably take over the list.) Not every robot master is going to hand your ass to you like Shadow Man but these guys definitely know how to raise the WTF flag. I give you my list of Top Ten Worst Robot Masters:

#10 - Guts Man



I’ll give him some credit because Guts Man certainly tries hard, but unfortunately he isn’t exactly all there. Try to wrap your head around this: Bomb Man blows things up; Fire Man burns things; Elec Man electrifies things; Guts Man... Guts Man LIFTS THINGS! Years into the future, far off into the time of 200X, and the best Dr. Wily can come up with is a robot that can lift things? The future looks bright indeed! I feel as though Gutsy here drew the short straw when playing the lottery for Megaman 1 character abilities. The "Super Arm" may sound promising, but the only time you get to use it is when you find these neatly stacked blocks of rubble, but those only appear in about 3 spots throughout the entire game. Never mind the fact that Guts Man could have been so much cooler had he the ability to punch enemies. Guts Man is easily the biggest robot master with the most wasted potential. On the bright side, at least his sorry ass is good for something:



#9 - Top Man



Like you even know who Pete Burns is! I was originally going to make a joke about Top Man being the only part Jewish robot master as the bastard child of a dreidel but I didn’t want to offend anyone. And by “didn’t want to offend anyone,” I mean I couldn’t find a good enough picture. Regardless, children toys don’t exactly make for fear invoking robot masters. What’s next? Crayon Man? Lincoln Log Man? Paint-by-numbers Man? Play-Doh Man? Wait no… scratch that last one, Play-Doh Man would be awesome!

#8 - Yamato Man



POP QUIZ TIME!

What is a Yamato? Is it:
a) a spear.
b) a lance.
c) the period of Japanese history when the Japanese Imperial court ruled from modern-day Nara Prefecture, resulting with those who are now known as the native ethnic group in Japan.
or
d) the current state of Yojimbo’s beard.

Time’s up! Pencils down. The answer? Well its probably safe to assume its not d, there are no words that can describe the grandeur of Yojimbo’s beard. Yamato Man’s weapon has a detachable tip so it’s not likely a lance. All signs point towards a. Sure there’s c but who would name a robot master after an ethnic group? That’s just silly! Oh wait… the answer is c. If you answered correct, congratulations. Your cunning foresight is unparalleled. You win 3 internets.

So essentially we have ourselves Japan Man. I would have thought we would have gotten a robotic salary man with a receding hairline whose attacks are fueled by the frustrations of becoming out of touch with his family or perhaps a robotic malnourished otaku who has the uncanny ability to snap up skirt pictures at difficult angles. Can’t win them all I guess.

#7 - Bubble Man



Oh ho! Bubble Man is a devious one! Our flippered fiend is quite the strategist luring Mega Man into his territory to undoubtedly take the combat advantage. Furthermore, his hideout is riddled with narrow spike-lined passageways and miniature robo-frogs that will knock you off platforms, plummeting you to a watery grave. Surely a robot master with such a sadistic level design would verily have a terrifying and awe-inspiring weapon! If you happened to survive long enough to meet your fated encounter and can't handle the pressure of crushing despair, Bubble Man took the courtesy of lining the boss room ceiling with spikes to make suicide look like an appealing option. The moment of truth arrives and Bubble Man appears! And what does he do? He attacks you with POCKETS OF AIR. He lures you underwater so he can attack you with areas of underwater that is devoid of water. You know, at least Burst Man had the foresight to put explosives in his bubbles. Let’s not forget Bubble Man is weak to the Metal Blade, and since every Mega Man II fan is secretly a Metal Blade whore (You heard me!) Scuba Steve here doesn’t stand much of a chance.

#6 - Blizzard Man



According to Hirofumi Ogawa, Blizzard Man’s designer, Blizzard Man was once a ski instructor in Russia. Now how is it that a trained ski instructor managed to roll up into one of those cartoon ski mishap snowballs and smack into the walls of the boss room? What are the chances that he’s under the influence? (Or in you follow the Futurama law of robotics, NOT under the influence.) I’ll let you in on a little secret here: Mega Man VI looks to push around the stereotypes quite a bit. I mean, look at Flame Man! His level is an oil field and he’s wearing a turban! Don’t forget his music either. It wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to say that Blizzard Man might indulge in a liquid lunch every now and then. Dem Russians gotta stay warm somehow!

#5 - Wood Man



Tell me, who in their right mind builds a robot out of wood? If Mega Man targeting him isn’t bad enough, I’ve got an even better idea! Let’s make him a robot that is a fire hazard onto himself! Ooooh oooh, and we can have him shoot leaves too! Mega Man is about to get the worst case of poison oak of his robotic life! Wood Man may be a bit of a novelty but I’m sure Dr. Wily’s mother would gladly display him along side the equally impractical macaroni jewelry box that Wily made at the tender age of five. Wood Man may have held the title for the “LOL WIENER” innuendo competition but unfortunately for him, HARD MAN came along and swept the rug right out from underneath him. Poor guy fails at failing, perhaps he would have led a better life as an end table.

#4 - Dust Man



It’s almost too difficult not to make a sucking pun when the robot master in question here looks like a vacuum. I’m not quite sure what the idea behind his design was. Was he going to agitate Mega Man’s robot allergies (there’s a Visine for that!) or clean him to death? Dust probably isn’t much of a threat to a futuristic robot; he could have instead opted for Kitten man. At least kittens have some sort of noticeable kinetic impact when thrown at people. His future would have been much brighter had he just formed a carpet cleaning business with Bubble Man. In retaliation to harsh criticism over his combat ability and design concept, I hear Dust Man now travels the world house to house aboard his MAGICAL ROOMBA red ringing your 360s by stuffing dust in their exhaust ports.

#3 - Centaur Man



Just in case you were unaware, the premise behind Mega Man VI is that the first annual “Robot Masters Tournament” was being held and Mr. X, aka Dr. Wily, comes along and reprograms eight of them to try to take over the world. That’s all well and good but then we got robotic mythological horse man man over here. According to his designer Kazuki Kidoguchi, whose name roughly translates to "secret boytaur lover," Centaur Man was built to serve as a tour guide around the ancient monuments of Greece. Yes, Greece entered a robotic tour guide into a worldwide robot tournament… Something tells me Greece won’t be winning the arms race in the not to distant future. Centaur Man does however win the award for the biggest WTF robot master of all time. He has the ability to stop time and teleport because, you know, centaurs can errr… well, Greek mythology was something written in the past and uhhh, the past has something to do with time! Time stopping: JUSTIFIED! And well if you imagine a centaur running really fast and imagine yourself blinking while you’re watching the imaginary centaur run, when you open your imaginary eyes it might look like it teleported! Teleportation: JUSTIFIED! Oh and his level with the upside down water tide… shit, I don’t know! WHAT THE FUCK, CAPCOM?? WHAT THE FUCK??!?!

#2 - Plant Man



I think the picture adequately expresses my sentiment towards Plant Man. It’s like he’s the misunderstood metrosexual son of Wood Man who dresses like a douche so people will notice him. He even inherits his old man’s crappy shield “weapon.” Words fail to describe my hatred for the shield weapons.

#1 - Toad Man



“Uuaauh, I’m a frog…” I think the black power ranger said it best when the rangers were getting their new zoids in the original Power Rangers movie. All his friends got cool animals like wolf, bear, and falcon while Adam gets stuck with the frog. Then the chick that gave them out tried spoon-feeding him crap about how frogs can become princes and are great. Well guess what? The bitch lied. Frog robots/zoids suck. I know what you’re thinking. Frogs != Toads. Yes, but toads are just uninspired versions of frogs anyway so they just suck more by association. Still don’t believe me? Just watch Toad Man in action:



There are no questions about it. Toad Man is absolute crap. The min-frogs in Bubble Man’s stage had a better chance of killing you than this guy. Even his weapon is pointless. Seriously, the Rain Flush? Stand still for a few decades Mega Man while I slowly corrode the life out of you. Toad Man, you are truly a worthless piece of scrap metal.

-----

That concludes my list of Top Ten Worst Robot Masters. I won't be making a habit out of list making, I'm no Excremento, whose articulation and dedication far exceeds my own, but it might be fun every now and then. Here's to hoping that the likes of the Mega Man IX cast avoid joining the ranks of this list, although the sounds of Plug Man and Splash Woman do concern me. But that shouldn't be a problem as long as Plug Man isn't the type of plug that first comes to mind and Splash Woman's stage is designed like a kitchen and her special ability is making me a sammich! I kid, I kid... Let's see some good stuff at E3, Capcom!

Not my Turning Point Gaming Rig: FUCK DELL Edition



You see, my PC and I have a love-hate relationship of sorts. It manages to do things I ask to the point of achieving adequacy as expected of most "I bought this for college but now its starting to show its age" PCs but it has its Achilles heal... it was made by Dell.



About a week after its warranty ran out, its internal power supply decided to die on me. Fixable, yes but when you're an engin major at college, not having a computer to work on it's a major pain in the ass. The timeliness of its demise seemed almost contrived; I'm no conspiracy theorists though, perhaps that 80 dollar repair charge and the subsequent Easy Mac microwavable mac & cheese packs just left me a bit resentful.

Oh, but wait! A year or so later, my PC once again went comatose, unresponsive to my forlorn cries and desperate pleas. Fortunately this time it was back at home, surrounded by its loved ones when it breathed its last breathe (again). Back to the repair shop it went, along with a fair amount of my hard earned cash (again).

It was times like that made me question whether I would have been better off going with a laptop. Then again, with my luck I probably would have gotten one of those special Dell varieties that come with the exploding batteries that like to set fire to itself and your things while you sleep.

All is well now. I'm just contemplating whether or not its merely lulling me into a false sense of security before it strikes with more of its theatrics... Either way, its specs go as follow:

Dell Dimension 8400
Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.00 GHz
1.022 Gigs of RAM

Also, epic posters ftw:

There seems to be a rumor floating around that Geno was actually intended to be a playable character in Brawl. One would be inclined to believe this as Geno ranked number one in a poll conducted by Sakurai in Japan over which characters people would most like to see in Brawl. Geno didn�t make the cut; however, the nine other most requested characters did. Odd that they would intentionally exclude the number one requested character.

The rumor says that Geno was originally playable, but was removed late in the development process due to copyright issues between Square-Enix and Nintendo. In fact, this is said to have been the cause of the original delay. While we have no proof of the validity of this claim, I certainly wouldn�t be surprised. Square has always been rather stingy with their intellectual property; we haven�t even seen any of their games on the virtual console. While one can argue that Geno had a cameo in Mario & Luigi: Super Star Saga, that was a minor appearance at best, only a few simple sprites to explain the instructions to a mini-game. Square would have likely demanded a pretty penny for extended usage of their intellectual property.

While we probably won�t know for sure, there are a couple of indicators that support the claim. First off is the character select screen:



Notice how the columns are set up. First two are Mario franchises, third Zelda, fourth retro, fifth Kirby/Pikmin (possibly the incredibly small but resized column), sixth Star Fox with Captain Falcon (pilots?), seventh Pokemon, eighth RPGs, and last being 3rd party characters. Now what�s interesting about this is the inclusion of a random button, something that we haven�t seen in either the original nor Melee. A spot that Geno would be perfectly suited for otherwise. Would absence of any SMRPG references in Brawl also support this idea?

While some also point out that IMDB has Makiko Omoto, the voice of Ness, listed as the voice actor for Geno, this could easily be the result of user abuse. At one point we had Leon Kennedy listed in there as well and that had no remote possibility of being true.

I can�t say for sure if we�ll ever find the truth behind this but there may be a few opportunities to find out some information. I�m sure somewhere out there someone will search through Brawl�s code for any evidence of Geno brief presence. Fortunately, there may be an easier way to get an answer to this. In case you were unaware, Sakurai will be holding a speech at GDC February 18th entitle �Building Characters: The SUPER SMASH BROS. BRAWL Postmortem.� Perhaps we may get some insight on characters that didn�t make the cut. If Destructoid will be covering the event, maybe someone can drop a few questions, eh Holmes??? And you know, yell �YOU MUST RECOVER!� at least once during the speech.

[via dpad.gotfrag.com]

At this very moment people from 2chan have gotten their hands on Brawl and are unlocking characters left and right. I'll post images as I find them.





*MAJOR SUBSPACE EMISSARY SPOILERS FROM HERE DOWN*
























Fire Emblem SSE Spoilers:

















OH SNAP! HE'S HERE!







Oh man, Koopa Clowncopter ftw!

Wow. Looks we have some nice 1v1 action going on. At this point I couldn't care less on how many characters we're getting simply because the gameplay looks so well done. Unlike most of the E4All and JumpFesta vids, we get a fairly comprehensive look at competent smashers in action with a little Mario vs. Sonic, a few free for alls, and Snake vs. Link. Sonic loses points for being a smug asshole and getting KOed mid-taunt, but goddamn is that thing fast. We also get a first extended look at Snake fighting. I'm also slightly impressed with the Snake combo of using his down smash (setting C4), using the sleeper move on Link, and then detonating. Other than that, Lucas looks to be promising with a good VA, along with a faster PK Freeze (compared to Ness's PK Flash), in addition to increased PK Thunder launch distance.

Just from listening I have to say the music really stands out, this being one of the few times we've gotten clips were there isn't annoying announcers and background noise, the MGS music and Delfino Plaza music most notably. Only seven more days! (Until we get teased some more with new info!)

So in the latest EGM issue I saw the Brawl spread and thought that the opening two page picture would make a great desktop background. Like in most cases, the scanned picture didn't look as well as I had hoped since magazines and scanners don't play nice. Either way I figured I see what I could do with it and went about vectoring it, editing out the creases, and touching up parts that didn't turn out well. Considering the most photoshopping experience I have is doing pictures for Blindeside's contest and reproducing sprites in MS Paint back in the days of Windows 3.1, I'd say I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out.



I made two sizes which I will include below. With the 1680x1050 size, I did both a textured and non-textured version (pictured above) since I think that the texture and vectoring makes it look a bit like water-color on a canvas. Enjoy! (Click on the magnifying glass on the bottom right of the picture to get the full size image.)

1680x1050 with texture (widescreen)

1680x1050 without texture (widescreen)

1024x768 with texture

EDIT: Fixed links