Jumping jumping jumping SPIKE PITS jumping jumping jumping LASER BEAMS jumping jumping jumping BOTTOMLESS PITS. Mega Man 2 is perhaps the pinnacle of early jumpman games, and this is in light of Mario. The reasoning behind this primarily evolves around the tightness of the experience, where every interaction is clearly planned and to some degree manipulated by the player. As a result of such careful planning, the entire game is an experience driven by the player’s adaptive choices to each world.
There are many decent, rewarding choices, and there are definitely optimal decisions to be made, but the game is navigable in any number of manners, each of which takes on a different process. Because of such variety, the replay takes on a certain joy, as there is now a context to be had in relation to the experience. Dynamism in play combined with unpredictability of outcomes, results in varied choices throughout each playthrough. Mega Man 2, in this sense, has great deaths. The system behind death in this game is entirely about learning, and does not obfuscate, but makes obvious, the mistakes which occurred.
The mistakes are there for evolution through play, to understand the game’s system naturally, without needing to force explanations or reasoning behind everything that is extant in the game world. It would be utterly silly to ask why there are spikes in a Mega Man game, yet other games, to this day, see fit to explain the silly minutia of the game, as if these small things cannot be explained away by simply saying, “it’s a game, use your imagination.” My imagination set these up as simply being traps setup by Dr. Wily, and that was enough. The truth is that it didn’t really matter why they were there. They were obstacles, and obstacles being overcome can be a goal unto itself, and a fulfilling one at that.
Mega Man 2 is one of the least heavy-handed games of the Mega Man series, and though it was not until the X series that Mega Man formally saw an evolution away from his character as an avatar and moved closer towards that of a epic hero, this was what ultimately doomed the character. Mega Man was never an epic hero, Mega Man was closer to the every man, Mega Man was closer to us, the player. Tasked with improbable goals and overcoming the challenges became a raison d’etre, and Mega Man as the every man would not be fully realized until the Mega Man Legends series.
While it is certainly true that Mega Man is indeed not us, the player, Mega Man is the character who is constantly looking for normalcy. He is happy to live an average life, in whatever capacity that might entail, and yet his character is at odds with such capacity. That is, in many ways, a reflection on who the player of such a game is likely to be.
Recommended: Yes