Old school gamers rejoice, for Mega Man has returned. Not Mega Man ZX, Mega Man Zero, Mega Man.exe, or even Mega Man X. No, it isn’t any of these poseurs. It’s the original blue bomber, in all his 8-bit glory. Keeping up with it’s retro revivals (see Street Fighter IV and Bionic Commando), Capcom had the ingenious idea of creating a new 8-bit Mega Man game and releasing it for all three consoles via their respective download services. The result is a classic throwback that caters strictly to longtime series fans while introducing the Mega Man series to a new generation.

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What if Taito had made a Mega Man game, but instead of a little blue robot, you played as a Arnold Schwarzenegger look-alike*, and instead of an upgradable arm cannon, you used an upgradable boomerang to fight enemies? Well the end result would resemble Taito’s NES side-scrolling platformer, Power Blade 2. A sequel to 1991’s Power Blade, PB 2 once again casts players as Nova, a secret government agent in the year 2200. The Delta Corporation has created a new cyborg warrior and wants to sell it to the United States. The president refuses, and the Delta corporation is threatening to sell the robot to an enemy power. This doesn’t sit too well with the Department of Defense, so they send Nova on a secret mission to destroy Delta. It’s not going to be easy, as scores of enemy robots will stand in his way. However, Nova has his trusty boomerang at his side, ready to take on anything.

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Out of all of Capcom’s intellectual properties, Mega Man stands as one of their best. The Blue Bomber has been around for more than 2 decades, and the franchise has branched out in several directions, including cartoons, action figures, comic books, and other merchandise. The series started off simple enough. As the title character, you fight a series of robots in whichever order you choose. When you defeat an enemy, you gained his weapon. The trick of course, was the find out which weapon worked best on which enemy. When you defeated all 8 robots, you went on to face Dr. Wily at his castle. As time went on, the series eventually spawned several spin-offs. While games such as Mega Man X placed a different face on the classic game play, other spin-offs such as Mega Man Legends have slowly moved away from what made the series great. Thankfully Capcom has recognized this, and as part of their retro-revival have created a new Mega Man game…for the NES! Of course seeing as how very few people these days have a working NES, Capcom did the next best thing: release it as a downloadable title via WiiWare, Xbox Live Arcade, and Playstation Network. The new game, Mega Man 9, will be released this month. In celebration of the new title, this week’s $20 GOTW and Lost Classics will be dedicated to the blue bomber himself. Coincidentally, this also marks the three-year anniversary of Powet’s $20 GOTW, so head right on in and check out this small tribute.

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This little known title from Capcom is basically a homage to 80s action films. You play as a secret agent, sent into South America in order to stop a terrorist group and rescue its prisoners. You travel your way through several stages, shooting enemies and rescuing hostages. It even takes a few pages out of Rolling Thunder’s playbook, as you have to enter doorways to collect ammo and rescue hostages. While it may not have revolutionized the 2-d platformer genre, it was still an enjoyable experience for what it was.Hopefully this should show up on the Wii Virtual Console soon. Or better yet, Capcom will show some more retro gaming love and give gamers an next-generation update/sequel a’la Bionic Commando Rearmed, Street Fighter IV, and Mega Man 9.

Bionic Commando Rearmed hit Xbox Live and PSN last week, so in honor of this special occasion, this week’s $20 GOTW and Lost Classics will take a special look at the new game, as well as a previous entry in the series. Enjoy!

In 1987, Capcom released an arcade game called Top Secret, which we over here would know it as Bionic Commando. It was a side-scrolling platformer in which the protagonist used a grappling arm to traverse the game’s 4 levels. It wasn’t a terrible game, but it was nothing special. When an NES sequel, which was known in Japan as Top Secret: Hitler’s Revival was released the following year however, that was when the series really took off. Players took control of Nathan ‘Radd’ Spencer, who was sent behind enemy lines to rescue Super Joe from the Imperialist Nazis who sought to resurrect Adolf Hitler. Players traveled through several stages to uncover the enemy’s plan and stop them. [Read the rest of this entry…]

During the 80s, Cold War hysteria was at its peak, even as the Cold War itself was slowly ending. Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed new leader of a collapsing Soviet Union, movies such as Red Dawn and Amerika scared viewers with nightmares of a fictional Soviet takeover of the United States, and sports films such as Rocky IV displayed their own subliminal stances on the situation by depicting American athletes defeating Russian and Chinese competitors. Of course video games followed suit as well. One of the most influential was Konami’s Rush’n Attack (Russian Attack – get it?). Rush’n Attack was the name given to the North American version of the 1985 arcade game Green Beret. Players took control of a nameless marine as he used his knife to defeat the enemy forces and rescue his captured comrades. The enemy soldiers came at you from all sides, and you had to fend them off or avoid them, as just one hit would kill you. This made it kind of funny, because if you actually did “rush and attack” like the title says, then you’d be defeated within seconds. You gained weapons such as pistols and flame throwers, but they had limited ammo, and before long you were back to using your knife. It wasn’t a bad game, but It was nothing mind blowing either. If anything, it could be considered a spiritual predecessor to Konami’s Contra, which came a few years later.

However, when Rush’n Attack was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System, it became something special. The plot was changed, and instead of rescuing POWs, your character had to destroy the enemy’s secret weapon. There were new weapons, 2-player co-op play, and the arcade’s military-style drumbeat that played throughout the levels was replaced by a full melodic soundtrack. It was a rare instance of a NES port of an arcade game being superior to the arcade original. While it wasn’t the classic that Contra was, Konami’s side-scrolling made its own unique impact on 8-bit gaming. Yeah, the arcade version is available on Xbox Live Arcade, but it just isn’t the same. Hopefully we should see the NES version on the Wii Virtual Console in the near future, provided it isn’t there already.

2000 was a good year for Squaresoft, particularly the summer. We got several awesome games from them, each of which was special in their own right. Some gained more accolades than others, though. Alongside Final Fantasy IX and Chrono Cross, we also got Parasite Eve 2, Vagrant Story, and this little number, Threads of Fate. Even though Threads of Fate was clearly geared towards kids, older action RPG fans who own a Playstation will enjoy this too.

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Following up the amazing news of Mega Man 9 being released in September, it appears that the folks at Capcom are starting even more hype to lead into the release. They’ve announced that the original Mega Man game will be released for the Virtual Console starting tomorrow, Monday August 4th. They also plan to re-release Mega Man 2 in early September.

Both games were originally released for the NES and Famicom in 1987 and 1988 respectively. Mega Man 2 had previously been released in Europe for the Virtual Console back in December of 2007.

Time to get back into playing the pixel goodness and reliving your childhood.