The Small, but Notable, Game Design Changes of Classic Mega Man

 

An Evergreen Series, For Good Reason

The original series of Mega Man has always been confident in a lot of its initial gameplay setup that was established in its first game back in 1987. Players take on each game's set of Robot Masters in any order they choose, experiment with the special weapons acquired from each boss to see how they help you tackle other enemies/bosses, and finally take on the gauntlet of Wily Castle stages in order to stop Dr. Wily’s scheme to use robotics for world domination. While the many different sub-series of the franchises would take approaches both similar and radically different, the classic series as always stayed true to what worked before without many drastic operations done to the formula. An impressive feat, especially considering how the first six games in the series were all released on the NES from 1987 to 1993. By the time Mega Man 6 released, the Super Nintendo was three years old and Mega Man X was just a month away from launching in Japan. To still keep the series so close to its roots is a commendable effort. That doesn’t mean nothing ever changed however, Instead, each new entry in the NES lineup would introduce a series of small changes that would eventually snowball as they stuck or went away, leading to later entries in the series to feel surprisingly different to approach compared to the beginning despite the core remaining relatively the same.

The original Mega Man (MM1) laid the groundwork that every other classic entry would follow faithfully. Players were asked to take on six Robot Masters in total: Cut Man, Bomb Man, Elec Man, Ice Man, Fire Man, and Guts Man. These bosses resided in their own dedicated level and could be taken on in any order. Upon beating a Robot Master, Mega Man would gain a special ability related to that master’s specialty. These moves increased Mega Man’s overall arsenal, but they also dealt increased damage to a specific other Robot Master. A typical buster shot (the default attack) from Mega Man dealt 1/16th of damage to a bosses health, while an attack from their weakness dealt 5/16ths of damage. Players aren’t told whose weak to what, so they had to experiment with each weapon and discover the weakness chain for themselves. After besting the six Robot Masters, players are then immediately thrown into Wily’s Castle, These are a gauntlet of four stages that culminate in a boss rush against the six previous bosses, and one final match against Dr. Wily. Because Wily’s Castle is designed to be a gauntlet, there’s no way to return to previously visited stages to grind for extra lives. Players have to go with what they have on them. Upon defeating Dr. Wily, the game ends and Mega Man lives to fight another day. As noted earlier, the structure of the original was already so well thought out that future entries didn’t feel the need to introduce drastic new features that completely shifted how players approached the game. Instead, Capcom decided to make small changes that would eventually snowball into the games feeling surprisingly different from how the series started. We see this first with Mega Man 2.

The jump from the original Mega Man to Mega Man 2 (MM2) brought with it two changes. The immediately noticeable one was an increase to the number of Robot Masters to beat before entering Wily Castle. What was once 6 in the original became 8 in the sequel. 8 Robot Masters would become the new default for the series going forward, with even Mega Man Powered Up (a remake of the original) adding an additional two Robot Masters to the initial six to better fit the series mold. Players now had an additional two new Robot Master abilities to work with when going through the game, though the game would be slightly longer now as a result. The next change was the introduction of E-Tanks. These items are found throughout each of the stages in the game and they fully restore Mega Man’s health upon use. Players can only carry 4 at a time, but they carry over between game overs so it’s not hard to enter the Wily Castle stages with a full set on hand. So much so that now players might find it a good precaution to revisit a stage that has an easy E-Tank for them to grind before taking on the final Robot Master and being immediately taken to the Wily Castle afterwards. Already, these two seemingly minor changes to the formula are having a mental impact on how players tackle the game. More Robot Masters means more weapons to take into account in the weakness chain and more levels to fight through overall, and now we have E-Tanks to fall back on when making a mistake to heal us. 

One of the Most Valuable Additions to the Series

The jump from Mega Man 2 to Mega Man 3 (MM3) brought with it a new set of adjustments and slight tweaks to the formula, with one of them not being immediately obvious. Firstly, Mega Man gained the ability to slide by pressing down and the jump button simultaneously. While a tame new traversal option on its face, the slide actually contributed quite a lot to new level design and boss strategies. Now players had to be on the look out for tight spaces to slide under, as more often than not they would now contain secrets such as E-Tanks and extra lives to find. As for Robot Master fights, players now had a new way to dodge and were expected to use this effectively should a boss particularly favor jumps as their main approach option. Keeping in them with the new traversal upgrade, this game was the introduction of Rush and the Rush items: Rush Jet, Rush Coil, and Rush Marine. Instead of the general use items Mega Man acquired from beating specific Robot Masters in the first two games, he now has access to his trusty robot dog Rush and the tools built into him for traversal. Rush Jet functions as a hoverboard, allowing Mega Man to soar through bottomless pits and disappearing blocks provided he has the spare weapon energy for it. Rush Coil has Rush act as a spring board for Mega Man, giving him an elevated jump that lets him reach higher up spaces or enemies he struggles with before. The last Rush item, the Rush Marine, acts as a submarine for Mega Man to use to traverse underwater. While the Rush Marine is extremely limited in use since it requires water to even work, the Rush Jet and Rush Coil became fan favorites because of how much they improved Mega Man’s movability along with the slide. They allowed for the developers to make new changes to how levels are designed since they know Mega Man inherently has the slide at all times, while players can route out a plan to take on the Robot Masters that give them the Rush items early so later stages are easier. 

The most significant change however would come from the introduction of the Doc Robot stages. Instead of being immediately flung into the Wily Castle after beating the final Robot Master, four Doc Robots appeared in four previous levels with altered level design that players had to revisit and recomplete. What’s significant about these levels isn’t the Doc Robots themselves, as they are often touted as the worst part of MM3 by many. The stages have little in the way of checkpoints, are harder, and the Doc Robot takes on the abilities of the Robot Masters from MM2; so now players had to memorize a new weakness chain for this one portion of the game. No, what actually makes these stages significant is the trend that they started for the rest of the classic NES lineup. From here on, the rest of the NES game would incorporate an “interquel” castle that precedes the regular Wily Castle. Dr. Cossack’s Castle, Proto Man’s Castle, Mr. X’s Castle; all of these now provide an additional test for the player to overcome before reaching the true finale. While the Doc Robot stages are generally hated, they provided the framework for Capcom to eventually introduce a new challenge to the game that extended game time. To compensate for the extra gauntlet though, the cap on E-Tanks was raised from 4 to 9, giving players much more leeway to make and learn from mistakes. 

Mega Man 4 (MM4) and Mega Man 5 (MM5) both mainly worked with what already worked, though they still brought some new ideas to the table. The main new ability introduced in these two was the charge shot. By holding down the shoot button, Mega Man can now charge up a single powerful shot that deals much more damage than a normal pellet. This made tackling that initial Robot Master easier as now players could rack up damage more quickly. The main catch however was that taking damage while charging resets the charge, so dodging attacks and enemies is still important to winning fights. These games would also introduce Eddie as another supporting robot, one who would randomly appear in select stages to drop a helpful item for Mega Man. These could be simple health/weapon energy drops or something a bit more substantial such as an extra life or E-Tank. They only appear once per stage and aren’t even found in every level, but Eddie gave players another helpful asset to keep in the back of their mind. Another helper introduced would be Beat in MM5. Four of the eight Robot Master stages have hidden collectables that spell out “BEAT”, and upon finding them all players gain the ability to summon Beat to help deal additional damage to enemies and Robot Masters. Beat was actually rather stronger for stage control and even against some bosses, so now players had another incentive to actively explore the levels as best as they could.

The Last Gameplay Additions Made With the NES Games

The final NES entry, Mega Man 6 (MM6), would provide its slight shift in the form of upgrades to Rush. Specifically, Rush gained the ability to combine with Mega Man thanks to the introduction of the Rush Adaptors: the Rush Power Adaptor and the Rush Jet Adaptor. Players receive these in place of the traditional Rush items after beating bosses, with each providing a unique power up to Mega Man. Rush Power Adaptor gives him a punch that increases in power as it’s charged up that can break down certain objects, while the Rush Jet Adaptor grants Mega Man the ability to hover in the air for a brief time. The trade off for these abilities is that players can’t hide or use special weapons while using them, though considering their power that’s likely for the best. With these enhancements in mind, the developers were once again able to adjust level design accordingly. New secret areas that required these adaptors to be accessed can be found all over the stages, further incentivizing players to go back and explore for extra lives and E-Tanks.

Subtle design evolution isn’t an uncommon practice at all with the series just starting out, but what makes Mega Man particularly impressive is how much faith they had in that core gameplay loop to keep it as it is for 6 whole games. The original Super Mario Bros. was a level-to-level romp that never really stepped on the breaks, but by Super Mario Bros. 3 they introduced a world map with different side activities to engage in with the various Toad Houses located on the map. A notable shift in progression such as this has yet to happen, yet because of all of the seemingly minor gameplay introductions made throughout the entire NES lineup, later entries such as MM5 and MM6 still manage to feel like completely different games from the original. MM1 was straight forward a no-nonsense in its approach, players took down the original 6 Robot Masters and defeated Dr. Wily without thinking about much else. As of MM6 though there’s just so much more to consider at any given time. Do you prioritize Robot Masters that have the Rush Adaptors? How many E-Tanks do you have before going into the Wily Castle? Did you collect all the letters for Beat? These are all tiny considerations on their own, but together they make for a surprisingly different experience when jumping back and forth between entries. I had been replaying some of my favorite classic entries recently and remember being shocked by the amount of options MM6 had me thinking about compared to MM2. 

Future entries would continue to play around with the formula in different ways. Mega Man 7 and Mega Man 8 would flirt with the idea of splitting the eight Robot Masters into two distinct halves. Meanwhile, Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10 would actively strip back mechanics such as the charge shot and slide in favor of playing more akin to MM2. A change which I don’t really appreciate in retrospect but also serves to emphasize just how much those abilities changed the game for level design and enemy encounters. The new ways I had to defeat dodge and deal big damage to bosses were gone and I had to readapt to that. During my recent revisit to those entries their absence was really felt to me, which hammered home how much the charge shot and slide changed how I approached the game.

40 Years Later, The Tried and True Still Has a Place in the World

In the years since the two “retro-revival” titles, we’ve received Mega Man 11 which restored Mega Man’s moveset and gave him the Double Gear System, which either enhanced his attacks or slowed down time depending on the gear used. Now we’re getting Mega Man Dual Override in 2027, which promises to bring with it some of the biggest changes to the formula the franchise has seen. The chip system seems to allow for players to add little buffs and add-ons to Mega Man to better express their gameplay style, Proto Man is getting his moveset almost completely redesigned to focus on close combat, and now the eight Robot Masters are getting three stages dedicated to them instead of just one. A total of 24 levels which would easily be the most meat an entry in the series ever had on it. By the looks of things you can jump around levels still with this structure, meaning you can tackle Twinkle Girl’s first stage then jump to Jet Man’s stage with little issue. Such a large jump in game time seems like it would drastically change how we view the classic series going forward, yet based on all the previews Dual Override still follows through on the tried-and-true formula that’s worked since 1987. The Robot Masters are all available from the start on the level select, so players just pick someone that looks interesting and dive in. The chips will likely define a lot of the game's identity but the core loop with shooting down and dodging obstacles from stage to stage remains intact. 

Classic Mega Man never needed to reinvent the wheel because it knows why the wheel works so well in the first place. The loop of defeating Robot Masters, gaining their powers, and experimenting with those powers in any order provides so much fun and replay value to the series. The short nature of the games means revisits are encouraged to try out a different boss order or maybe doing a mega buster only challenge run. The fact that the original NES ran well into the launch of the Super Nintendo is incredible enough, but the ability to constantly make small innovations to keep the series fresh without making some drastic gameplay change is even more so. The core always remained the same, but the additions made in each entry give all of them their own identity. The classic series will always be easy to understand and pick up because of it, and its availability on all platforms means that anyone at any time could pick up the series and learn the joy of Mega Man.