Mega Memories

Mega Man 2 was the first Mega Man game I ever played. I wasn't very good at it when I first played and it took some time, but after a few weeks, I was finally able to defeat all the robot masters and make it to the Dr. Wily stages. One of the most memorable bosses in MM2 is the Mecha Dragon. I can still remember my first encounter with this mechanical beast. There I was, just hoping along the single block platforms. All of a sudden, there's this huge dragon, roaring dragon behind me! Freaked. Me. Out. If I recall correctly, I was so nervous that I died before I could exchange shots with the thing. Then when I did get to the are where you fight the thing, I got knocked into the pit by one of his fire balls.

Today, I can kill the Mecha Dragon with no problems. Its weak against Quick Boomerangs, but I prefer to just whale on the thing with Mega Man's default arm cannon. Still one of the coolest bosses in Mega Man games, and I wouldn't mind seeing him make a comeback in Mega Man 9 or in some other Mega Man title. I mean, how many variations of the Yellow Devil/Rock Monster has there been?

Speaking of the Yellow Devil, I first came across this monstrosity in Mega Man 3, but I didn't know he was the first Wily boss in the original Mega Man. In MM3 he'd given me a hard time for a while but I'd eventually owned him. After fighting him in MM3, I thought he was a pretty cool boss. Playing the original MM later changed my view on him considerably.

I enter the chamber of the first Wily boss, but nobody's home. After a few seconds, orange pieces about the size of Mega Man's head start flying into the room from the left side of the screen. I knew what this meant, so I'm thinking "Cool, the Rock Monster!" Well the pieces of him just seem to be coming in so flipping fast and without the slide, said pieces are very hard for me to dodge. Some gamers say "He's not that hard." I think these people forget that not everyone is as adept as they are when it comes to certain bosses, levels and areas in gaming. If anything kept people from beating the original MM, it was the Yellow Devil. He's so hard, he should have been the final boss. Easy mode on Mega Man Anniversary Collection makes him far less difficult and the famous pause glitch in the original NES game makes this seemingly unstoppable goliath fall like a ton of bricks. Well, I never could get the glitch to work and I just don't have the quickness to dodge those blocks. For my money, he's still one of the toughest bosses in all of gaming and thanks to the original MM, my memories of him are bitter.