This is a good video, but I think referring to what other NES/Famicom games were doing at the time or prior to the original Mega Man to say what it was doing that was new or different, while having a limited frame of reference really hurts your points. For instance, Mega Man was inspired by shoot'em ups and the original Ghosts'n Goblins, but neither Gradius or GnG are mentioned (you mention the shoot'em up point, but not any specific games!). You mention more than a couple of times that you "could be wrong" about certain assertions of what Mega Man was doing that no other game was, and while that can be excused (there were a lot of games, nobody has perfect knowledge of every video game made before Rockman), when the other games mentioned in the video are mostly very well-known Nintendo first-party games that enjoyed being very popular and lasting franchises, it does make your bigger assertions difficult to take in. Sorry if this sounded harsh, but I hope this helps you in the future.

its a different format, i get it... but i miss ur trademark humor

Stone fang is Kazad dum & Erebor, the king of stone fang was is Thorin, the gemstone he is looking at is the arkenstone, the scale miners are orcs, bear bugs are the nameless things that live in the (lava) pools, the armor spider is shelob, flamelurker is the balrog, the rock worms are behemoth worms, and the dragon god is Smaug 😂

This game was amazing back on the ps1 way ahead of its time thanks for the vid!

According to a quick google search, the programmer was Nobuyuki Matsumshima, who (assuming it's not just someone with the same name) also programmed the PS2 JoJo 3D Beat-em-ups weirdly enough. My feeling on life systems generally reflect yours. I think lives can work as a valuable resource in games that have generous checkpoints (or even instant respawns) and are generally low enough and rare enough to actually be a valuable resource. They work in something like Mega Man because the levels are usually well-paced endurance runs and if lives were infinite then there'd be nothing to punish players from simply tanking hits in order to rush to the next checkpoint. That said, I do have a gripe with how Mega Man traditionally handles lives and that's random life spawns, it doesn't really add anything except reward monotonous grinding which artificially lengthens the game and is functionally the same as having infinite lives (especially in MM1 with how the pre-boss hallways function).

Glad to see you again! So about that game ost video...🤗

15:50 There were other factors here like very limited quality control, low profits from third party games, no lockout chip, and above the others, the combination of overproduction and then having to buy back what wasn't sold from retailers. Which was a lot in ET's case since it flopped, unlike Pac-Man.

1:21:30 Dude, you can just hold right and you won't get damaged

Holy shit your game is cute as hell, Dave!

Mega Man 5 is too easy compared to 6, I wonder why you prefer it

It's great to see you back! I'm excited to see more of ChivalBee in the future!

"tension and feeling of reward" no such thing was experienced, idk what's with people's who's brains do that

25:29 The rom for the original Rockman is only 128 KB, not 1 MB. I think only one game had a cartridge that big, being Dragon Quest IV.

So...when we kill Nito, is he double-dead? Does he become nonexistent? Does he undergo a rebirth process? Nito is still a pain in the ass either way.

8 isnt so bad

Hey! Great video! Another commenter already said that they've been itching for an in-depth analysis of MM1 and I've absolutely felt the same way. Actually the same person (heypeterReal) said another thing I agreed with: once you got to the Wily stages it feels like there was so little to say about anything besides the Footholders and Bigeyes in Wily 1 that the review was basically over by that point. However, as someone who speedruns the classic series with 1 being my main game (a rarity both in general and in the speedrunning MM community), I totally loved hearing your thoughts as a game designer and kind of wish you'd nerded out a little more about some of the technicalities because I don't know how coding or game design or music theory work; I simply enjoy the game. And maybe you don't know much about some of those either, but I would assume as a designer of your own game some of those concepts (especially coding) are in your toolbox. You called it out as such, but MM1 is overlooked. For those who have played it, almost all of us first played MM2, then went back to 1. I am not one of those people. I refused to beat MM2 until I'd beaten MM1 because although I gained access to both of them at the same time, I was already in my teen years and had grown up playing Mario and Mario-esque games. Even as a speedrunner who has played this game I have no idea how many times, I completely agree that Iceman's stage is the worst one! Haha. And actually I feel like although you labeled it as subjectivity, you laid out many very objective reasons design-wise as to why Iceman's stage is the worst. The other day I watched a different Mega Man 1 retrospective/review video and I don't remember who it was by now, but they actually said the opposite to you about Gutsman's opening: They did not like the fact that the hardest obstacle of the stage was first and iirc just didn't like the obstacle at all. I find that it's actually a really good challenge and having it at the beginning (as you said) cuts out a lot of potential frustration because the player isn't set too far back from failing it. And the one in Wily 4 is MUCH harder, even if it's only two jumps. That being said, I actually FAR prefer this consistent platforming challenge to something like the Footholders in Ice/Wily 1 where there is randomness involved as to whether you can even progress or not. When the combat has randomness it can be a little frustrating (like the Bigeyes), but with platforming I feel as though the less random ones in MM1 were much better because you aren't inherently given the chance to have to wait around for 12 minutes (multiple people have recording themselves being stuck for that long on one cycle to line up) just to have ONE shot at ONE jump. Anyways, that was long-winded but even us in the speedrunning community love hearing the more technical side of game reviews. I love watching and hearing reviews of any game I enjoy, especially ones I disagree with because sometimes they bring up points I was personally blind to (usually through nostalgia. A great example is "How 'Bout Super Mario Galaxy" by Barry Kramer). As someone who loves MM1 enough to have beaten it more times than I can care to remember, I loved this review and am looking forward to you doing the others! Anther commenter already said it and I saw you acknowledged it but I'd say don't bother with a "Mega" complication (haha). If you're going this in-depth with all the games, just give each game it's own video. It CLEARLY took you a very long time to make this video. So please keep up the good work and if it takes a long time to release MM2, and then long to release MM3, and so on and so on, we'll wait. It'll be worth it. Sorry for the long comment and great video! You have a new subscriber and it looks like I'm not the only one. :D

When talking about your game, you said that you want to find a way to prevent attack-spamming but that you don't want enemies to have i-frames, right? I immediately got reminded of Sparkster for SNES (from the Rocket Knight series). In that game you can perform a rolling move left and right with the shoulder buttons. They give you some good air-time and serve as an attack as well, but if you spam it say, 6 or 7 times in a row, you'll get dizzy and fall to the ground. Can't your game perhaps implement something like that? Given that your character seems to be an insect, maybe it can absorb energy from enemies when attacking them, which in turn allows you to keep attacking (it also gets replenished once you touch the ground), but if you attack the same enemy over and over it offers you diminished amounts of energy with each attack, forcing you to land or attack another enemy to keep the combo going.

2 hours of Mega Man 1 I’m impressed and I’m absolutely willing to watch a 2 hour video about a game that can take like 30 mins to beat

Welcome back, old friend. Remember to refill your Estus, and don't you dare go Hollow🔥

Dark Crows 1,2,3

The true final boss

Sorry it took me so long to get to this, it was a really fun watch! As for stuff to suggest, since I doubt Powered Up is going to be part of this retrospective series I think you could've mentioned the Robot Master's personalities here and maybe see if they line up with their boss pattern since I think Mega Man is a very character driven series. Though that maybe my story and characters focused brain talking.

Megaman is my favorite NES franchise by far, and I cannot wait to watch your reviews of 2 and 3, since those are also easily my two favorites. Also curious to hear what you think about 4 (which is by far my least favorite of the NES titles) and 6 (which you did not group together with 1-5, but I personally feel is underrated).

I'm not sure if somebody mentioned this already but anyway: Big Eye can be easily avoided with the Ice Man weapon. You can freeze him midair and even if he does his low jumping move you can still freeze him high enough to walk under him to avoid taking damage. The Guts Man blocks can also be removed with Elec Mans ability. It is still stupid to do Elec Man twice for it but you can technically do it with his own weapon by revisiting the stage and then use the Magnet Beam to avoid Guts Mans pit section. You can totally 100% clear this game intentional with Buster Only no hit. Yes even the Wily Stage 2 and the flames in Fire Man. But there are unfair points for it. The sprite limitation in the Wily Stage 3 Boss CWU-01P makes it impossible to always see his projectiles and even if you are able to avoid every pattern of him when the Guts blocks are still on the screen...this makes his fight really random. The other thing is Guts Mans jump pattern which can just be unfair and lock you in a corner if you are unlucky. I kind of wished you would have gone also in detail about weapons in stages and enemy behaviers but well I cannot ask for everything. You did a great job with this video anyway. Just a thing I want to mention because in my personal No Hit Buster Only run I figured out that the Octopus Batteries (the sticky Cut Man enemies) have a random pattern but it is only random by spawn. The pattern repeats after a few minutes. I noticed this while thinking how I avoid the 3 enemies on top of each other on Wily 2 without getting hit and waited for a good opportunity just to see that after a while every movement of the 3 always ended up in the exact same circles.

Missed ur super show vids and glad you've had a fulfilling time while away, here's to a revitalized return

DAVE! WB man! I'd like to point out that Black Devil in Mega Man X6 is also a reference to Yellow Devil.

Excellent retrospective here. I have been dying for an exhaustive Mega Man 1 video, and you've absolutely set a new standard! I do feel that while your critiques and praises on the game design are well-spoken and thought-out, they were extremely front-loaded at the start, which left the last 30 minutes feel a lot less exciting, because it became a much more standard review. I really hope you'll be doing a similar video like this for Mega Man 2, so I hope you consider interspersing them more evenly throughout the video. Regardless, I had a wonderful time watching this!

honestly i think the biggest flaw of the mega man series (both classic and x) is that boss weapons have limited ammo. the fact that they're limited at all makes me never want to use them unless absolutely necessary and i know i'm not the only one like that. it also creates the infamous issue of using up your ammo trying to defeat a boss, losing a life, and then not having any ammo for your next attempt. imo rather than refilling your energy upon death they should just completely drop the ammo mechanic and let you use your abilities infinitely. it would make these games significantly more fun in my opinion.

Heads up that you can use Elecman weapon to break those blocks in his stage as well.

this seems like the perfect way to spend my afternoon

I copy. Edit: /ˈwɑɪnd.ɛ̽d/. Edit 2: I digress for the vagary.

Did you freaking use music from Popful Mail

Mega Man 8 is one of my favorites! I actually really enjoy using almost all of the weapons, it's underrated but it's one of my favorite weapon lineups. I like the bolt system too. Easily the worst part of the game to me is jump jump slide slide, especially with input lag on Xbox Anniversary Collection played on 360 backwards compatibility. I'd know.

Mega Man has way too much health in the classic series. It often leads to boss designs that are random and highly erratic where the seemingly intended behavior from the player is to trade blows with the boss (e.g. Quick Man, Shadow Man, Burner Man). It puts an incentive on mediocre play, and this is why arcade games typically have 1 hit deaths with lives, or a very long lifebar but only one life (e.g. Guwange), and attack patterns that are harder to fight but are more predictable. While Mega Man 4 in particular has very well written boss AI, Capcom probably knew something was up, hence the X and Zero series starting the player off with much less health. Zero in particular allows for more skill based play by allowing players to learn EX skills from bosses if their mission rank is high and by having health bar expansions locked away behind items that decrease said rank (i.e. the cyber elves).

Good thing she gave you thing ring even if you didn’t talk to her trapped in the body

so unfortunate you didn’t go back to the cave with the repair dude and auriel. i wouldn’t have made it nearly as far as you without : edit And you missed the teleport bc of the knights omg i feel so bad for you 😂

The goat is back !!!

I want to own all of the classic series CIB but holy fuck US MM5 and MM6 will always be too expensive for me to justify

just picked this up on ps3 absolutely loving it so far! just got passed the Cerberus dogs in the flame tower

Can you tell me the music that's used at 55 minutes? Thanks. Nice video, very nerdy 👍

Ice Slash your turkey robots at the full height of their jump and run under, or even magnet beam over when facing them on the first Wily fortress. Otherwise, great video.

T H E R E T U R N O F D A V E .

Mega Man 2 that easy a 4 year old can beat it? 🤔

I personally think you don't need a giant Megaman 1-11 video that just combines all of the previous videos. That's pretty redundant, and you'll get more views for having multiple "smaller" videos. Instead, do a overall thoughts of the progression of design for the series that doesn't have the same content of the previous videos.

I love how while saying a lot you actually didn’t tell us anything

You weren't lying about not using special weapons. You can kill the spiky guy at the bottom of the appearing/disappearing blocks pit in Ice Man stage with a few different abilities.

this is awesome

The Complete Works / Anniversary Collection versions of Mega Man 1-6 are the definitive versions But Mega Man 7 and 8 are way better in the Legacy Collection than the Anniversary Collection.

12:06 *cries in Mighty Number Nine*

I have thought a lot about the boss i-frame thing, because I feel like if your in a position where you can mash the fire button at full speed, and not get hit, you should get rewarded for your positioning. But as you said, making the Bosses health bar big enough to compensate for that is going to make each fight drag on for players who haven't mastered the fight. I always wondered if they could have implement damage scaling, almost like a fighting game, where repeatedly hitting an enemy reduces the damage of the next hit, until you stop hitting them, or they get an action. Mashing the button then would reward you with a spike of big damage that slowly tapers off. if that didn't work, you could more simply have the boss trigger i-frames every 3rd or 6th shot. I only have a sour spot with boss i-frames because I feel like it makes combat a bit 1-Dimensional. Unless its a weakness, rapid fire weapons suck for bosses. Once the charge shot is introduced, using normal shots in a fight feels pointless. Bosses would feel more dynamic and fun if you had to decide whether its worth getting close and hitting the boss really quickly to chunk off health fast, or stay back and pick your shots with the charge buster. IDK, this is very much a hindsight is 20/20 moment.