Depending on who you are and when you were born the name Mega Man may mean a myriad of different things for you.  It'll either bring back wonderfully nostalgic memories of childhood or a soulless franchise that peaked in the late 80s that Capcom has unfathomably refused to let go.  Personally, one of my greatest videogame memories ever was taking turns with my brother playing Mega Man 2 until we'd eventually beaten it.  This may have had to do with the fact that this was in the preinternet days, so hints were not readily available and as a child I didn't exactly have the funds to go around buying games left and right, so I had yet to grow cynical of rehashed game design.  But in that time and at that place Mega Man 2 was quite possibly the greatest thing ever.

       The much hailed Mega Man 9 seeks to do away with all that Mega Man has done since the late 80s in order to become a the true successor to the now legendary Mega Man 2.  Gone are the charge shot, the power slide, the 16 bit graphics.  This is oldschool Mega Man to a T, like it or not.

     The opening cinematic sets the scene perfectly.  In a hilariously campy storyline Dr. Light is being framed for attempted world domination.  The short blips of text tend to cut off midsentence at the most ill-conceived moments, so you'll get such wonderful exchanges as "Mega Man: We have to do something about," wait for the next screen to load... "those robots!!"  Brilliant! It’s here that you’ll realize that Mega Man 9 is both a retro 8-bit game as well as a parody of retro 8-bit gaming. And as such it succeeds beautifully.

     You'll then launch into the now famous Brady Bunch-style menu where you can face any stage in any order.  It's here that the true brilliance of the game lies as everyone will conquer the stages differently.  Sure there are some stages that are mercifully easier than others, but none are exactly easy.  The level design throughout is quite clever, with no two stages being at all alike.  Some are water based, others have disappearing platforms, and one particularly fiendish stage has platforming on tiny platforms where the wind keeps altering your trajectory.  It's all good, if sadistic stuff.

     Then comes the bosses, the highlight of any Mega Man game, and here's where my nostalgia begins to fall apart.  The bosses are hard.  Sometimes really hard.  But much of that has to do with the fact that Mega Man can't jump very high (or duck for that matter) and the bosses can be rather large and you'll fight most of them in cramped quarters.  At times they can feel rather cheap as they try to corner you, but once you get their trick down they all become rather easy.  The problem is that if you run out lives on a boss (which will happen a lot), you'll have to redo the entire stage leading up to them.  Sure, this is tradition for the series, but it ends up being frustrating in a way that isn't fun as you're just repeating stuff you know you can do, rather than embracing new challenges at every turn.  But the stages are short, so it's not too bad.

     What's worse is the final act of the game.  As anyone whose played a Mega Man game knows, after defeating all 8 robots you'll have to enter a four stage castle with no save points.  I'm all for a good challenge, but once you get to the 4th stage of the castle and realize you don't stand a chance, you'll be begging for a break.  But if you turn the game off you'll have to make your way through the entire castle again.  Given that the game saves your progress after beating each of the main 8 stages, would it really be too much to ask for them to do the same with the final 4 stages?  Especially as there are rewards in place for those who can beat the game with no continues (or one particularly impossible award for beating the game without taking a single hit.  Good luck with that one), it seems like they wouldn't have cheapened the game that much by adding more save points in the end.

       And while it may sound hypocritical, I'm actually not in favor of the in-game store.  You can now buy energy tanks and the like, giving the game an almost RPG like quality that makes it not so hard, if you're willing to waste a lot of time farming for currency.  As a result, the game will either be too easy or too hard, depending on what equipment you've got.  I'd much prefer if the game had no equipment, but better checkpointing.

Ultimately, Mega Man 9 is a bit like meeting up with an old friend who you haven't seen in years, only to realize they're at the same job, with the same person, and really haven't changed that much at all.  You'll still have a good time playing catch up, but realize that you don't have as much in common as you once did.  Still, if the worst thing I can say about Mega Man 9 is that it's not as amazing as Mega Man 2 was back in the day, then I'd say it's still a pretty good game.  Even with the rubbish checkpointing making the game more frustrating than actually "hard," Mega Man 9 is still a lot of fun.  The great level design and "tough, but fair" challenge make this still a trip worth taking (especially for the piddly $10 price point).  Just don't expect it to rekindle all your long lost memories of childhood.

8/10

Pros:
+Great presentation that manages to be both sincere, and a parody of itself at the same time.
+Wonderfully challenging.
+Great level design.

Cons:
-Savepoints and checkpoints are as awful as they were back in 1988.
-Too much trial and error.