Back in Blue

The industry spent years convinced everything needed to be 3D, bigger, some kind of franchise with a story nobody asked for. Then Mario came back in 2D and suddenly everyone remembered what fun actually felt like. Sonic 4 got announced. And now Mega Man shows up, the little blue robot, back in 8-bit like he never left.

I didn’t grow up with Mega Man first-run—I was always late to that stuff—but the game had this presence in the culture, this ambient knowledge. The blue guy shooting robot masters and stealing their weapons. Simple and perfect. You go right, you get eight powers, you fight the final boss. Games that know what they are don’t need excuses.

Playing through it now, it’s exactly what you’d expect. Shoot left to right, collect weapons, dodge attacks. The music is the thing that gets you though—these melodies that sound simple at first, then you’ve been stuck on a stage for twenty minutes and heard the same eight bars a hundred times, and you realize they’re actually perfect. That kind of video game music that lives in your head forever.

There’s a Nintendo World Store event in New York with T-shirts and all that. I’m not going to make the trip, but I’ll download it anyway. The game doesn’t need the ceremony. It’s just good the way it is.