Comment by hbn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hbn | Hacker News Reader

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I also happened to play through some of the X games recently! I went up to X4.

X1 was my first Mega Man game ever and got me into the series. My childhood friend owned a copy and we weren't able to get very far as kids but we liked to play it anyway. It's still my favorite of the X series! I didn't play the other X games until years later. Back in 2015 a guy in my city was selling a complete collection of all the SNES Mega Man releases, albeit in Japanese (so, the SFC versions). A North American SNES can play Japanese games if you rip a couple of plastic tabs out of the cartridge slot, and Mega Man games aren't too dialogue heavy so I was fine playing them in Japanese.

If you haven't played beyond the SNES games, I'd recommend giving X4 a shot. I didn't play it until Mega Man X Legacy Collection released, but it's actually very good. Beyond that... X5 the quality drops off quite a bit, X6 is straight up bad, X7 is also very bad and features a horrible attempt at transitioning the series to 3D. X8 I only played through once but was a bit of a return to form. But yeah, the X series isn't known for consistent quality.

I just got interested in Mega Man recently - do you recommend a playthrough in order, or is there a best version to play for a good initial experience?

I'd recommend starting with 2 & 3 for the NES. The soundtrack might be my favourite of all video games. It has been played by rockers [0] and orchestras [1].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-WIBmzETBo

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9__sJWMXjE0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdVpJfXXoFI

That's a good question on where to start. I usually enjoy playing games from the classic series because they're simple, but some of the earlier ones can be a bit janky and punishing. The first 6 games are on NES, and they're all pretty good. Mega Man 2 is a lot of people's favorite, and I personally like it a lot but it's not without flaws and some unfair difficulty. 7 was for SNES and I don't care for it much but I wouldn't say it's bad. Same with 8 which was on PlayStation and Dreamcast. 9 and 10 were a throwback to the classic series with an 8-bit art style and can be difficult but they have more modern design sensibilities and I'd say are more "fair". 10 has an easy mode if you're wanting to ease yourself in too. 11 is pretty good too, but has some new mechanics that complicate things a bit.

The X series has some good games, but focuses more on collectibles and upgrades, so you'll likely end up looking up a guide to find where all the upgrades are. It can be very difficult without them. I think X1 is the best in the series, and is also more streamlined than the other games. You can't go too wrong with the first 4 X games. They can be played on the Legacy Collection, but I've heard complaints about the emulation, and I know on the PC version I couldn't watch any of the cutscenes in X4 because they froze. Might be better off just emulating.

Order doesn't matter too much, the plots are mostly disjointed and/or nonsense until the Zero series for GameBoy Advance which are again pretty good but upgrade-focused like the X series, and are less of traditional Mega Man games.

I'd probably just not start with Mega Man 1. Come back to it if you like the series, but it's pretty primitive compared to later stuff.

IMO the 8-bit ones - while fun - are somewhat primitive and often a little too "NES hard". So I'd say start with Mega Man X - it's timeless; still one of the most perfect games ever made.

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