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We Salute Halloween and the Greatest Mega Man Boss Of All Time

Posted by Nadia Oxford

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.

Related Links:

Irrational Gaming Fears
Running For Your Life
Question of the Day: How Do You Make a Horror Game Horrifying?


Comments

Roto13 said:

I don't get the hate for Mega Man VII anyway. What did it do that was so wrong?

October 31, 2008 6:17 PM

Alex said:

Mega Man 7's certainly not the worst Mega Man game ever, but I wasn't terribly fond of it. At least, not in the sense that I would bother to play it more than once. I didn't think the level design was terribly interesting, and I don't like how Mega Man takes up such a large portion of the screen.

October 31, 2008 6:43 PM

Demaar said:

I like Shade Man's redesign in the Battle Network series.

November 1, 2008 8:10 AM

Nadia Oxford said:

Yeah, Shade Man's re-design was great. A lot of the Robot Masters had some fantastic re-designs, actually.

November 2, 2008 1:50 PM

Josh said:

I'm playing MM7 for the first time right now, as I'm working my way through the original games (having played 1-6 a bunch but never beyond that).  I dig Shade Man's stage as well, but as a whole, this game is terribly frustrating.  Turbo Man and at least the first Wily stage are ridiculously frustrating, and constantly punish you with death for the smallest mistakes.  THAT's why there's no love for MM7.  

November 3, 2008 7:54 PM

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  • about the blogger

    John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

    Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

    Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

    Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

    Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

    Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

    Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

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