Hello, everyone, Budgetron here.  I have just returned from the 5 day assault that is Comic con and all I have to say is, amidst all the craziness on the floor, I had one moment stand out above all the rest.  And oddly enough, that moment seemed to have taken place in 1988.  I don’t know what asshole at the event that stole Doc Browns patented flux technology, but I’m glad he did.  As most of you can tell by the title of this post, I am here to tell you of the awesome glory of Capcom’s Mega Man 9!  Just so you know how much awesomeness you can be prepared for, here’s the box art!

Now, for any of you bots who played the original back in the day, you realize how awesome this art is, but even for me, the unmitigated retro-ness of it all was not enough to ease my fears.  You see, I have been burned before by a “going back to its roots” style of game called “New Super Mario Bros.”  I felt it was fun the first time through, but the developers forgot what was fun about the old ones, while simultaneously trying to convince us that’s what they were trying to recreate.  The dev team on NSMB forgot the fun that comes from dying a lot and finding the secrets on your own (I hate how all new games treat its players like morons, “here it is, here’s your secret level,  look there!”).  I sold my copy of NSMB quickly after one play through.  So, needless to say I was hesitant to even get my hopes up about Mega Man 9, much less be crushed to tears after playing the demo.

I am here to let you all know it is time to rejoice!   I played through 2 sets of lives and never passed a level.  Now, granted, I was surrounded by other people and felt rushed, but I really do feel that this game is just as fun and difficult as the Meg Man games of the past!  I had a lot of fun, got knocked into pits by birds dropping eggs, fell off of disappearing platforms into an empty abyss, and even missed out on a big energy pill because it got stuck under the floor (bad collision detection included)!  It was so fun playing it, and I am super excited to play a hard platforming game again.  Capcom really seems to have knocked it out of the park, and everyone playing it and watching around me were happy with the product as well.  Yes, we have grown up as an industry, and the graphics have gotten sleeker, but make no mistake, the gameplay is there and your eyes will soon forget it’s looking into an 8-bit time warp, but your brain will feel like a kid again.

As an added bonus to thrifty robots everywhere, this game will be available on wii ware, and that means it’ll probably be 5-10 bucks.  Hooray for cheap thrills.