More Mega Man, you say?
Hell yes.
Yesterday we spent some time exploring the wonderful world of box covers. Today we talk about the characters.
There is a lot to love about this blue man and his blue swim underwear outfit, his mouth open in surprise every time he jumps for some reason.
Mega Man started his life as a robot boy working with Dr. Light. Kind of like Pinocchio, except instead of creating a boy to sit around and get in trouble with a fox man(?) Mega Man was enslaved to do office work. Faxes, Future Faxes, shit like that. Why this old doctor decided it was easier to create a robot boy to do these things, I’m not sure. Also, the question of why a robot boy instead of a robot man is a question that haunts most of us and arouses pedophiles worldwide.
Dr. Light decides to take away his robot boy’s pencil and email etiquette and to give him a gun hand. Not since the stump hand used by the weird kid in my junior high have I seen a more worthless hand. For all the jumping and climbing ladders this guy does, you’d think he would just make him, I don’t know, a goddamn holster or something. The technology for a holster has been around for the last million years, so why not just use that? At least that way he could, I don’t know, eat a fucking sundae on his day off.
Anyway, then this huge asshole, Dr. Wily, converts some other robots from doing jobs like bulldozing and welding to kick some ass. Again, scientists, if you are listening, STOP MAKING ROBOTS THAT GET OUT OF CONTROL AND KILL. If you’re developing some kind of a robot meant to do housework with a laser, just stop. Or maybe some kind of robot that uses a huge spiked ball to clean out sewers, just stop. Stop, stop, stop. Because your robot is going to get out of hand, and then we’re fucked.
The first game had pretty sensical characters. Fireman, Iceman, Cutman, Gutsman, Elecman. Basically dudes who were from elements. Simple enough. But then things started to get a little crazier. Some favorites:
Ah, our good friend Wood Man. Maybe not the power you’d expect from a guy named Wood Man, this dude has tree powers. More specifically, he kind of shoots leaves at you. Now, I’m not claiming to understand Dr. Wily’s overall plan for world domination or whatever, but the situation that calls for a tree stump robot with a leaf blower is kind of a mystery to me. Although I can say that Wood Man nicely illustrates one of the main points of the game. When you beat a Robot Master, you gain his power. These powers are probably of the most use to beat the other Robot Masters. So, try and guess which of the following Robot Masters you should be first in order to use his power on Wood Man.
A. Air Man (guy with giant air fan embedded in his chest)
B. Quick Man (guy who is fast, not to be confused with Nestle Quik man, who is a rabbit, not a man)
C. Metal Man (guy who throws buzzsaw blades, the kind often found in woodshops, paper mills, logging camps, lumberyards, and so on)
The connection here is almost so strong that it seems like Wood Man was created specifically to be killed by Metal Man. Really more like Dr. Wily had a manifest to fill for eight robots and needed to bust out an extra and figured, “Well, I’m not wasting time on this shit.”
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My good buddy Heat Man. Not to be confused with FireMan. Something that Dr. Wily clearly does not understand is that if Mega Man beats FIREman, he is probably not going to have a lot of trouble with a lesser version. Given the choice between being tasked with putting out a house fire or cooling down a house that’s warm, I’ll take the warm house and open the windows.
The design of Heat Man suggests that maybe Dr. Wily took up smoking somewhere between the first and third game. He seems like a Parliament man to me.
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Here we have Hard Man.
Yeah.
By the way, between Wood Man and Hard Man, I DO NOT recommend Google Image searching with safe search off.
So Hard Man was basically, well, hard. And heavy. He does have an ass rocket to help him move around, which is nice.
He can shoot his fists off, which is perfect. Nothing like designing amazing, multi-million dollar technology like robot hands just to have them go shooting off and be gone forever.
And frankly, the ass rocket is going a little too far. I think he could have gotten the same sort of action out of a jet pack, but instead they decided to make it like flames are shooting from his ass. Real nice.
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Gemini Man. After rejecting designs for Sagittarius Man and Cancer Man (although Cancer Man’s power would be slow-acting, I can see that it would ultimately be one for the win column) Gemini Man was given the sickening green light. Like you might have guessed if you are a dope who likes to read horoscopes (hint: your horoscope for tomorrow reads “You will waste time folding a primitive newspaper”) Gemini Man has the power to split into two identical robots.
This sort of begs the question, “Why not just make two robots instead of creating technology to create two robots from one? Especially when you seem to have no shortage of robot materials and time.” Well, there is no answer to that question. Ask Japan.
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Here you can see our hero facing off against none other than…
TOAD MAN!
Sorry, I meant to say
toadman.
Toad Man’s main strategy to beat a sophisticated robot who has gone up against lasers, robots who can alter the speed of time, and gigantic mechanical monsters, is to make rain hit him. Granted, it’s a lot of rain. But not what I would call a shitload of rain. Just a solid rain. Oh, and he’s a good jumper. Unfortunately for him, he’s locked in a room with Mega Man, and there’s really nowhere he can just jump to safety.
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Pharaoh Man. You know, at some point, you almost start to feel bad for these robots. You’d think that if Elecman was defeated, Dr. Wily could just go back to the drawing board and make a far better robot with deadly electric powers. But no. For some reason he has to make one robot of each type.
So here we have Pharoah Man. What are his powers? He’s Egyptian. You can see how this is going a dark path. I personally was not aware that being an ethnicity was a power, other than possibly having an easier time getting a job where equal opportunity was a factor. But if we keep going this way, I don’t really want to speculate on what other ethnicity’s powers may be. Except Chinese Man. He doesn’t understand that “Less spicy” doesn’t mean “Super Ultra Spicy” and has the power to burn my asshole to the point where I think the entire thing is prolapsed and sitting in a jar of Listerine.
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Dust Man. A robot with duct work for a head. A vacuum head.
Well, that’s just amazing. Once Mega Man is sucked towards Dust Man, he will simply…um, be shot in the stomach and die in horrible pain.
This is one of what I call Dr. Wily’s many “Chore Bots” that seemed way better suited for housework than fighting killer robots. Imagine you are entering a gladitorial arena. You have a very powerful vacuum on your head. Your enemy has a gun hand. Your best hope is to suck all the oxygen out of the room and pass out so that he kills you in your sleep.
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Ring Man. Shoots rings. Other than making serial daters very uncomfortable, this guy doesn’t have a strong chance of doing a whole lot of damage. The best way to beat him is to accidentally lose him down the garbage disposal.
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