Origins

The history of one of Capcom’s Flagship Franchises is a long and storied one. Starting out with the humblest of beginnings on the NES/Famicom the first game the iconic Blue Bomber starred in wasn’t his finest hour. By no means was the game BAD, for the time it was GREAT and even now, it’s far from the worst in the series. It would be the second, third, and fourth games in the series that would catapult Mega Man to the heights of success.

By the early 90s, the formula had started to wear a bit thin: Your arch-rival Doctor Wily escapes from custody AGAIN, activates eight new robot masters, and tries to take over the world, again. After five games and a sixth on the way, with the same exact formula, Capcom decided to shake things up a bit and released Mega Man X on SNES. Retaining many aspects of the classic series and expanding on them and adding new elements to gameplay, and overall immersion, Mega Man X was a smash hit. Given the almost annual release of X titles, Capcom soon found themselves needing to refresh the Blue Bomber once again.

A New Generation

Enter the Sony Playstation. In the early 90s, Sony decided it wanted to be in the thriving video game market but never intended to have its own console. The company had first wanted to work with Sega and then Nintendo in making a CD-based peripheral for one of their home consoles. After being burned by both companies in the strange dance of corporate partnerships Sony decided to go it alone and in 1994 they released the PlayStation for less money and better hardware than the competition.

With its lucrative licensing agreements, third-party publishers flocked to the new console, with Capcom being one of them. After releasing two of the Mega Man X games on the PlayStation it was decided to go in a markedly different direction and Mega Man Legends, known as Rockman DASH in Japan, and Mega Man 64 on the Nintendo 64 outside of Japan, was born to very divided opinions.

Gameplay

Mega Man Legends is conceptually and literally unlike any Mega Man game that came before it. To be honest, it plays far closer to a Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time onward title rather than a Mega Man game. The first game is set on Kattleox Island and players take on the role of MegaMan Volnutt, a humanoid boy of around fourteen years who has blue armor over most of his body. Gameplay-wise it’s a 3-D “open world” exploration game.

There are many underground ruins and other locations around the island that serve as dungeons, and upon completion, or thorough enough exploration, you can obtain treasure that you can take back to your partner. Roll can be used to craft new and stronger weapons for use throughout the game. Another gameplay change was the ability to extensively upgrade Mega Man’s Buster. In previous titles, it could be upgraded to have a stronger charged shot or go farther across the screen, but in Legends you could change every aspect of it.

With upgrade components you could find around the Island you could upgrade how fast the Buster shoots, how strong the shots are, how far they go, and how fast it can start firing again after the burst of shots ends. This added a whole new depth to the gameplay and gave a real alternative to the age-old Mega Man strategy of “use the boss weapons and keep their energy refilled at all times”.

In Closing

Without delving into spoiler territory Mega Man Legends is FAR more story-intensive than any previous title in the series. The X series had started to craft an overall narrative but ultimately that still boiled down to “Sigma is bad, go beat him”. Conversely, when Mega Man and company crash on Kattelox Island and in the process of trying to get their ship fixed, they are pulled into a much larger series of events involving a family of pirates and what mysteries the island REALLY holds.

When I first played Legends it had me wondering “what the…” all the until the final cutscene played and I still hold it in high regard. I do give the caveat of putting it in a different category than the Classic and X series but Legends paved the way for more than one RPG-lite Mega Man series to shine and I vehemently recommend anyone interested in this title do a little research, and if you are still eager to play it, enjoy one of the best action games the PS1 has to offer. Come back for my next article where I delve into the appropriately named sequel to this title Mega Man Legends 2 released at the tail end of the PS1 life cycle.