Saturday, August 21, 2021

PrinceWatercress plays Mega Man 7 - Part 1 of 9


After the NES days, it took a while for the Mega Man we knew and loved to get to the Super NES - we had two games in the X series at that point - but he got there.


After the events of Mega Man 6, Dr. Wily is arrested and jailed. However, six months have passed since then, and four robots that have been programmed to look for Wily after six months without any contact has come out of the capsules in Wily's lab. Apparently, Wily had a back-up plan all along.

This leads to the start of the game. After an intro segment also involving Roll and Auto, Mega Man finally heads into battle. He then meets Rush and Dr. Wily, and the three of them watch as the robots break into the prison and free Dr. Wily.

The short intro segment has you shooting down a couple of robots that are really easy to destroy. You'll soon meet the steamroller robot from the before-game intro. Jump over his sawblade mohawk when it shoots out at you and hit the steamroller robot in the face with a combination of regular and charged shots.

Enemies will drop small and large blue capsules with yellow cores that give you health, green capsules with red cores that refill your special weapons, and small and large bolts. The bolts act as currency, and I'll get into more detail about that later.

You'll then meet a Mega Man-esque robot that jumps in place and shoots at the same time. After doing enough damage to him while avoiding his firepower, he'll tell you his name is Bass (Forte in the Japanese version). You'll also meet his robot wolf, Treble (Gospel in the Japanese version). They've been tracking Dr. Wily, but have come to realize you don't need their help. After this, the intro stage is over.

If your energy gets low enough, the fight will stop and you'll get the same conversation with Bass, but it will begin differently.

After getting a password (which is numerical like the X series but also has pictures), you'll see the stage select screen. This would be the first game to have four stages to choose from at the outset as opposed to eight (even though you could get all eight at once with a password). You have Freeze Man, Cloud Man, Junk Man and Burst Man at the start.

Burst Man

There are a lot of spike pits here, as well as bomb platforms that you'll have to stand on in order to clear them out of your path. Shadow Man and Blizzard Man stages, anyone?

There are fish in the water, as well as Mettaurs in snorkels and swim fins. The clear-colored sphere robots are mines, and if you're near them when you destroy them, the resulting explosion will damage you.

You'll meet a crab mini-boss. Avoid the fire balls and shoot down the bubbles. Jump over the crab when it rocket towards you, then jump over it again as it heads back to the right side. When you defeat the boss, the spike ceiling will be destroyed and you'll be carried upwards by the water. Watch for the ceiling spikes and the mines. To make it past the spike pit, jump when the water is at is highest point as Mega Man will float on the surface. Climb the ladder, and you'll be dealing with the disappearing platform blocks again. At least these are simple.

After some more reappearing block platforms (jump straight up on the third one to reach the fourth!), you'll see some green frog robots. They leap high every couple of seconds. They're pushovers.

You'll then be dealing with the water that rises and falls again (which brings fond memories of Dive Man). Walk into the surface of the water instead of jumping so you don't sink towards the spikes and come close to dying.

You'll find a spinning square with the letter "R" on it. There are three others that spell the word "Rush," and you'll need these to get another ability.

Burst Man shoots bubbbles that you can shoot down, then prdoces others in the floor that take you towards the ceiling if you stand on them. Stay off of them and keep putting a hurt on Burst Man with the Mega Buster. He'll perform a high, short-distance leap towards you before shooting bubbles with yellow balls in them at you. Let them hit you, then shoot the bubble repeatedly while your inside so the yellow balls don't explode on you before you can break free. Stay away from these explosives when they're on the ground, too.

From there, Burst Man will keep repeating this pattern to the letter. If he gets too close, slide under him when he does the jump.

Burst Man's weakness is the Scorch Wheel, but you won't be able to get that until later. When you hit him with it, he'll drop a bunch of bombs. If he's clear on the other side of the room, this isn't a problem; it's when he's near the center of it that it can. However, it's harder to hit him with the Scorch Wheel, so using the Mega Buster and knocking him back with the fully-charged from it is the go-to weapon here.

Beating Burst Man will net you the Danger Wrap. It can encase enemies and other things inside bombs.

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