Nitpickery --- Robo Cop versus Source Code

Hey y'all.

So last night I watched Source Code with my boyfriend, and you know what?  I like the movie.  Too many movies these days just go for the lowest common denominator, for the cheapest laugh and the simplest themes.  It's a disease of modern movies, and very few movies are free from modernity.  Unfortunately, this one isn't completely free, but yet it shines through and stands out as a really entertaining movie.

One thing I did before seeing the movie was watch Robo Cop, and I've noticed a parallel between both.  I'm really going to have to be spoilerific to explain why I see this parallel.  I'm going to do a straight, non-spoiler review of Source Code first, then get into Robo Cop and how they compare.  I'll warn you before I do this, so if you don't want Source Code spoiled then don't read it.  Honestly, Source Code is not a movie that should be spoiled.  I highly recommend not reading the second half of this blog if you haven't seen it.

So, spoiler free.  Source Code is an entertaining movie about a guy who is sent back...not in time, per say, but sent into the last eight minutes of one of the lives of a train bombing victim.  He has to figure out who bombed the train so that it won't happen again.  This is a great premise well executed, with a great cast.  I'm not really a Gyllenhaal fan, but he did a great job in this role.  I believed him in this role.

The character I had trouble believing in was a side character, the secondary antagonist Dr Rutledge.  He's one of these guys that's in charge of sending Gyllenhaal's character back, and he just comes across as an extremely fake stereotype.  He's selfish in a completely two dimensional way.  Writer people, be aware: evil people have hearts, their hearts are just demented, twisted, self-righteous, or entirely centered around themselves.  There is no one that exists that does not have a heart.

I'm honestly not sure if it's the actor Jeffrey Wright to blame or the writers, but either way it's like watching a....well, I was going to say a cartoon, but cartoon villains are more believable.  This guy's greed and iron-fisted control of the organization is ineloquent, and if he were a real person nobody would genuinely trust him. It's too easy to see how much of a jerk he is, and thus no one in his organization, or in the audience of this movie, has any reason to trust him or believe in his two-faced platitudes.

Alright, I love nitpicking, but let's talk about some good stuff.  I love the structure of this movie, how they can make it very interesting even though it's partially the same thing over and over again.  Watching Jake's character Colter figure out where the bomb is and who the bomber is feels very wonderful and natural.  It's heavy on the melodrama, but as the movie continues, the melodrama starts to really work.  I totally dig the ending, which is perfectly satisfying with just a hint of unsettled issues.  But you know what?  Unsettled issues are okay.  Storytelling is all about answering certain questions and leaving others up in the air, and this movie knows which is which.

However, I do have to call them out, because I guessed the bad guy within the first twenty minutes, and I figured out most of the ending well before the end.  Maybe I should just let that go, because it really didn't hamper my enjoyment of this movie.  I was totally crying in the theater near the end.  It's very emotional, and you'll really like it if you let yourself.

I found the character of Christina, played by Michelle Monaghan, to be slightly cheesy (what in the world makes India such a dang good place to find yourself?  You're more likely to get lost in their religiousity), but she's a very heartfelt character, and she does the job well of being a somewhat down on her luck sweetheart that you do not want to die in the train explosion.

I can't really talk much about the villain without spoiling anything, but he does a very good job and you can feel his emotions with sickening clarity.  Crafty, crafty job.

So, some complaints about this film is that I feel like a lot of the neutral victims on the bus are trying too hard to be normal people.  They're trying to hard to be the cranky businessman, the snarky comedian, the college student, etc.  It's like they're trying to play specific roles on the train rather than just be natural.  It's not a big deal, but it's a thing that irritates me in movies.

Also, the chick that works with Colter, Goodwin, feels a lot like a stereotype.  Not a life stereotype, but one in the movies.  Again, I can't get spoilerific, but her morals are very movie-ish, the kind that Hollywood types want to shove down your throat and accuse you of being a soulless jerk if you don't agree with.  This is the modernity I was talking about.  Goodwin combined with Jeffery Wright's character make up simplistic agents of a theme that's in a lot of movies, but isn't too overly presented in this one to the point that it ruins the movie.

That theme is self preservation over self sacrifice.  You may have noticed this in other works, like that one Bruce Willis was in with these people that told the future, or that one episode of Voyager where a child used to bring a virus to the Borg is told that it's okay to not forgive your parents for putting you in that situation.

I'm not going to go on about this yet.  Just to sum it up, Source Code is a great movie with a great plot structure and pretty good writing.  It understands human emotion very well, and has created a good scientific background without trying to cram two tons worth of data and technobabble into the mix.  You will enjoy this movie.

Best actor: Jake Gyllenhaal.  He carries this movie to an excellent extent, making it very believable.  You feel his emotions and want him to do well, which is exactly what a movie should do.

Score: 7/10.

People who should watch this:
Movie cynics
Couples
Science fiction fans
Thriller fans
People who want dramatics and emotion.

Okay!  I'm going to go into Robo Cop now, and I have to warn you, by comparing these movies I will be spoiling both, though I'm sure you're more worried about Source Code spoiling.

Seriously!  If you haven't seen it, don't read on!

I warned you!

Does anyone actually pay attention to spoiler alerts?

Anyway....

Robo Cop came out in 1987, and it is a far, far darker movie.  The violence is more explosive (figuratively and literally), and there are about four sympathetic characters in the entire movie of cynical, bitter, and villainous characters.  I honestly sort of love that about this movie, because when an audience is confronted with this kind of evil, a lot of the times their natural reaction is to try and resist it with inner beauty and light.  Or they just sympathize with the bitter view and follow along with the story more deeply.

The story goes that cop Alex Murphy is killed, and his body is taken by OCP, the corporation that bought the police, and is used to become RoboCop, the new law enforcement officer that is stronger and better.  The story follows along his path to recovering his memories of the past, and not only stopping the evil man that murdered him (played extremely well by Kurtwood Smith), but also stopping the OCP man that controls him.

This OCP man is Dick Jones, and he's a corporate number 2 that really wants his own robot law enforcement robot to work.  Sadly, his invention is ineloquent, violent, and shot an innocent coworker.  Thus the guy in charge of the Robo Cop program wins the attentions of their boss, one of the sympathetic figures.

This movie is bitter.  Bitter like a Turkish coffee sans any form of sugar or cream.  It's cynical.  The news is all about war and death, the popular television show is about a creepy old guy surrounded by brainless hot women ("I'd buy that for a dollar!"), and Chicago is full of crime and gangsters.  The only form of innocence in this movie is the love shown in Alex's brief memories of his past life.  This film is artfully shot, and very much a dark eighties film.

Here's where the comparisons and contrasts come up.  Source Code isn't at all dark.  It's grim at points, but it has the view that life is grand and is to be enjoyed.  It tells you to escape darkness. Robo Cop's view is that the whole world is dark and violent, but the ending of it makes it very clear: there is hope, and we can fight to make this world what we want it to be, if we find the right people to trust (Robo Cop versus ED-209, Dick Jones versus his caring boss, Ordinary cops versus Robo Cop's creator).

The main reason I wanted to compare the two, besides having watched both yesterday, was that they both deal with the theme of self-sacrifice.  Jake's Colter (here we go spoiler) is actually a soldier who died in Afganistan.  The entire reason why he can work with the source code that enables him to see the last remaining essence of those that died on the train is because there's only a smaller portion of his brain still alive, as well as an assortment of organs.  He gave up having a relationship with his father to go on his last deployment, because he loved his unit and wanted to help them win.

Alex Murphy gave up his past life, including his loving wife and adorable son.  He barely remembers them even at the end of the movie, and it's heart wrenching to see.  The main difference between these two characters is this: RC had no choice but to become a cyborg, but in the end he gave in and decided to become the best cop he could.  He genuinely wanted to help people, and he must have understood that it was too late to save his old life.

Colter, on the other hand, doesn't come to this point.  We never find out if his choice was willing or not (it probably wasn't, but we don't know for sure -- the guy was heroic), but he instead wants to die rather than go on working for the source code projects.   He has to be convinced to save the people on the train (apparently this is the first time the whole idea of going back was really invented), and even then he wants his life support cut off after he's finished.  He spends a lot of his eight minute shifts on the train looking after his own life and trying to figure out what happened to him rather than helping them find the terrorist.

Now, they want you to sympathize with him, and I honestly do.  I'm just irked at the self-centeredness of it all.  Maybe it's because I'm raised on things like Robo Cop and The Chronicles of Narnia (the books, not the stupid movies), but it seems strange to me that his first concern isn't the innocent people that could die if the bomber isn't found.  The characters around him, like Goodwin and Rutledge, are engineered to make the theme say it's right for him to want to die and escape the life of a source code worker.

I personally feel like it is indeed Colter's choice to live as a source code jumper or not.  The people should have been very honest and clear with him about what happened to him and what his life would be like in the program before the whole train situation happened.  My thing is, I really miss the days when people would say, "well, this sucks for me, but since I can help a lot of people now, I'm all for it".  Movies don't just take from culture, they give into it, filling it with themes and making people look at things a specific way.

What people seem to forget is that movies aren't real.  They claim to remember this, but when you ask them about self-sacrifice, they'll point to this movie and refer to Colter's specific situation as proof of their point, even though this never happened and probably never will.  They also use fictional Christians as the foundation for the belief that all Christians suck, but that's a story for another day.

Yes, the dude in charge was a jerk and nobody was honest with Colter, but there's still a point in everyone's life where they've got to realize this: the secret of life is everyone else.  If you want to be a good singer, you have to make songs that people identify with, not self-serving bullcrap that only ends up making sure modern pop music stays dead (I'm lookin' at you, Gaga).  If you want to write a good story, you have to write toward people's hearts and/or minds.  Other people make your work a bestseller, not yourself.  Heroes are people that save others, not themselves.  All I want is for Hollywood to remember this, and that seeking the best end for yourself is not the goal.

Yeah, Source Code ends with Colter becoming the man he's been pretending to be on the train, and depending on how you look at it (this movie never clarifies, which it shouldn't) he either stopped the train bombing from ever happening or he's living in an alternate universe where he stopped it from happening.  In a way it's a satisfying ending, but for that theme.

At the end of the day, I think I like this movie because it's not violent like Robo Cop, and it's not bitter.  However, Robo Cop is a better movie because it has better themes, artful cinematography, and more realistic characterization.  At least it's better in a sense of art.  If you just want a more relaxing and less violent film, Source Code is the way to go.  Still, watching either one is a good time.

Mega Man Robot Master Ratings.

Hey y'all.  I'm sure I've mentioned before that there's a perfect runner on youtube named Roahm Mythril.  In my last music review, I said that I did averages of all the ratings he did for the robot masters and their coinciding level.  Just FYI, here is that list.  Roahm rated each robot master on their difficulty to perfect run and gave them a rating between one and ten.  Here are the averages from highest to lowest.
#1 is a tie between Mega Man and Bass and Mega Man 4 with an average rating of 5.375.

#3 is MM3 with 5.25

#4 is MM2 with a rating of 4.625. And people say it's the hardest game...

#5 is MM9 with a flat average of 4.

#6 is a tie between MM5 and 7 with 3.875.

#8 is MM1 with the average 3.66.

#9 tags right along with 3.625, MM8.

#10 is MM10 at 3.375.

#11 is unsurprisingly MM6 at 3.25.

So, any surprises?

Mega Man Music -- Mega Man 8

AAAARRGGGH!!!! I wrote so much and the push of one button it all disappeared!  I've been writing for the past hour!!!!  Stupid auto save function!!!!

Okay, calm down, get it together...write it all out again..

*cries*

Hey, y'all.  I'm really frustrated right now because I worked really hard and was more than halfway complete with this post when it all went blank.  It's okay though, because I think I can write this out in a more coherent manner now.  You know how it is with first drafts and such.

Okay, so Mega Man 8.  While it was a good game, it had its problems.  The main deal with it was that it came out on the PS1 and the Sega Saturn, meaning that even right after MM7, it's first non-8 bit game, it had to go right back and figure itself out on completely different consoles.  That meant unnecessary changes from what MM7 established.

You know, I'm suspicious that the fan backlash against MM7 is what did this to MM8.  Honestly, MM7 got a lot of unfair accusations back in the day.  These were essentially unavoidable in one sense, because MM7 had a lot of expectations for the first 16 bit Mega Man game.  Except for in music and too much cheese, I feel that MM7 really rose to the challenge and created a new formula by which other higher resolution Mega Man Classic games could go by and adjust as they went along.

MM8, however, scrapped it.  They decided to go back to square one and make everything like a huge Mega Man party.  To me, the game feels like a Japanese stereotype.  Mostly in two areas: plot and graphics.  Now because I'm American, a stereotype from Japan is more interesting than one from over here, but still, come on Capcom.

First of all, you have this alien Duo from outer space who seeks to destroy all of this evil energy stuff, which is a moderately common concept.  It's even in the Japanese version of the Power Puff Girls, PPGZ.  It's not too bad a plot item, though.  Naturally Wily finds this evil energy and starts using it to enhance his forces.

Thing is, Mega Man 8 is an easy game.  RoahmMythril, a perfect runner on youtube, did perfect runs of the robot masters for all MM games.  Using his ratings, I determined that out of all the games 1-10 and Mega Man and Bass, MM8 ranks only at number nine.  If this evil energy translated into harder bosses, or maybe you encounter a good guy that goes bad, or maybe you fight Bass without it and then next time he uses it, then this game would be better and more dramatic.  I mean, if you're going to break the normal formula of a Mega Man game, then why not?

There are other things that make it a Japanese stereotype.  You have the robot masters saying little catchphrases as they enter, shoot attacks, and die.  I wouldn't mind the first and third so much if the voice acting wasn't terrible.  I mean, the bad voice acting is hilarious in the anime cutscenes, but it's sort of hard to understand the robot masters when they're doing it.  Admittedly, some are really funny and hilariously creepy, but still.

Also, having them name their attacks when they do them really makes this game unnecessarily easy when you fight them.  That alone probably makes this game less hard.  The key to any Mega Man game is learning how exactly to fight the robot masters, and it's just cheap if they call it out.  Sheesh, why can't they make a dang Famicom version of this game?  This is the one that deserves it more.

Another stereotype is the color scheming of this game.  It's so crazy...every little bit of every little robot or machine or platform in most levels is colored these brilliant neon tones so that you're going through this crazy world of color and eye burning brightness.  They also have birds flying in the intro level, shrapnel going everywhere when you shoot a bad guy, toys falling from nowhere in Clown Man's level, and even a techno club color pattern going on in the stage select screen.  I honestly don't think I could play this game for too long at a time, and I really like shiny stuff.  Search Man's color scheme in his level makes me feel nauseous for some reason.

Bah, enough bashing.  This game really is fun.  It's sillier than it needs to be, but the gameplay adds interesting elements, like getting rid of E tanks in favor of party balls.  I like the E tanks better, but it's still interesting for party balls to be there.  They float in the air, and if you don't shoot them they hurt you if you run into them.  If you shoot them, they drop an item for you.  It's different, and that's cool.

Honestly, they really could have figured out how to make the games work on a non-8 bit format if they kept trying.  I believe it.  So anyway, let's get to the music.

MM8 had the opposite problem as MM7 when it came to music.  While I personally don't enjoy MM7's track as much as other games, I do feel that its music was more in the feel of Mega Man: weird and good times.  Now, in a pure sense of general music, MM8's had some better and more unique tracks.  On the downside, it lost its Mega Man feel.  It became less of a Mega Man game and more of just a generic video game.  Now, it's not as bad as how generic the JJ Abrams Star Trek was compared to real Star Trek, but all the same it lost some of its uniqueness.  It lost that slight darkness that makes Mega Man what it is.

However, like I said about MM7, it's actually fun for one game.  I want to criticize this game, but I watched a playthrough again, and you know what?  I forgive this game's flaws.  I really like it.  It's not as good as games 1-5, but it's fun, so play it.

I think most of this game's cheesiness (as well as MM7's) comes from an overly dark Mega Man X series.  They wanted the original series to balance it out.  I really don't like this, but for one game it's good to just have fun and even be a little silly.  Honestly, they really should have given Bass more plot, but whatever.

So anyway, indeed, whether or not you like MM7 music or 8 music better, one for its more Mega Man feel and the other for its better quality, they do have similar flaws.  I talked about this during my MM6 review, but honestly, these two games have it worse.  In their cases, Capcom seemed to be trying too hard to make the robot master themes sound thematically alike, rather than giving each robot master a more unique sound.  MM8 isn't quite as indistinct as MM7's music between masters, but still, its songs don't really reflect the characteristics of the masters they try to portray.  I mean, you could start playing random songs from Mega Mans 1-5 (and possibly 6) and about ninety-five percent of the time I can guess what robot master they're from.  These?  Not so much.

But as cheesy 80s pop as MM8 sounds, it's still pretty enjoyable.  It's too cheese to really compare to other games that well, but it's good that the music didn't suck.  It's not as unique and weird as I prefer my Mega Man, but whatever.  Speaking of which, on to it!

So this game has two different intros, depending on the country the game was released.  The western theme is a very nice piece that's sort of mellow rock, both dramatic and relaxing at the same time.  Meditative, even.  It makes me feel nostalgic even though I never played this game as a child.  Really though, the Japanese song does fit better with the anime intro scene, which shows Mega Man fighting baddies from all the previous games.  It's cheesier than cheese, but dang is it fun!  It makes me want to learn Japanese.

Next up is the title screen song, a nice song that accomplishes its purpose I suppose.  It feels like a track you'd play at a fashion boutique or exercise video, but I like it.   Now the intro stage is where it's at.  I love this song!  Very hyper and appropriate.  The music they play underground during the intro stage, while kinda cool, reminds me of a fashion show, one of those really wonky ones that are unnecessarily gimmicky.  Like making all the models walk through a spray of glow in the dark paint.

The mid boss song is okay.  Very hyperactive and pulsing.  It kind of annoys me though, because it's a bit too repetitive for having to fight an enemy for a significant period of time.  The stage select screen song, however, is very good.  I quite like it.  It's what a stage select screen should be, except a bit more noticable than most of the stage select screens tend to be.  Fitting with the disco shiny panels on screen.

Okay, just a warning, there are nine robot master themes this time.  For some reason Tengu Man has a completely different theme on the Saturn version, so I'll be rating both songs like I would normally.  Naturally, I won't be playing favorites, but rating each song on its own merit and how it represents the robot master.  Let's go!

#9 Does everything about Search Man's level have to make me sick?  What is up with this song?  The squealing, squelching tones are like getting stabbed in the ear.  Like listening to modern crap pop.  Like listening to Nathan Fillion pretend he's from out west (you are officially disallowed from every saying "ain't" or "y'all" ever again, Mr. Fillion).  This doesn't relate to being a sniper military attack robot at all.  What were they thinking?  This is my nominee for the worst Mega Man song ever.

#8 ....Are you kidding me?  I know Clown Man is a clown, but how about not making his theme sound like any clown's song?  You could literally play this song while clowns are performing at a circus and it wouldn't make a difference.  Perfect for like one of those toys where you crank the handle and a clown pops out.  Well, at least it's cute.

#7 What?  What is this mess?  Okay, so in Japan tengus are these bird-demon mountain monster things, and so Capcom calls a robot master after one.  Where in the mess do you get such a chirpy theme for a dang kami from?  It's a dang kami.  Fail, Playstation version.  Well, it's at least a happy song, very windy sounding.  Honestly though, it's a lot like the color scheming of this game: too much, too hyper, too sugar.  Especially at the part where they dump a bunch of mets on you in the level.  I really don't want to listen to annoying music at that part.

#6 As silly and annoying as Aqua Man the robot master is, his theme is pretty peaceful.  Do, do, do.  Not that unique or special, but nice in its own way.  Perfect for an elevator or an insane asylum.

#5 Honestly, everything in this game soundtrack reminds me of either exercise videos or fashion shows.  It's definitely the former when it comes to Astro Man's level.  Truth be told, I kinda like this song.  It just makes absolutely no sense for Astro Man's level.  Neither does the level itself.  Endless mazes are really gimmicky, especially, when you expect that robot master lairs are either civilian made or Wily made.  Oh wait, we're talking about music now.  Um...yeah.  Okay song.  Not great.

#4 Grenade Man's theme is decent.  Pretty fun, actually.  I like it's sense of drama and tension.  As much as I really like this song, I don't really feel it's very grenade-ish.  Way too peaceful.  Actually, this song is quickly becoming a favorite of mine as I just listen to it some more.  I think I could listen to this just on my ipod without playing the game. *hums happily along*

#3 Sword Man's theme is actually kind of fun.  While it still reminds me of overly melodramatic runway shows, it actually makes the attempt to be like Sword Man's level, which entails going through ancient relics.  While I feel the level's gameplay was gimmicky and just generic video game, this song certainly isn't. I dig it!

#2 I really love Tengu Man's song on the Saturn version.  It's a great rollicking song that's fun, passionate, and actually sounds like a Mega Man song from what the series should be.  It inspires you to keep going in the level, and it's really cool.  Shoot the dang kami-bot, Mega Man!

#1 Much like Shade Man's theme from the previous game, the song from Frost Man's stage was instantly recognisable and even stuck in my head after only one watching of RoahmMythril's Frost Man perfect run.  It's a more mellow song, which is definitely necessary when you're following a crazy voice around going "JUMP, JUMP! SLIDE, SLIDE!"  Easily a memorable and well written song, best of the bunch.

There's a lot of extra songs to go over in this one.  First of all, you can go to Dr. Light's lab to buy some stuff for the game to make it easier on ya.  Mellow, repetitive, not that great, but you don't want to stab your own ears when you listen to it.  Duo has his own theme, and this plays during the midstage after four of the robot masters.  It's a great theme.  I really like it.  Very passionate and driving, really pumping you up.  Pity the midstage is so lame gameplaywise.  A song like this deserves a hard level.

Cut Man returns in the midstage if you're playing the Sega Saturn version, and they remix his song all special like.  Thing is, have you ever heard those professional DJs that really aren't as good as they think they are?  That's what this song sounds reminds me of.  I really don't think the MM8 sound really works for Cut Man.  Either that or they were just trying too hard.

Wood Man returns in Search Man's stage in the Saturn game, and his mix is a lot better than Cut Man's, mostly because it was a far less wonky song to have to remix in the first place (some songs are just easier to mix than others).  Honestly, this song is a dang lot of fun.

Okay, so the boss battle song.  About time I actually got to this.  In MM8, there's a short intro to this song.  It's unnecessary, but it's cool.  The boss battle song itself is dang awesome.  Good layering and excitement.  Maybe too intense for such an easy game, but whatevs.  The get weapon song is okay.  Not really anything that interesting or special.  It's trying too hard to be exciting, really.

I don't usually comment on the Wily stage intro for the games, but this one's was so unnecessarily pompous that I just have to wonder what Capcom was thinking.

Wily stage one is so weird.  It's sort of deep and weird sounding, like an older, intense computer movie where  somebody's trying to figure out what's going on. Or like a really melodramatic fashion show.  Jokes aside, it's a really fun and well layered song.  I really like it.  Not sure how Wily it is, but eh.

Wily 2 doesn't really compare.  It's just okay.  Like the first, it sort of reminds me of Frost Man's level, except this one part where it gets all whistle-ish.  Not the greatest ever.  You're bound to forget this track.  If only the song was more like the ending of the track and less like the beginning, and given to Search Man instead of his annoying theme.

I don't mind Wily 3.  Sounds almost like a haunted house.  Not that unique.  Could be for basically any game.

Wily stage four is a remix of the battle theme introduction, and since you're replaying the robot master themes, it makes sense.  I just wish that the Wily level themes didn't all sound so....icy.

Unlike in MM7, Bass' theme actually sort of matches the rest of the game.  I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.  In any case, his theme is still awesome, and Bass is still radical.  Or he would be if the evil energy actually made him difficult to fight.

After a short introduction where Duo stops you from dying (okay theme at this point) it goes into the Wily battle.  I have very high expectations for the music during Wily fights, and honestly...I'm not sure about this one.  It's okay.  It's just trying too hard.  I mean, if your game is full of cheese, then your big boss theme should reflect the tone of your game, like in MM7.

After you defeat his first form, Wily switches over to the skull capsule, and I must say, it's a dang creepy intro as he does this.  Creepy awesome.  The final Wily fight theme is also creepy, very computerish and intense.  I like.  Really weird and awesome.

So yay!  You beat the game!  Duo saves Mega Man again and then disappears off into space, leaving the defense of earth to the blue bomber and company.  And again, there are two different endings.  Maybe the Japanese one is more fitting, but my heart belongs to the western one.  I suppose Japan's version is more like a reprise of the intro, very cheesy and fun.  I just wish I understood it.  Fun and happy, and it makes you happy you won.

Honestly, I still love the western one more.  It makes me feel really reminiscent of all of the Mega Man games.  Just listening to it almost makes me want to cry.  I don't know what it is with this song, but something about it reminds me of being a kid and the more innocent music theory we had going on in the nineties (did I mention modern pop is crap?).  This along with the ending picture just makes me feel fondly about Mega Man and happy about life in general, reminding me about all things good in life.  Especially since it was the last Mega Man classic game for a long time.

Well, overall MM8's music was not up to standard.  I'm going to tell you not to skip this game because it was good, but at the end of the day, I have to call it right here.  While I'm willing to let your opinion decide the best  soundtrack of the series, I'm calling this one as the worst.  It had its good songs, but after some bad or just plain not unique robot master tunes and mediocre Wily level songs, it just can't muster up the great times that all the other games of the series can.

So if these songs were the soundtrack to a movie, it'd be one of those cheesy old movies that's not as cool as it thinks it is (and you love the movie for it).  Not unlike the first Mortal Kombat movie, except not quite as good.  The hero has to deal with computer hackers, and his girlfriend is a fitness instructor.  He makes her pretend to be a model so that he can sneak into the really melodramatic runway show.  The villain is overly dark and the ending is dang happy.  Yeah.  I seriously need to write that movie.

Couple of questions might pop into your head.  First of all, am I going to review the Mega Man and Bass soundtrack?  The answer is probably not.  I mean, I kind of like the game and how it sort of fixed everything that was wrong with MM8's burn your eye out graphics (it was based on the same sprite models), but the music also was in line with MM8.  The sound type of the game just wasn't good for Mega Man as a whole, and I don't really enjoy it.  That being said, MM&B does sound more like a Mega Man game.  I might reconsider, but for now I'm not sure.

Heck, I'm actually not that mad I had to rewrite this.  I think this version is more coherent than what I put before accidentally deleting my first draft.

As for reviewing MM9, I'm going to listen to its soundtrack and MM10 more before I continue with these reviews.  I feel like I want to get more of a sense of these soundtracks before I go on about them.  See you then!

Mega Man Music --- MM7

Hey y'all.  Let's move on to the next game in the Mega Man series, MM7.  This is the first one to be on the Super Nintendo, and honestly the SNES was good for Mega Man.  The formula was getting tired, and Capcom was having trouble being more creative with Mega Man on the original Nintendo.  It was time for a facelift, and SNES is exactly what the doctor ordered.

The graphics were a bit cheesy, but who cares?  They were great graphics, and with new graphic abilities you can do cool things like burn back trees and freeze lava to discover hidden paths.  Enemies could do new things, and with the L and R buttons on the SNES controller you could switch powers without hitting the pause menu.

Just like the graphics the gameplay is awesome, and they create great new enemies that are interesting to fight.  You'd be surprised how interesting fighting robot cockroaches is.  Also, they add an intro stage and a mid-stage.  I have a problem with how easy the both of these are, but they are very useful for the plot.

Honestly, I think MM7 has the best plot out of any Mega Man Classic game.  It's good, doesn't interfere with the gameplay, and is a good level of complex.  You have Dr. Wily breaking out of jail to fight the world again, and then Bass, my second favorite character ever (under Crystal Man), appears.  He appears to be Mega Man's friend, and in the first plot twist worthy of a spoiler alert, he's not.  He wants nothing more than to beat Mega Man, and he ends up almost destroying Dr. Light's lab.  But of course Mega Man saves the day, and everything is happy, other than Dr. Wily escaping to terrorize the world again.  Throughout all this you get to see a good dose of Roll, Light's new robot Auto, and Dr. Light himself, who tells you about how the weapons you gain work when you get them.

They make the game to where you can't play all eight levels in whatever order.  Only four of the robots show up, and after you beat them you get the next four.  This is fine, and actually it helps the plot.  The gameplay too makes the limited options still interesting enough for you to not have a too similar game every time.  You have Rush plates, Beat, and Proto Man to find, making this a very interesting game.  You get to go to Auto's shop and buy things in this game, and there's an item you can find to make everything half-price and access different new items.  However, most of these items can be found for free during the game.  I like this, because if you can't find it you can just buy it.

The Rush adaptor is there, but it works more like a double jump than as broken as MM6's adaptor.  Still very useful, just balanced.

So the plot, gameplay, and graphics are all excellent.  This game was a step in the right direction for the series on the SNES, and it's quality.  However, some people threw a hissy fit because it wasn't 8bit, and that's honestly cold.  Mega Man can't just stay the same all the time.  That they would talk crap about such a good and well made game is just frustrating to me.  Sure, it was weird for me at first, but crap, MM7 did so many things right that you can't hate it just for being 16 bit.  Those people that made an 8 bit Famicom version of it really need to apologize to Capcom.

You will now note that I didn't mention music as one of the game's good points.  Because honestly, it's not.  There are a lot of people who like it, and that's cool.  It's not like the music sucks, other than the remix of the Proto Man whistle (guh).  The trouble with it is that it's just so tinny and dated.  It's ridiculously corny, and it depends on how willing a person you are for corny music as to whether or not you'll like it.  When you compare it to the music of the games before, it comes off as too silly.

Now, you might complain that me, an 8 bit fan, shouldn't call this soundtrack dated when 8-bit is too.  That's a somewhat fair accusation.   Thing is, MM7's music is cheesy through and through, because it's a type of style.  The MIDI formatting that makes 8 bit music is more like an instrument: one item that can make a variety of sounds and styles.  Like a violin, MIDI can be dramatic, serious, frolicking, happy, hyper, slow, or whatever else it wants to be.

MM7's music can't really be anything but silly, happy, and fun.  And that's the plus side of the music.  There's really nothing wrong with silly, happy, and fun, so for this one game it works.  Still, I could take any of the games MM1-5 (I don't know about 6) and just listen to them alone on my ipod.  Especially MM5, which is a really great roadtrip soundtrack.  MM7, however, has music you can really only listen to when you play the game.  It's not that enjoyable on its own.

Oh, and by the way, daddies are the coolest ever.  My dad told me to say that, so I thought I'd listen for once.  Yeah, Dad's pretty cheesy himself.

Speaking of cheesy, let me talk about something I mentioned in the MM6 review.  Now, MM games 1-5 all had a more or less serious tone, without going more cheesy than the 8 bit format required them to.  Capcom obviously made efforts to make this a more serious series at that half of Mega Man's life, but it seems that once the Mega Man X series arrived and became the melodramatic stuff that it was, they for some reason made deliberate efforts to make the series cheesy.  Thus, Mega Man 6 had a plot with an obvious plot by Dr. Wily and an extra boss castle to go through for essentially no reason. 

In this sense, MM7 is far worse.  The dialogue between several characters is hilariously corny, the password screen is so dorky I can't stand it, and the graphics are generally chirpy and silly.  I can forgive the graphics, because they only real problem with them is that Mega Man looks sort of mean.  I despise the password screen (goofy screenshots of people's faces? Come on...), and I actually don't mind the dialogue.  The trouble is the precedent this creates.

Let me explain with the game series Space Quest, which follows the adventures of a janitor, Roger Wilco, that has to save the universe repeatedly.  The reason why the first game was so awesome was because the threat was real.  The game itself had very goofy and funny moments, but the bad guys were actually serious and the plot was based on serious intergalatic politics.  The only goofy thing about it was the fact that a lazy janitor had to be the hero in the end.  That was what made the game.

Now, SQ2 was more or less in the same vein, though the plot wasn't to use a star generator to destroy planets, it was now subjecting all of the universe to insurance salesmen.  Yeah.  The third game was silly too, with the villain having servants with jello-shooting guns and you have to fight the boss in a giant robot based on a toy.  Those games were still good, as the elements of the game make them fun.

SQ4 is better, because the villain Sludge Vohaul took over time, ended up conquering Roger's planet, and even kidnapped his son.  Now that's a serious threat.  Even with the cheesy voiceovers, it was a great game and very awesome.  You could feel the threat of the bad guy. 

Space Quest 5 was the beginning of the end.  While it was a very fun game in its own right, it did a lot of things wrong.  It threw in too many parodies, made Roger fart every time he sat down (once is enough!  We got it!  Thank you!), and the whole universe was essentially a rip off of Star Trek.  This game is worth playing, but the end was near.

That was SQ6.  Nothing about this game was original.  The structure of the game was awesome, with lots of options and a different feel to the gameplay.  That was the only good part.  The plot was stupid (it didn't match up with the ending of SQ5), nothing that happened wasn't a parody of something, Roger turns whiny, an old villain from 3 is recycled, and the ending actually preaches about eating right.  Nothing new or distinctly Space Quest even happened in the game.

Now, why did I got on that big rant?  Because I want to make the point that when you take a game in a series and make it too cheesy from what it was meant to be, you hurt the quality of the series as a whole.  Honestly, I love Mega Man 7, and if I had to compare it to a Space Quest game, it would be 3: cheesy, but fun and great the way it is.  I just don't want this to be a sign that Mega Man as a whole is forgetting its more serious origins.

I'm pretty sure that this is the point Keiji Inafune started having less influence and his crew having more.  Then again, it might be a good thing in some cases.  Inafune always seemed to want to go darker than those around him, and it helped the Zero series not be as melodramatic when the crew essentially forced him to not make Mega Man X the villain of that series.

In any case, I just don't want the Mega Man series to be complete cheese.  Being funny is cool, but hey, even little Rockman has to save the world.  You can't forget how intense that is.

Bah!  I"ve been ranting too long!  Music time!

Okay, so the cheese begins with the intro track.   It's a silly intro, but it conveys what it needs to convey: Mega Man finally arrested Dr. Wily.  Then it gets dark to let you know that Wily built robots to let himself out.  People seem to like the title screen song, and it is really peppy and fun for being so short.  To me it's not that great, but it's good.

Ah, the intro stage music is awesome!  It's fun, intense music that would sound really great on an electric guitar (I'm pretty sure you could find that on youtube somewhere).  I just wish that the intro stage were harder or longer so that it matched the awesomeness of the song.

The stage select tune is pretty good.  It does what a stage select track should, namely to get you to choose a robot master.  The best stage select tunes are like that.

Now for the robot masters.  Notedly, this is the part where I think the composer really messed up.  None of the robot master tracks are horrible, but I have a problem with how non-unique most of them are.  In the earlier games, it's easy to hear a track and be like "oh, that's Wood Man" or "that must be Magnet Man".  Honestly, you have to pay more attention to keep track of these themes in this game.  MM6 had trouble with that, but nowhere near this bad.  Lots of the tracks are just peppy and don't relate as well as they could to the robot master of the level.  They sound too much like each other.

Well, I better rate 'em.  Remember, I'm putting these in order of quality of song, not my personal favorite or even fan favorites, though I have to regard fan favorites somewhat if I'm going to be completely fair.  My aim is for which song is of the best quality, not so much which is favorite.

#8 Spring Man.  You are a questionable robot master.  Seriously, a slinky-bot?  Dr. Wily really is a mad scientist.  I kinda don't blame them for really not having a matching theme with this guy.  His music is fun and cute, and that's about all you can say.

#7 Cloud Man's stage theme is just weird.  It's happy, and it does convey a sense of the sky, but it's like somebody turned the cheesy dial way up.  It reminds me of old kid's show tunes.  Heck, that's probably why some people like it so much.

#6 Turbo Man's theme does make me think of roads and racing.  They did do a good job there.  Trouble is, the theme kind of annoys me.  The tinny sound is forgivable on other tracks, but it really hurts Turbo Man's.

#5 Freeze Man's theme is so videogame.  It reminds me of every ice level theme I've ever heard.  It's got great layering, and it feels sort of carnival-ish.  Freeze Man is captain of the cheese cruise.

#4 Okay, so Burst Man's theme is pretty good.  The song doesn't remind me of bombs or bubbles, but it's a fun theme that's happy, and it makes me happy.  Doo doo doo doo-doo-doo-doo.....

#3 Junk Man's theme is like Burst Man's.  Not very distinct, but very happy.  Does this seriously remind anyone of a junkyard?  Hardly.  I don't think anyone really cares, because it makes them happy.  Me too.

#2 I like Slash Man's theme because it actually conveys a sense of the robot master and his level.  It conveys jungle, adventure, dinosaurs...everything about the stage.  It fits really well.  I'm not going to be rating the Famicom music, but I have to say that this song even sounds awesome in 8 bit.

#1 Now this is it!  Shade Man is what they should have done for every robot master theme: convey the actual robot master!  It's so evident that the creators of this game liked Shade Man the best.  You have to replay his level twice to get all the items, there's a secret way to get Ghosts and Goblins music for his level, and the theme is so kickin'!  The first time I heard this song I was watching Roahmmythril's perfect runs, and even though his commentary sort of blocks out the music, I found Shade Man's theme running around in my head later on.  I wasn't even thinking about Mega Man.  I can't say that about any other robot master theme from this game.

I'm not including it on the ratings list, but yes, the Ghost and Goblins song is on there if you hold A when you're selecting Shade Man (and you haven't defeated him yet).  It's a cute song, and it sounds pretty good as an MM7 tune.

Now, in the middle of the robot master themes, they have a time where you go to the robot master museum and you hear a remix of the Snake Man, Guts Man, and Heat Man themes.  I really like this song, up until the point where you get to Heat Man.  It's actually kinda frightening at that point.  They really should have gone with a different robot master there.  It's wonky, but you might like it.  The Snake and Guts Man parts are awesome.

Normally Capcom always did very good on the boss battle songs, but I don't know what the crap happened with this one.  I'll admit that some people really do like it, but I'm puzzled at why: this is just too darn squeaky, and listening to it for long gives me a headache.  If they just cut out those darn high notes it wouldn't be so bad, but crap is it headache inducing.  Normally I post a link to this guy who put up a youtube video with all the songs from the game, but he forgot to put the boss battle theme in his soundtrack.  I'll go ahead and post the link here.

Boss battle theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpHUYUN7H7c

I'm not really a fan of the password theme song. It's okay, but it's so dang cheesy and silly.  Kind of lame.  It's harmless, though.  Actually, I really hate how the password screen uses corny shots of characters' faces as password combinations, but that's not music so we'll move on.

Now THIS is where MM7 music gets good.  The Wily stage themes are pwnsome.  In the earlier games, I never considered Mega Man as a series to be cheesy, but Wily himself?  Sure.  He's a demented creepo bent on conquering/destroying the world.  He built Spring Man.  How is that not cheesy?  Also, this is the first game in the series to bring us a new theme for each and every Wily level.  Pwn!

Wily level one is very good, very sneaky sounding.  It's like Mega Man is finding the way inside Wily's fortress and has to be very careful.  Level 2 sounds extra dorky, but dorky in a really good way.  It's very fun, like a really cheesy horror flick.  Level 3's music is also fun, almost inspirational in a way.  Not unlike a cartoon opening theme.  4 sounds almost like a continuation of 3's, just in a different pitch.  The best of these is the first, but all of them are a good time.

For some reason, Bass' theme really stands out to me.  Unlike the other MM7 songs, it has no cheese.  It doesn't sound overly tinny or like just another generic theme.  This is really good, distinctive stuff.  It's like your reaction to Bass himself.  You're not really sure what to think about him at first, you just know he's awesome.

The Wily fight music has parts, one for each stage.  The first is okay.  It's exciting, dramatic, and electro fun.  The second one is the one that's completely crazy.  I love it so much I made lyrics for it.

Pew, pew-pew, pew, pew..
Fighting with laser guns
Fighting with laser guns
Fighting with laser guns
Fighting with laser guns

Pew, pew-pew, pew, pew..

Fighting with laser guns

Fighting with laser guns

Fighting with laser guns

Fighting with laser guns

You think you'll beat me

You will not beat me

You think you'll shoot me

But then I will go-

Pew, pew-pew, pew, pew....

And so on and so forth.  Hey, it's a cheesy song, what to you expect?  So anyway, there's other music I didn't mention.  Auto has a shop in this game, and his theme...is repetitive and annoying.  It's like carnival clown hell or something.  So not the way to go, Capcom.   The get weapon music is okay.  Nothing great, but not horrible.  A second weapon tune plays when Dr. Light is telling you what the weapon does, and this theme is pretty good.  Kind of refreshing sounding and cute.

The ending theme is alright, but it feels a little weird.  It's too dramatic for an end theme...the excited kind of dramatic.  It would work a lot better for a robot master stage or something.  All in all, I do like the song.  Out of all the songs, I think I like this one and Shade Man's best out of the game.  It's really fun and exciting, just not really ending-like.  Whatever, you're not going to hate it.

Heck, listen for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbzMX94qtCk

Summary: Mega Man 7 is a great game, but the music wasn't as good as the rest of it.  The cheese was too much.  Honestly though, as long as no one ever makes another tinny sounding soundtrack for Mega Man, MM7 will remain unique and different.  The music here is second place to the game, and not really that great to listen to if you're not actually playing. 

So if this were the soundtrack to a movie, it would be to a cheesy horror film with weird special effects and goofy protagonists.  Probably involving a haunted house.   It'd be the kind of movie that's like a Halloween classic.  More funny than scary, but still scary in a way.  The kind of film where you mention it around Halloween and your friends are all like, "Yeah, let's watch it again!"

Write Club -- Keep Writing!

Hey y'all. It's been a while since I've done one of these posts.

Okay, so I just wanted to go over something about writing. One of the hardest parts of keeping up with it (as you can see by my meager posting of the Hero of the Month segment) is that you just have to keep on writing. It's not a habit that always comes to you easily. The worst thing ever is sitting in front of a blank computer screen or page and wondering what the heck you're doing. There seems to be some sort of myth going around that writers are able to look at that blank page, press on through, and just write.

See, this is exactly what doesn't happen, and I think the myth trips up a lot of writers. It's like comedians. You always expect those guys to just think "okay, I have to write a comedy routine now" and then just sit down and do it. Nope. They have to have a goal in mind, a subject they want to go on about. It's exactly the same about writers. We never make something out of nothing.

So how in the world do we write? We have to be inspired. You'll be walking somewhere or you'll be washing dishes or staring at an awesome picture (maybe even a special word), and you'll just have a "DING DING DING!!" go off in your head in the form of inspiration or story. Sometimes this inspiration is only a little, and sometimes it's enough to actually start writing something with. In any case, the hard part is definitely sitting at your computer and typing up something out of your raw inspiration.

I've learned a lot through my years of fanfiction and poetry, so here's a few tips for young'uns to learn.

1. Write quickly after inspiration hits.

Not only do you not want to forget your inspiration, you also need to remember how much passion you felt for it. If you remember the idea but have stopped caring, it's going to be very hard to write on it. Maybe you have an idea for a story but really have more background than actual plot in your head. That's okay, write it down too. That way you can follow the next tip.

2. Reread what you write constantly.

While writing my Mega Man fanfiction, one of the things I more or less inadvertantly ended up doing was rereading my story. I started off on Okkusenman, a story where Bass gets out from under the thumb of Wily, and I found myself enjoying the story so much (doesn't it feel sometimes like someone else wrote your work?) that I just wanted to read it again and again. That proved a great way to maintain my passion for this story series, especially now that I'm on the fifth and last story of my Mega Man fanfiction. It reminds me of how much I wanted to write this story in the first place.

Not only that, but it helps me remember what directions I took in my first story. Sometimes in my later stories I'd wonder what to do next or what to give a character to make them more interesting, and then I'd look back at my writing and get inspired to do something or remember an old character trait that I need to show off again. It's a great way to find errors in your work or odd points that you can exploit and pretend was planned from the beginning.

So heck, reread your stories and even your notes about your works. It helps your brain get into the proper mode for your story so that when you think of your works, it will only be a natural extension of what you have already written rather than mismatched and sort of random plot additions or changes. *COUGH*R.A.Salvatore*COUGH*.

3. Love your characters and story.

One of the mistakes you can make is just get bored with what you're doing and just stop. Or maybe you carry on, but because you have lost your love for a person or even a plotline you just kind of go on with it for the sake of money or reviews or whatever. Just so you know, if you're bored by something, chances are your readers will be.

So if at any moment you feel bored, there are a few things you can do. You can stop working on that plotline and find some outside characters to write about. You can focus on that character and think about how they feel or how they got to a situation. Maybe go out and take a walk, or do the dishes (it's surprising how much work inspires my writing).

Maybe you could go listen to music that inspires you. This song Into Being from Paul Oakenfold's Another World (yeah, sometimes I listen to Oakenfold, sue me) really inspired me to write about Kerrigan from Starcraft. There are certain videos on youtube that make me want to write about the Mega Man universe, including fan-made music videos and let's plays of the games.

Really, at the end of the day you just have to remember that your characters are people. Notedly, so is your audience. Your audience wants to identify with the people from the story and be able to live your story through them. Write the story as if it's someone's life, and learn to describe things in a way that makes your readers think that even if it's only in some far off, fantasy alternate dimension, your story really could have happened.

4. Write incomplete ideas.

Yeah, basically don't forget the things that you don't know what to do with. Like maybe you're staring at a few inspirational words or ideas and you have a clue where to go, but you're not sure yet. Just write it down and wait. Sooner or later you'll get more ideas, or maybe you'll figure out how to attach that idea to one of your current stories. There will be times when particular inspiration won't be useful ever, but the more you think and the more ideas constantly pop into your head, then the better you'll be.

5. Have a vision and aim for it.

Oftentimes you'll have a key idea or image you're trying to express in a story or story series. This is the most important part of writing. Maybe your vision is to create a vast world with interesting creatures. Maybe you want to talk about a certain theme or emotion, how you feel on a particular topic. Or maybe you just want to fill your audience with a specific emotion, sharing your past or a specific hurt or glory in your life.

Let me emphasize this. If you have no vision, your story will suck. Period. This is the ironclad rule of all storytelling. For example, look at these movies that came out lately after you pretty much thought their series was over: Rocky, Rambo, Indiana Jones, Die Hard, etc. Rocky and Rambo had the advantage that Stallone seems to understand that you need a vision. Rocky Balboa was about not letting anyone tell you that you can't do something. Rambo was about the Karen rebels of Burma with the additional set of themes that show the perspectives of how different people feel about going into dangerous situations: some want to go without guns and show peace, others just want to stay away, still others believe that it's fine to let people trapped in terrible countries just rot, and finally there are those who will go in and fight.

Indiana Jones 4? All about the money and universally derided. Die Hard 4 actually tried to have a theme, one that basically says it sucks to be a hero, but this is a major failing because none of the other movies in the series have that theme, and it looks tacky and not a natural extension of the trilogy before it. Also they have a sucky villain, but that's a different topic. I mean, in the first movie Hans Gruber was hardcore. This guy in the fourth? Some idiot that you feel like you can just walk up to and slap in the face without consequence.

Better get back on topic...

For my story series on Mega Man, the idea which keeps me inspired is my objection to Keiji Inafune and the direction he took Mega Man in. I disagree with how dark the X series, the Zero series, and the ZX series ended up being. They tried to make Mega Man Legends more happy, but that game feels like it could be its own universe; it didn't really need to be a Mega Man game. Honestly, I feel like they sort of betrayed Mega Man Classic. Pretty much every game in the X and Zero series (I haven't yet seen playthroughs of ZX, I just know it's dark) makes the world worse off after the heroes save the day, and honestly that sucks. It's like saying that nothing you do in the end matters. So that's my motivation in what I wrote.

So anyway, the real key to writing is this: To write! You'll only get better if you write and read, making yourself more kin to the written word. Don't sit there in front of a blank page and wonder what you're going to do. Take the things running around your heart and mind and put them on paper! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go eat food!

Mega Man Music --- MM6

Hey y'all.  Okay, so right away during these reviews I have to admit that I have only played the games 1-5 as a kid.  It is my desire to be fair, and to judge these according to their merits, not according to nostalgia.  So yeah, number 6 is the first of those that I didn't play.  Though, to be fair, its first release was only in Japan.  I'm really glad it came over here to America eventually, but to me it's the real beginning of Mega Man Classic's troubled period.

Let me explain.  MMs 1-3 were all weird, because Capcom had to figure out how to make the series work.  In MM4, they figured it out.  They surfed a wave of uncertainty and had a great ride.  MM5 came around, and Capcom figured out quickly that they were going to need to configure the series to not only have a good pattern, but to also be adjustable enough to be fun every time.

This wave wasn't as great a surf, but I don't blame Capcom.  MM6 was a rushed NES production which I assume was done for two reasons.  The first is obviously money, as Mega Man is a great series and they could cash in for other endeavors on the Super Nintendo.  The second was to figure out how to adjust their set formula to make the gameplay more interesting.  As much as I love MM5, the gameplay problems during the castle levels (ie the lack of challenge) made it clear that some changes needed to be made if Mega Man Classic was going to survive.

Hence MM6.  They tried some new things and definitely tried harder on the robot master designs, but in the end the rushed nature of the game made it suffer a lot of the problems of MM5.  Actually, people have said that Mega Man 6 is the easiest of the classic games.  There are several reasons for this, mainly in the very strict robot master patterns.  This to me is a huge no-no, because the reason why some of the earlier robot masters are so delightfully hard is because they have an edge of randomness and you have to figure out how to force them into their pattern.  With these guys, it's basically just watch them repeat themselves and dodge/attack accordingly.  Lame.  Especially when you throw in robot master weaknesses.

Let me actually talk good about the robot masters.  The thing that makes MM6 stand out from the others is its robot masters.  By the time this set was designed, their creator was already working on several things for the Super Nintendo, so they came out way more detailed than the NES could really handle well.  As a result, all the robot masters are very distinctive, and this is very cool.

However, at least in my opinion that's the only thing that's really distinctive about the game.  The first time I watched a playthrough of this game, I couldn't remember a thing about it other than some of the robot masters.  I knew it involved shortcuts and two power upgrades, and that's it.  I honestly had to watch it again to just remember anything about it.  Not much about this game makes a lasting impression compared to all the others in the series.

You might just say that I feel that way because I didn't play the game as a kid. That doesn't have anything to do with it.  Honestly, I remembered plenty about 7-10 after watching playthroughs.  MM6 tries, but it just doesn't really get outside of mediocre a lot of the time as far as gameplay goes.  The bosses are too boring, the enemies during the levels aren't as much of a challenge, and the two new powers don't really work out as well as they could because the game wasn't designed enough around them.

Let's talk about those.  Okay, so there's the jet adaptor and the power adaptor for Mega Man, and these as concepts are actually very interesting.  Rush isn't Rush jet in this game.  Instead he merges with Mega Man to become jet Mega Man or Power Mega Man.  The jet adaptor allows you to fly around for a short amount of time before you have to land.  However, once you do land, your little meter goes back up and you can fly some more.  The power adaptor lets you have a great punching ability to break blocks or deal good damage.

Honestly, these things could have been really great if the game was actually designed better for them.  The jet adaptor ends up more or less being a cheat because it's so handy, and the power adaptor has of course short range.  Actually, people probably would have loved the power adaptor if it showed bad guys bouncing off your fists as you punched them.  That would be hilarious.

Oh yeah, Beat is available.  You unlock him by fighting four of the robot masters, except these four have two different boss rooms and you have to choose the right one.  Beat, like in MM5, deals damage to enemy robots.  It's not as useful to have Beat in this game, as no boss is weak to it.  It's fun to find the pieces though. I thought that was a good idea for gameplay.  A bad idea for gameplay was to have it so there are shortcuts during the boss castle stages that enabled you to avoid most of the trouble of that castle level.  That's just a cheat right there.

I'm not going to say that the game isn't worth playing.  It's cool.  Oh yeah, maybe I should talk about the plot. Okay, up till this point the classic series has always been mildly serious, at least in the sense that Capcom never made the story cheesy on purpose.  It actually tries in several places to be very serious, like the ending themes of MM2 and 4.  If it was cheesy, it was only because the NES 8 bit format is hard to convey serious themes in.  MM6 involves a bit of deliberate cheesiness, specifically that the bad guy is obviously Wily in a costume.

So the story goes that Mr. X (Wily) is running a robot contest to see who the most powerful robot is, but then he steals the robots and uses them to try and take over the world.  Yeah.  Cheese.  I'll get to more of why this is a problem in my MM7 review, where it is more applicable.  MM6 isn't too cheesy by comparison.  Actually that plot point is really the only problem.  Up till this Capcom went more or less seriously with its work, and I'm disappointed that it felt it had to go more silly past this point.

Bah, this is supposed to be about music, no?  Let's get to it.  Overall I find MM6's soundtrack lacking.  Don't get me wrong, it's got good tracks here and there, but it just feels too mediocre.  There's no Crash Man-like or Star Man-like track that just sounds weird and out there.  Most of the robot master themes don't feel as distinctive or memorable as the general fare of the first five games went.  It felt like either they tried too hard or didn't try enough.  My guess is the first one, as there are some hits in here.

Now remember, I judge the music by what I think is quality, not by my personal favorites.  Also, I made sure to listen to this soundtrack a lot to give it a real chance and not just malign it.  I want these to be as honest as possible, and I'm not picking on this game.  I intend to be honest with all of these, not just put random ratings. I've listened to it over and over again these past weeks.  That being said, I think I can honestly tell you that MM6's music is a step down.  More than anything a lot of the robot master themes seem to blur with one another, sounding thematically alike.  As distinctive as the robot masters' designs are, their songs are just kinda there without really matching the robot master as well as it needed to.

The intro music is good.  It does remind me of a robot master contest.  It's cool.  Not epic like some, but it's a good time.  It leads pretty well into the title screen music, which I personally think is pretty nice.  Good stuff.

I don't like the password screen music that much.  It's okay, but it's just kind of there.  It's not really remarkable.  The stage select screen steps it up with music, and it's very enjoyable.  Ready to fight!

#8 What where they thinking?  Wind Man's theme sounds more like end credits music than a robot master theme.  Were they trying to make this music sound all sad and melodramatic because they knew it was going to be the last game for the NES?  It's a pretty good song, but it really fails to be what it needs to be: Wind Man's.

#7 Yeah...I'm not sure what happened to Tomahawk Man's theme.  It just doesn't stand out that well.  This is one of those themes I had a really hard time placing to the robot master.  I find the main layer of this song to just kinda be there.  Honestly though, it's a pretty good song on its own.  It doesn't really strike the fancy, but it's okay.

#6 I like Blizzard Man's theme alright.  I'm not sure how much it conveys snow and ice, but it's alright.  It's peppy and fun.  Cute, even.

#5 Yamato Man's theme is kinda cool.  It's one of the themes in the mix that really could have stood to be more distinctive, but I enjoy it.  It feels like a Mega Man song.  I wish it could have been more creative, especially for a robot master that's said to originate in the same country as the makers of this game.  Whatever, it's fun.

#4 Knight Man's is more of a fan favorite in this game, and I see why.  I like it pretty good.  As it goes on it actually gets fairly interesting.  Good rollicking theme.

#3 Plant Man's theme is one of those themes that I constantly mix up with several others.  However, it's more of a cut above as it actually does convey some sense of flowers and wind, at least in my mind.  It's a nice theme, even a little soothing.  Cute.  The more I listen, the more I like.  Good job, here.

#2 Now Centaur's Man theme I actually really like.  This song they actually made more relaxing than the others, and that bit of uniqueness makes it stand out a lot more, something the robot master themes desperately needed.  It actually makes me think of horses in fields, conveying an idea.  It's a great song, really being what MM6 needs.

#1  The robot master deserving of the number 1 spot is definitely Flame Man.  Not only does his level have good gameplay, but this theme just kicks butt.  I love how it actually gets Arabian tones in the music even though the format is so dated.  This really tells the skill of the composer in the game, as he made a really great theme here that is distinctive and entertaining.  This is what 8 bit music is all about.

Say what you want about the robots' themes, but the boss fight song is great!  I honestly think it's my favorite boss battle theme in the entire series.  It's a crazy song that really does exactly what a boss battle should do: be awesome and crazy!  Wooo!  Get them baddies, Mega Man!  The get a weapon theme is okay.  They could have done a little more with it, but whatever, it's good stuff.

MM6!  Come on, we had to deal with this in MM5!  I thought you knew better!  Sigh.  So like the last game, there are two castles, and each castle of four levels has only one theme.  Lame!  Come on guys, at least switch it up a little!  Oh well.  At least the Mr. X theme is cool.  It's a good song, weird and fun.  I love the beginning of it especially.

The Dr. Wily theme is good too.  It's a little nostalgic...I like that.  I would like it better if they hadn't made the robot masters' themes nostalgic as well, but whatever.  This song takes me back to the good ol' NES days, and I enjoy it a lot. La la-la, la, la la la!

You know how I said the Wily boss theme was the best in the last game?  I take it back again.  This is more awesome.  I can't believe how much I like this song and the madness it shows.  It's so dang fun and really pumps you up to fight the mad scientist one more time.  Great stuffs!  Yeah!

I'm kinda irritated with the ending theme.  I mean, it's just a compilation of all the robot master themes with a couple of beats between each.  In a sense it's cool, as if you're saying goodbye to Mega Man NES, but still, to me it feel sort of like a cop out.  Especially since during the ending theme they're showing the robot masters'  patterns.  I guess it depends on how you look at it.

Actually, that song does make for a great transition into the credits theme, a sweet nostalgic song that really does say goodbye.  Crap, I love this song...it's the right way to end the Mega Man NES days.  It's such a good fun theme, as if you're saying goodbye to old friends.  Dang...I'm actually crying as I write this.  I didn't think it was that good.

Oh yeah, link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9Ug7szIvh0

So yeah, much like the game itself, the music is pretty hit or miss.  I just wish they had taken the time to be more individual with the robot master themes (and the password theme) rather than have them sound so thematically similar.  It's like they knew from the beginning that they were going to do a robot master compilation at the ending theme.

If this were the soundtrack to a movie, it would be a samurai movie where the main character has eight friends that he has to fight for some reason.  At the end of the movie they all get together to fight the real bad guy, or else the lead character remembers the former friends he fought.  It would be the kind of movie that some people really love, and other people don't get.

Mega Man Music --- MM5

Hey y'all.

You know, after writing reviews for all those other Mega Man games, I was starting to feel a little depressed.  Mega Man 5 really was the downturning of the series in certain ways, and honestly, it's my favorite game.  I remember playing and enjoying this series as a kid, and it means a lot to me.  Charge Man was the first robot master I ever defeated without Game Genie (who remembers Game Genie?).

So I just posted on the fourth game, and then I started listening to five's soundtrack.  That brought me out of the funk I was in, because whatever you want to say about the game, the music was definitely not one of its faults.  It pwns, doing a great job being what MM music is supposed to be. 

Oh no, all 5's flaws are in gameplay.  The plot is great, making it look like Proto Man actually kidnapped Dr. Light and held him hostage.  Of course Wily's behind it all in the end, but it's still a great plot.  The graphics also rock, and it's a fun good time for all.

Trouble is, by MM4 the classic series was all figured out.  That became trouble for the game because it then had to concentrate on making more unique gaming features for the robot master stages.  This might have been easier if Capcom hadn't been in such a rush.  MM5 (and 6) came out in the latter days of the NES, when the Super Nintendo was rising and becoming the thing (and no console has ever truly beaten the SNES in awesomeness).  I guess maybe Capcom wanted to make money so that they could move on to SNES games and still have some cash flow coming in while they work.

They did try.  I'll give 'em that.  One of the things they did wrong was make the Mega Buster's charged shot more powerful, and also larger in size.  This makes it too easy to kill bad guys.  Even worse, the weapons from the robot masters weren't great.  Crystal Man's was too random, Stone Man's couldn't hardly hit anything, Gyro and Napalm Man's were unwieldly, Gravity Man's wasn't strong enough, Wave's couldn't hit very high, and using Charge Man's was more likely to get yourself hurt than a baddie.  Star Man's shield was okay.  You're better off just going on as your normal Mega Man self in the end though.

The real doom of this game was the Proto Man and Wily Castle stages.  If these alone had been improved, then the whole game would have been much better.  Trouble is, there were a lot of great stage gimmicks during the robot master parts, but none of these gimmicks (or anything particularly interesting) were used in the castle stages.  Actually, at one point they reused the gimmick from Dust Man's stage in MM4, but you know...how about something new? 

The bosses in the Proto Man castle were extremely uncreative.  What happened to the big mammoth baddies in the other games?  Come on...

Bah, let's get on to some positive things.  First of all, they did try very interesting gimmicks for a lot of the stages.  Gravity Man's stage could have been developed more to be more challenging, but having gravity switched up and down was a great idea.  Everyone who played this game remembers the crystal drop segment of doom.  Then there's the Wave Man bubble ride that Splash Woman copied (in a better way), and Wave Man also had a fun jet ski segment.

So that's the problem with the gameplay.  They come up with good ideas, but they just didn't bring them out enough to be the right level of challenging (besides the crystal drop, which was fine as it was).  If they had just taken these same gimmicks and used them in the Proto Castle (Wily's castle should have its own gimmicks). It was a good game just done too fast.

However, gameplay is the one downside to the game, and this by no means ruins it.  The graphics are perfect 8-bit fare, the plot is good, and the music is definitely awesome.  Seriously, I love this soundtrack.  It's my favorite soundtrack.  I won't call it the best, but it's definitely the closest to my heart.  I was thinking about all the other games, and you know what?  You can talk all the crap you want to about MM5, but its music owns, and forget you if you don't agree!

Alright, so I'll tell you what I'm talking about. MM5's music is not out to be more epic, or more party, or darker than any other Mega Man soundtrack.  It's just out there being itself: relaxed, fun, and just good to sit and listen to.  Honestly, I don't even have to play the game.  I could just listen to this stuff on its own because it's so darn good.  It's actual music, not just vgm fare.  Not to talk down about other MM soundtracks, it's just that there's video games out there with music it's just weird to listen to if you're not playing the game.  You know what I'm saying?

So anyway, the introduction starts out a little dramatic, giving the apparent betrayal of Proto Man a proper and suprising sound.  The title theme is just awesome.  It's powerful and even a little sad.  It's like Mega Man's saying "Proto Man....why? I....I'll do what I have to!" 

The password screen theme is a nice tune.  It's not annoying, and it does exactly what it needs to do by urging the player to go ahead and input the password.  I like it.  The screen select theme is also good...man...I can't believe how much I love that song.

Robot Masters!  Whoohoo!  Remember that these are in order of quality, not my personal favorite.

#8 One of the robot masters with a fun level was Gyro Man, who had his elevators of doom with death spikes on them.  I wish they had more of them in the game.  But anyway, his music is good.  It's a little too mellow and dragging in my opinion.  It's a perfectly good song, but it's not as evocative as the others.  Chillin' in the clouds...

#7 Wave Man's music is nice and relaxing.  It's about just cruising along in the water, just going on and enjoying everything.  Honestly, it's really too happy to be a robot master theme, but you know what?  I dang well like it.  It would be awesome if the sun in the background set while you're on the jet ski segment.

#6 I really like Star Man's theme.  It's perfectly reminiscent of space, stars, science fiction, and machinery.  Like Crash Man's theme in MM2, it serves as the randomly wonky piece of the game.  I can just see the little jet mets now, cruising in space.  Honestly, I think this level in particular was perfect.  Hard, but well designed.  And the music was exactly what it needed to be.

#5 Charge Man's music is great.  I seriously need to write lyrics to it.  Words come to mind as if it's a song about a guy asking a girl to run off on a train with him to go have adventures or something.  It's be so great in a movie...

#4 Now, one of the robot masters, Stone Man, is in a long line of Guts Man rip offs (Hard Man, Concrete Man, etc), but his theme is awesome.  It's intense without forgetting how to be an MM song, and it keeps you going during his level, easily the longest in the game. 

#3 This is how you know I'm trying to go by quality and not play favorites.  Crystal Man isn't coming in at first, though he's my favorite robot master with my favorite theme of all time.  His theme has an intense beginning, with a very dramatic middle, and an ending that sounds as if it's mocking Mega Man.  Seriously, this is good stuff.  Weird and dramatic, just how I like.  I can still remember hearing this as a kid and trying my hardest to remember it over the years.  Praise God for youtube.

#2 Gravity Man's theme is just what you expect a robot with a unique power to have.  It's fun and just a little wonky, with a nice mechanical layer to it.  It represents the true spirit of what an MM song should be.  It makes me want to play a video game.

#1 Was number 1 really going to be any different?  It's all about Napalm Man.  Seriously.  This guy's music is just so dang Vietnam, just like the game designers intended.  Honestly, this makes me think of shopping in California (you also await lyrics, Napalm Man theme...), but it's such a happy and yet equally fierce tone that well, it's a true masterpiece.  So it wins.

This soundtrack also has a great boss battle theme.  It's one of the favorites, and it's really good.  It's a fun theme with perfect melodic layering.  The "get a weapon" bit is simple, but to me it sounds like a really great background for a rap. 

One of the things I will never forgive MM5 for is for having two castles (Proto Man's and Wily's) but each castle of four levels only gets one theme.  That's stupid.  Four levels of the same song?  The other games castles had two songs each.  What gives?  Luckly, the theme for Proto Man's castle is a great song and is probably the most well liked track from this entire game. 

Wily's castle theme is also really good, I think.  It's dramatic, enjoyable, and dang does it bring back those memories.  It's great, sending you off to Wily guns blazing.  If only you didn't have to hear it four darn levels in a row.

The game over theme wasn't really that much of a theme in this game.  Ah well, didn't need to be.

Y'know how I said MM4's Wily battle music was the best in series?  I take it back, this is.  Honestly, this is is such a powerful theme here.  I enjoy it so darn much.  The ending theme is so much dang fun too.  It's the perfect ending for a fun game where you find out your brother really didn't kidnap your dad after all and just might be a good guy.  I remember downloading the MM5 soundtrack once (before I freaked out about legality) and I would just listen to this song over and over because it's just so darn happy.

That's the thing about this whole set of music.  It's happy, good times.  It's not trying to go anywhere outside of itself, and I love the honesty.  This is definitely my favorite soundtrack ever, and if it were the soundtrack to a movie, it would be one of those movies where the protagonists are a group of friends roadtripping through California.  Some bad guy is doing something evil and the only people that can stop him are the not particularly smart but still well meaning roadtrippers.  It's like a group of friends just doing what they can to stop an evil they never really believed could exist.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoURky2zdoc

Fun stuffs!