One video game pairing that seems obvious and yet has never occurred is Mega Man and Samus Aran. I’ve been waiting for a match up ever since Samus started using the charge shot. My dreams have not come true. The opportunity has been passed up in several Smash Brothers games and countless cameos... the two never even met in Captain N, for God’s sake. Bizarrely, Mega Man was a regular character in the television show and Samus was a regular character in the comic, but neither ended up in the other’s iteration. By now, I’ve come to accept that it was not meant to be.
It did get me thinking, though. What would such a pairing entail? It was while thinking about this that I realized I don’t really like Mega Man’s character. He’s the consummate do-gooder with no real reason to fight except that it’s what he does. The X series gives a touch of tragedy to help motivate him, but overall I’m not sure what he would add to a dramatic pairing. Then I thought about Samus and realized what I like best about her character is that she doesn’t talk (at least, not until recently). In her best incarnations, she is the science fiction version of Link, emoting almost entirely through grunts and screams. While it works great in the games, this does not make her prime material for a rendezvous of any significance.
Don’t let this give you the wrong idea. These are two franchises that I consider perfect (if you don’t count Mega Man Legends). It’s not the characters that need to meet, though, it’s the game design. What would you get if you mixed the two perfect games? And what exactly should be mixed from the two?
Mega Man is the purest form of the platforming genre, which means timing, timing, and more timing. In the early stages of the games, this is usually tested by jumps separated by bottomless pits or levels with uncertain footing, with slippery ice and quick conveyor belts being series staples. By the time you reach Wily’s (or Sigma’s, for X devotees) castle, though, these tests get seriously adrenalized. The final stages of any Mega Man game are things of nightmares. I don’t remember what game it was, but there is one castle where you have to go through this long hall jumping on disappearing blocks. If you fall, it’s death, of course, but the real challenge is that if you jump too high you hit a ceiling full of instant-death spikes.
I never beat that castle.
In other classic games like Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania the platforming was always complicated by enemies. Making a jump in Ninja Gaiden isn’t all that difficult, once you get used to the wall climbing mechanics. But for every ledge in Ninja Gaiden there are at least three enemies crawling all over it, waiting to knock you backwards into a pit. And I think bats have been responsible for more player deaths in Castlevania than Dracula himself.
You could take all of the enemies out of a Mega Man game and it would still be difficult.
Maybe this is Dr. Light’s fault. Look at Samus Aran. She’s merely set back by things like spikes and bottomless pits. Spikes, acid, lava... nothing kills Samus Aran (at least at first exposure). Had the Chozo designed Mega Man, we can assume that Dr. Wily wouldn’t have survived long enough to create Heat Man. Still, no one can deny that there is something special about beating a true challenge with nothing more than digit-dexterity. Mega Man may get all sorts of power ups, but none of them can save you when it comes to navigating room after room of death traps.
Samus has her own form of conquering things. Metroid treats obstacles as temporary setbacks, reminders that Samus will get stronger. An impossible jump serves not to taunt the player into besting it, but rather as a teaser to let them know that an entirely unexplored area lies just beyond their reach... for now. Rarely will players get stuck because they can’t make a jump. They’ll simply have to rack their brains and think about what room they haven’t explored yet... and then go there and find the high jump boots.
That’s not to say that Samus doesn’t see her share of excitement. Metroid games may be easier than Mega Man, but they don’t lack for explosive moments. Every dark tunnel in Metroid leads ultimately to an encounter with an alien boss monster, always set on some crazed stage. Samus may not be the first or last video game hero to fight in free fall, but I think she’s the only one who has fought a Pteranodon while falling down an exploding elevator shaft. Ridley is a special case among bosses. Despite the fact that he’s appeared in all but three of the Metroid titles, his fights are always something new. When he does use a recognizable attack, it comes off as nostalgic rather than boring.
It’s not just Ridley, though. Consider that Kraid was the largest Super Nintendo boss or that every encounter in the original Metroid Prime made extensive and successful use of a scanning and lock on system that had never been used in games before. Metroid games are constantly evolving and pushing their genre to evolve with them. They introduce new concepts to gaming. The boss fights go beyond being simply memorable visually, they are memorable for doing things with their design that no one has done before.
Compare that to Mega Man. No one will deny that the Robot Masters are classic bosses, but we have to recall that standing in the ranks alongside Gutsman and Cutman are Clown Man, Centaur Man, and Tomahawk Man (who has the distinction of being offensive as well as uncreative). Also, for how many different Robot Masters there have been (well over a hundred at the time of this writing), many of them fight exactly the same. There seems to be three overall patterns...
First, there are the “Frank Miller’s 300” robots. These guys stand in one corner of the room continually activating their power in a defensive barrage. If Mega Man gets too close, they leap to the other side of the room and repeat the process.
Then there is the “Bush administration” robot. This particular breed charges forward blindly until he hits a wall; then he moves around in predictable patterns, stopping occasionally to fire a weapon. When the pattern is done, there is a brief chance to take him out before he starts again.
Finally, there are the “Teenage Dance Party” robots. They have no recognizable pattern. They simply go nuts all over the room, jumping around and firing randomly into whatever side of the room Mega Man is in, hoping that something will hit. Generally there’s some weapon that freezes them in place, making them actually possible to beat.
Then, of course, there is the Mega Man staple of having bosses be weak against certain power ups. While this added a nice puzzle element to the games back in the 80’s, these days we have gamefaqs and so it’s not quite as applicable. Once you have a Robot Master’s weakness in your arsenal, it doesn’t matter what kind of pattern they adhere to, they aren’t going to last long. So really, outside of design, Mega Man bosses don’t pack much of a punch.
That said, I defy anyone to beat the dragon boss in Mega Man 2. It’s the first boss in Wily’s castle. You have to fight it while running away on a line of disappearing blocks. It’s ridiculous. But note that its hardest element is those blocks. Again, Mega Man has a corner on truly precise platforming. The bosses are just a colorful end of stage bonus to levels that are pure adrenaline.
So, on that note, here’s a simple idea. Take Metroid’s bosses and toss them into Mega Man’s levels. The trick here is not to make the bosses difficult, but to make them fun. Bosses shouldn’t be as hard as the levels; they should be the prize that drives a player to finish a level. They should be involved fights that require players to switch weapons and fight in a changing environment. Imagine how cool that Dragon fight would have been if, after inevitably falling off those damn blocks, Mega Man had to fight the Dragon in a free fall battle? Or, even cooler, if he had to use an ice weapon to create new platforms for him to stand on and take on the creature, creating new platforms as the old ones melt? This kind of battle would add some greater purpose to the huge variety of weapons Mega Man gets, a purpose beyond making bosses easier to damage.
At the same time, what Metroid lacks is a real outlet for all of Samus’ crazy platforming abilities. Aside from some brilliant uses of the morph ball in the Prime series, most of her movement systems (like the gravity suit) just let her access more of the planet. They don’t provide new challenges for her. In fact, they make older areas less challenging! But what if wearing the gravity suit made her vulnerable to underwater currents that carried her towards spikes and death traps in the style of Mega Man? I’m of the belief that acquiring new technology for her suit shouldn’t put her a notch above the environment. It should force players to learn how to deal with another level of dangers. That would keep things consistently exciting.
And it would be much more interesting than a coffee shop get-together.
