The beginning of the odyssey.
Graphically, Mega Man is pretty impressive for its time. The characters are well drawn and colorful. The worlds are nicely detailed and colorful. Compared to later incarnations of Mega Man, the original looks a little bland. But that isn’t much of a concern as long as you realize it was released in 1987. Keeping that in context, the graphics are excellent. The Mega Man series is famous for some of the catchiest tunes in early video games. Mega Man has some great music. My favorites are Bombman, Iceman, and the first two Wily levels. Game play is simple throughout the Mega Man series. Mostly you run, shoot, and jump. Defeating the boss of a level gives you its power to use. This little feature was pretty unique for its time. Finding the right order to fight the bosses provided some of the challenge in the game since certain weapons had a better effect than others. My only complaint with Mega Man was a couple of areas that proved to be frustratingly difficult. The flying platforms on Iceman’s and the first Wily level were a pain in the arse to get through. If you were lucky they would fly in a pattern that made it easier to jump from one to the other. Most of the time they would fly in a way that made it hard to get to the next one and on top of that they would shoot at you, which would cause you to fall to your death. I would have made it through Mega Man a lot quicker if it weren’t for these platforms.
Overall, Mega Man does an excellent job setting the standard for the series. I have many fond memories and it is one of my prized games in my collection. I even still have the original box and manual for it. Sure to box art is lame, but most NES games box are left much to be desired.