June 16, 2025 • 64 mins
Let’s talk the Blue Bomber today in another episode of That Game Rules! Mega Man II is an amazing NES Classic. We talk Robot Masters, weapons, levels, the freakin MUSIC, and the love the developers put into this game.
While we’re in 1988 we talk old movies and toys. Did you ever own those crappy Tiger Electronic handhelds? Do you have a list of “mom movies” you like because they were always on in the background?
And of course, I forget my train of thought and talk about a whole bunch of other stuff too!
Let's waste some more time this week on the worst gaming podcast on the internet!
Thanks again for giving this podcast a chance!
Send me messages at thatgamerules@gmail.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:26):
Hello friends.
Welcome to another episode of that game rules.
This ain't your dad's podcast or maybe it is.
I'm a dad.
I'm your host scuba Steve.
Thank you for listening.
Every week here, we're going to pick a game.
We're going to travel back in time, talk about all the movies, shows, toys that surroundthat game.
(00:46):
Then we'll get into the game, go over vitals, box art, characters, levels, check out somecomments, reviews, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
At the end we'll give this game some awards, talk about remake versus demake, anddetermine once and for all if that game rules.
Thanks again for listening.
Today we're talking about Mega Man 2.
(01:08):
Have any of you ever chewed through an old Nintendo controller to get to the gooey copperygoodness on the inside?
Because I feel like playing this game when I was a kid, I might have done that.
And it's a good thing they make those little
NES controllers as durable as they were.
isn't no you drop a PS5 controller You might have some issues, but I think those NEScontrollers can Make it through drywall.
(01:36):
You chuck one of those things hard enough Anyway, we're gonna waste some time togethertoday If anybody wants to get a hold of me the best way to do that currently is that game
rules at gmail.com
Tell me the games you want to talk about.
Send me your memories, your favorite games, levels, bosses, cheats, any of old playgroundstuff we used to talk about.
(01:58):
I'm currently working on a website, but I'm also learning that, uh self teaching myselfthat at the same time I'm trying to teach myself how to podcast.
So I have that at thatgamerules.com and I'm hoping to get that set up so I can get somenewsletters out.
to let you guys know the games that are coming up so that you can then send me all yourinfo on those and get it read on the show.
(02:20):
Also currently setting up a free Patreon just as a place to kind of collect everything andit may be the best place to do things like voting polls so you guys can tell me the games
you want to hear about.
I don't have any social media stuff going yet and it's hard to kind of keep all thosetogether so I'm going to stick stuff up on Patreon eventually it'll be patreon.com slash
(02:46):
that game rules again that's all going to be free this is just a passion project for me soI appreciate all you guys who are listening shout out to a couple listeners right now
we're going to shout out Raichu and Zelda and Wanda
because those are our three cats and are currently the only listeners of the show becauseI haven't posted any of this out yet.
(03:11):
um But if you haven't noticed those are our three cats and yes it's Raichu.
um He was adopted but he already had that name as a Pokemon and then of course Zelda wasmy oldest daughter's cat.
I suggested that name she loved it and Wanda is my wife's cat and she is uh Wanda Maximofftechnically so.
(03:33):
My wife is a big Scarlet Witch fan, out of nowhere.
Thank you WandaVision.
So what have I been up to before we get into the game and the time warp?
It is currently June 5th, so my Switch 2 is upstairs right now downloading Mario KartWorld, so I will be playing that.
(03:54):
I've been playing some Mega Man 2 of course, and other than that gaming wise I'm just busywith a lot of...
uh
end of the year school stuff with the kids.
know, carnivals and field days and all those kinds of things.
So they're running me wild.
but we're past the intro.
We're going to get right into a time warp.
(04:15):
know that my podcast can kind of seem like, did you ever see that episode of South Park?
Like the member berries where I just kind of rattle off.
Hey, do you remember that?
That was cool.
Hey, remember this?
That was cool.
But my whole life and I feel like m
The way I talk a lot of times is almost just based entirely on movie and TV showreferences and video games and you know that's just part of my personality.
(04:41):
But we'll start by getting right into a time warp.
We're talking Mega Man 2.
We're gonna go back to 1988.
Let's get this baby going.
(05:06):
Man that synth just screams 1988 doesn't it today's time warp is brought to you by Tigerelectronic handheld gaming systems Listen to me kids of the 80s 90s.
Do you like Power Rangers?
Do you like Mortal Kombat X-Men Sonic you like Space Jam?
Do you like Lion King Jurassic Park Aladdin?
(05:30):
Do you like all those things and would you love them in video game form?
Well, get ready to have your parents and grandparents disappoint you on every singlebirthday and Christmas when they give you one of these Tiger electronic handhelds.
um The packaging is beautiful on these things.
When you'd walk down, I walked down the aisle at Kmart, I'd be eyeing these things, eventhough I knew they were just going to make me angry.
(05:54):
But the packaging looks great.
They were cheap.
I think they were like 15 bucks back then, you know, so aunts, uncles, grandparents wouldsee these things and they'd pick these things up for you guys.
and you're talking static screen, hold that thing in the sun if you want to see whatyou're doing.
You know the way those screens worked it was just they just had pre-placed graphics andyou could only you could only do so much in Mortal Kombat.
(06:19):
I mean if you you know hold that thing in the sun push your thumb down on that screen andyou can see all the little moves that you could do eventually you could squish it down and
see Johnny Cage's eight leg motions he has.
I was trying to think like if there was any of those that really worked for me or any ofthem that I really liked but I don't think so.
(06:41):
I think we just had those and it was almost like use your imagination with these thingsand on top of that they took batteries and why would you want to put batteries in those
when I've got my game gear eating up six batteries every three minutes or your you knowyour Game Boy with your four batteries.
It's almost like let's take a Game Boy and demake it.
(07:02):
It's like almost like here's a little etch a sketch just kind of draw what you thinkyou're doing on these games But anyway, if you don't know what those are if you're younger
Take a look at some of those because they are pretty and of course like anything else Alsoold people grew up with there's a huge collector market for those as well But thank you
fake sponsor tiger electronics.
(07:23):
I think they're still out there nowadays even probably some new games, but Let's talk 1988this game, you know, we'll get into it
But as far as things surrounding Mega Man 2, 1988, we'll talk movies.
We've got, man, a lot of classics for me.
And, you know, I know as I go through all these years and as we get more episodes in, I'mnot just gonna rattle off movies.
(07:46):
I'll probably pick some to maybe do a small little memory or deep dive on.
And, heck, eventually I'd love to do maybe like a That Movie Rules kind of episodes foryou guys as well, especially the video game movies.
But anyway, let's talk some movies that meant a lot to me, uh even now or then.
Beetlejuice, um of course, and the kids are huge fans of that now as well.
(08:09):
My youngest daughter with the new show Wednesday on Netflix, she's into that.
So as far as just kind of timber in kind of uh creepiness, and my kids were always kind ofraised on that.
I didn't hide, um you know, movies or shows from them if you're there to...
Supervise or the parental guidance of the parental guidance ratings, but I mean I'd showmy young kids We were watching stuff like Bealejuice or both my daughters loved Coraline
(08:38):
growing up And just kind of these you know let your kids kind of see the darkness let themwork through their fears Don't hide that stuff from them Die Hard came out Naked Gun of
course Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
I'd love to talk about that movie again someday
A lot of those movies back then fall along the lines of...
(09:01):
At one point they only, they didn't have a PG-13, so you had PG like straight to R, and alot of those movies kind of walk that line between enough to keep adults entertained and
maybe kids entertained, but it's the kind of things you watch now when you're likecatching jokes as an adult, that you know, but hey, if you didn't, you didn't catch it
(09:22):
when you a kid, then that's the point.
You know, back then they had those kind of movies that...
kids would sit through but they were made for adults whereas nowadays they make movieslike you know the Pixar like the Incredibles or these kind of movies that are made for
kids but have this stuff for adults to be able to sit through.
We also had Willow a classic to me kind of all those movies like Willow, Labyrinth, uh howwas the other one?
(09:49):
Neverending Story those kind of movies.
um Land Before Time a big cartoon.
in my house when I was a kid and then some of my favorites that more now I rememberwatching Child's Play when I was a kid and being terrified but I love that and I love kind
of where Chucky's gone with his ridiculousness another show that my youngest daughterwatched with my wife the new Chucky show which is not for an 11 year old at all but like I
(10:17):
said if you're there with your kids experiencing these things together you can you knowyou work those things out
you answer questions they may have.
And then another classic favorite for me that we've all watched with my kids forever isKiller Clowns from Outer Space.
And I think there's a new game if it hasn't come out yet already for that.
But watch that movie with your kids.
(10:39):
And it's weird because nowadays my oldest daughter is 20 and she will sit there and she'llget together with my son 13, my youngest daughter 11, and between those three it's like an
episode of Mystery Science Theater.
They watch these bad horror movies and just rip on them the whole time.
And I think it's quite endearing for me.
uh TV shows, 1988 ish.
(11:02):
Count Duckula, shout out to you.
It's random.
ah Garbage Pail Kids.
I think that was a TV show, you know, maybe for a season, but it was based on those cardsand which are terrible.
Look up some of those.
Another thing, there's a huge collector market for just all the cool stuff.
Might have been peak humanity, 80s, 90s, because all this stuff is, it's like worth somuch to us.
(11:27):
And like anytime I say something based on pricing on collector items or anything, it's theprice is based off of what people will pay.
You know, there's no value technically in it at all, besides what someone is willing topay for that, you know, based on how much they might want something that they grew up
with.
Also shout out Wonder Years.
(11:48):
You know, when you were a kid,
And growing up in, and your parents had control of the TV, very few channels.
from then you just kind of got stuck watching what they were watching.
And sometimes it was good.
Sometimes it's, you know, boring as a kid, but then you grow up and you find out theseshows were pretty great.
You know, wonder years was one of them.
then huge shout out to Roseanne, which, was a show I just grew up with because my momwatched it, but I, I love.
(12:16):
that show.
loved all those shows I grew up with and I really feel like they molded me as a father, asa husband.
All these, the other shows, had Roseanne, which I love how they, between Roseanne andMarried with Children, they just brought kind of the dirt of families.
It wasn't this clean cookie cutter, you know, leave it to beaver stuff.
(12:40):
You know, Roseanne's house was dirty and they talked and ragged on each other in dirtylanguage and same with like married with children.
Um, which I loved, home improvement.
loved fresh Prince of Bel Air.
I will still watch some of those episodes and I'll, I'll tear up now, like the homeimprovement episode where, old JTT, he gets some sort of disease or something.
(13:03):
It's one of those like serious episodes, not quite like.
The old Save by the Bell episodes where they'd all stand out at like the end and like adrug episode and everyone would like talk to you about how serious that episode was.
It wasn't like that, but they were still like these kind of emotional episodes.
The one in Fresh Prince is besides like the final episode where like the set's empty isthe one where Will Smith, uh, like he's talking about his dad or something and now his dad
(13:31):
doesn't want him.
And, uh, that one'll like get me every time if I see it.
And you know, I really like Will Smith as an actor despite the last couple of years.
But did anybody else have like just mom shows or like mom movies that were just on thatlike, again, I grew up with a single mom.
So there are movies I love that I shouldn't as a 40 something year old man.
(13:53):
I love Pretty Woman.
I love Overboard with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.
I love Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead.
Just all these movies that were just kind of on in the background that are just kind ofI'll watch if they're on now We'll keep moving on to toys and when I say toys we're
(14:13):
talking 1988 and if you don't think that every kid in 1988 boy anyway Was was going forthose Ninja Turtle figures, man?
We're talking the blimp.
We're talking the big sewer set the eh the pizza little pizza discs chuck-and-van
I all that stuff, which I still did.
(14:33):
I know in particular that blimp's worth a lot because it was like a blow up balloon.
So you don't see a lot of those um in good condition anymore.
But I mean, when you're talking 1988, the toys, the popular toys at that time were allthese 80 toys.
G.I.
Joe, Star Wars figures were still big then.
Cabbage Patch dolls were huge.
(14:55):
that think Cabbage Patch dolls kind of started the
The mall madness kind of scenes, the moms punching each other for toys, that was kind ofpre-Tickle Me Elmo.
um The Black Friday type stuff.
ah I think it's the same kind of concept they used in like Jingle All the Way withTurboman Doll as far as it's probably more of a reference to Cabbage Patch dolls.
(15:22):
Although I like the fact in that movie they always have like the booster dolls availableand like nobody wants it and that's kind of how it was if you
wanted a certain toy, was gone, but then there was shelves and shelves of these other sidecharacters that nobody wanted to deal with.
Video games out when we're talking 1998.
This is the Nintendo era.
(15:43):
So all those were out.
We're talking Mario 2, 3, Blaster Master, Ghouls and Ghosts.
Another favorite of mine were like the Dragon Quest games, which may...
I mean, we're talking NES RPGs.
Excuse me, ah like Final Fantasy one is is like tough to get through it's just like uhLike they didn't know What they were doing?
(16:10):
I don't remember I don't remember much about Final Fan is the first one on the NES theFinal Fantasy besides like I Didn't like it.
So maybe I'll give that another run through that was a long time ago um Also a shout outto the recent I forget the name of it and it might be level up it's like a new show with
Little kind of stories of video games and they have one of Mega Man And it's only like 10minutes long, but it's like can we just make that a full movie, please?
(16:40):
It very like Astro Boy-esque quality to it that's a movie I like So shout out to that andgo watch that if you haven't We're gonna get into Mega Man 2 and when I
started this podcast I knew I wanted to talk about box art because that was like I say alot just how all you had to judge a game by and I knew I couldn't wait to get to Mega Man
(17:10):
and Mega Man 2 as far as box art they might be like the most famously terrible and Ifreaking love them for that so let's get into this box art
So Mega Man 2 is just like Mega Man 1 as far as it's like a guy in a suit.
(17:31):
Although Mega Man 1 is drawn so terribly.
I didn't look up too much of the history on that, but I know that it was like the artistwas given, think on the first one, like two hours to like draw up something he had no idea
about.
oh But as far as the Mega Man 2 cover, you've had human males in these like costumes.
(17:52):
And it's like a guy's got a helmet and for some reason there's no blaster.
It's a gun.
And I think the artist said that like that's what America, um you know, whatever, Capcom,Nintendo, whoever it was in America for American audiences said, give that guy a gun.
Because in Japan, he's known as Rockman.
There's also um for this, have like titles after their games.
(18:17):
I forget which this one was because it's like Rockman 2 caption.
fights bad guys or whatever it is but none of the the Mega Man games here ever had thoseand I do like Mega Man better I think it just kind of rolls off the tongue a little bit
more with the double M's there so again the box art I mean I like kind of the platform youknow I like the background of it beside you take the kind of guys out of it and it's like
(18:43):
it's cool how they took you know the 2D NES level it kind of looks like maybe flame man'slevel
Heatman, sorry You know, I'm not sure but North America North American box art guy wasMark Erickson.
So sorry guy, but um I Love it.
(19:05):
And as far as the back of it, um, nothing too crazy there It's got some good screenshotsas the shot of your eight Robot masters and a quick description.
It doesn't have it.
I like to if I can kind of go over the back of the box description
If there's anything fun or anything translated bad, I like to go over that, but it'spretty uh cut and paste.
(19:27):
You know, another shout out to a lot of these, like I think they were third party, but asfar as like Capcom, like I just remember those games, you know, it's kind of got this
bluish purple border around it.
So, I mean, they had like Chippendale, they had, I think a lot of the Disney stuff wasCapcom, tailspin, maybe, maybe DuckTales, but I just know Capcom was banging back then.
(19:50):
And I can see the logo.
A lot of those games or lot of those old logos when they pop up can hit some nostalgia.
Almost like the same when you watch an old movie and you see a New Line Cinema or theseold kind of production studio logos that aren't around anymore.
uh Like Capcom or some of the other ones.
You'd have the EA Sports or not that Sega was a third party thing, but it pop up with theSega.
(20:17):
So I like all the...
I have distinct memories of those.
uh Mega Man 2, you were...
uh I picked this game out of all the Mega Mans.
It's not my favorite Mega Man, and that could almost change by the day.
ah My specific memory of this is uh playing it over at my great aunt's house.
(20:44):
I had to stay there for, think...
me and my sister two weeks in the summer while my mom was in Germany.
And this lady was old.
I love her, you know, rest in peace, Aunt Lois, but she like, didn't even have, she neverhad kids.
So she didn't even have a TV in the house.
And on top of that, her hobby was like making dolls.
So her living room was just filled with these like dolls.
(21:05):
So I just, had a little TV.
I managed to pack up.
think I had Mario Mega Man 2 and I had Yoshi that NES game.
think it was like a
puzzle game.
It might have been Yoshi's Cookie maybe, but it was like a puzzle type game and I meanthat's all I had for two weeks and when you have two weeks to kill a Mega Man game that
you've never played is a great thing to have.
(21:28):
Well let's just kind of go over some quick little notes here on the game before we getright into gameplay and I get to play some more of that sweet sweet music.
So 1988 Capcom
and it's your basic story, your hero, Mega Man, and his was built by Dr.
Light as a way to fight uh Dr.
(21:50):
Wily and his bad, evil robot masters.
As far as Mega Man 2, know, so Mega Man 1 was tough.
It wasn't received very well, and I think the studio didn't justify any sequels.
They were ready to kill it off, and the development team itself...
worked on their own time, you know, they were approved by some sort of management orsomething, you know, using their own time, essentially using a lot of their own time, but
(22:18):
they were also allowed to work on Mega Man 2 as long as they were working on these othergames, whatever their bosses told them to.
And so you can tell is like Mega Man 2 is like a passion project and it shows and I'm gladthey did it because like every game that's come after that just keeps building on to
the Mega Man legacy you've got your six NES games, you've got five Game Boy games, they'reon Game Gear, they're on Sega, they're on...
(22:46):
uh and that doesn't even start getting into Mega Man X that are some of the best games onthe Super Nintendo.
Mega Man 2 was the best selling Mega Man game for a long time and is now only the secondbest, and that's behind Mega Man 11.
So that just goes to show you...
you know the love for these games or the fact how great Mega Man 2 is that it stayed onthe top number one awesome number two that it got that number eleven way down the road
(23:16):
that was fairly recently is good enough to take the top spot for Mega Man 2 and that'swhen they um they stick with the the same kind of sprites the same kind of graphics and um
I think nine ten eleven they were all good seven I know seven's kind of the weird one
And I know there's a lot of Battle Network stuff type too, but in Mega Man 2, of course, alot of people will say it's the best soundtrack of all the Mega Mans.
(23:45):
And a lot of people argue it's the best soundtrack of all time on the NES.
And I'll let you be the judge of that.
It seems like every Mega Man track in every game is like, it's just amazing what theycould do with the limited technology they had back then.
And it's like the only...
music since then like I don't play a lot of games, but I love like Sea of Stars as far asI'll probably mention that game a lot as far as how I like my new modern RPGs and the You
(24:19):
still this kind of 2d Kind of overlap the backgrounds look great, but just the music inSea of Stars is insanely good And it's just kind of using the same sound bites from all
these old systems
Mega Man 2 because Mega Man 1 was so hard they introduced some new stuff in Mega Man 2 yougot e tanks You have like your floating platform weapon like I and they're item 2 item 3
(24:45):
and 1 but one of them is like a floating platform one of them is like a Shooting platformthat you know one will go to the right and one will go up as far as your platforms and
those can be you know
Having those can be helpful.
They can cheat through a lot of the levels, you know, and it's like if you've never playeda Mega Man game, you can go online and be like, what order do I do the robot masters?
(25:08):
And you could go and run through a Mega Man game in 45 minutes or less.
but you know, when you were, that was when you were back then and you had none of thatknowledge, like that was like the fun of it.
It was finding the order of the masters, what weapon does what to who.
And those are the things that gave you like a sense of accomplishment.
(25:29):
So it's like if you want to run through the game, go ahead and look up that kind of stuff.
Not everybody has the time like we do when we were kids when you had just a full weekendto lose on a game.
We don't have that time.
mean, walkthroughs are fine just to see these games.
But if you really want to experience it, you just go in with nothing and you have to trialand error your way through it.
(25:50):
And like I said, you'll be throwing your controller the whole time when there's somethingabout it because at the end there's just a sense of accomplishment that you don't get
with.
a lot of games nowadays they just try to make it quick and big bright graphics like acasino to make you give you that dopamine fix but when you really work for it obviously it
sticks with you over 30 some years or whatever I'm here and I want to talk about Mega Man2 still so it also introduced the password system so Mega Man 1 didn't have that so that
(26:20):
was a good thing to add to a game that they determined was too difficult so that you couldafter each boss
depending on whatever your order is, can pick back up right where you were anyway.
And I mean that was added again because of consumer complaints of the game being toodifficult.
And then just again, a shout out to Capcom for putting these games out and just like theprogression of these systems, when you talk like NES to SNES,
(26:56):
Look at just look at Mega Man versus Mega Man X and like that's what I love about theSuper Nintendo is it's so just shiny new when they released all these games like Super
Castlevania Super Mario World you had your Mega Mans you just had all these games thatjust looked like you know it had all the all the bones of those NES games and they just
(27:18):
beefed them up and it's so different
From there you go SNES to the 64 and it's almost like back to square one.
Now that we're in 3D they had to go back to these polygon type shapes and of course I lovethe 64 but the weird thing is now it's like young kids now see these 64 games it's just
(27:40):
ugly and terrible but you throw a couple like Super Nintendo games at them they wouldn'tbe able to tell that they weren't just modern games that you have to play with a
controller versus on your phone or whatever.
So again...
Shout out to uh Capcom for keeping it going, making these games happen.
I am going to play some of that amazing music and we're going to get into some straightgame chat, some comments and reviews, and uh enjoy.
(28:37):
Oh, just let it keep playing, hold on.
Don't sue me, Nintendo.
All right, so for some comments and reviews my cats didn't have anything to say so I hadto look at the internet and it's weird I found some um Angry people on reddit, which is
really weird because reddit's usually such like a cheery place to look for gaming reviewsand stuff But again because everybody loves Mega Man 2 and gushes on it I try to find just
(29:05):
some critiques so that we can kind of break it down a little bit so on reddit um We've gota guy and he's got
what he says is an unpopular opinion and that Mega Man 2 is not that great.
He says, big problem is the weapons, they're cool in theory, but so many enemies justdon't take damage from anything but the default buster and one or two special weapons.
(29:28):
And I'll give him, you know, I'll agree with that, but that's assuming you know whatweapons you have and who you're using them on and...
You know, there isn't a set path for the Robot Masters.
You can do it in a few different ways.
A lot of people will start with, uh you know, getting that OP metal saw blade, taking outMetal Man.
(29:58):
There's a reason that that weapon's in Smash Bros.
for Mega Man.
uh And yeah, it's true.
You can walk, like I said, you can run through this game in 40 minutes, 50 minutes if youknow...
Exactly what you're doing and what weapons do what?
But you know as far as a critique I'll take that he says in Mega Man 2 it seems like allthe weapons do a minuscule amount of damage except for one which kills the boss in like
(30:22):
three hits and that's true as well, but it was also when you put in the work You know whenyou were eight years old or something playing this game Going through all these you know
robot masters you pick one first you make it all the thing is you make it all the waythrough this tough stage
As you're going through the stage you can see platforms, e-tanks, free lifeguys that youknow you can't reach now.
(30:45):
So you're like, well, if I had a certain power, if I could get those.
So you start to question if this is the level you should be in or not.
uh But you make it through, you make it to that boss and all you have is your buster, yourlittle, you know, pea shooter.
And you know, you're getting nothing on this boss.
So you just, you work through that whole level, you made it to the boss and you know, andyou can't beat them.
(31:07):
So it's like...
You write that down and then you move on to the next one and it's like as soon as you havelike a new Mega Man game, as soon as you get that first boss down, it's like that's the
dopamine fix.
That's the good feeling right there.
But it is true that there are like, you have the right weapon and you're like tap, tap,tap and that boss explodes.
(31:29):
ah But still satisfying.
He also says, ah everyone complains about this, but it has to be mentioned.
The Wile E stage 4 boss, the little semi-circles on the wall that you can only kill withcrash bombs is such a stupid design decision.
ah That is a tough one.
If you're not in there with enough, um you know, energy filled up with your crash bombpower on that boss in that stage, it can be annoying.
(31:57):
He adds that, you know, the whole second half of this game is more obnoxious than it isfun.
And I guess that depends on if you find obnoxious and hard things fun or not.
ah
You know, my case, like I said, I would get angry.
I'd throw the controller.
I'd throw the controller.
I'd bite the cord.
I'd say, I'm never playing this again and go run off to play with, you know, NinjaTurtles.
(32:19):
But it's like an hour later, I'm like, up click, you know, blow in the cartridge, throwthat thing in there and you go again.
You're like, you know, if it's frustrating you take a break.
Just like anything else in life.
But all these Mega Man games, there's a reason they're worth so much out there.
I want to give a shout out as far as gameplay ah on the Mega Man collections out there.
(32:45):
And I don't know if they have it in the Mega Man collection.
I know they do in the Cowabunga collection for Ninja Turtles.
Like on the NES you can turn off slowdown.
And I would not recommend that.
Like on these older NES games when they got all those sprites on the screen and thatthing's chugging and suddenly Mega Man's moving like Neo from the Matrix.
(33:07):
Like that is, like I love that when there's so much on that actually slows down.
like that.
It feels like a bullet time type of situation.
Um, you know, what we talked about the characters, there's not many, the story on an oldNES game is bad doctor guy.
You're a good robot guy.
Go fight bad robots.
(33:27):
And that's all you needed back then.
There's, there's only so many like
twists in gaming.
So it's not like I would say like, oh, warning, there's spoilers in this podcast.
I guess if I ever do some more modern stuff, I'd let you know.
But on these old games, there's nothing worth spoiling unless like it's kind of likespoiling the biggest like twist surprise, I guess on an NES game with me.
(33:52):
And if you haven't played Metroid, go ahead and skip to 15 seconds.
But when um Samus turns out to be a girl at the end.
I feel like that was my first video game like twist um up until a certain like um FinalFantasy 7 situation that happened in that game that seems to be like a that's I feel like
(34:16):
when I when I played that game is when I was like oh these games can be not what youexpect sometimes uh so I won't spoil that one go play Final Fantasy 7 so we'll get into
the robots.
I don't know if I want to give you guys any sort of...
I'll give you guys my order at some point, but I'm just going to go down the bosses kindof as they appear.
(34:39):
So you got Woodman.
And first of all, I just love these...
just the concept of these robot masters having just a name, having man or whatever, um andjust having like stages themed around that.
But just like the sprites they made of these guys, how they're just...
kind of like bigger than Mega Man, they're kind of intimidating.
(35:00):
It's like I used to like draw these guys or make up these things like in my spare time.
um One of them mainly I think was, is there like a scorpion or like a reptile one?
It might have been on the Game Boy Mega Man that specifically I had.
I would draw him a lot.
It's hard to, I'm not, it's weird that my memory will, I'll have things in my brain thatI'll never,
(35:26):
about certain things and then other things I can't like I don't you know I don't knowevery Mega Man robot master off the top of my head but anyway so wood man I liked him he's
just a big log looking guy and I like his level because I levels I like something aboutrobots and plants and when they combined it it's you're just in these level with these
(35:51):
like big robot trees and like sharp metal leaves I'm assuming
um So Woodman, he's not too difficult and his power and the other great thing about theMega Man game is just all these power-ups you get and that was like that was just the fun
of it to you to then have this power-up and now you got seven more bosses to go try outand see who's weak.
(36:14):
Some of it you might want to have it make sense like I've got this big metal saw blade Ibet this would chop up Woodman pretty good.
Spoiler alert you're right.
But then it's like other games it might be like if you took
this one you might if you had like heat man's weapon you might think that it might be goodon bubble man because he's kind of like a water type thing and again i don't know off the
(36:34):
top of my head specifically which does what to what boss i mean i can tell you you're inpretty good shape if you start with metal man and get the metal blade that's very op uh
but back to wood man wood man you get the leaf shield
So it's not a direct weapon.
It surrounds you in little leaves that you can throw as a weapon.
(36:56):
But I find it most handy to just have a shield, usually for like those, either like thelittle froggy things in a Bolo Man's level or those birds that drop the eggs and then a
bunch of little birds come out, especially if you're on like a ladder and you don't wantto fall down.
I use leaf shield on that.
(37:16):
I won't, I'll just kind of poke around at these.
I'll mention every single.
Robot Master and their weapon, but other than that I'll just try to peek at their levels alittle bit You know it's a this being an audio medium.
I can't Tell you how nice some of these levels look without you seeing them but for theNES and especially for Mega Man 2 Compared to even like end of the life like Mega Man 5
(37:39):
and 6 ah The levels just look so great.
There's like shine to them.
There's like shadows.
There's things going on in the background
And then again, that's the designs of the bosses and the sprites and the enemiesthemselves.
And like I said, specifically, can tell that this was just like I said before, a passionproject.
(38:01):
All right, so we got Woodman.
I like his little metal forest.
We've got Airman and Airman gives you the air shooter.
Nothing huge about Airman and his level.
Some of these are pretty short in Mega Man 2 as far as the levels, but one of them, theycan just have one spot.
They can just get you for like a day if you can't make it through some of these or if youdon't have the special items.
(38:27):
But special items aside, uh Airman's got some disappearing platforms and stuff.
Just Airman itself, you can assume you're going to be like in the sky and that can betough on Mega Man games.
He's got it good, he moves really good.
Like he doesn't slide around like, like, and like, uh it doesn't fall like a brick like inCastlevania or slide around sometimes like Mario can do.
(38:50):
um Mega Man kind of goes where you want him.
The issue is you're on a tiny little block and you've got six things coming at you fromsix different directions, just kind of floating across the screen to you.
And um if you don't shoot him or jump in the right spot, then Mega Man will hit him and hewill fall like a brick.
Airman gives you the air shooter.
Another next boss will say Heatman.
(39:14):
And I like that level too.
I like fire themed levels.
Looks like you get atomic fire from Heatman.
He's got a very, very tough level if you don't have these special items, the like rocketthat shoots you across.
It's these disappearing blocks.
They form and then they disappear.
(39:35):
And just like any NES game, even the sprites and everything, it's like when I tell my kidswhen they're frustrated playing old games, I'm like, they're going to be in the same spot.
I mean, in Mega Man's case, you can tap backwards for like three seconds and they'll allreappear, which can be frustrating from behind and all that stuff.
But, um you know, with these blocks, these vanishing blocks, you've got to just kind ofsit there and see the pattern.
(39:59):
And it can be hard because there's so much progression.
You're moving to the right so much that you can't...
just sit there and study the pattern.
You've got to make it across six blocks and see where seven, eight, nine are going to goas you die and now know where those are for the next time.
But again, if you have a special item, you can hop on a rocket and you can shoot acrossthe lava like it's nothing.
Um, I don't think I ever had that.
(40:19):
I feel like that was one of my tough levels.
And we'll get into that when we talk about awards.
Um, flash man, he's all right.
He gives you time stopper and that's kind of unique.
You know, a of these weapons are just like going to maybe shoot something kind of themed.
to the boss but then some of them just kind of do different things like leaf shield andtime stoppers cool it just like stops time essentially all the sprites freeze and um
(40:45):
whatever the boss I know whoever the boss is it's weak to that use time stop and I thinkit just takes 80 % of their life out and then you just pop them again a few times with
your buster uh quick man that was another tough level quick man gives you the quickboomerang
And it's fun when you, cause you always just have that, you know, the regular blaster thatjust kind of shoots your little pellets.
(41:09):
So when you get something like a boomerang that kind of does like an arc and kind of givesyou more of a hit range, same, obviously the same with metal blade we'll get to, but you
get the quick boomerang and the hard thing about quick man, there's no item one, you know,none of the items will help you through this is those laser floors.
And those didn't end in mega man.
They kept coming and
(41:31):
They became easier to me, I think at least, when you had slide, which you don't have inMega Man 2.
So quick, that was another one, you gotta just get to the bottom, you gotta keep jumpingdown past these laser beams that shoot across the screen and then fill up.
ah So that is considered a tough level for me as well.
(41:51):
uh Crash Man, he gives you the crash bomber and those are of like sticky bombs.
So it's cool, it's another kind of thing, you can like shoot it and it sticks and then itblows up.
Another tough level for me is those like ladder.
There's a lot of ladders and then it has kind of these like platforms.
You start in bottom right.
(42:12):
You got to zigzag, jump on a platform, zigzag your way through the air while these thingsare coming, you know, spawning left and right.
And then you got to get up to the top left ladder.
There's a couple of screens of ladders and if you know Mega Man ladders, as soon as youhit something, you blink blink blink and fall, go.
So leaf shield's good on that stage if you have it.
(42:33):
like I said, yep, crash bomb there.
Next we got Bubbleman.
He gives you, I guess, bubble lead.
I guess it would be bubble lead.
I like that stage as well.
Like a water themed stage.
I know I like the waterfall parts.
almost too much kind of flashing, you know, because they put all the detail into thewater.
(42:57):
It's got little like robot frogs too.
And, uh, that's where like it's an underwater level.
At some point you're underwater and thank the maker.
You're not doing any sort of weird swimming.
If anything, you can jump higher underwater, but it plays just like regular mega man.
Um, but then they're like, you think you can jump higher until we bought a bunch of spikesall over the ceiling.
(43:20):
So that's a harder part of that level.
But I really liked bubble man's design.
He's just, uh like, I like all the
frog looking robots in that level.
like Airman's design.
I think he's got the big fan in the middle of them.
So again, I just love these robot designs.
I would draw and make up my own.
It's sweet to just kind of pick a theme, kind of make a simple kind of robot around it.
(43:43):
And last but not least, we're talking Metal Man and his metal blade.
And the fact you can throw that thing up, down, left, right, and diagonal, and the factthat it hurts.
I swear at least half the bosses um and it's definitely OP.
um So there and then you get along the way you get items item one item two item three andthose are your kind of fancy helper items and those predates where Mega Man's gonna go in
(44:16):
Mega Man 3 when you get your good boy rush and you know what makes
a game better just last week we were talking about a bullion is dog with secretiveevermore and here we are again i mean not in this game but a couple of things you know
mega man one and two almost kind of stand on their own because i feel like when they addedmore things in three and beyond it did kind of change it from what it ever would be again
(44:45):
and mainly like the charge up your charge up blaster because i feel like once they broughtthe charge out blaster out
You were playing the entire game, blinking, charged up, ready to let your big gun out.
Yeah, it came across an enemy.
And then, I mean, they added things like slide and they added a rush, but they also addedgood gaming and story development type things too with like Proto Man.
(45:13):
And, you know, they start to get into more stories as far as Mega Man and family and...
you know, Dr.
Light and what else he, other robots he made and things like that.
so shout out again to Rush, my good boy.
And it may be a reason why this game isn't my favorite.
(45:33):
Maybe it's one of the other ones, maybe because Rush is in it.
Maybe it's the one I played more.
Maybe Top Man's my favorite robot master and I'll take it to the grave just because he wasthe one I could beat when I was like six or whatever.
ah So anyway, you beat all your robot masters just like any Mega Man game and you're gonnahead to Wileys Castle and just like any Mega Man game, know, eventually you're gonna fight
(45:57):
all those robot masters again.
So keep track of what you did on what and what you used on who.
But Wileys Castle itself has a couple of like mini bosses and there are tough spots inthat castle as well.
A lot more of the...
moving in the air on a platform with uh sprites coming at you.
(46:18):
I feel like that is always kind of the toughest to me because it's a matter of shooting,jumping, and landing back on the platform and what your strategy is for that.
And it's like you think you could just kill them all, but it's like they spawn just asquick as you kill them.
So it's like, do you want to just try and avoid them so that more don't spawn on the leftside of the screen?
Try to keep them on the right?
You know, there's a lot of that strategy too.
(46:40):
But Wiley's stage itself has
Like a dragon mini boss and these are like huge.
They're not just your little kind of Robot masters so you're jumping you're jumping alongthese platforms brick at a time and this dragon comes chasing you from behind I Just
remember that the first time I played that it was just like I think I just dropped anddied because I just got suddenly scared so quick of this big dragon chasing me and all the
(47:09):
Side note on all those parts of games where something's on the left like chasing youtowards the right I don't know why they just give me crazy anxiety, but I like them and
Another you know mini boss.
You've got like a room that kind of throws bricks at you.
It's almost like the like the tiles in uh Link to the past when you're on the floor, andit's like throwing tiles at you
(47:35):
kind of reminds me of that.
So you avoid like a room that's throwing itself at you, I guess, and that's a boss.
And then the other one is like a big giant like robot tank guy.
Again, just drawn really well, bright, colorful, like they have thick black lines aroundthings that will give it the illusion of like a cartoon.
um I like that in games.
(47:56):
I just like the style of it.
It's almost like I really love the style of Yoshi's Island.
and how that looks like a cartoon with like big brush strokes and big thick borders onthings.
And it almost kind of went with things like Mega Man comics and Mega Man cartoons.
You I I talked about how much I like the slowdown, you know, we talked about the slide thefeature games, you know, you had six on the NES and um The difference between that going
(48:27):
into Mega Man X which I'd love to talk about someday as well um And then like the otherthings like I like Mega Man X how you start to build up your armor visually like
on the screen you start to get whatever shoulder pads and helmets and things like that.
(48:47):
Whereas in these games it's still cool because you're like you change color.
That was another like fun part.
It's like every time you kill a boss like what color is Mega Man gonna turn and sometimesI would play the game with my favorite color.
Didn't matter what the weapon was.
You know the things you do when you're younger.
I think we're going to wrap it up as far as gameplay.
(49:09):
We're going to talk about some awards.
We're going to gush more on some levels.
I don't have any real cheats.
uh Mega Man's like another big uh speed running game.
And it's like, it's weird how many rules people will have as far as when they're speedrunning.
em You know, I used to play this game.
(49:30):
I think I had one of those controllers.
It was like you could flip a little switch.
to do like an auto fire, like a rapid fire.
You flip a little switch and then all you had to do was hold down fire and it would justrapid fire.
But it's more fun to just tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
You know, with the controls in this game being so simple, you're moving and you jump andshoot.
(49:51):
And it's like, you know, sometimes I do these, uh these like boots, cause I do like some3D printing and stuff.
So these like fairs when me and the kids will sell some stuff and ah
I'll have a Nintendo, a little mini set up there with a TV and just for kids to come overand play.
And they always, they always pick it up with the cord on the bottom.
(50:14):
So they're holding it upside down.
And I'm just like, it might cause I'm like the lack of joysticks.
Maybe they don't know what to do, but I'm just like, man, you go back to that simple.
like it wasn't rounded.
was like square solid square controller, but it just, it feels so good in the hands.
feels so firm.
(50:36):
Anyway, we're going to talk about some awards.
Let's get into it.
(51:02):
Alright, someday I will get some comments and awards from you guys or my cats.
But in the meantime, let's do award number one.
I got three awards.
Sometimes it'll be hardest level, sometimes it'll be favorite level, sometimes maybeprettiest level.
Right now I'm going to talk about my personal favorite track from this game.
(51:23):
ah I wish I could just play all of them back to back for you guys, but I don't think I'mlegally allowed to do any of that.
ah It's kind of, I mean, my favorite, think is also the internet's favorite and it's WileyStage 1.
That's when you first go into Wiley's castle.
(51:45):
I also really like, is it Woodman?
Yeah, it's Woodman's stage.
I don't know why.
And I forget that jingle now, but I just remember I really liked that one.
But Wiley Stage 1 is like the stuff you can work out to.
You heard it once already and I'm going to play it some more.
yeah, you're running on the treadmill?
(52:12):
How can you not just tap your foot?
Alright, ah I'll just play it again.
Alright, let's just keep going No, okay.
So that's my favorite track and I do have there's a huge community of like Mega Man musicremixes like techno DJs and stuff and it's like it's insane some of that stuff It's like
(52:40):
you were doing that with a 16-bit Nintendo.
How many tones did you have?
I don't even know like six
And it's like, no one's given these guys like props.
And I'm not either because I didn't look up the names, but I'm sure like people know theseguys.
But it's like, man, these guys sitting back then in headphones on and just composing thesekinds of things.
(53:04):
Like, I just thank you all you guys and keep that music going and go listen to that see astar song to the boss fight and see a stars.
I'll play that someday.
Next award.
I'm going to do hardest level for me and I've got two of them here and I mentioned it andit's going to be between Heatman and Quickman and by the way, I'm so bad at this.
(53:27):
I just have like papers everywhere.
Are you supposed to podcast like with things on the screen?
Cause I have like papers and I've got like a quill over here.
I'll get the hang of this eventually.
So hardest level is, you know, so we'll say personal.
It's going to be between Quickman and it's laser floors and it's going to be betweenHeatman and it's vanishing blocks.
(53:48):
And it's so it's like it would be heat man 1000 % if you didn't have your rocket slide aspecial item.
So it's like I could say it could be quick man because there is no special item to get youby those floor lasers any faster.
um But just based on the amount of skill.
(54:14):
It takes to do the heat man section of the vanishing blocks without item one or whateveritem number is I think it might be two it slides you across I'm gonna give that one to
heat man uh You are there's other levels of vanishing blocks and other Mega Man games tooand like I was saying the tough part is you can't just be like, okay, there's One two
(54:40):
three and it has this I can hear the sound in my head
Sometimes I think I wake up at night.
I shoot up out of bed and I sit up with that like vanishing block noise ah So I'm gonnagive it to heat man.
You're gonna get a little clapping You're all right.
You're a cool boss, too.
I like he was like kind of built big like kind of looks I Like that how intimate how smallmega man can look next to some of the bosses and they only get better down the road as far
(55:09):
as the creativity there's just no end to
robot masters, some worse than others.
so again, hardest level heat man, try that without your secret little American cheats theygave us because we're not good at video games.
ah And we'll move on to the third award is kind of a giveaway.
(55:30):
Maybe we could do something else, but I did the most OP weapon and man is it that metalblade.
I wonder if they could go back.
If this was a modern game.
like a modern indie game, if they would go back and nerf the metal blade at all.
Cause I think it's like they threw it, you he's got it in Smash and it's like, cause theyknew how popular it was.
(55:53):
And that was the thing about these games too, is you couldn't, you release these games,you put them in a cart and you sent them out in the world.
And that was it.
Game breaking things, good or bad.
ah They were just part of it.
And they've just continued to just kind of be part of the uh
or like the community around old games ah between things like they can't change.
(56:17):
I like a lot of the bad translations that they had on like the NES games, Ghostbustersespecially, conflagrations or something.
ah But you know that was that's kind of what made these these things like real art.
It's like you make art you put it out there.
(56:38):
And you can't take it all back.
George Lucas, you can't take all these Star Wars out of people's homes and only give themyour special editions.
ah He can do that.
They couldn't do that with video games.
So it's like, you got these games and they were yours for better or worse.
So three awards down.
If we want to talk remake slash demake, we're talking an NES game, but when we talk futuregames, I like to think of them because demakes are kind of cool and popular and I like
(57:07):
them.
But as far as like a remake, there's no reason for a remake because after Mega Man 1through 6, we're going to go right into Mega Man X, which is a top tier when it comes to
NES to SNES on these video games.
Like I said, right along with Castlevania, Metroid, trying to think of like all their IP.
(57:33):
There was just like 8-bit here and now 16-bit here and gorgeous.
So again, Super Nintendo, like I said, you give that to a little kid and they won't justsay, ooh, look at this old game.
They might just say, neat, it's Mario.
Let me try playing it.
um So no remake needed, no demake needed.
And when it comes to Mega Man 2, of course, that game rules.
(57:57):
For sure.
um sorry with all the ums and uhs, I'm trying to keep the podcast clean.
So I think you should be able to listen to it.
Or I appreciate a podcast.
I can at least just have odd around the house that isn't full on cussing or like truecrime murder and all that kind of stuff.
So all my pauses or all my uhs are probably replacing what would be like a cuss word, but,um, you know, keep it clean, let it play around your kids and.
(58:26):
Let them hear how good these games are.
um With that said, we'll get out of it.
We'll be done.
We'll move on.
What do you guys want to talk about next week?
I was thinking of doing a Sega game.
I'm just trying to get some intro episodes out.
But I'm also trying to, number one, talk about games I can just talk about for sure.
(58:48):
You know, when it comes to, I do some sort of research, but I don't, obviously, I don'twrite a lot out.
have like,
notes and then I pick it and then I just kind of ramble about it and maybe someone likesit out there but you know I like natural sounding podcasts when it comes to when I when I
(59:09):
started looking into this or just kind of doing it as a hobby it's because I wanted to Iwanted to do it I wanted to learn it I want to learn you know I wanted to learn audio
editing video editing website making and all the stuff I don't do in life I'm a machinistby trade
So I just do whatever manly metal type work that I hate.
(59:32):
ah it's like, so all this tech stuff I'm trying to learn and all they want to do when itcomes to making anything nowadays is just have AI do it for you.
And I hate that.
So I'm trying to learn all this on my own.
But so I could just have AI take all my us and ums out and take all my spaces out, but Idon't like it.
(59:53):
Like I like them.
Maybe if you guys all I get some complaints I can go in there and do it all myself aswell.
But some of the podcasts I listened to, liked when they were like at the beginning, theywere just sounded like natural and that you were just talking to a guy hanging out or a
girl or just kind of people, you know, talking.
And then as some podcasts progress, they just get almost like too professional.
(01:00:17):
And then it just sounds like you're listening to a newscaster or something.
So forgive my rambling.
Let's wrap up this show here I'll talk about a few more house cleaning things at the end,but I'll try to save all that crap so if you guys are are good if you like some of that
game chat or some of that nostalgia chat you can click off now, but uh Let's just go oversome outro stuff.
(01:00:39):
I just want to thank you guys again You three cats sitting on the floor over there youguys made it through another episode ah
If you are listening to this and you like it or you don't like it send me messages thatgame rules at gmail.com Again, that'll be my best bet right now um Try shooting over to
(01:00:59):
patreon.com slash that game rules and again if I have any of this stuff set up Feel sayhey good job in your head to me.
So I don't I don't know what I'm doing I feel like to um I like the podcast when youlisten to them at the beginning and they're like we're
We have no ads.
are completely ad free.
then 30 seconds later is like a cut in ad because they're like popular now and makingmoney and stuff.
(01:01:23):
I mean, good for them.
And like good for me if you ever hear like ads on this, uh, I guess, but again, I don't,not that I'm rich by any means, uh, but it's like, this was just kind of for fun, but I
like to keep it going.
mean, I bought
The cheapest mic I'm YouTube and things I have used equipment I don't have like even thismic here on my desk.
(01:01:48):
It's like when you're at podcast mics, you know, I got a cheap one based on like reviewsand looking up what a good cheap podcast mic is.
But it's like, you see all the fancy ones on like the big arm swinging arm things thatpeople have in like podcasts.
And I was like, no, you don't get that yet.
You're not just going to buy yourself into like cool besides are like 200 plus dollars orsomething.
(01:02:10):
um
I'm not the type of guy to just be like, I'm not going to pay to win.
I'm going to earn my keep in this podcast world.
uh Again, send in your stuff.
Again, I have no experience.
um I am hoping to get better and I can change the format around.
(01:02:30):
I'll try to dial in my thoughts a bit more.
um I'm excited for any sort of comments and reviews.
Nowhere and I just mean like you guys talking to me I don't know if you guys rate mypodcast anywhere any of that like stuff or Subscribing or all these things that people are
(01:02:51):
asking for I don't know about any of that you probably need that kind of stuff to be asuccessful podcast, but I'm just trying to Put a piece of myself out there and I may have
said before just kind of maybe give my kids something to listen to when I'm gone someday
But again, I'm bad at editing.
I'm figuring it out.
(01:03:12):
I don't like re-listen to this podcast.
I do like a quick edit and I send it into the ether.
And um that's just kind of how I like it.
I feel like if you micromanage that kind of stuff too much, then you could just be at itfor days.
So again, I want it to be natural and kind of my goal, I guess, would be to get to ahundred episodes.
(01:03:32):
I know that's two plus years and it's quite tough because my schedule is super full withkids and work.
But I also read some sort of statistic that said like 94 % of podcasts don't last to 100episodes and that makes sense if you've ever listened to a podcast and it like 12 episodes
(01:03:52):
and then it was gone.
But again, this is just a hobby.
I'm going to keep putting them out there if you keep liking it.
I teased what I want to do next week.
It may be a Sega game, but we'll see.
because I do want to do like a World of Warcraft episode, specifically 2006 to 2010 when Iplayed it.
(01:04:16):
It's hard to say, like talk about retro games when this game is still around.
It's definitely not the game it was now when I played it, but we'll see.
It's going to be Sega, Sega something, or it's going to be a Warcraft next week.
But either way, I'm looking forward to it.
And we'll wrap it up.
we'll get out here again thanks for listening cats thanks for listening humans and we'llsee you on the next one
(01:04:51):
Get out of here, cats.
Hello friends.
Welcome to another episode of that game rules.
This ain't your dad's podcast or maybe it is.
I'm a dad.
I'm your host scuba Steve.
Thank you for listening.
Every week here, we're going to pick a game.
We're going to travel back in time, talk about all the movies, shows, toys that surroundthat game.
(00:46):
Then we'll get into the game, go over vitals, box art, characters, levels, check out somecomments, reviews, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
At the end we'll give this game some awards, talk about remake versus demake, anddetermine once and for all if that game rules.
Thanks again for listening.
Today we're talking about Mega Man 2.
(01:08):
Have any of you ever chewed through an old Nintendo controller to get to the gooey copperygoodness on the inside?
Because I feel like playing this game when I was a kid, I might have done that.
And it's a good thing they make those little
NES controllers as durable as they were.
isn't no you drop a PS5 controller You might have some issues, but I think those NEScontrollers can Make it through drywall.
(01:36):
You chuck one of those things hard enough Anyway, we're gonna waste some time togethertoday If anybody wants to get a hold of me the best way to do that currently is that game
rules at gmail.com
Tell me the games you want to talk about.
Send me your memories, your favorite games, levels, bosses, cheats, any of old playgroundstuff we used to talk about.
(01:58):
I'm currently working on a website, but I'm also learning that, uh self teaching myselfthat at the same time I'm trying to teach myself how to podcast.
So I have that at thatgamerules.com and I'm hoping to get that set up so I can get somenewsletters out.
to let you guys know the games that are coming up so that you can then send me all yourinfo on those and get it read on the show.
(02:20):
Also currently setting up a free Patreon just as a place to kind of collect everything andit may be the best place to do things like voting polls so you guys can tell me the games
you want to hear about.
I don't have any social media stuff going yet and it's hard to kind of keep all thosetogether so I'm going to stick stuff up on Patreon eventually it'll be patreon.com slash
(02:46):
that game rules again that's all going to be free this is just a passion project for me soI appreciate all you guys who are listening shout out to a couple listeners right now
we're going to shout out Raichu and Zelda and Wanda
because those are our three cats and are currently the only listeners of the show becauseI haven't posted any of this out yet.
(03:11):
um But if you haven't noticed those are our three cats and yes it's Raichu.
um He was adopted but he already had that name as a Pokemon and then of course Zelda wasmy oldest daughter's cat.
I suggested that name she loved it and Wanda is my wife's cat and she is uh Wanda Maximofftechnically so.
(03:33):
My wife is a big Scarlet Witch fan, out of nowhere.
Thank you WandaVision.
So what have I been up to before we get into the game and the time warp?
It is currently June 5th, so my Switch 2 is upstairs right now downloading Mario KartWorld, so I will be playing that.
(03:54):
I've been playing some Mega Man 2 of course, and other than that gaming wise I'm just busywith a lot of...
uh
end of the year school stuff with the kids.
know, carnivals and field days and all those kinds of things.
So they're running me wild.
but we're past the intro.
We're going to get right into a time warp.
(04:15):
know that my podcast can kind of seem like, did you ever see that episode of South Park?
Like the member berries where I just kind of rattle off.
Hey, do you remember that?
That was cool.
Hey, remember this?
That was cool.
But my whole life and I feel like m
The way I talk a lot of times is almost just based entirely on movie and TV showreferences and video games and you know that's just part of my personality.
(04:41):
But we'll start by getting right into a time warp.
We're talking Mega Man 2.
We're gonna go back to 1988.
Let's get this baby going.
(05:06):
Man that synth just screams 1988 doesn't it today's time warp is brought to you by Tigerelectronic handheld gaming systems Listen to me kids of the 80s 90s.
Do you like Power Rangers?
Do you like Mortal Kombat X-Men Sonic you like Space Jam?
Do you like Lion King Jurassic Park Aladdin?
(05:30):
Do you like all those things and would you love them in video game form?
Well, get ready to have your parents and grandparents disappoint you on every singlebirthday and Christmas when they give you one of these Tiger electronic handhelds.
um The packaging is beautiful on these things.
When you'd walk down, I walked down the aisle at Kmart, I'd be eyeing these things, eventhough I knew they were just going to make me angry.
(05:54):
But the packaging looks great.
They were cheap.
I think they were like 15 bucks back then, you know, so aunts, uncles, grandparents wouldsee these things and they'd pick these things up for you guys.
and you're talking static screen, hold that thing in the sun if you want to see whatyou're doing.
You know the way those screens worked it was just they just had pre-placed graphics andyou could only you could only do so much in Mortal Kombat.
(06:19):
I mean if you you know hold that thing in the sun push your thumb down on that screen andyou can see all the little moves that you could do eventually you could squish it down and
see Johnny Cage's eight leg motions he has.
I was trying to think like if there was any of those that really worked for me or any ofthem that I really liked but I don't think so.
(06:41):
I think we just had those and it was almost like use your imagination with these thingsand on top of that they took batteries and why would you want to put batteries in those
when I've got my game gear eating up six batteries every three minutes or your you knowyour Game Boy with your four batteries.
It's almost like let's take a Game Boy and demake it.
(07:02):
It's like almost like here's a little etch a sketch just kind of draw what you thinkyou're doing on these games But anyway, if you don't know what those are if you're younger
Take a look at some of those because they are pretty and of course like anything else Alsoold people grew up with there's a huge collector market for those as well But thank you
fake sponsor tiger electronics.
(07:23):
I think they're still out there nowadays even probably some new games, but Let's talk 1988this game, you know, we'll get into it
But as far as things surrounding Mega Man 2, 1988, we'll talk movies.
We've got, man, a lot of classics for me.
And, you know, I know as I go through all these years and as we get more episodes in, I'mnot just gonna rattle off movies.
(07:46):
I'll probably pick some to maybe do a small little memory or deep dive on.
And, heck, eventually I'd love to do maybe like a That Movie Rules kind of episodes foryou guys as well, especially the video game movies.
But anyway, let's talk some movies that meant a lot to me, uh even now or then.
Beetlejuice, um of course, and the kids are huge fans of that now as well.
(08:09):
My youngest daughter with the new show Wednesday on Netflix, she's into that.
So as far as just kind of timber in kind of uh creepiness, and my kids were always kind ofraised on that.
I didn't hide, um you know, movies or shows from them if you're there to...
Supervise or the parental guidance of the parental guidance ratings, but I mean I'd showmy young kids We were watching stuff like Bealejuice or both my daughters loved Coraline
(08:38):
growing up And just kind of these you know let your kids kind of see the darkness let themwork through their fears Don't hide that stuff from them Die Hard came out Naked Gun of
course Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
I'd love to talk about that movie again someday
A lot of those movies back then fall along the lines of...
(09:01):
At one point they only, they didn't have a PG-13, so you had PG like straight to R, and alot of those movies kind of walk that line between enough to keep adults entertained and
maybe kids entertained, but it's the kind of things you watch now when you're likecatching jokes as an adult, that you know, but hey, if you didn't, you didn't catch it
(09:22):
when you a kid, then that's the point.
You know, back then they had those kind of movies that...
kids would sit through but they were made for adults whereas nowadays they make movieslike you know the Pixar like the Incredibles or these kind of movies that are made for
kids but have this stuff for adults to be able to sit through.
We also had Willow a classic to me kind of all those movies like Willow, Labyrinth, uh howwas the other one?
(09:49):
Neverending Story those kind of movies.
um Land Before Time a big cartoon.
in my house when I was a kid and then some of my favorites that more now I rememberwatching Child's Play when I was a kid and being terrified but I love that and I love kind
of where Chucky's gone with his ridiculousness another show that my youngest daughterwatched with my wife the new Chucky show which is not for an 11 year old at all but like I
(10:17):
said if you're there with your kids experiencing these things together you can you knowyou work those things out
you answer questions they may have.
And then another classic favorite for me that we've all watched with my kids forever isKiller Clowns from Outer Space.
And I think there's a new game if it hasn't come out yet already for that.
But watch that movie with your kids.
(10:39):
And it's weird because nowadays my oldest daughter is 20 and she will sit there and she'llget together with my son 13, my youngest daughter 11, and between those three it's like an
episode of Mystery Science Theater.
They watch these bad horror movies and just rip on them the whole time.
And I think it's quite endearing for me.
uh TV shows, 1988 ish.
(11:02):
Count Duckula, shout out to you.
It's random.
ah Garbage Pail Kids.
I think that was a TV show, you know, maybe for a season, but it was based on those cardsand which are terrible.
Look up some of those.
Another thing, there's a huge collector market for just all the cool stuff.
Might have been peak humanity, 80s, 90s, because all this stuff is, it's like worth somuch to us.
(11:27):
And like anytime I say something based on pricing on collector items or anything, it's theprice is based off of what people will pay.
You know, there's no value technically in it at all, besides what someone is willing topay for that, you know, based on how much they might want something that they grew up
with.
Also shout out Wonder Years.
(11:48):
You know, when you were a kid,
And growing up in, and your parents had control of the TV, very few channels.
from then you just kind of got stuck watching what they were watching.
And sometimes it was good.
Sometimes it's, you know, boring as a kid, but then you grow up and you find out theseshows were pretty great.
You know, wonder years was one of them.
then huge shout out to Roseanne, which, was a show I just grew up with because my momwatched it, but I, I love.
(12:16):
that show.
loved all those shows I grew up with and I really feel like they molded me as a father, asa husband.
All these, the other shows, had Roseanne, which I love how they, between Roseanne andMarried with Children, they just brought kind of the dirt of families.
It wasn't this clean cookie cutter, you know, leave it to beaver stuff.
(12:40):
You know, Roseanne's house was dirty and they talked and ragged on each other in dirtylanguage and same with like married with children.
Um, which I loved, home improvement.
loved fresh Prince of Bel Air.
I will still watch some of those episodes and I'll, I'll tear up now, like the homeimprovement episode where, old JTT, he gets some sort of disease or something.
(13:03):
It's one of those like serious episodes, not quite like.
The old Save by the Bell episodes where they'd all stand out at like the end and like adrug episode and everyone would like talk to you about how serious that episode was.
It wasn't like that, but they were still like these kind of emotional episodes.
The one in Fresh Prince is besides like the final episode where like the set's empty isthe one where Will Smith, uh, like he's talking about his dad or something and now his dad
(13:31):
doesn't want him.
And, uh, that one'll like get me every time if I see it.
And you know, I really like Will Smith as an actor despite the last couple of years.
But did anybody else have like just mom shows or like mom movies that were just on thatlike, again, I grew up with a single mom.
So there are movies I love that I shouldn't as a 40 something year old man.
(13:53):
I love Pretty Woman.
I love Overboard with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.
I love Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead.
Just all these movies that were just kind of on in the background that are just kind ofI'll watch if they're on now We'll keep moving on to toys and when I say toys we're
(14:13):
talking 1988 and if you don't think that every kid in 1988 boy anyway Was was going forthose Ninja Turtle figures, man?
We're talking the blimp.
We're talking the big sewer set the eh the pizza little pizza discs chuck-and-van
I all that stuff, which I still did.
(14:33):
I know in particular that blimp's worth a lot because it was like a blow up balloon.
So you don't see a lot of those um in good condition anymore.
But I mean, when you're talking 1988, the toys, the popular toys at that time were allthese 80 toys.
G.I.
Joe, Star Wars figures were still big then.
Cabbage Patch dolls were huge.
(14:55):
that think Cabbage Patch dolls kind of started the
The mall madness kind of scenes, the moms punching each other for toys, that was kind ofpre-Tickle Me Elmo.
um The Black Friday type stuff.
ah I think it's the same kind of concept they used in like Jingle All the Way withTurboman Doll as far as it's probably more of a reference to Cabbage Patch dolls.
(15:22):
Although I like the fact in that movie they always have like the booster dolls availableand like nobody wants it and that's kind of how it was if you
wanted a certain toy, was gone, but then there was shelves and shelves of these other sidecharacters that nobody wanted to deal with.
Video games out when we're talking 1998.
This is the Nintendo era.
(15:43):
So all those were out.
We're talking Mario 2, 3, Blaster Master, Ghouls and Ghosts.
Another favorite of mine were like the Dragon Quest games, which may...
I mean, we're talking NES RPGs.
Excuse me, ah like Final Fantasy one is is like tough to get through it's just like uhLike they didn't know What they were doing?
(16:10):
I don't remember I don't remember much about Final Fan is the first one on the NES theFinal Fantasy besides like I Didn't like it.
So maybe I'll give that another run through that was a long time ago um Also a shout outto the recent I forget the name of it and it might be level up it's like a new show with
Little kind of stories of video games and they have one of Mega Man And it's only like 10minutes long, but it's like can we just make that a full movie, please?
(16:40):
It very like Astro Boy-esque quality to it that's a movie I like So shout out to that andgo watch that if you haven't We're gonna get into Mega Man 2 and when I
started this podcast I knew I wanted to talk about box art because that was like I say alot just how all you had to judge a game by and I knew I couldn't wait to get to Mega Man
(17:10):
and Mega Man 2 as far as box art they might be like the most famously terrible and Ifreaking love them for that so let's get into this box art
So Mega Man 2 is just like Mega Man 1 as far as it's like a guy in a suit.
(17:31):
Although Mega Man 1 is drawn so terribly.
I didn't look up too much of the history on that, but I know that it was like the artistwas given, think on the first one, like two hours to like draw up something he had no idea
about.
oh But as far as the Mega Man 2 cover, you've had human males in these like costumes.
(17:52):
And it's like a guy's got a helmet and for some reason there's no blaster.
It's a gun.
And I think the artist said that like that's what America, um you know, whatever, Capcom,Nintendo, whoever it was in America for American audiences said, give that guy a gun.
Because in Japan, he's known as Rockman.
There's also um for this, have like titles after their games.
(18:17):
I forget which this one was because it's like Rockman 2 caption.
fights bad guys or whatever it is but none of the the Mega Man games here ever had thoseand I do like Mega Man better I think it just kind of rolls off the tongue a little bit
more with the double M's there so again the box art I mean I like kind of the platform youknow I like the background of it beside you take the kind of guys out of it and it's like
(18:43):
it's cool how they took you know the 2D NES level it kind of looks like maybe flame man'slevel
Heatman, sorry You know, I'm not sure but North America North American box art guy wasMark Erickson.
So sorry guy, but um I Love it.
(19:05):
And as far as the back of it, um, nothing too crazy there It's got some good screenshotsas the shot of your eight Robot masters and a quick description.
It doesn't have it.
I like to if I can kind of go over the back of the box description
If there's anything fun or anything translated bad, I like to go over that, but it'spretty uh cut and paste.
(19:27):
You know, another shout out to a lot of these, like I think they were third party, but asfar as like Capcom, like I just remember those games, you know, it's kind of got this
bluish purple border around it.
So, I mean, they had like Chippendale, they had, I think a lot of the Disney stuff wasCapcom, tailspin, maybe, maybe DuckTales, but I just know Capcom was banging back then.
(19:50):
And I can see the logo.
A lot of those games or lot of those old logos when they pop up can hit some nostalgia.
Almost like the same when you watch an old movie and you see a New Line Cinema or theseold kind of production studio logos that aren't around anymore.
uh Like Capcom or some of the other ones.
You'd have the EA Sports or not that Sega was a third party thing, but it pop up with theSega.
(20:17):
So I like all the...
I have distinct memories of those.
uh Mega Man 2, you were...
uh I picked this game out of all the Mega Mans.
It's not my favorite Mega Man, and that could almost change by the day.
ah My specific memory of this is uh playing it over at my great aunt's house.
(20:44):
I had to stay there for, think...
me and my sister two weeks in the summer while my mom was in Germany.
And this lady was old.
I love her, you know, rest in peace, Aunt Lois, but she like, didn't even have, she neverhad kids.
So she didn't even have a TV in the house.
And on top of that, her hobby was like making dolls.
So her living room was just filled with these like dolls.
(21:05):
So I just, had a little TV.
I managed to pack up.
think I had Mario Mega Man 2 and I had Yoshi that NES game.
think it was like a
puzzle game.
It might have been Yoshi's Cookie maybe, but it was like a puzzle type game and I meanthat's all I had for two weeks and when you have two weeks to kill a Mega Man game that
you've never played is a great thing to have.
(21:28):
Well let's just kind of go over some quick little notes here on the game before we getright into gameplay and I get to play some more of that sweet sweet music.
So 1988 Capcom
and it's your basic story, your hero, Mega Man, and his was built by Dr.
Light as a way to fight uh Dr.
(21:50):
Wily and his bad, evil robot masters.
As far as Mega Man 2, know, so Mega Man 1 was tough.
It wasn't received very well, and I think the studio didn't justify any sequels.
They were ready to kill it off, and the development team itself...
worked on their own time, you know, they were approved by some sort of management orsomething, you know, using their own time, essentially using a lot of their own time, but
(22:18):
they were also allowed to work on Mega Man 2 as long as they were working on these othergames, whatever their bosses told them to.
And so you can tell is like Mega Man 2 is like a passion project and it shows and I'm gladthey did it because like every game that's come after that just keeps building on to
the Mega Man legacy you've got your six NES games, you've got five Game Boy games, they'reon Game Gear, they're on Sega, they're on...
(22:46):
uh and that doesn't even start getting into Mega Man X that are some of the best games onthe Super Nintendo.
Mega Man 2 was the best selling Mega Man game for a long time and is now only the secondbest, and that's behind Mega Man 11.
So that just goes to show you...
you know the love for these games or the fact how great Mega Man 2 is that it stayed onthe top number one awesome number two that it got that number eleven way down the road
(23:16):
that was fairly recently is good enough to take the top spot for Mega Man 2 and that'swhen they um they stick with the the same kind of sprites the same kind of graphics and um
I think nine ten eleven they were all good seven I know seven's kind of the weird one
And I know there's a lot of Battle Network stuff type too, but in Mega Man 2, of course, alot of people will say it's the best soundtrack of all the Mega Mans.
(23:45):
And a lot of people argue it's the best soundtrack of all time on the NES.
And I'll let you be the judge of that.
It seems like every Mega Man track in every game is like, it's just amazing what theycould do with the limited technology they had back then.
And it's like the only...
music since then like I don't play a lot of games, but I love like Sea of Stars as far asI'll probably mention that game a lot as far as how I like my new modern RPGs and the You
(24:19):
still this kind of 2d Kind of overlap the backgrounds look great, but just the music inSea of Stars is insanely good And it's just kind of using the same sound bites from all
these old systems
Mega Man 2 because Mega Man 1 was so hard they introduced some new stuff in Mega Man 2 yougot e tanks You have like your floating platform weapon like I and they're item 2 item 3
(24:45):
and 1 but one of them is like a floating platform one of them is like a Shooting platformthat you know one will go to the right and one will go up as far as your platforms and
those can be you know
Having those can be helpful.
They can cheat through a lot of the levels, you know, and it's like if you've never playeda Mega Man game, you can go online and be like, what order do I do the robot masters?
(25:08):
And you could go and run through a Mega Man game in 45 minutes or less.
but you know, when you were, that was when you were back then and you had none of thatknowledge, like that was like the fun of it.
It was finding the order of the masters, what weapon does what to who.
And those are the things that gave you like a sense of accomplishment.
(25:29):
So it's like if you want to run through the game, go ahead and look up that kind of stuff.
Not everybody has the time like we do when we were kids when you had just a full weekendto lose on a game.
We don't have that time.
mean, walkthroughs are fine just to see these games.
But if you really want to experience it, you just go in with nothing and you have to trialand error your way through it.
(25:50):
And like I said, you'll be throwing your controller the whole time when there's somethingabout it because at the end there's just a sense of accomplishment that you don't get
with.
a lot of games nowadays they just try to make it quick and big bright graphics like acasino to make you give you that dopamine fix but when you really work for it obviously it
sticks with you over 30 some years or whatever I'm here and I want to talk about Mega Man2 still so it also introduced the password system so Mega Man 1 didn't have that so that
(26:20):
was a good thing to add to a game that they determined was too difficult so that you couldafter each boss
depending on whatever your order is, can pick back up right where you were anyway.
And I mean that was added again because of consumer complaints of the game being toodifficult.
And then just again, a shout out to Capcom for putting these games out and just like theprogression of these systems, when you talk like NES to SNES,
(26:56):
Look at just look at Mega Man versus Mega Man X and like that's what I love about theSuper Nintendo is it's so just shiny new when they released all these games like Super
Castlevania Super Mario World you had your Mega Mans you just had all these games thatjust looked like you know it had all the all the bones of those NES games and they just
(27:18):
beefed them up and it's so different
From there you go SNES to the 64 and it's almost like back to square one.
Now that we're in 3D they had to go back to these polygon type shapes and of course I lovethe 64 but the weird thing is now it's like young kids now see these 64 games it's just
(27:40):
ugly and terrible but you throw a couple like Super Nintendo games at them they wouldn'tbe able to tell that they weren't just modern games that you have to play with a
controller versus on your phone or whatever.
So again...
Shout out to uh Capcom for keeping it going, making these games happen.
I am going to play some of that amazing music and we're going to get into some straightgame chat, some comments and reviews, and uh enjoy.
(28:37):
Oh, just let it keep playing, hold on.
Don't sue me, Nintendo.
All right, so for some comments and reviews my cats didn't have anything to say so I hadto look at the internet and it's weird I found some um Angry people on reddit, which is
really weird because reddit's usually such like a cheery place to look for gaming reviewsand stuff But again because everybody loves Mega Man 2 and gushes on it I try to find just
(29:05):
some critiques so that we can kind of break it down a little bit so on reddit um We've gota guy and he's got
what he says is an unpopular opinion and that Mega Man 2 is not that great.
He says, big problem is the weapons, they're cool in theory, but so many enemies justdon't take damage from anything but the default buster and one or two special weapons.
(29:28):
And I'll give him, you know, I'll agree with that, but that's assuming you know whatweapons you have and who you're using them on and...
You know, there isn't a set path for the Robot Masters.
You can do it in a few different ways.
A lot of people will start with, uh you know, getting that OP metal saw blade, taking outMetal Man.
(29:58):
There's a reason that that weapon's in Smash Bros.
for Mega Man.
uh And yeah, it's true.
You can walk, like I said, you can run through this game in 40 minutes, 50 minutes if youknow...
Exactly what you're doing and what weapons do what?
But you know as far as a critique I'll take that he says in Mega Man 2 it seems like allthe weapons do a minuscule amount of damage except for one which kills the boss in like
(30:22):
three hits and that's true as well, but it was also when you put in the work You know whenyou were eight years old or something playing this game Going through all these you know
robot masters you pick one first you make it all the thing is you make it all the waythrough this tough stage
As you're going through the stage you can see platforms, e-tanks, free lifeguys that youknow you can't reach now.
(30:45):
So you're like, well, if I had a certain power, if I could get those.
So you start to question if this is the level you should be in or not.
uh But you make it through, you make it to that boss and all you have is your buster, yourlittle, you know, pea shooter.
And you know, you're getting nothing on this boss.
So you just, you work through that whole level, you made it to the boss and you know, andyou can't beat them.
(31:07):
So it's like...
You write that down and then you move on to the next one and it's like as soon as you havelike a new Mega Man game, as soon as you get that first boss down, it's like that's the
dopamine fix.
That's the good feeling right there.
But it is true that there are like, you have the right weapon and you're like tap, tap,tap and that boss explodes.
(31:29):
ah But still satisfying.
He also says, ah everyone complains about this, but it has to be mentioned.
The Wile E stage 4 boss, the little semi-circles on the wall that you can only kill withcrash bombs is such a stupid design decision.
ah That is a tough one.
If you're not in there with enough, um you know, energy filled up with your crash bombpower on that boss in that stage, it can be annoying.
(31:57):
He adds that, you know, the whole second half of this game is more obnoxious than it isfun.
And I guess that depends on if you find obnoxious and hard things fun or not.
ah
You know, my case, like I said, I would get angry.
I'd throw the controller.
I'd throw the controller.
I'd bite the cord.
I'd say, I'm never playing this again and go run off to play with, you know, NinjaTurtles.
(32:19):
But it's like an hour later, I'm like, up click, you know, blow in the cartridge, throwthat thing in there and you go again.
You're like, you know, if it's frustrating you take a break.
Just like anything else in life.
But all these Mega Man games, there's a reason they're worth so much out there.
I want to give a shout out as far as gameplay ah on the Mega Man collections out there.
(32:45):
And I don't know if they have it in the Mega Man collection.
I know they do in the Cowabunga collection for Ninja Turtles.
Like on the NES you can turn off slowdown.
And I would not recommend that.
Like on these older NES games when they got all those sprites on the screen and thatthing's chugging and suddenly Mega Man's moving like Neo from the Matrix.
(33:07):
Like that is, like I love that when there's so much on that actually slows down.
like that.
It feels like a bullet time type of situation.
Um, you know, what we talked about the characters, there's not many, the story on an oldNES game is bad doctor guy.
You're a good robot guy.
Go fight bad robots.
(33:27):
And that's all you needed back then.
There's, there's only so many like
twists in gaming.
So it's not like I would say like, oh, warning, there's spoilers in this podcast.
I guess if I ever do some more modern stuff, I'd let you know.
But on these old games, there's nothing worth spoiling unless like it's kind of likespoiling the biggest like twist surprise, I guess on an NES game with me.
(33:52):
And if you haven't played Metroid, go ahead and skip to 15 seconds.
But when um Samus turns out to be a girl at the end.
I feel like that was my first video game like twist um up until a certain like um FinalFantasy 7 situation that happened in that game that seems to be like a that's I feel like
(34:16):
when I when I played that game is when I was like oh these games can be not what youexpect sometimes uh so I won't spoil that one go play Final Fantasy 7 so we'll get into
the robots.
I don't know if I want to give you guys any sort of...
I'll give you guys my order at some point, but I'm just going to go down the bosses kindof as they appear.
(34:39):
So you got Woodman.
And first of all, I just love these...
just the concept of these robot masters having just a name, having man or whatever, um andjust having like stages themed around that.
But just like the sprites they made of these guys, how they're just...
kind of like bigger than Mega Man, they're kind of intimidating.
(35:00):
It's like I used to like draw these guys or make up these things like in my spare time.
um One of them mainly I think was, is there like a scorpion or like a reptile one?
It might have been on the Game Boy Mega Man that specifically I had.
I would draw him a lot.
It's hard to, I'm not, it's weird that my memory will, I'll have things in my brain thatI'll never,
(35:26):
about certain things and then other things I can't like I don't you know I don't knowevery Mega Man robot master off the top of my head but anyway so wood man I liked him he's
just a big log looking guy and I like his level because I levels I like something aboutrobots and plants and when they combined it it's you're just in these level with these
(35:51):
like big robot trees and like sharp metal leaves I'm assuming
um So Woodman, he's not too difficult and his power and the other great thing about theMega Man game is just all these power-ups you get and that was like that was just the fun
of it to you to then have this power-up and now you got seven more bosses to go try outand see who's weak.
(36:14):
Some of it you might want to have it make sense like I've got this big metal saw blade Ibet this would chop up Woodman pretty good.
Spoiler alert you're right.
But then it's like other games it might be like if you took
this one you might if you had like heat man's weapon you might think that it might be goodon bubble man because he's kind of like a water type thing and again i don't know off the
(36:34):
top of my head specifically which does what to what boss i mean i can tell you you're inpretty good shape if you start with metal man and get the metal blade that's very op uh
but back to wood man wood man you get the leaf shield
So it's not a direct weapon.
It surrounds you in little leaves that you can throw as a weapon.
(36:56):
But I find it most handy to just have a shield, usually for like those, either like thelittle froggy things in a Bolo Man's level or those birds that drop the eggs and then a
bunch of little birds come out, especially if you're on like a ladder and you don't wantto fall down.
I use leaf shield on that.
(37:16):
I won't, I'll just kind of poke around at these.
I'll mention every single.
Robot Master and their weapon, but other than that I'll just try to peek at their levels alittle bit You know it's a this being an audio medium.
I can't Tell you how nice some of these levels look without you seeing them but for theNES and especially for Mega Man 2 Compared to even like end of the life like Mega Man 5
(37:39):
and 6 ah The levels just look so great.
There's like shine to them.
There's like shadows.
There's things going on in the background
And then again, that's the designs of the bosses and the sprites and the enemiesthemselves.
And like I said, specifically, can tell that this was just like I said before, a passionproject.
(38:01):
All right, so we got Woodman.
I like his little metal forest.
We've got Airman and Airman gives you the air shooter.
Nothing huge about Airman and his level.
Some of these are pretty short in Mega Man 2 as far as the levels, but one of them, theycan just have one spot.
They can just get you for like a day if you can't make it through some of these or if youdon't have the special items.
(38:27):
But special items aside, uh Airman's got some disappearing platforms and stuff.
Just Airman itself, you can assume you're going to be like in the sky and that can betough on Mega Man games.
He's got it good, he moves really good.
Like he doesn't slide around like, like, and like, uh it doesn't fall like a brick like inCastlevania or slide around sometimes like Mario can do.
(38:50):
um Mega Man kind of goes where you want him.
The issue is you're on a tiny little block and you've got six things coming at you fromsix different directions, just kind of floating across the screen to you.
And um if you don't shoot him or jump in the right spot, then Mega Man will hit him and hewill fall like a brick.
Airman gives you the air shooter.
Another next boss will say Heatman.
(39:14):
And I like that level too.
I like fire themed levels.
Looks like you get atomic fire from Heatman.
He's got a very, very tough level if you don't have these special items, the like rocketthat shoots you across.
It's these disappearing blocks.
They form and then they disappear.
(39:35):
And just like any NES game, even the sprites and everything, it's like when I tell my kidswhen they're frustrated playing old games, I'm like, they're going to be in the same spot.
I mean, in Mega Man's case, you can tap backwards for like three seconds and they'll allreappear, which can be frustrating from behind and all that stuff.
But, um you know, with these blocks, these vanishing blocks, you've got to just kind ofsit there and see the pattern.
(39:59):
And it can be hard because there's so much progression.
You're moving to the right so much that you can't...
just sit there and study the pattern.
You've got to make it across six blocks and see where seven, eight, nine are going to goas you die and now know where those are for the next time.
But again, if you have a special item, you can hop on a rocket and you can shoot acrossthe lava like it's nothing.
Um, I don't think I ever had that.
(40:19):
I feel like that was one of my tough levels.
And we'll get into that when we talk about awards.
Um, flash man, he's all right.
He gives you time stopper and that's kind of unique.
You know, a of these weapons are just like going to maybe shoot something kind of themed.
to the boss but then some of them just kind of do different things like leaf shield andtime stoppers cool it just like stops time essentially all the sprites freeze and um
(40:45):
whatever the boss I know whoever the boss is it's weak to that use time stop and I thinkit just takes 80 % of their life out and then you just pop them again a few times with
your buster uh quick man that was another tough level quick man gives you the quickboomerang
And it's fun when you, cause you always just have that, you know, the regular blaster thatjust kind of shoots your little pellets.
(41:09):
So when you get something like a boomerang that kind of does like an arc and kind of givesyou more of a hit range, same, obviously the same with metal blade we'll get to, but you
get the quick boomerang and the hard thing about quick man, there's no item one, you know,none of the items will help you through this is those laser floors.
And those didn't end in mega man.
They kept coming and
(41:31):
They became easier to me, I think at least, when you had slide, which you don't have inMega Man 2.
So quick, that was another one, you gotta just get to the bottom, you gotta keep jumpingdown past these laser beams that shoot across the screen and then fill up.
ah So that is considered a tough level for me as well.
(41:51):
uh Crash Man, he gives you the crash bomber and those are of like sticky bombs.
So it's cool, it's another kind of thing, you can like shoot it and it sticks and then itblows up.
Another tough level for me is those like ladder.
There's a lot of ladders and then it has kind of these like platforms.
You start in bottom right.
(42:12):
You got to zigzag, jump on a platform, zigzag your way through the air while these thingsare coming, you know, spawning left and right.
And then you got to get up to the top left ladder.
There's a couple of screens of ladders and if you know Mega Man ladders, as soon as youhit something, you blink blink blink and fall, go.
So leaf shield's good on that stage if you have it.
(42:33):
like I said, yep, crash bomb there.
Next we got Bubbleman.
He gives you, I guess, bubble lead.
I guess it would be bubble lead.
I like that stage as well.
Like a water themed stage.
I know I like the waterfall parts.
almost too much kind of flashing, you know, because they put all the detail into thewater.
(42:57):
It's got little like robot frogs too.
And, uh, that's where like it's an underwater level.
At some point you're underwater and thank the maker.
You're not doing any sort of weird swimming.
If anything, you can jump higher underwater, but it plays just like regular mega man.
Um, but then they're like, you think you can jump higher until we bought a bunch of spikesall over the ceiling.
(43:20):
So that's a harder part of that level.
But I really liked bubble man's design.
He's just, uh like, I like all the
frog looking robots in that level.
like Airman's design.
I think he's got the big fan in the middle of them.
So again, I just love these robot designs.
I would draw and make up my own.
It's sweet to just kind of pick a theme, kind of make a simple kind of robot around it.
(43:43):
And last but not least, we're talking Metal Man and his metal blade.
And the fact you can throw that thing up, down, left, right, and diagonal, and the factthat it hurts.
I swear at least half the bosses um and it's definitely OP.
um So there and then you get along the way you get items item one item two item three andthose are your kind of fancy helper items and those predates where Mega Man's gonna go in
(44:16):
Mega Man 3 when you get your good boy rush and you know what makes
a game better just last week we were talking about a bullion is dog with secretiveevermore and here we are again i mean not in this game but a couple of things you know
mega man one and two almost kind of stand on their own because i feel like when they addedmore things in three and beyond it did kind of change it from what it ever would be again
(44:45):
and mainly like the charge up your charge up blaster because i feel like once they broughtthe charge out blaster out
You were playing the entire game, blinking, charged up, ready to let your big gun out.
Yeah, it came across an enemy.
And then, I mean, they added things like slide and they added a rush, but they also addedgood gaming and story development type things too with like Proto Man.
(45:13):
And, you know, they start to get into more stories as far as Mega Man and family and...
you know, Dr.
Light and what else he, other robots he made and things like that.
so shout out again to Rush, my good boy.
And it may be a reason why this game isn't my favorite.
(45:33):
Maybe it's one of the other ones, maybe because Rush is in it.
Maybe it's the one I played more.
Maybe Top Man's my favorite robot master and I'll take it to the grave just because he wasthe one I could beat when I was like six or whatever.
ah So anyway, you beat all your robot masters just like any Mega Man game and you're gonnahead to Wileys Castle and just like any Mega Man game, know, eventually you're gonna fight
(45:57):
all those robot masters again.
So keep track of what you did on what and what you used on who.
But Wileys Castle itself has a couple of like mini bosses and there are tough spots inthat castle as well.
A lot more of the...
moving in the air on a platform with uh sprites coming at you.
(46:18):
I feel like that is always kind of the toughest to me because it's a matter of shooting,jumping, and landing back on the platform and what your strategy is for that.
And it's like you think you could just kill them all, but it's like they spawn just asquick as you kill them.
So it's like, do you want to just try and avoid them so that more don't spawn on the leftside of the screen?
Try to keep them on the right?
You know, there's a lot of that strategy too.
(46:40):
But Wiley's stage itself has
Like a dragon mini boss and these are like huge.
They're not just your little kind of Robot masters so you're jumping you're jumping alongthese platforms brick at a time and this dragon comes chasing you from behind I Just
remember that the first time I played that it was just like I think I just dropped anddied because I just got suddenly scared so quick of this big dragon chasing me and all the
(47:09):
Side note on all those parts of games where something's on the left like chasing youtowards the right I don't know why they just give me crazy anxiety, but I like them and
Another you know mini boss.
You've got like a room that kind of throws bricks at you.
It's almost like the like the tiles in uh Link to the past when you're on the floor, andit's like throwing tiles at you
(47:35):
kind of reminds me of that.
So you avoid like a room that's throwing itself at you, I guess, and that's a boss.
And then the other one is like a big giant like robot tank guy.
Again, just drawn really well, bright, colorful, like they have thick black lines aroundthings that will give it the illusion of like a cartoon.
um I like that in games.
(47:56):
I just like the style of it.
It's almost like I really love the style of Yoshi's Island.
and how that looks like a cartoon with like big brush strokes and big thick borders onthings.
And it almost kind of went with things like Mega Man comics and Mega Man cartoons.
You I I talked about how much I like the slowdown, you know, we talked about the slide thefeature games, you know, you had six on the NES and um The difference between that going
(48:27):
into Mega Man X which I'd love to talk about someday as well um And then like the otherthings like I like Mega Man X how you start to build up your armor visually like
on the screen you start to get whatever shoulder pads and helmets and things like that.
(48:47):
Whereas in these games it's still cool because you're like you change color.
That was another like fun part.
It's like every time you kill a boss like what color is Mega Man gonna turn and sometimesI would play the game with my favorite color.
Didn't matter what the weapon was.
You know the things you do when you're younger.
I think we're going to wrap it up as far as gameplay.
(49:09):
We're going to talk about some awards.
We're going to gush more on some levels.
I don't have any real cheats.
uh Mega Man's like another big uh speed running game.
And it's like, it's weird how many rules people will have as far as when they're speedrunning.
em You know, I used to play this game.
(49:30):
I think I had one of those controllers.
It was like you could flip a little switch.
to do like an auto fire, like a rapid fire.
You flip a little switch and then all you had to do was hold down fire and it would justrapid fire.
But it's more fun to just tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
You know, with the controls in this game being so simple, you're moving and you jump andshoot.
(49:51):
And it's like, you know, sometimes I do these, uh these like boots, cause I do like some3D printing and stuff.
So these like fairs when me and the kids will sell some stuff and ah
I'll have a Nintendo, a little mini set up there with a TV and just for kids to come overand play.
And they always, they always pick it up with the cord on the bottom.
(50:14):
So they're holding it upside down.
And I'm just like, it might cause I'm like the lack of joysticks.
Maybe they don't know what to do, but I'm just like, man, you go back to that simple.
like it wasn't rounded.
was like square solid square controller, but it just, it feels so good in the hands.
feels so firm.
(50:36):
Anyway, we're going to talk about some awards.
Let's get into it.
(51:02):
Alright, someday I will get some comments and awards from you guys or my cats.
But in the meantime, let's do award number one.
I got three awards.
Sometimes it'll be hardest level, sometimes it'll be favorite level, sometimes maybeprettiest level.
Right now I'm going to talk about my personal favorite track from this game.
(51:23):
ah I wish I could just play all of them back to back for you guys, but I don't think I'mlegally allowed to do any of that.
ah It's kind of, I mean, my favorite, think is also the internet's favorite and it's WileyStage 1.
That's when you first go into Wiley's castle.
(51:45):
I also really like, is it Woodman?
Yeah, it's Woodman's stage.
I don't know why.
And I forget that jingle now, but I just remember I really liked that one.
But Wiley Stage 1 is like the stuff you can work out to.
You heard it once already and I'm going to play it some more.
yeah, you're running on the treadmill?
(52:12):
How can you not just tap your foot?
Alright, ah I'll just play it again.
Alright, let's just keep going No, okay.
So that's my favorite track and I do have there's a huge community of like Mega Man musicremixes like techno DJs and stuff and it's like it's insane some of that stuff It's like
(52:40):
you were doing that with a 16-bit Nintendo.
How many tones did you have?
I don't even know like six
And it's like, no one's given these guys like props.
And I'm not either because I didn't look up the names, but I'm sure like people know theseguys.
But it's like, man, these guys sitting back then in headphones on and just composing thesekinds of things.
(53:04):
Like, I just thank you all you guys and keep that music going and go listen to that see astar song to the boss fight and see a stars.
I'll play that someday.
Next award.
I'm going to do hardest level for me and I've got two of them here and I mentioned it andit's going to be between Heatman and Quickman and by the way, I'm so bad at this.
(53:27):
I just have like papers everywhere.
Are you supposed to podcast like with things on the screen?
Cause I have like papers and I've got like a quill over here.
I'll get the hang of this eventually.
So hardest level is, you know, so we'll say personal.
It's going to be between Quickman and it's laser floors and it's going to be betweenHeatman and it's vanishing blocks.
(53:48):
And it's so it's like it would be heat man 1000 % if you didn't have your rocket slide aspecial item.
So it's like I could say it could be quick man because there is no special item to get youby those floor lasers any faster.
um But just based on the amount of skill.
(54:14):
It takes to do the heat man section of the vanishing blocks without item one or whateveritem number is I think it might be two it slides you across I'm gonna give that one to
heat man uh You are there's other levels of vanishing blocks and other Mega Man games tooand like I was saying the tough part is you can't just be like, okay, there's One two
(54:40):
three and it has this I can hear the sound in my head
Sometimes I think I wake up at night.
I shoot up out of bed and I sit up with that like vanishing block noise ah So I'm gonnagive it to heat man.
You're gonna get a little clapping You're all right.
You're a cool boss, too.
I like he was like kind of built big like kind of looks I Like that how intimate how smallmega man can look next to some of the bosses and they only get better down the road as far
(55:09):
as the creativity there's just no end to
robot masters, some worse than others.
so again, hardest level heat man, try that without your secret little American cheats theygave us because we're not good at video games.
ah And we'll move on to the third award is kind of a giveaway.
(55:30):
Maybe we could do something else, but I did the most OP weapon and man is it that metalblade.
I wonder if they could go back.
If this was a modern game.
like a modern indie game, if they would go back and nerf the metal blade at all.
Cause I think it's like they threw it, you he's got it in Smash and it's like, cause theyknew how popular it was.
(55:53):
And that was the thing about these games too, is you couldn't, you release these games,you put them in a cart and you sent them out in the world.
And that was it.
Game breaking things, good or bad.
ah They were just part of it.
And they've just continued to just kind of be part of the uh
or like the community around old games ah between things like they can't change.
(56:17):
I like a lot of the bad translations that they had on like the NES games, Ghostbustersespecially, conflagrations or something.
ah But you know that was that's kind of what made these these things like real art.
It's like you make art you put it out there.
(56:38):
And you can't take it all back.
George Lucas, you can't take all these Star Wars out of people's homes and only give themyour special editions.
ah He can do that.
They couldn't do that with video games.
So it's like, you got these games and they were yours for better or worse.
So three awards down.
If we want to talk remake slash demake, we're talking an NES game, but when we talk futuregames, I like to think of them because demakes are kind of cool and popular and I like
(57:07):
them.
But as far as like a remake, there's no reason for a remake because after Mega Man 1through 6, we're going to go right into Mega Man X, which is a top tier when it comes to
NES to SNES on these video games.
Like I said, right along with Castlevania, Metroid, trying to think of like all their IP.
(57:33):
There was just like 8-bit here and now 16-bit here and gorgeous.
So again, Super Nintendo, like I said, you give that to a little kid and they won't justsay, ooh, look at this old game.
They might just say, neat, it's Mario.
Let me try playing it.
um So no remake needed, no demake needed.
And when it comes to Mega Man 2, of course, that game rules.
(57:57):
For sure.
um sorry with all the ums and uhs, I'm trying to keep the podcast clean.
So I think you should be able to listen to it.
Or I appreciate a podcast.
I can at least just have odd around the house that isn't full on cussing or like truecrime murder and all that kind of stuff.
So all my pauses or all my uhs are probably replacing what would be like a cuss word, but,um, you know, keep it clean, let it play around your kids and.
(58:26):
Let them hear how good these games are.
um With that said, we'll get out of it.
We'll be done.
We'll move on.
What do you guys want to talk about next week?
I was thinking of doing a Sega game.
I'm just trying to get some intro episodes out.
But I'm also trying to, number one, talk about games I can just talk about for sure.
(58:48):
You know, when it comes to, I do some sort of research, but I don't, obviously, I don'twrite a lot out.
have like,
notes and then I pick it and then I just kind of ramble about it and maybe someone likesit out there but you know I like natural sounding podcasts when it comes to when I when I
(59:09):
started looking into this or just kind of doing it as a hobby it's because I wanted to Iwanted to do it I wanted to learn it I want to learn you know I wanted to learn audio
editing video editing website making and all the stuff I don't do in life I'm a machinistby trade
So I just do whatever manly metal type work that I hate.
(59:32):
ah it's like, so all this tech stuff I'm trying to learn and all they want to do when itcomes to making anything nowadays is just have AI do it for you.
And I hate that.
So I'm trying to learn all this on my own.
But so I could just have AI take all my us and ums out and take all my spaces out, but Idon't like it.
(59:53):
Like I like them.
Maybe if you guys all I get some complaints I can go in there and do it all myself aswell.
But some of the podcasts I listened to, liked when they were like at the beginning, theywere just sounded like natural and that you were just talking to a guy hanging out or a
girl or just kind of people, you know, talking.
And then as some podcasts progress, they just get almost like too professional.
(01:00:17):
And then it just sounds like you're listening to a newscaster or something.
So forgive my rambling.
Let's wrap up this show here I'll talk about a few more house cleaning things at the end,but I'll try to save all that crap so if you guys are are good if you like some of that
game chat or some of that nostalgia chat you can click off now, but uh Let's just go oversome outro stuff.
(01:00:39):
I just want to thank you guys again You three cats sitting on the floor over there youguys made it through another episode ah
If you are listening to this and you like it or you don't like it send me messages thatgame rules at gmail.com Again, that'll be my best bet right now um Try shooting over to
(01:00:59):
patreon.com slash that game rules and again if I have any of this stuff set up Feel sayhey good job in your head to me.
So I don't I don't know what I'm doing I feel like to um I like the podcast when youlisten to them at the beginning and they're like we're
We have no ads.
are completely ad free.
then 30 seconds later is like a cut in ad because they're like popular now and makingmoney and stuff.
(01:01:23):
I mean, good for them.
And like good for me if you ever hear like ads on this, uh, I guess, but again, I don't,not that I'm rich by any means, uh, but it's like, this was just kind of for fun, but I
like to keep it going.
mean, I bought
The cheapest mic I'm YouTube and things I have used equipment I don't have like even thismic here on my desk.
(01:01:48):
It's like when you're at podcast mics, you know, I got a cheap one based on like reviewsand looking up what a good cheap podcast mic is.
But it's like, you see all the fancy ones on like the big arm swinging arm things thatpeople have in like podcasts.
And I was like, no, you don't get that yet.
You're not just going to buy yourself into like cool besides are like 200 plus dollars orsomething.
(01:02:10):
um
I'm not the type of guy to just be like, I'm not going to pay to win.
I'm going to earn my keep in this podcast world.
uh Again, send in your stuff.
Again, I have no experience.
um I am hoping to get better and I can change the format around.
(01:02:30):
I'll try to dial in my thoughts a bit more.
um I'm excited for any sort of comments and reviews.
Nowhere and I just mean like you guys talking to me I don't know if you guys rate mypodcast anywhere any of that like stuff or Subscribing or all these things that people are
(01:02:51):
asking for I don't know about any of that you probably need that kind of stuff to be asuccessful podcast, but I'm just trying to Put a piece of myself out there and I may have
said before just kind of maybe give my kids something to listen to when I'm gone someday
But again, I'm bad at editing.
I'm figuring it out.
(01:03:12):
I don't like re-listen to this podcast.
I do like a quick edit and I send it into the ether.
And um that's just kind of how I like it.
I feel like if you micromanage that kind of stuff too much, then you could just be at itfor days.
So again, I want it to be natural and kind of my goal, I guess, would be to get to ahundred episodes.
(01:03:32):
I know that's two plus years and it's quite tough because my schedule is super full withkids and work.
But I also read some sort of statistic that said like 94 % of podcasts don't last to 100episodes and that makes sense if you've ever listened to a podcast and it like 12 episodes
(01:03:52):
and then it was gone.
But again, this is just a hobby.
I'm going to keep putting them out there if you keep liking it.
I teased what I want to do next week.
It may be a Sega game, but we'll see.
because I do want to do like a World of Warcraft episode, specifically 2006 to 2010 when Iplayed it.
(01:04:16):
It's hard to say, like talk about retro games when this game is still around.
It's definitely not the game it was now when I played it, but we'll see.
It's going to be Sega, Sega something, or it's going to be a Warcraft next week.
But either way, I'm looking forward to it.
And we'll wrap it up.
we'll get out here again thanks for listening cats thanks for listening humans and we'llsee you on the next one
(01:04:51):
Get out of here, cats.
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