MEGAMAN 1

I'll preface this by saying one of my favorite games is Megaman X. Megaman X2 and X3 was always too hard for me, even today I can't even beat one maverick in either game, so I always replay the original X game. Until about 3 months ago, actually, I thought Megaman X was a standalone series. I never knew about the classic series, as embarassing as that is to admit. I only learned about it when at a used game store and saw a shelf labeled "Megaman Classic". I picked up the cartridge that just said "Megaman", as I assumed it was the first and looked at the price tag. 'Damn, $50 for an NES game', I thought to myself, 'whatever, I get paid tomorrow anyway,'

Taking the game to the counter, I found the clerk staring at me. "Sir?" I asked as politely as I could. He snapped his head up and said, "Sorry, I wasn't looking at you, just that game. If you got it from that shelf, I have to warn you that it is a hacked copy, the maker thought the game wasn't hard enough. When we were testing it, we couldn't even get to Cutman. Granted, we're not the best at Megaman, but the hacker also changed it somehow so that using Game Genie codes only leaves you with one line of health. Do you still want to buy it?"

I smiled at him, "Of course, I love a challenge."

"Alright," he shrugged, "Most people get scared off by that."

After buying the game and walking to my car, I was unusually hot. It was a very cold day before, even with a chance to snow. The drive home was like being baked, thankfully I lived relatively near the place.

Excited to play and to get out of the heat, I ran into my house, almost running into my girlfriend. "Girl," she said, "Why are you in a rush?" I held up the copy of Megaman, she nodded, and I walked into my living room.

After booting up the game, the title screen just said "Megaman 1 hard mode" in large letters with "press start" under that. The boss screen has 6 robots on it, all looking a bit angry except Iceman, he was pretty chill. As the guy mentioned him before, I went after Cutman. Three enemies flew in from the right and immediately charged me. I had to shoot them quickly, but they got me down to about 3/4 of my health. Going forward, there were enemies on the wall that tracked my movement to shoot me. Not too hard to dodge, but the bullets were very fast. Other enemies included a one eyed enemy that flew through walls to get me. After struggling through the stage, after every time I get hit, the room gets hotter. Entering Cutman's room, He glared at Megaman, ripped the shears off of his head, then lunged at me. Megaman fell to the floor and shot Cutman. He died with only one shot.The room cooled off the instant Cutman exploded. I was feeling a little cocky, so I went for the biggest man there, Gutsman.

The beginning was very hard, a few platforms that quickly went down and killed me. It was getting extremely hot after the second death, so I got a bottle of water and poured it on myself. After a few times, I got down the platform part. The rest of the level was completely devoid of enemies. When I got to the boss room, all the bosses were there. Iceman was cowering by the wall. "I-is that the one that killed him?" he said.

Gutsman then got angry, stomped, then slammed me with a boulder from the ceiling. Elecman shot a bolt of lightning at me, Bombman threw a bomb at me, and Fireman shot me with a flame blast. I died instantly, not surprisingly, and the temperature rose dramatically. I tore that shit out of my NES and dropped it down. It was melting in my hands. I think I'll be emulating Megaman from now on.