Monday, February 9, 2009

SuperPhillip's Favorite VGMs - Mega Man Mania Edition

Welcome to another week of five terrific tracks from various video games! If you're just checking in, last week we started our look and listen to the classic Mega Man franchise with Mega Man 1-5. Now we'll conclude the classic series with Mega Man 6-9 and a special bonus track from the 20th Anniversary Rock Arrange Mega Man soundtrack! If you'd like to check out last week's tracks, here is Part 1 of 2 for your viewing and listening pleasure!

Now we enter what I consider to be the black sheep of the Mega Man franchise, Mega Man 6. The game came out near the very end of the original Nintendo's life when many people had moved onto the 16-bit systems. Mega Man 6 is still a good game utilizing the true power of the NES. The environments and enemies are detailed like no other 8-bit Mega Man game. Our song from this game comes from Blizzard Man's stage.



Continuing the ice elemental boss trend, we have Freeze Man's Stage, an area littered with icebergs. This comes from Mega Man 7 for the Super Nintendo. This game was radically different from the NES titles as Mega Man had a much larger sprite which took up more of the game screen than usual. This meant levels were more tight, less expansive than before. I loved it the same nonetheless. Save for that bastard last boss.



Completing this trilogy of ice Robot Masters, we have Frost Man from Mega Man 8 where "Jump, Jump!" and "Slide, Slide!" became fixtures of a MM8 player's mind. This is the Playstation version of the track.



My verdict is still out on Mega Man 9. I'm somewhat of an audiophile, so 8-bit music just doesn't do it for me anymore. It's sort of like a lesser case of HD system owners who can't go back to SD systems like Wii and the like. Additionally, the game seemed much more difficult than any of the NES games. There was a much greater emphasis on one-hit kills which was just lame to me. Anyway, this track comes from Concrete Man's stage.



This awesome rock medley of boss themes from Mega Man 1-6 comes from the special 20th Anniversary Rockman 1-6 Rock Arrange album. My favorite part of the medley comes at 3:00. Simply put-- it rocks.



Direct Linkage:

Blizzard Man Stage
Freeze Man Stage
Frost Man Stage
Concrete Man Stage
Boss Mix Medley

That wraps up another week of SuperPhillip's Favorite VGMs. Next week we're heading out to hear some sounds from the Mushroom Kingdom. See you then!

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