Capcom, who has perhaps observed Nintendo’s use of nostalgia to maintain its relevance to “true gamers” and recently revived the Bionic Commando franchise with the sublime Rearmed, is resurrecting another dormant IP: the real Mega Man. A new Mega Man with the style of 1988 and twenty years’ design insight seems like a surefire plan for success. And it is.
Mega Man 9 follows the basic narrative and gameplay patterns of every other retro Mega Man game. Dr Wily is up to no good and eight robots need to be stopped before you can assault his stronghold. Items and weapons with unique and advantageous applications are earned by blasting your way through stages taking you into the clouds, caves, forests and underwater. Each area concludes with a fight against a robotic foe: business as usual. It’s no joke; Mega Man 9 is very much a classic Mega Man game.
As for variations on the formula, Mega Man 9 chooses to primarily mould itself after Mega Man 2. It lacks the slide and charge shot. While the absence of these tricks makes the game slightly more difficult, it’s outweighed by the presence of a store, where you can buy energy tanks, extra lives, temporary spike protection and damage reducing upgrades. One can forego these for a pure, 8-bit challenge or grind for bolts within the levels until they max out their energy tank capacity and are fully armed.
The game has achievements and leaderboards on the Xbox 360 as well as its own, more extensive set of in-game goals. This adds some incentive to play the game for a couple more hours than you probably would have. Unfortunately, Mega Man 9 is not untainted by microtransactions and prominently features big, fat question marks in the menu blocking access to cool little things that should’ve been gratis. So far, “Endless Attack” mode (a single life marathon of new stages where you’re ranked by amount of cleared screens), “Proto Man” mode (play as Proto Man with several new and different features), an extra time attack stage and two additional difficulty levels are all available for purchase on the Marketplace. Some of these are understandable, but charging for something as simple as difficulty levels is just extortion.
What you get for your 800 MSP is a pretty neat package. It's a modern Mega Man game that doesn't do anything that couldn't conceivably be emulated by the NES. However, when held up to all of its downloadable content (and even earlier Mega Man titles with their second castles and things), it feels light on features. By no means should that drive you away from Mega Man 9, though. It's a very enjoyable game and sets an example that should and hopefully will be followed. I'd love a no bullshit, back to roots Sonic the Hedgehog 4 with music to match.