While researching the Megaman comics at Dueling Analogs for my last post, I came across some free Megaman games on the internet. I thought I’d post them here so you could give them a try. If you haven’t played Megaman, these do a pretty good job of summing up the experience.
Rokko Chan
I’ve been using a girl-robot model for my Megaman posts for a long time, but it never occurred to me that there might be a Megaman game that follows Rule 63 of then internet. In Rokko Chan you play a girl version of Megaman. The game plays in the browser in Flash. While the button scheme is not very intuitive, the gameplay is pretty good:
Here’s a walkthrough video, but don’t let it spoil your experience: go play the game.
Street Fighter X Megaman
I actually played and beat this game months ago, and I can’t believe I didn’t post about it until now. In this game, you play Megaman in all of his 8-bit goodness, but the bosses (and themes for their corresponding stages) are Street Fighter characters. This game was made by a fan developer from Singapore, but eventually received official support from Capcom. Apparently, they liked the idea so much that they put their stamp on it. You can read more about it here.
The game can be found here: Street Fighter X Megaman
Again, here is a short video.
I love living in a time where the art of the game is inspiring young designers to make their own products. They’re not waiting for some studio to tell them they can make a game; they’re just doing it. This is the video game equivalent to fan art or fan fiction, but the time and effort required to make it work means they are taking it to a whole new level. In addition to creating fine products for the market, it’s giving programmers an outlet to explore their own creativity. As Martha Stewart would say, “it’s a good thing.”