There are two ways to approach a review of a game like Mega Man 1. The first way is to look at what elements the game implements as the baseline formula that would eventually define the gameplay of the long series it spawned. You can look at whether or not those elements laid a good foundation for a long-running series, and how those building blocks set Mega Man apart from other games in the 2d Platformer genre. For example, every other game in the series afterwards takes ranged weaponry being the default as an assumption, but in the first Mega Man game, that was a deliberate choice made by the developers of the game. If you take this approach to reviewing Mega Man 1, it is a fantastic game. It lays down gameplay loops, moveset concepts, level design concepts, and overall game structure in a way that was unique and innovative for the time, and it deserves all the credit in the world for that. However, you can also take a second approach to reviewing Mega Man: The perspective of a player who first played the game in 2018 as a part of the Legacy Collection, and who thinks it’s significantly worse than most of the games that followed it.
Mega Man 1 is an okay game, at best, when viewed within the larger context of the games that came after it. But, by being the first in the series, it also provides the most to analyze, as it was the blueprint for the rest of the series in concept even if not in execution. I’m going to go through different elements of the game and give my thoughts on which parts work and which don’t. Let’s start with the concept of a boss order loop. In most Mega Man games, each boss has one weakness to a special weapon, and it works like a chain so that you can use the weapon you just unlocked to fight a new boss. However, in Mega Man 1, the boss order is mostly nonsense. Cut Man is weak to the Mega Buster, the default weapon, which makes him the obvious starting choice, rendering little strategy to the process of choosing an order to play the game. The reason Cut Man is weak to the Mega Buster is a Japanese pun; “Rock Man” has a weapon that beats “Scissors Man.” While that is pretty funny, it is a sacrifice to the gameplay quality for a small and ultimately insignificant joke. Bomb Man is also weak to the Mega Buster, without any excuse as to why, at least as far as I am aware. The boss order being nonsense in Mega Man 1 is a big downside compared to later games, because the game is both less replayable and also gives less agency to the player. It’s less replayable because, by having a boss be weak to the Mega Buster, you create less options for where in the “wheel” of bosses the player can start. It gives the player less agency for the same reason.
However, that leads to the structure of the game, which is something I think that Mega Man 1 mostly succeeds at, and laid the foundation for games very shortly after to perfect. I think the concept of having 6 (and later 8) levels you can tackle in any order you want before coming back together for the final stages is a great way of balancing player agency with difficulty. If every stage was selectable from the beginning, it would throw the difficulty of the game completely out of wack. You would be able to start with the hardest levels in the game before the game got gradually easier, which would make the game much less fun overall. By making the Wily stages separate at the end, it ensures the player has been exposed to the rest of the game first. The levels in the main 6/8 stages cannot account for which weapons you already do or do not have. They can’t require a certain weapon, because it is not guaranteed that you will have already beaten that boss. However, in the final Wily stages, the game can assume you have them and build levels with those weapons in mind.
The weapons themselves, however, are somewhat lacking in Mega Man 1. They definitely aren’t all bad or anything, but there are issues with them. The Super Arm is the biggest offender. While the idea of being able to pick up and throw parts of the terrain is certainly interesting and novel, in execution it suffers greatly. The stage design in Mega Man 1 is not built with enough care for the Super Arm, and often there is little to no reason to use the weapon outside of the situations where it is the only option. I respect the ambition, but it doesn’t land. The Hyper Bomb is cool, though, and the dynamic of it being slow to activate makes it play in an interesting way, distinctly from the rest. The Fire Storm and the Rolling Cutter are both fine, workable weapons that only stand out by having different trajectories from the Mega Buster, but sometimes that’s all a special weapon needs to be.
The Ice Slasher is pretty mediocre as a weapon, but it does have a property that makes it my favorite weapon in Mega Man 1: The ability to freeze fire and allow Mega Man to walk on it. This is one element of the series I think is actually sorely lacking in some later games: Weapons having ways to interact with the level design beyond damaging enemies. The final weapon in the game is the most infamous weapon from this game, the Thunder Beam. It’s broken, in both a literal AND a figurative sense. In a literal way, it is broken in that it doesn’t work. As I am sure most of you are aware, due to a glitch, the Thunder Beam can be used to wrack up massive damage on bosses by pausing and unpausing the game. This pushes an already too powerful weapon into the stratosphere, but the weapon is broken without the glitch too. By firing in 3 directions at once, it is easily the go-to staple weapon once it is unlocked. That would not be a bad thing if its weapon energy consumption was high enough to match it, but unfortunately, it is not. It becomes overcentralizing, and in most cases, the best thing to do.
The concept of taking weapon data from the Robot Master you defeat and incorporating it into your own moveset is also very cool, and one of my favorite aspects of the series. This leads to the overall level design and stages in Mega Man 1, which is another mixed bag aspect of the series. Cut Man’s stage is one I think has cool elements, especially its verticality. The verticality of level design is something I always appreciate in platformers, and is something that Mega Man handles a lot better than some of its contemporaries, like Super Mario. It also has fun enemies, Adhering Suzy and Blaster especially. I think the enemy placement of those two enemy types is usually great, and they feel fun to fight. I think the placement of spikes in the level feels fair, and is something the Mega Man series does well in general. Like many other stages in Mega Man 1, it ends with a sort of mini-boss fight with the Big Eye enemy. I am not a fan of this enemy’s attack patterns, and it being used as an ending to about half the stages in the game feels like a bit of a let-down. The hallway of enemies before the stage boss is also a unique aspect of Mega Man 1 not in other games, and I think I prefer other games where you go straight from the main level into the boss fight. The actual boss fight with Cut Man is a joke. With his weakness, he goes down in two hits, which is just pathetic. This is an issue a lot of Mega Man games have, even the best ones, but I digress.
Guts Man’s stage is one of the worst stages in the entirety of the classic Mega Man series. It’s so bad. This is a good time to mention what is potentially a hot take within the Mega Man fandom, but I am not a fan of Mets. I think their pattern of attacking and blocking is pretty frustrating. It wouldn’t be a big deal if it was a rare enemy, but as the flagship enemy for the entire series, it’s pretty lame. But then, we get to the worst part of the entire game: the lifts. The speed at which they fall is blatantly unfair and they are an incredible outlier in difficulty for anything else in the pre-Wily section of Mega Man 1. Luckily they do not occupy a large amount of the stage, but it’s brutal and unfun. The spacing of the Pickelman enemies later in the level is equally obnoxious, especially with how enemies in this game respawn after they leave the screen. You then get to blind-dropping down tunnels where you have no way of knowing which ones are the correct ones before trying, and then another lame mini-boss fight with a Big Eye. At least the fight with Guts Man isn’t terrible, and the Hyper Bomb being slow means it doesn’t turn the fight into a complete joke.
Some people really hate ice stages in platformers but I am not one of them. Sadly, Ice Man’s stage specifically is mediocre. Another thing people really hate that I don’t mind: disappearing blocks in Mega Man stages. I think they are only annoying when they are over an instant-death hazard, like spikes, a pit, or lava. In this case, they are just over a water hole containing an enemy that you can avoid, so I think disappearing blocks are tolerable here. Another Big Eye, which is still boring. The gauntlet of penguins at the end is pretty cool though. Ice Man is another boss who is far too easily defeated by his weakness, dying in just three hits to the Thunder Beam.
Bomb Man’s stage is just the pinnacle of an okay Mega Man stage. There is very little that sets it apart. It’s closest to Cut Man’s stage, with some vertical sections, but it also shares a color palette with that stage, with light blues and silvers. The only real highlight for me is the section after the boss door where you have to go down a ladder with Adhering Suzys blocking your way. The fight with Bomb Man isn’t especially good, but it does get bonus points for not being easy to the point of being unfun when you have his weakness.
I like Fire Man’s stage, and it’s probably my second favorite stage in the game. As I already mentioned, I love how the Ice Slasher can freeze the fire pillars, but I also think the fire pillars are just a fun obstacle. It’s also probably the only stage in the entire game that I think looks especially cool visually, which is something we will get to later. The tubes of fire look very cool and are my favorite visual set piece in the game. Fire Man is merely an okay boss but luckily he also doesn’t just die in a couple hits to his weakness.
The final main Robot Master stage in the game is Elec Man’s stage, who has my favorite stage in the game, with an important caveat. The fact that it is REQUIRED that you take the Magnet Beam in order to beat the game, which is not really the fault of this level itself, is a massive strike against this game from a design perspective. Nothing telegraphs that, and it further ruins the concept of a Mega Man game where you can tackle the stages in any order that you want, as you need to have the Super Arm from Guts Man’s stage to grab the Magnet Beam. Other than that, though, it’s a very good stage. The electricity hazards that flicker on and off are fun to avoid, and the sections where you climb a ladder while avoiding falling enemies is also a highlight. Yet another stage with a lame Big Eye mini-boss, though. Sadly, despite the great stage, Elec Man is another boss who dies too easily to his weakness.
After the six Robot Master stages, we arrive at the Wily’s Fortress stages, which is yet another thing that Mega Man 1 does merely okay at. A small detail I appreciate about Fortress stage 1 is how you start outside and infiltrate the base. It’s something the games rarely touch on, the actual physical implications of levels as places in the world. However, the gauntlet of Big Eyes is certainly frustrating. They take so many hits to kill and have a fairly unpredictable pattern of attack that makes them not very fun to fight. The next section requires usage of some of your special weapons, which is a major highlight of the stage. Another highlight about the stage is how it sprinkles arrays of items like health and weapon energy in hard to reach places. It does a good job at encouraging players to try to grab them. Eventually within the stage you come to the boss fight with the Yellow Devil, and it’s an aspect of the level I am pretty torn on. I do think it is cool how it has such an iconic pattern and how it encourages memorization. It ups the replay value of the game, but it comes at a cost, which is that this makes the game very frustrating to a new player. It is very hard to beat the boss on a first try because of how reliant it is on you memorizing the pattern rather than reacting to it. While I respect the fight as an important part of the series, I think overall I do not like it much.
Wily’s Fortress stage 2 starts with a fairly easy platforming section before you come to the first of the Robot Master rematches. I think the later games’ formula for boss rematches, where you get to fight them in any order and all at once, is a stronger execution of the concept. However, for the first version of it, it still works well. From the developers’ end, it saves resources from having to make more bosses but it also gives you an opportunity to fight the bosses with your full arsenal, which is something I value. Aside from introducing the concept of the boss fight rematches, Wily Fortress stage 2 is pretty unremarkable, but that’s not a problem. The final boss fight with a copy of Mega Man is a neat premise, and is pretty fun.
The third Wily Fortress stage is very short and contains the boss fight with CWU-01P, which was a weird one. I think the level design of this boss fight is sadly not very good. The four Super Arm blocks in the room make you think your first step should be to use them, but doing so is ultimately shooting yourself in the foot, because the stage is harder once you do so. I don’t know what the best way to fix that is, though. Maybe make other weapons a bit more effective and the Super Arm a bit less effective, that way you rely less on the 4 Super Arm attacks.
The final stage of the game is the fourth Wily Stage, which contains the remaining Robot Master rematch fights. I think that outside of the rematches the stage is pretty standard, but executed well. The theme of a factory is cool, although the lifts from Guts Man’s stage return. At least they are less annoying here. After the rematches are all done, it’s on to Dr. Wily. The first phase of the boss is pretty easy, but it’s still fun. The second phase, however, is arguably even easier, which makes the ending of the game pretty underwhelming to me. The final boss is one of the easier bosses in the game, which makes the game feel less satisfying to beat.
Overall, the level and boss design of Mega Man 1 is… Okay. It’s not awful, except for key moments, but it’s also rarely spectacular like it can be in later games. It’s better than a lot of other NES platformers of the same era, but I think a lot of those are pretty bad in hindsight and so that isn’t a huge accomplishment. On a similar note, the graphics of the game are something that I think does stand out as notably bad for its time. I don’t expect every NES game to look great. I understand that graphics of consoles can get better as they go, because the developers can better utilize the hardware to get better visuals. However, I still do not think Mega Man 1 looks very good by those metrics. I think some of the stages look too similar, and the lack of backgrounds in most stages makes the game look very flat and uninteresting. Super Mario Bros. 3 came out just one year later and looks much better, and even with Mega Man 2 just one year later, there is a decent improvement in visuals. I’m not saying the graphics look terrible, but I do think they are below average for the time. Some aspects of the visuals do look good; while I think the stages generally don’t look good, I think the enemies and bosses do look pretty good and distinct. The lack of good graphics never impedes the gameplay.
Before I wrap up this review, I have to acknowledge three blind spots in my own reviewing process, aspects of the game that I don’t factor into my reviews, and will not factor into any other reviews I do of later games: The first is that I play video games on mute. I don’t listen to the music or sound effects, and so I cannot judge how they are used within Mega Man or any other game. I have listened to the soundtracks on their own (my favorite song in this game is Cut Man’s stage), but I have not actually experienced the game with them. The second is that I do not care in the slightest about the lore or story of Mega Man. I think it is awesome that there is a community of people who do, but personally it does not interest me and I do not factor it into my reviews.
The third blind spot is about perspective. I am a younger player in my early 20s, and I am reviewing this game from a 2024 lens. A lot of the things in this game that are bad by modern game design standards were normal and accepted at the time of the game’s release. I can’t act like I know how the game would feel to someone playing it in the 80s, I wasn’t even alive. So, if you were there when the game was released and don’t have issues with the things that are outdated by modern standards, that’s totally fine. At the end of the day, it’s just my opinion.
I think Mega Man 1, overall, is a game that is a lot easier to praise for what it created for the rest of the series rather than on its own merits as a game. I did enjoy parts of the game while I was playing it, but a lot of those parts of the game are things that every Mega Man game has, which means Mega Man 1 has relatively little worth returning to in comparison to the many other games in the series. What it did do, though, was start one of my favorite gaming franchises, which means despite its many issues, I still do have a fondness for it.
I give Mega Man 1 a grade of D+ and a score of 4/10.
Since this is my first written review, I want to explain my scoring system. I have a 16-point scale that can also be translated into a traditional 10-point 1-10 scale. The scale contains 6 letters, and five of those letters can get a + or a – to indicate relative quality. So, the possible scores for a game are: S+, S, S-, A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D-, and F. F doesn’t get broken into sections. These scores equate to a 1-10 rating scale like this:
- S+/S = 10
- S-/A+ = 9
- A/A- = 8
- B+/B = 7
- B-/C+ =6
- C/C- = 5
- D+/D = 4
- D-/F = 3
- F = 3, 2 or 1 depending
So, overall, Mega Mega 1 got a D+, which means it is a 4/10.
I plan to use this blog to write a lot more game reviews, mostly of 2D platformers. I hope you all enjoyed this review, if you did, please make sure to send it to your friends who might like it. My next review will be of Mega Man 2, which, spoilers, I do not like.
Queen's Corner 
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