3 Things I Love about Mega Man II
Welcome to Mega Man Month! Every weekday in January I’ll be listing three things I love about the original Mega Man series. Let’s go!
The hilariously terrible soundtrack
If you’ve never played this game before, you may not know about it’s legendarily bizarre soundtrack. I don’t know what it was exactly, but something went catastrophically wrong when it came time to program this game’s music. The compositions are fine. Some are actually really, really good. But everything is played at an unbearably screechy frequency that it’s genuinely more difficult to not turn the volume down than it is to see the game’s ending. There are a lot fo really col takes on these tunes from all manner of VGM cover artists because like I said, the songs themselves are actually pretty cool. But even though the music is tough to listen to, it’s one of those strange things that helps give the game its charm. Really, how did this make it out the door sounding like this?
Quint and the Time Skimmer
Mega Man games at this point weren’t exactly known for having very involved stories, but if you take a second to look into the lore behind this particular game it involves something called a Time Skimmer Dr. Wily used to make Mega Man have to fight previous robot masters again, and a bizarro alternate future version of Mega Man named Quint who wears all green, has a dorky-looking helmet, and rides a pogo stick. It’s impossible not to love that brand of insanity.
The Sakugarne
That pogo stick I mentioned? It’s called the Sakugarne, and you can actually get it. And ride it. It’s easily the most awkward thing I think Mega Man’s ever done in one of his games, and I love how unbelievably stupid this thing it. As if it wasn’t silly enough in concept, it’s also got googly eyes, like it’s supposed to be sentient or something. This image is the coolest it’s ever looked, and it comes from the tragically cancelled Archie comic series. I love this dumb thing, so much.
That’s all for this week. Come back on Monday for the continuation of my favorite things about the Game Boy Mega Man games with Mega Man III.
