Why Mega Man 8 is actually one of the best Mega Men

This was originally posted as a review on my Backloggd account. It's long enough that I can justify putting it on my formal blog too.

Mega Man 8 is one of the very best Mega Man games, and I will not be silenced.

I don't make this claim out of nostalgia. Mega Man 8 wasn't my first Mega Man game, and it wasn't even one I particularly gravitated towards when I'd pop in Mega Man Anniversary Collection as a kid. I'm not sure I even got past the first set of stages until I was 20. And, look, yes. Jump jump slide slide is a bad level gimmick. The English dub is bad. I get it. I started going on Mega Man forums in 2005, I've been hearing these talking points for 20 years. These are small parts of an experience that has a ton to love, if you open your heart to a Mega Man game that's a little different.

First and foremost, the game looks absolutely phenomenal. For my money this is the prettiest-looking entry in the entire franchise, rivaled only by... what, the ZX games? Whereas many of the later 2D games in the X/Zero/ZX lineage rely on pre-rendered backgrounds and scaled down illustrations, Mega Man 8 uses pure pixel art for almost everything, and it is SO crisp. It hasn't aged a day. Every stage is super colorful with lush, detailed backgrounds. Many have scenery that changes as you progress, like the way the sun sets midway through Frost Man's stage and you see the city light up at night. It's gorgeous. I want to live in the world of this game, robot attacks be damned.

The character sprites, too, are very fluidly animated with lots of squashing and stretching. Some complain that this doesn't make sense for a bunch of metal robots, but I think it fits the cartoony look of Classic Mega Man perfectly. This extends to a particularly quirky set of Robot Masters with more varied designs than usual, whether it's the stretchy-armed Clown Man, the very retro sci-fi Astro Man, or Sword Man's ability to split his body in half. They're all memorable and a lot of fun to fight because of this. I also have to love the way enemies all explode into gears and springs when they die. There's so much attention to detail here.

And the MUSIC! The very chill synth vibe here is unlike anything else in the series, and I love it. I get these tunes stuck in my head all the time. It's just a crime that the English version cut "Electrical Communication" from the intro.

The gameplay feels slightly different than what you might be used to, but the claims that the game feel is totally off are greatly exaggerated. It feels fine to play. It feels like Mega Man, just a Mega Man on a different system with some different ideas.

Perhaps the most consequential change is the complete overhaul of the support items and Rush. E-Tanks and the like are completely gone, which sounds like a brutal change, though in their place you can just summon Rush to fly around and drop a ton of health and ammo pickups. You no longer have to worry about collecting and holding on to your E-Tanks because the cooldown on this Rush summon resets every time you die or enter a new stage. (And so does all of your weapon ammo, for that matter! Thank god.) I never really felt the need to heal more than once at any point other than the final boss fight, and even there I think it was a little more satisfying to have to learn Wily's patterns and weaknesses over a few tries rather than just cheesing my way through with multiple E-Tanks.

The lack of E-Tanks also means that the shop now sells only permanent upgrades rather than consumables, many of which are very useful. In turn, the game only needs a finite number of bolts to sell you this finite number of items. Rather than dropping from enemies they're now placed more deliberately, often as rewards for little puzzles, which I really liked. If anything, I wished the stage select screen told me how many bolts there were to collect in each stage so that I could know which to replay to 100% the game.

With Rush being reduced to an occasional summon rather than one of your main mobility tools (Rush Jet is used for two autoscroller segments and Rush Coil is completely gone), the emphasis is placed instead on your special weapons, and this is one area where Mega Man 8 REALLY shines. Many of the weapons have secondary functions, like Thunder Claw being usable as a grappling hook in some levels or Tornado Hold placing down a fan that can be used to reach high platforms. In fact, Sword Man's stage in the second set of stages is basically just a glorified tutorial for the first four weapons and their secondary functions, and it rules. (The fact that the later stages can be designed with mandatory use of the first four weapons in mind is a great argument for the much-maligned division of the stages.) Even the Mega Ball that you get for free halfway through the intro stage can secretly be used for a double jump with good timing. It's not that difficult of a trick, but I feel like a pro speedrunner every time I do it. It's SO good. And the decision to move firing your special weapon to a separate button so you can still use your buster as a backup with a weapon equipped is a godsend.

What about the story, though? Well, it's not much to write home about, even with the addition of FMV cutscenes. I don't think the "evil energy from space" plotline is a particularly compelling one, compared to something more personal like Rock having to reluctantly fight reprogrammed Light bots. It's easy to forget the evil energy is even a factor, since Wily's just doing the same plan as always. And the bad English dub does it no favors. But there are only, what... four FMV story scenes in the whole game? It's not a huge part of the experience, and the only truly horrendous voice that goes beyond the average dub quality of the time is Dr. Light's Elmer Fudd impression. It's been decades, though, and we've had games with better voice acting since then, so it's hard to stay mad. I do at least kind of like the ending, where Duo acknowledges how hard Mega Man has been fighting over the years and thanks him for keeping the planet safe. It's sweet. Rock needs some reassurance like that sometimes.

Yes, the "jump jump slide slide" rocket sled sections are the worst part of the game. They're annoying. I get it. But should we really write off the whole game because of it? Yeah, I got a few game overs, but is it really that much worse than the lifts in Guts Man's stage? The Quick Man lasers? Boobeam Trap? Having to play through four Doc Robot stages? Wily Capsule 7? Climbing the flying platforms in Sigma's fortress? Getting dropped into a pit before the "READY" text has even left the screen at the start of Volt Kraken's stage? I could go on and on. It's far from the only obnoxious difficulty spike in the series. And let's be real, this game is extremely generous about continues, it lets you save between Wily stages, and you're probably either playing this on an emulator with save states or in Legacy Collection 2 with infinite continues from every checkpoint anyway. In a world where people will spend hours and hours trying to beat a single boss in a Fromsoft game, I don't see jump jump slide slide as the end of the world, especially when the rest of the game has so much I love.

Is Mega Man 8 my absolute favorite in the Classic series? I don't know. It's hard to pick when these games are so consistent in their quality. 4-6 perfected the NES formula. 9 is challenging but incredibly finely tuned. 11 is a strong modern reinvention with a very fun Double Gear system to play with. But there's just something about 8 that sticks with me, in large part because it's so unique. Its differences from the NES games aren't flaws, they're what make it special and worth revisiting.