Other design decisions are less maddening but equally tedious. You still have to pause the game to switch weapons, and you still have to select the weapon you want to reload for ammunition capsules to have any effect. This made sense in the NES era, when controllers had only four buttons and a D-pad. When you're attempting to replenish your ammo before a boss fight, however, you spend more time in the "pause" screen than actually playing the game.
Most inexcusable are the anemic Save and Navigation functions. There is no "return to stage select" option, meaning selecting the wrong level requires you to die three times to correct your mistake. (Luckily, insta-death spikes and bottomless pits are plentiful.) Furthermore, saving your game only records your inventory and the bosses you've killed, not any mid-level checkpoints you've achieved. To my horror, the game counts Dr. Wily's castle as a single level with no less than eight checkpoints, so plan to block off at least an hour of your time if you want to make a serious attempt.
With so many artificial barriers to your enjoyment, it's a wonder that Mega Man 9 is entertaining at all. But in between cursing impotently at your television, storming out of the room and weeping softly into your pillow, there's genuine fun to be had. A number of levels introduce new gameplay mechanics like swinging platforms and portals that preserve your momentum. And the feeling of killing a boss and gaining his special ability is incredibly satisfying, in no small part because of their difficulty.
In recent years there's been a resurgent interest in resurrecting old franchises and game mechanics and incorporating them into new projects. Earlier this year, Bionic Commando Rearmed debuted on the Xbox 360 and PS3 to generally favorable reviews, and Castle Crashers took Golden Axe-style gameplay and infused it with a much-needed sense of humor. Mega Man 9 is perhaps the purest of these revivals, pinching not just its predecessors' design mechanics but their aesthetic. It might be more authentic, and it's certainly more familiar, but sometimes nostalgia reinforces a painful truth: You can't go back again. Time marches on, progress happens and it's up to developers to save ... er ... acknowledge it.
Bottom Line: Twenty years have passed since Mega Man 2, but you'd never know it from playing Mega Man 9.
Recommendation: If you want to save $10, an NES emulator and a couple ROMs will probably get you where you want to go.
[Ed. note: Upon review, we have determined that NES emulation software may be illegal. The Escapist does not condone piracy.]
Jordan Deam isn't bitter.
