My Ideas: Mega Man Ideas! Round 1!

And so begins the start of a series that will last a while, especially since I'll be breaking them up as well. This refers to the very first video game ideas I ever wrote, ideas that started many of my later series. Megaman ideas were simple to make even when I was eight, as all it takes was toss an adjective to man eight times, drawing up some maps, and it's done! Sadly, in the first game idea, I didn't have that much.

The names of the characters at the time were Fastman, Explodeman, Webman, Stoneman, Waterman, and...that's it, at least briefly. My original plan was to have one boss from Megaman 1 and two from Megaman 2 to finish the list. Why those two? Those were the only two Megaman games that existed!

That eventually didn't last, as I realized it was a silly idea. Fortunately, I already planned on adding two characters that didn't match the normal nonlinear set; an intro boss named Garbageman and a Wily-based robot master boss named Rayman (as in Ray-gun, like the hi-tech laser guns as we imagined them in the 1950s.) Garbageman was based on a Captain N joke-cameo, so at this point things had to be improved upon. Eventually, Garbageman became Grinderman, Explodeman was just Explosionman, Rayman became Laserman, and a few other robots had to change their names because other games or even Megaman sequels already used them. Stoneman became Graniteman, for example. As for Waterman, well, that changed because it was stupidly generic. It was Aquaman, Hydroman, and others, and finally I gave up. It's Generic Water Boss in "canon" now. Oh, and I tossed in a generic fire robot boss, called him Infernoman, and we had our 8!

Hilariously, after taking years to make just eight bosses, I eventually went mad and tossed in twelve bosses. This became a recurring theme in later Megaman games, save for one. The assumption was either that four were later "advanced" characters, or some would be editted out and we'd have our eight. The four new guys were Tornadoman, Hawkman, Rocketman, and Nightman.

The second major feature I made for this game is one I'm sort of proud of. Midway through the development above, half of the "man" characters became "woman" in an attempt to have gender equality. So I had to come up with which gender each boss had; for the record, the women were Fastwoman, Webwoman, (Water/Hydro/etc)woman, Infernowoman, Hawkwoman, and Nightwoman (who was Nightmarewoman at this point.)

Here's my opinion on this game, overall. It wasn't good; come on. Most of this was conceived of when I was in elementary school. By junior high even, the games were much more clever. There were some clever game ideas, mind you. Fastwoman's level was autoscrolling, Waterorwhateverwoman's level had a series of paths you could choose from, and there were a few other platforming elements that I still want to use one day. Otherwise, the story was simplistic even for this series; Dr. Wily wanted to conquer the world, beat his robots, and game over. This represents just a tentative step, not a revolution. I did my first "design documents" at this point, but it was about 5 pages or so at the most. It also had "drawn" designs, which means I made pictures of the levels, using my 8 year old art skills. And like all video game ideas, they later brought new concepts to later games. Even Grinderman, one of the first characters I ever made for a video game and little but a lame transfer from a cartoon when I started, became a major enemy for one of my most recent and advanced games. I'm sorry that there are less to review for this game, but it does set the stage for the other ideas of this series. All 6 or so of them; like I said, this arc can last a while.