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Editorials   Mega Man: 15th Anniversary Spectacular - Introduction
- By Francis Bonnet

Introduction

It’s hard to believe that Mega Man is over 15 years old, but the first game did, in fact, come out in 1987 for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Since then Capcom has released a hoard of games featuring the original Blue Bomber (as he is sometimes called) as well as new versions. But what made this little blue man so popular? Well, let’s take a look at the video game industry in the late 1980’s…

Now during this time in video game history, the NES was the industry standard. Nintendo ruled the market and they ruled the kids. This power also held true for third party developers. Not having a license to make games for Nintendo could make or break a company and cost a company millions of dollars. Another addition to Nintendo’s marketing power was the Nintendo in-house magazine publication, Nintendo Power. Now this magazine was the bible of gaming at the time – kids everywhere turned to Nintendo Power for news and strategies on their favorite games. The amount of coverage a game was given greatly affected cartridge sales (which is why Nintendo-published games always received the most coverage). After being out for one year, Nintendo Power’s July/August 1989 issue (Volume 7) featured 16-pages of coverage on Mega Man 2. This helped open the eyes of millions of kids across America increasing sales of Mega Man 2. This, however, was only the beginning.

Mega Man (known in Japan as Rockman) was already very popular in the east. Now that gamers in the west were taking an interest, Capcom could produce countless sequels and the kids would eat it up. Mega Man games were released for the NES right up until the NES died off, in fact, Mega Man 6 was one of the last 3 games released for the NES in the United States (the other two were Star Tropics 2 & Wario’s Woods). Mega Man entered the 16-bit era rather late, but it was definitely worth it. Mega Man X changed the way Mega Man looked and played when it was finally released on the Super NES in 1993 (it was also featured on the cover of Nintendo Power volume 56).


Special thanks to The Rockman Robot Center
for the use of many of its Mega Man-related images.

Mega Man is coming out with more games today than he ever has in history. With new entries into the existing storyline and new spinoffs coming out on every platform available, it’s very easy to lose track of which games are of the highest Mega Man quality. Since I’ve seen a rather lackluster interest in Mega Man games by gaming publications and gaming websites in more recent years (despite his strong sales and popularity), I constantly make sure to keep fans updated on new releases here on Ngenres. So welcome to Ngenres’ Mega Man 15th Anniversary Spectacular in which we take a look back at EVERY Mega Man game released on EVERY gaming platform to date.

Now before you mail me with death threats, be warned that I’ve covered non-Nintendo platforms in my Mega Man 15th Anniversary Spectacular. I know that here on Ngenres we cover only games for Nintendo platforms, however, this particular Ngenres feature is meant as a look back at Mega Man. The fact that his games were seen on Sony and Sega systems must be included in this feature or it would cheat fans out of the full knowledge of Mega Man games. Also keep in mind the grading system. Mega Man games are a lot of fun no matter which one you play, however, the grading system grades the game against other games of the series and not as individual titles. With that in mind you may continue…

Continue To The NES Era...