Tendo City

Ah, the one that started it all! This game may look strange for players of Mega Man 2-X because of a few differences.
For one there are only 6 six enemy robots instead of the traditional 8.
They consist of:

Cut Man, who uses scissor-like blades
Fire Man, who uses flame attacks
Elec Man, who uses lightning attacks
Ice Man, who uses freezing attacks
Guts Man, who uses strength to throw huge boulders
Bomb Man, who uses, obviously, bombs to get his point across.

This game also uses a point system. You get a certain number of points for beating enemies and picking up pellets, you get a certain number of points for beating bosses. Also, after a boss is killed, you must walk over to where you killed him and pick up a capsule ot recieve his weapon. If you wait too long, it will disappear and you have to do the level and the boss all over again. Quite a difference, but fun.

Gameplay is good for an early NES game. There are some challenging parts that may have you pulling your hair out.
I know it took me a little while to even get off the first part of Guts Mans level! Graphics are classic 8 bit, everything is flat, but it's a detailed flat, mostly with backgrounds and non-moving things, everything else is pretty solid looking. The background of Bomb Man's stage is impressive though.

<i>Mega Man 1</i> paved the way for a great series in gaming, and did a good job asserting itself, letting the world know it was for real. For these reasons and others, I rate <i>Mega Man 1</i> a 7.5 out of 10.

Megaman 1 is a classic that basically set up the formula. It's a good game, but I have to say that it's main claim to fame is laying down the groundwork. Otherwise it's rather "rough" in terms of design. There are a number of recycled rooms with elements not even used in certain points of stages, for example. Further, there are some awkward glitches that result in some really random deaths like being shoved off platforms sideways for no good reason. The bosses are rather easy but most of them use basically the exact same AI pattern rather than moving in unique ways as in later games. Certain obstacles were "binary" in the sense that there was really no telegraphing at all to warn you of things, namely those insta-death platforms in Guts Man's level (the thing you end up having to do is jump before actually reaching the gap, give yourself a nice safe buffer of a quarter second before the danger actually comes around, rather than the natural instinct to jump only at the "very last second").

A good concept that was executed in rather rough almost amateur terms. There's a reason (aside from the box art) that this game vanished out of stores while 2 and onward stuck around even after 6 came out. Most of my friends never even played 1.

Essentially, the Megaman series for most of us started with 2, kinda like Street Fighter, and pretty much for the same reasons.

Again, this is still a good game, but not nearly as good as what came next.