Presenting: Mega Man

Setting The Stage - The Elements of Presentation

The Winter of '87

    Mega Man I came out in the US* to relatively little fanfare in the winter of '87. Platforming games, while popular, had not become as universally common as they would by the end of the system's life; still, several notable titles in the genre had already been released on the NES. Super Mario Bros. was, of course, a packaged release title and owned by virtually everyone who had a system. Ports of many of Nintendo's arcade platformers came out in the summer of '86, including all three Donkey Kong games, Mario Bros, and Popeye. Metroid was released later that summer, and Ghosts N' Goblins that winter. Castlevania came out to great success and fanfare early in '87, and Kid Icarus and Legend of Kage (the first console platformer to feature multi-directional scrolling, and one of the few ever to appear on the NES at all) soon after.

*  I will be discussing Mega Man only in the context of US game culture during the life of the NES; for its history in Japan and the differences between the Japanese and American versions of the franchise please look elsewhere. Also, for purposes of clarity, I will refer to the first game in the series as Mega Man I; Mega Man will refer to the franchise as a whole.

Source:  Nintendo Wikia

    At first glance the game had little to recommend it. Initial sales were higher than Capcom had expected, but still moderately low - certainly nowhere near enough to render the game an 'instant classic'. Even so, the game managed to garner enough corporate support for a sequel, which was successful enough to secure many, many more.

Pop quiz: which is which? You have thirty seconds.

     One of the most striking things looking back on the Mega Man franchise on the NES, and pointed out by nearly everyone who comments on it, is how very little it changed between the six games. Each one was just different enough from the last to seem new, but the graphics, gameflow, controls, and story stayed entirely the same, which cannot be said for any of the other franchises I have mentioned so far. Out of all the platformer series' I can recall on the NES, the only other one that remained so consistent was Ninja Gaiden, and that was only half as long, with three games.

    Another striking thing is how timeless the games feel in their presentation. The style of the game's backgrounds and sprites are as close to what we now think of as 'classic 8-bit graphics' as anything that was out at the time when 8-bit graphics were simply 'graphics'. The stage musics could easily be the standard template for modern chiptune compositions, with their clear, upbeat synth-pop influences and catchy hooks. The easy, fluid controls feel almost vanilla now, but at the time of the game's release they were virtually unprecedented. More on them later. My point is, Mega Man was in many important ways more than a decade ahead of its time as well as a smash success during it. I think some of the reasons for this lie in the differences between it and its contemporaries, and I would like to examine some of them, beginning with the first (and only) thing the player sees in a game: the graphics.

The Graphics

    The basic template for NES platform graphics lies, naturally, in the graphics of Super Mario Bros. - boxy sprites to show clear hitboxes, high contrast between foreground and background to allay confusion and facilitate clean gameplay, and smooth scrolling to lend the illusion of space and expanse.  And, if the graphics of Castlevania were an elaboration upon those principles in order to explore and push the limitations of the NES's limited resources, then the graphics of Mega Man were more of a refinement, meant to cheerfully embrace those limitations and use them to best advantage.  The result is that, while both games still look fantastic today, the graphics of Castlevania look distinctly (if gracefully) dated, while the graphics of Mega Man could easily pass for stylized graphics in a modern indie game.

Detail and Color

    The sprite for Mega Man's eponymous main character, designed by artist Keiji Inafune, is easily one of the most recognizable 8-bit sprites in video game history. In interviews, he has stated that the choice of blue was due to the limited palette of the NES - it had 56 colors, most of which were shades of blue. Wanting to produce a sprite with as much detail as possible, he used two shades of blue for Mega Man's armor and white for the face. The black outline makes Mega Man 'pop' from the rest of the stage.

Source: www.sprites-inc.co.uk

   But for me, the most important touch is that Mega Man has facial expressions.  They weren't unique at the time, even on the NES (Chubby Cherub, released the year before, had even more detailed ones), but their inclusion added an element of characterization that made it much easier to connect with Mega Man and gave the action of the game a more personal, living feel.  When you took damage, Mega Man would visibly cry out in pain, and when you jumped he would...

Source: hyde209 on deviantART

    ...shout a fierce battle cry.  Yeah, let's go with that.

Effective Backgrounds

    Mega Man did not concern itself with realism in its backgrounds and stage design, going for something between Castlevania's detailed, atmospheric quality and the fully abstract graphics of most platformers, giving each stage a concrete 'feel' that was unconstrained by architectural logic. While some games in the series would make a token attempt at 'explaining' stages (Mega Man III, for instance, took place on 'alien planets' where exotic materials were located, while Mega Man VI gave the stages names that vaguely explained their features, though not their layout), most made no effort at all, abandoning realism for artistic effect - a smart decision, in my view, since Mega Man boasts some of the most varied and visually interesting stages of any 8-bit series in history. Once more, clear black outlines made most stages 'pop', and bright, high-contrast primary colors were the norm.

Gravity Man's Stage from Mega Man V.

Note how the enemy strongly contrasts with

both the stage and Mega Man himself.  Blue

and orange are natural complements, and the

contrast makes it clear what is foreground

and what is background.

Crystal Man's Stage, from the same game.

Again, the enemies, foreground, and

background all contrast strongly, while

the overall mix is quite visually striking.

Both shots are from Charge Man's stage, again from V.  Though the actual design

of the stage changes little from the area atop the train to the area inside

the cabins, the changes in color and movement are intense; though not visible

in the second screenshot, the clouds and gray wall are racing past very quickly,

while the cabin in the first merely bumps up and down every few seconds.

This lends a feeling of dynamic progression to the level that it would otherwise lack.

The music rocks, too.

    The developers made effective use of color and shape within the limits of the NES's hardware to give each level a unique and dynamic feel. To make another comparison to Castlevania (because I intend to beat the device into the ground), if Castlevania's graphics were a Gothic novel, filled with richness of detail and an atmosphere of hanging dread, then Mega Man's graphics were comic poetry, sparkling with humor and life and the expression of pure emotion. And speaking of emotion...

The Sound of Music

    The musical scores assigned to the Mega Man stages were as varied and catchy as the graphics. The composers varied from game to game and were generally credited in the in-game credits with aliases; their names can mostly be found on Wikipedia if one searches by individual game. Regardless of composer, however, every Mega Man game sports a varied and catchy collection of compositions with modern influences ranging from 80's synth-pop to soft rock. Some of these tracks have become independently famous in the gaming world, though none have become as ubiquitous as themes from the Mario or Zelda franchises.

You've heard it, and you love it. This is music to

save the world to.

The Heart of the Matter...

    As important as the graphics and sound are in creating Mega Man's unique feel and lasting popularity, the most important element lies in the game's mechanics and design. That contains enough material for another post, however, and so I will leave it for next time.

Thanks for reading,

The Undesigner

A Brief Introduction

"The lifeblood of old-school gameplay is consistent, distinctive, and satisfying gamefeel. This is accomplished by the well-orchestrated combination of player control and challenge elements."

--Me, in this blog, just now

    I thought beginning my project with a sweeping generalization in scholarly language, as shown above, would be dramatic and capture people's interest. "How is he going to justify such a broad-brush statement," people might well ask, while silently thinking "Clearly this man is an expert of some sort." "By the thorough analysis of well-known examples," I would reply, a look of endearing self-confidence on my face. "Isolating the basic elements of design and the choices made in their arrangement in the timeless classics of the medium will provide us with insight into why they became timeless classics, and inform future efforts to duplicate the successes of the past without giving up modern innovations."

    I don't think that's how I'm going to do this, though. It's not like me to be that ambitious, not to say pretentious. Maybe it's because I'm a Type 9 INTP with no self-confidence at all, endearing or otherwise, or maybe it's because I have no formal training in game design to back up my efforts and insights, but one way or another I just don't feel up to a soaring, rigorous intellectual effort like that. But I've been a gamer my entire life, and I have put a great deal of thought into the very thorny issue of what made old-school gaming old-school, and I do have some things to say about it, and I think that maybe, just maybe, some people might be interested in reading them.

    Separating nostalgia from genuine analysis is very difficult in any artistic medium, and perhaps especially in gaming. There is no 'Institute of Gaming', after all: no orthodox and widely recognized authority on what games are true masterpieces. Mainstream game journalism is infamously beholden to corporate interests, and independent journalism is opinionated and informal. And, of course, gamers learn to love games by playing them, not by studying them, and so the greater part of their love will always be given to the games they grew up playing. I have no intention of being perfectly objective, and anyway I think it's impossible. Games are art, after all, and trying to separate an abstract 'science' of games from the love and excitement that motivates the medium from the start seems a bit unnatural.

    For my part, I can point to a few specific moments when my 'tastes' in gaming were formed; magical instants when a single gaming session lit my imagination on fire and shaped the way I thought about games, the world, and life forever. Playing Mega Man 2 in the loft of a baby-sitter's house - the sacred space of her older son, opened only to a select few of the children who stayed there, and only on the whims of its occupant - was one. Playing the opening of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in the basement of my church at a youth event was another. One experiences a moment of perfect satisfaction and transforming excitement, and then follows the thought, "This is the game I am playing.  This is what I am going to spend the next several hours doing." Whether it is true or not, such moments provide the standard by which the rest of one's experience is judged. When I examine my gaming memories in this way, they resolve themselves almost entirely into such moments, separated by periods of activity largely shaped and informed by those moments. Perhaps the fact that I was never allowed to own or play games freely as a child affected my perceptions; I have no idea if it is the same for other people or not. But I do know of one specific respect in which my experience is widely shared, and that is in the development of my taste in platformers.

    Platformer games were the genre in the world of home console gaming from their popularization in the mid-80s until 3D games came into prominence with the rise of the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 in the late 90s. From the success of Donkey Kong, considered the first 'true' platformer, in arcades, the genre grew and expanded until it became the 'default' gameplay style for most commercial releases, much like the 'Action Adventure / Third Person Shooter' blend (think of the Uncharted and Gears of War franchises) is today.

    And during the days of the NES, there were three franchises that, more than any others, defined what platforming was and how it worked. Those franchises were Super Mario Bros., Castlevania, and Mega Man. Those three franchises essentially divided the platforming world between them; while Metroid, Ninja Gaiden, Contra, and other franchises became popular and brought their own innovations and unique characteristics to the style, none of them reached the level of ubiquity in influence during the lifespan of the NES that those three did, and none of them hold up as well by today's standards. Super Mario Bros., of course, defined an entire sub-genre on its own, becoming the basic template for many other games, and still surpasses most of its imitators even today in the precision and liquidity of its controls and the subtle genius of its design. Castlevania displayed meticulous attention to detail in the creation of a moody, atmospheric experience, expanding the narrative possibilities of the genre considerably, and its high-pressure challenges - made all the more intense by the very limiting, yet precise, control scheme - hold up today as a model for combining design and control elements in a directed and cohesive way.

    But the focus of my first project is going to be Mega Man. In my view, Mega Man did more to define and promote the possibilities and unique character of console gaming than any other platforming franchise, and produced some hard-to-pinpoint innovations that greatly informed the future choices of game designers in every genre. More so than any other series I have mentioned in this article, the 8-bit Mega Man games hold up as well today as they did on the day of their release; they are still considered models of brilliant level design and tight controls, and feel just as fresh and natural now as they did twenty years ago. Plenty of people have analyzed the design choices and successes of the Mega Man series; I know I am treading familiar territory. I don't care. These games cannot be analyzed too often or too deeply. In the following articles, I will be exploring what set the Mega Man games apart from their contemporaries and how they created the experience they provide the player, one game at a time, one stage at a time, starting with the very first game.

    Before I close, a quick note on my assets, for legal purposes: I will be providing screenshots and, I think, gameplay footage to illustrate and support some of my points, as well as to provide visual interest to break up monotonous blocks of text like this one. All of them will be of my own production, unless otherwise attributed. For reasons of convenience I will be using an emulator to provide them, but I would like to say ahead of time that I will not be emulating any game I do not own or have immediate access to (i. e., am able to borrow) in purchased form. The Undesigner does not officially endorse piracy, and encourages all gamers to support the industry by purchasing games through legitimate vendors, or at least borrowing from friends who do.

Thanks for reading,

The Undesigner