Street Fighter x Mega Man

This is the first game I completed this year.  I beat it around 2:30 AM on January 1st.

Everyone loves Street Fighter, and everyone loves Mega Man.  So it's only natural that since they're both made by a company with a penchant for crossovers there'd be a game where the two series meet up.  Enter Street Fighter x Mega Man, a fan developed game that Capcom produced and gave consultation on.  For this reason, it was divisive among players.  Did I like it?  That's what I'm here to tell you.

The game plays like any of the retro Mega Man games, in which you go through the lair of an evil robot, defeat him, gain his unique power, lather, and repeat.  This time, though, our hero isn't fighting robots but brawlers from the Street Fighter universe.  The only reason the game gives behind this is that the Street Fighters are intruding on Mega's 25th anniversary celebration, as their series was created 25 years ago too.

The Street Fighter games have a huge selection of eccentric characters, but to fit with the typical Mega Man game structure, only 8 were chosen.  I think the developer did a good job of choosing which, including not only the usual suspects like Ryu and Chun-Li, but also some more interesting and obscure faces like Rolento and Rose(my personal favorite).  Each of these bosses are well-animated, especially for the 8-bit style.  That said, some of their poses are just slightly altered versions of Mega Man's, so it's lazy at times.

The levels are pretty well designed.  The backgrounds are well detailed but not so much to the point that they'd look out of place in an 80's Nintendo game.  Each zone and the enemies that inhabit it fit the character they belong to well.  For example, Dhalsim's stage is a huge maze inside of an Indian temple.  The traps and platforms found within reward the player for taking risks with extra lives and energy refills, which is just what a Mega Man game should do.  In Rolento's New York scaffolding level, one such life is out of the way, guarded by a stack of construction robots.

The music is hit or miss.  Instead of simply turning all of the Street Fighters' respective theme songs into 8-bit chiptunes(as opposed to 16-bit ones, duh), composer A-Rival decided to mash them up with popular Mega Man songs.  While I absolutely LOVE mashups, I don't feel that all of them work here.  Snake Man's theme doesn't go well with Dhalsim's, thank you very much.

The gimmick of the Mega Man games is that each of the bosses are weak to a specific weapon you get, so you have to plan your route in order to stand the best chance against them.  Knowing this, I admittedly used a weakness guide online to know which order to tackle the levels.  I didn't use any cheat codes or guides for specific levels, so I don't really feel guilty about it.

Then there are a few final levels after the additional eight, where you face off against Mike Tyson knockoff Balrog, claw-wielding Vega, all the Street Fighters again, and finally the evil mastermind M. Bison.  These levels are where the challenge level of the game really takes off.  They test everything you've learned so far.  The boss rush is probably the toughest of these hurdles, but Bison is very hard too.  As far as advice goes, all I can say is watch the enemy rather than focusing on your character to dodge their attacks easier.

One area the game lacks is any ability to save your progress.  No save feature or passwords are included like in the majority of the old games- you have to start from scratch every time you boot it up.  This wasn't much of a problem, considering the game's fairly short length.  What was a problem, though, was that you're only given 9 seconds to continue instead of a stationary continue screen when you lose all your lives.  On my first run, I almost got up to Bison but checked my texts after I died and missed out on the opportunity to continue.  This is more my fault than the game's, but it still meant that I had to do everything all over again.

While yes, Street Fighter x Mega Man could be seen as a "cop out" for Capcom while they delay their own new MM games further, it's still a lot of fun.  And shouldn't that be what matters at the end of the day?  So I'd say play it.  While the challenge can be brutal at times, it's free and should only take you a couple hours to beat.

Introduction

Hey there!

You've probably reached this page from my Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr/Insert Social Networking Place Here, so there's no real need for me to introduce myself.  Suffice to say I'm your average art school sophomore who likes video games.  While I play a lot of them, something has been bugging me recently.

You see, I rarely beat a game.  Most of the time, what ends up happening when I buy a game is that I play a level or two, set it aside for later, then never come back to it.  I never experience the whole thing, making getting the game a waste of time and money.  As a part of my effort to change myself in 2013, I've decided to fix this.

What I'll be doing is going through as many games as possible that I own on the various consoles I have- PS3, Wii U, PC, and 3DS- and beating them.  This also includes backwards compatible games, so don't be surprised if something older shows up.  Depending on how much I like the game, this can either mean completing the main storyline and reaching the end credits, or unlocking 100% of the game's content.  Regardless, I want to experience what the game has to offer instead of just throwing it aside.  

Once I've had these experiences, I'll post about them here.  What I'll do is summarize what the game is, what I liked and disliked about it, and whatever else I might have to say about it.  It should be a lot of fun, and I hope you stick with me on this adventure.

-Jared