April 7, 2006
Since I spent the last Musing bashing on the plot continuity errors in Mega Man: Powered Up, I thought I’d take the opportunity to point out some of the good (or at least amusing) sides to the game’s plot. After all, it’s not all bad. To prove it, here are some examples.
- When you defeat the initial eight stages, Dr. Wily contacts Dr. Light and basically blames him for the defeat of his Robot Masters. “Dr. Light, look at this, eight robots and they’re all down. Your robots were nothing but junk!” It is amusing (and rather in character, I would expect) that Dr. Wily would try to claim credit for the robots he steals if they succeed, and blame the original creators of the robots when they fail. (Granted, Dr. Light and Dr. Wily built the Robot Masters together—at least according to the original plot—but I’m sure Dr. Wily isn’t against overlooking this little detail.)
- When you are playing as a Robot Master, some of the dialogues you get with the other Robot Masters are just plain classic. Oil Man, for example, complains at Fire Man that fire isn’t allowed in that area (Oil Man just happens to be weak against fire, and fire also is effective against his oil weapon as well). Granted, I think my current favorite is Fire Man and Bomb Man (this is paraphrased slightly):
- Bomb Man: Oo, looking good, Fire Man. I’ll be putting your flames to good use.
- Fire Man: My flames of justice burn bright! Fiiiire!
- Bomb Man: What’s up with you? Too much burning the candle at both ends?
- Fire Man: My flames of justice burn bright! Fiiiire!
- Bomb Man: Oo, looking good, Fire Man. I’ll be putting your flames to good use.
- When you face off against the bubble boss in Dr. Wily’s fortress as Fire Man, he actually observes that he’s facing an underwater fight, and that it’ll be tricky (because his fire goes out when he touches water as part of a game mechanic). This was a nice touch.
- When you reach Dr. Wily at the end of the game, he says his only mistake was not taking your character along with the rest of the robots he stole. Yep. Yep. You could say that, Wily.
- There’s a cute sequence when you defeat the Wily 1 machine. At the start of the battle, Dr. Wily glows with praise for his newest invention, “Wily Machine Number 1!” But, of course, once you whittle away its energy meter, he starts pounding on the unresponsive controls and growls, “Worthless piece of junk!” Quite a turnaround, heh. It gets better—Dr. Wily tells your character to “wait a minute” and starts hammering on the machine, building the Wily 2 machine out of the wreckage of the first one. Actually, I think this is one of the better animations in the game, because the machine actually lifts itself up on temporary legs before they break away, no longer needed when the propeller on the bottom lifts it into the air. Of course, it’s a little silly that your character just stands there and lets Dr. Wily do this without trying to do the logical thing and stop him, but overall it’s still an amusing scene.
- Speaking of the Wily machines—they attempted to keep the general appearance of the machines consistent with the original game, even though the original game didn’t have the whole sequence of Wily building the new machine out of the old one and such. (In the original, the front of the first machine simply breaks away, revealing the second one.) Granted, in Powered Up the first machine is a tank instead of flying, but it’s still close.
- The MegaMaster