Although this game will punish you with it's difficulty, if you stick with it you'll find that it tends to grow on you.
THE GOOD
-Fun level design
-Cool power-ups
-Superb music
THE BAD
-Health is few and far between
-Cheap difficulty
OVERVIEW
The story of Mega Man starts with the famous robotic engineer named Dr. Light. He and his assistant Dr. Wily created robots with unique powers to help man-kind. The robots were intended to aid humans in the most difficult tasks. After a while, Dr. Wily saw how powerful these robots were and decided that with these machines he could take over the world. So, as you can guess, Dr. Wily stole six of these robots. The names and powers of these robots are the following: Bomb Man (can wield highly destructive explosives), Guts Man (a strong armed behemoth), Cut Man (able to throw deadly sharp scissor cutters), Elec Man (create and shoot electricity), Ice Man (able to freeze anything), and Fire Man (with fire as hot as Hades). In order to stop Dr. Wily, Dr. Light and his first creation Mega Man need to come up with a plan to end this madness.
GAMEPLAY
The objective for Mega Man is to first defeat all six of Dr. Wily's robots and then ultimately defeat Wily himself. This is no easy task because each of the six robots have themed-like stages to overcome. For example, Ice Man's stage requires plenty of platforming on icy surfaces. Each of the levels are uniquely designed with lots of enemies and platform jumping to be mastered. Then at the end of the stage a challenging boss awaits. The nice part about defeating a boss is that you obtain their powers permanently. Also, it just so happens that each robot master has a weakness so use this knowledge to your advantage. Trust me when I say this because the overall difficulty of the game is extremely hard and the last thing you want to do is make it to the end of a stage and die quickly. Along with your health meter, you have each of your power's meters as well. You can't just "go crazy" with the other powers you have obtained because they'll run out quick. Luckily, as you defeat enemies they have a chance to drop health containers (very rare) or power-up containers to be used to refuel Mega Man.
The controls for this game are really good, even though you only jump and shoot. They don't feel sluggish like other NES games. And since there is plenty of platforming to do, the controls won't hinder your performance. Although if only Mega Man could jump just a little higher that would have been great.
GRAPHICS & SOUND
Each of the fun levels are creatively designed enhancing the overall fun-factor. Plus, the detail in every aspect of the game is very clear and visually stunning.
The audio is another great aspect to Mega Man. Each stage has music that fits perfectly. Most of the music in this game is memorable. Together the music and sounds effects give the game a nice robotic / futuristic feel.
CONCLUSION
Mega Man is a great concept for a video game. The level design, graphics, sound and overall gameplay is a lot of fun. However, the punishing difficultly takes away from some of the fun and ultimately the rating too. I would recommend this game to anyone but only the hardcore gamers will truly enjoy this one.