Hello Level1 friends, it’s your friendly Level1Techs Senior (Old) Video Editor Grant here! A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in my office and a strange urge overtook me; what if I were to play every single Mega Man video game and rank them in a completely arbitrary order?
A sane person would immediately shake that thought off. “That’s like, 150 games”, they’d say. But I am not that person, so for the past little while I’ve been playing all of these dumb little games and putting them in a list. Then, on Monday, @Level1_Amber and I were chatting and she said I should put it on the forum, and here we are. Who knows if anyone cares but it’s worth a shot!
Now, for the ground rules. The rankings are basically down to “how much fun did I find this game?”. They are not scientific. If you LOVE Mega Man II on the Game Boy I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong. That’s not what this is about.
I am making an earnest attempt to finish every game, although some are either beyond my ability (or are way too boring). Every game will be played for a minimum of one hour, at least.
Every game with the words “Mega Man” or “Rockman” in the title is eligible, including Mega Man X, Battle Network, etc. I’ll be adding games to the list and updating the thread as I finish them.
THE LIST:
Mega Man 11
Mega Man V (GB)
Mega Man 5
Mega Man 9
Mega Man 10
Mega Man 7
Mega Man IV (GB)
Mega Man 4
Rockman 2: The Power Fighters
Mega Man 8
Mega Man 2
Rockman: The Power Battle
Mega Man 6
Mega Man 3
Mega Man III (GB)
Rockman: Battle and Chase
Rockman and Forte
Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge (GB)
Mega Man’s Soccer
Mega Man 1
Mega Man: The Wily Wars
Mega Man II (GB)
Mega Man (Game Gear)
Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousensha
Wily & Right no Rockboard: That’s Paradise!!
Super Adventure Rockman
I’m happy to chat about any of these games and the reasons they’re placed where they are, I love this dumb series and am always happy to talk about it. So yeah, what do you guys think?
im not sure ‘fun’ is the first word that comes to mind for any Mega Man game. this is a valiant effort, and while i have only played maybe half of them, Mega Man 3 would be higher on my list.
So yeah I genuinely thought 3 would be up near the top but especially once you get past the first 8 stages it gets kind of sloppy. I think I remember reading that series creator Keiji Inafune was dissatisfied with Mega Man 3 because they had to rush it for release. I think the addition of the slide is a fundamental part of the formula though so it gets a lot of credit for that, also the ending is excellent so it has that going for it too.
I’m not okay with the title of the thread, because it is click-bait-y. “I decided to play” insinuates that you have already played them all.
Play them in chronologically released order. It will give massive insight into how games have changed.
That being said, the X series was a major step up from the core series, and the Legends series was the only attempt at straying from the 2D platformers that the series is known for, but I loved it.
I have pretty much played all of them previously other than some of the bizarre Japan only releases. This is mostly me coming back to them years later to see what I think of them now.
Speaking of which, we have an update!
*Mega Man X
Mega Man 11
Mega Man V (GB)
Mega Man 5
Mega Man 9
Mega Man 10
Mega Man 7
Mega Man IV (GB)
Mega Man 4
Rockman 2: The Power Fighters
Mega Man 8
Mega Man 2
Rockman: The Power Battle
Mega Man 6
Mega Man 3
Mega Man III (GB)
Rockman: Battle and Chase
Rockman and Forte
Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge (GB)
Mega Man’s Soccer
Mega Man 1
Mega Man: The Wily Wars
Mega Man II (GB)
Mega Man (Game Gear)
Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousensha
Wily & Right no Rockboard: That’s Paradise!!
Super Adventure Rockman
*Mega Man 3 (DOS)
*Mega Man (DOS)
The highest of highs and the lowest of lows, MMX is still an all time classic and basically perfect. The DOS games, on the other hand, sure do exist!
I’m glad you asked, I just added some more entries to the list!
Mega Man X4
Mega Man X
Mega Man 11
Mega Man V (GB)
Mega Man 5
Mega Man 9
Mega Man 10
Mega Man X2
Mega Man 7
Mega Man IV (GB)
Mega Man X3
Mega Man 4
Rockman 2: The Power Fighters
Mega Man 8
Mega Man 2
Rockman: The Power Battle
Mega Man 6
Mega Man 3
Mega Man III (GB)
Rockman: Battle and Chase
Rockman and Forte
Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge (GB)
Mega Man’s Soccer
Mega Man 1
Mega Man: The Wily Wars
Mega Man II (GB)
Mega Man (Game Gear)
Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousensha
Wily & Right no Rockboard: That’s Paradise!!
Super Adventure Rockman
Mega Man 3 (DOS)
Mega Man (DOS)
Mega Man X2: A little slapdash feeling, didn’t like it as much as X1 but it’s not bad at all.
Mega Man X3: This one was made by the people who made the game boy games and it shows, there’s so much to collect and so much backtracking to previous levels. Again, not bad, but missing a little bit of that Mega Man simplicity.
Mega Man X4: This one is incredible, cheesy voice acting aside. Two separate campaigns for X and Zero, great stages, fantastic bosses, the works. Surely the X series will stay at this quality level now that they’re here, right? Right???
Before I tackle X5, I’m going to play through Command Mission, the Mega Man X RPG, so that’ll be fun.
So I’m about halfway through Command Mission (it’s good but it feels like a game from like, 1998 even though it came out in 2004, very primitive for a PS2 RPG) and I figured I would go ahead and wrap up X5 and rank it, so here it is:
Mega Man X4
Mega Man X
Mega Man 11
Mega Man V (GB)
Mega Man 5
Mega Man 9
Mega Man 10
Mega Man X2
Mega Man 7
Mega Man IV (GB)
Mega Man X3
Mega Man 4
Rockman 2: The Power Fighters
Mega Man 8
Mega Man 2
Rockman: The Power Battle
Mega Man 6
Mega Man 3
Mega Man III (GB)
Rockman: Battle and Chase
Mega Man X5 *
Rockman and Forte
Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge (GB)
Mega Man’s Soccer
Mega Man 1
Mega Man: The Wily Wars
Mega Man II (GB)
Mega Man (Game Gear)
Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousensha
Wily & Right no Rockboard: That’s Paradise!!
Super Adventure Rockman
Mega Man 3 (DOS)
Mega Man (DOS)
Not sure if any of you have played God of War Ragnarok but one of the common complaints about that game is that your companions never shut the hell up, and X5 has a similar problem. Several times a stage you’ll be interrupted by your comms lady yapping about completely obvious things that would have gone unremarked on in previous games.
The level design is also kinda weak, like there are gimmick stages that are more boring and frustrating than anything. I feel like late in the life cycle of the PS1 several series were flirting with adding a bunch of extraneous bullshit to their latest entries instead of focusing on the core gameplay (see also: Spyro: Enter the Dragon, Crash 3).
There’s also a really ill conceived time limit that barely matters, and just for funsies there’s even more backtracking and repetition than X3! Joy!
On the plus side the music is good and the bosses are serviceable. Not a terrible game but definitely far from the heights of X4. Jeez I sure hope they learned some lessons with this one and made X6 the best it could possibly be!
Will probably wrap Command Mission this week and at least start X6, so stay tuned!
Yeah no worries, it was better than I was expecting but still not quite up to the standards of the NES games, if that makes sense? What I found interesting about it is that it was developed in the UK and published by US Gold; Capcom themselves never touched it.
I was impressed by how closely it resembled the NES games visually, but I took issue with how much the screen was zoomed in and some of the enemy patterns felt poorly thought out. Still, pretty impressive on a technical level, although iirc it was a pretty late model Game Gear game. Definitely not the worst but there are better options I think.