PixlBit

Let's face it - some games are just hard as balls, whereas others are too easy, but some of these difficult games, not just Gradius difficult, but beyond that - we're talking I-now-have-2-years-left-off-of-my-life-expectancy-from-taking-a-month-to-beat-this-son-of-a-bitch type games.

This is Part 1 in a series on games that make you want to break controllers with your face, and in the end, shave years off of your life.  Today, we're talking about Mega Man 9. First off, I could talk about any number of Mega Man games for being difficult (Mega Man 1 was brutal, 3 was serious hate fuel too, but perhaps more on them in a future part?), but Mega Man 9 was almost satanically difficult.  Mega Man 9 was released in 2008 in proper retro format - back to the 8-bit sprites and the good old fashioned NES soundchip, but those weren't the only things that went back in time.  Mega Man 9 will make you cry with sadness AND rage with its unrelenting assault of jumps that have to be pixel perfect and those GOD DAMN DISAPPEARING BLOCK THINGS THAT MAKE THE DOOOOOOP, DOOOOOP, DOOOOOP SOUND! GAH!

Dare I say that Mega Man 9 is the hardest in the series?  I think so.  Of special note is that the in game currency is Screws, kind of fitting when you're going to be doing nothing but getting fucked over at every turn.

The levels in Mega Man 9 are well layed out and very impressive, and as always, incorporated individual level properties based on the Shit bag asshole[ST] Robot Master you're trying to defeat.  For example, Tornado Man's level features some interesting weather effects like rain, wind, ice, and jerkoff rotating platforms, Magma Man's level features lava flows that you have to dodge in a similar vein of Quick Man's level (but instead they just block the path periodically, not quite AS terrible, but still rather brutal at times) and Plug Man gets the biggest asshole award for Mega Man 9, because his level prominently features the disappearing blocks as mentioned above.  Concrete Man gets 2nd place for biggest asshole because it features enemies that pop out of pits ONLY when you're just close enough to knock you into the pit, meaning you have to pretty much fail a thousand times and memorize where each enemy is.

As always in any Mega Man game, it features our favorite dick moves in level design:

-Pixel perfect jumps

-Pixel perfect jumps over lava/spikes

-Enemies spawning out of bottomless pits to put you into the damage animation and make you fall to

your death

-Enemies spawning in otherwise awful locations, resulting in essentially the same scenario as above.

-Items that seduce you into trying to get them, knowing that your ass is going to miss the jump.  I

guarantee the 1ups laugh at you as you drop into oblivion.

-Obnoxious boss patterns that mercilessly decimate your health bar while laughing at you trying to

memorize it, then laughing even harder when you instantly Google search a FAQ.

As a side note though, I must mention that this game features other things from Mega Man you'd come to expect, screen flicker, popup sprites, and even framerate issues to really recreate the original experience, and it was built from scratch.  Those bugs and glitches are programmed in just for us, so at least it feels like we're playing the original insanely difficult Mega Man games, and not getting massacred by some current-gen Mega Call of Battleduty Man: Modern Rush Turns Into Things.

The easiest level in the game, Galaxy Man's stage, still has its own flavor of hatred to cram down your throat.  I'll give you a hint - it involves a bunch of spikes, and enemies that grab you from above and drop your ass into them.

The only explanation I can come up with for as to why this game is so brutal is simple.  Keinji  Inafune hates each and every one of us.

I can't say Mega Man 9 is a bad game, because it's a very refreshing revival of the original Mega Man games, although Mega Man 9's story is pretty lackluster and leaves much to be desired, but since when have we REALLY cared about the story?  All we care about is that there are 8 more Master Robots to defeat, and Dr. Wily has built another obnoxiously large facility that we have to invade and beat a bunch of Master Robots over again!  Overall, it's a great game, but playing through it will easily knock 2-3 years off of your life.

To make things easier, I've come up with this simple formula:

M = Number of Master Robots defeated

35 = Constant for how many hours it takes to beat each one.

100 = Arbitrary number I chose to make the math work out.

X = How many times you've fully completed the game, if ever.

((M*35)/100)+X

If you beat all 8 and the game, you'll never gain those 3.8 years back...