So I have a long history with the Mega Man games growing up. I came up with the Mega Man Derusting series to do such a task. The goal is to play and finish the Mega Man classic series along with most of the X series and some other Mega Man titles. I still have some of my mega Man and X carts and discs and hadn’t really played them in years but I wanted to share my adventures on stream of relearning my way through the classic titles, and in some cases finish the later games to completion! 

THE REVIEW: Mega Man 7 was released for the 16bit systems in 1995. The series made a great conversion to 16-bit with great graphics and music! Even if the sprites seem a bit too big. The plot of this one continues from that of Wily finally going to jail at the end of MM6, where he had a backup plan (like every good mad scientist) of a new set of Robot masters to free him from jail after a certain amount of time. This was the first game to feature Auto’s shop and new abilities from Rush. I think one of my favorite parts is how deep the ending for this game is (and the cool scene of Wily’s Castle burning as Mega Man walks home).

GRAPHICS & SOUND: Mega Man 7 made a great conversion to 16-bit! The graphics are quite large and colorful as per Capcom’s standards. Mega Man, Wily, Rush and the cast look wonderful in 16-bit and you can really see Wily’s eyebrows here! Mini-bosses, Robot masters, and Wily bosses are quite large and colorful and all their animations are quite fluid with no lag to them. The Robot Masters even have animations when they get hit with their weakness weapons! All the new weapons look great too! I love Rush’s new animation when he gets hit, digging, and standing there wagging his tail. I think the creativity and enemies in Shade Man’s stage are my favorites.

The music made a great jump to 16-bit as well. Not many tracks stand out to me as much as earlier ones, though offhand I do like the opening stage and Wily’s Castle music! Sound effects are about the same, just in 16-bit, from the earlier games. Though Mega Man’s main weapon does have more of a “pew pew pew” effect to it. Also pressing B during Shade Man’s stage introduction gives you special music for his stage!

PLAY CONTROL: Mega Man controls great in 16-bit. Y and B are your shooting and jumping buttons, and you can switch to other weapons via the shoulder L or R buttons. Unfortunately you can’t change the button layout to be B and A like 8-bit mega Man.

CHALLENGE: Oh man, this game is really tough! Some of the Robot Masters are tough to fight even with their weakness and some of the Wily Castle bosses will take some time to defeat, especially the turtle boss. The final fight with Wily’s walking tank and capsule fights will tear your hair out. You get little room to avoid damage and the weaknesses don’t give out a lot of damage to Wily either. The Wily Capsule fight has to be the worst out of the first 7 games. Some of the levels are tough to get through, especially Spring Man’s level with the springs, which I feel are worse than bouncing around in the Casino levels of Sonic. The learning curve for this will ease you into the tougher levels since the first 4 Robot masters aren’t hard and you can learn how the game works and start picking up Rush items and more for the latter half. Thankfully this game has a great password system. The story behind the Wily Capsule fight goes because Keiji Inafune said, “Let’s make the very last fight insanely hard!”.

You can find Bolts everywhere and farm them for 999 to stock up on 4 E-Tanks, W-Tanks and consumables, but also buy new upgrades for Rush and more if you find Auto’s missing bolt and bring it to his store. The Rush upgrades and the Exit device can be found in levels, sometimes you need a Rush upgrade to get to it, or a specific Robot master weapon to open up a new path which adds creativity. Stocking up on tanks before Wily is needed, and you can go back to Auto’s Store between levels like in Mega Man X. If you find Proto Man and beat a mini-boss a certain way you can find Proto Man for his Proto Shield!

I GIVE MEGA MAN 7 4 OUT OF 5 ENERGY TANKS!!

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