It just so happens the two are connected!
I don't blame Mackey for pussying out on Berserk. We owned that game too and it was kind of pants-dumping scary. You, as Mr Stick Spaceman, had to crawl slowly through electrified caverns. Inch by inch, step by step; touching the wall meant death. It was tension at its most potent.
So you'd almost be clear of some narrow hallway and then your mom would pop in and ask you, "What would you like for lunch?" You'd scream and jolt and Mr Stick Spaceman would fry against the wall with a blinding flash of colours and a sizzling/clacking sound that was offensive to the ear in the worst imaginable way. Berserk did not get much playtime in our house.
It's mandatory for bloggers to give wordy offerings to Halloween on the appointed day and I was thinking about how I might do the same. I don't play survival horror games because honestly I already have a problem with vivid dreams and nightmares and further contributions are just not necessary. Then I thought about "safe" ghouls and vampires--the guys who are just fun to have around. I thought about Shade Man, the vampire-bot from Mega Man 7 and probably my favourite Robot Master of all time.
People sometimes say to me, "Nadia, why do you still like Mega Man games after all these years? Were you dropped on your head as a baby?" The short answer to that is "Yes." The long answer is that every Mega Man game, no matter how stale the gameplay happens to be, has some clever little thing in it that makes me smile. In Mega Man 7's case, I love Shade Man's entire stage. The music is great. You can opt out of it and go for a Ghosts and Ghouls remix, but eff that, I love the original.
There are two distinct paths you can take in the stage, depending on how you beat the, um, Great Pumpkin. If you take the low road, you get to fight knight-bots who morph into wolves when the moon comes out. Tell me that is not awesome. Just try it.
Also of note about Shade Man's domain is the gothic portrait of Dr Wily. Did he dress up for a cosplay session, or is it the portrait of some blood-sucking ancestor? I like the latter theory, especially since my own paternal grandfather is from the Carpathian mountains. Maybe they...met and built evil robots or something. Oh my God I'm delusional.
Shade Man's design is just cool. Nobody's ever given me a reason not to love a purple robot vampire, so I'm just going to go ahead and say he is among the upper Pantheon of Robot Masters.
Happy Halloween.
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