Certainly, the balance between submitting to demand for sequels immediately and not flooding the market is something Capcom in particular have always struggled with (yeah, looking at you, Street Fighter series). So how does one tack a sequel onto that without falling into the same traps the series did the first time around? That’s a difficult question. Most importantly, though, all of this was filtered through an awareness of game design’s innovations over the past twenty or so years. It knows that years of pointless sequels, and the ever-diminishing lack of fun they contained, had turned the series into something that barely even captured the interest of most gamers. It recognises that sometimes less is more. It’s filled with the awareness that the twitchy-eyed, badly-voiced anime cut scenes of Mega Man 8 simply didn’t work. Mega Man 9 was a game designed to placate said old people. It will become clear to you, as it is already to us, that nothing current (music, games, films, sexual partners) can come at all close to being as good as things were back in the old days and, oh boy, games these days make no sense with the millions of colours and the voices and characterisation and plot. Those of us who are old (that is, over the age of 25) find change confusing, and quite frustrating.

Note to younger readers: this is what happens when you get old. Especially in the case of those who grew up with the NES originals, these games represent nothing more than a confusing rash of brightly coloured boxes that seem to appear with frightening regularity, in stupefyingly numerous Pokémon-like variants, and feature characters that bear no resemblance to anything recognisably ’ Mega Man-y’ with the exception of that guy in the helmet, and even then he’s not exactly classic blue bomber material. For anyone over the age of, say, 12 or so, Mega Man 9 and its recently released sequel have provided a rather refreshing antidote to the increasingly confusing world of Battle Network and Star Force games.

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