Possibly the most iconic game in the entire Mega Man franchise, a miracle of a game in it's own right if you read the previous blog post discussing the first game's history, and the one that seems most re-releases. For everyone who needs a quick catch-up - Mega Man did not do very good sales wise. With a hasty decision to localise the game, and a horrible box art that did a horrible job representing the series, Mega Man ultimately wasn't good enough to drive sales for Capcom to want to put money into sequels. Under most circumstances, that's where this series would have died - a forgotten gem of the NES era like many other games of it's era.

However, due to the sheer passion of the development team of the first Mega Man, they managed to make a bargain with Capcom that if they're allowed to make a sequel to Mega Man, they would do it specifically only during whatever free time they had from developing the other Capcom projects at the time. That sounds like something that might be a recipe for disaster - a low priority game that is purely a passion project that's being made only by the grace of Capcom allowing the team to hammer away at it on their off time.

Yet what we got instead is one of the most iconic sequels of the NES, and practically of all-time. It's highly likely that these days, if you think of Mega Man, your mind jumps right to Mega Man 2, thanks to all of the retro gamer YouTubers who highlighted it as one of the most iconic games of all time, and all of the many, many re-releases that we've seen appear multiple times over. So let's get into it.

Mega Man 2 on the surface seems to just be a slightly expanded version of the first Mega Man game. Eight robot masters to take down as opposed to six, but otherwise, it's the same shtick. Take down the evil robots, stop Dr. Wily's schemes for conquest, and be on your way to a heroic ending. But so many improvements and adjustments have been made to bring the series so much closer to what you expect, making the jump from MM1 to MM2 significant. The level design feels much more improved with more complex timings and deeper level obstacles. The robot master fights feel much more clearer with their patterns. The weapons feel more useful and more varied, and the level gimmicks and visuals have more improvements. From the water fall and dams in Bubble Man's stage, to the laser facility of Quick Man's stage.

It's honestly hard to try go into more in-depth with Mega Man 2, but so much of it can just be described as the series having much more polish, and in general, the series just finding much more of it's identity in the time since. There's a lot more of the stylish additions to the game that would become much bigger aspects in future. Even the music, sprite work, and more just feels like peak Mega Man, compared to the first game. There's also the straight up improvements they brought to the game, such as the Item 1, 2, and 3 powers that increase Mega Man's movement, and let you explore a lot more, meaning the level design is allowed to be a lot more interesting as they intermix the items, even including additional pathways for bonus items like E-Tanks (Which refill your energy), meaning they see much more use compared to the Magnet Beam, and even the means of attaining them has been simplified, simply being restricted to finishing certain bosses, meaning there's no chance of needing to backtrack like you had to do for the Magnet Beam.

And hey, this time the cover is just a little bit closer to the actual game's visuals. I mean, Mega Man is using a gun, Dr. Light has glasses, and of course let's not forget the fact that Dr. Light is leading Wily's robots to try destroy Mega Man, but hey - we at least got far enough that Quick Man and Crash Man look semi alright. Even the location in the back looks like it could be something out of Mega Man.

I could go on over and over again about how good the game, and how much it improved the series, but I think that should be self-explanatory at this point - the passion project paid off, and this time, it performed well. Which meant we got to see a third entry in the game become a reality, and from there, we had multiple sub-series, sequels, and more to spawn from it. It is one hell of a victory that this game single-handedly managed to save this series from being a obscure gem from the 80s, and turned it into one of the biggest franchises of all times, but here we are.

So, anything else to say?

Uh...

Well, this is pretty funny too.