The First Mega Man Game I Ever Bought

My current article is taking a bit longer than I’d hoped for — work, health, life, and all that fun stuff, y’know? So in the meantime, here’s a quick little anecdote about the first Mega Man game I ever bought. With my own money, no less!

If you’ve been following me for any length of time, then you might know that my first Mega Man game was, well, Mega Man. The original. The OG. Down since Day One ish, so to speak.

Buuuuut… that wasn’t the first Mega Man game I’d ever own/bought, which in this case, is the same thing. In fact, it was pretty far from it.

Back in the original heyday of the Classic series, before there was even a need to refer to it as that, when the Blue Bomber stood head and shoulders alongside such video game legends as Mario, Link, Simon Belmont, Pit… wait, that’s just describing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Okay, let me try this again.

Back when the first Mega Man games were coming out and making magazine covers, video game rentals were a big business. Well, not so much in Japan, but in other parts of the world.

Some of the younger among you may not remember them, but there were these stores that you could go to and pay to rent a movie or video game from their vast selection for a predetermined period of time, upon which you’d need to either return it, rent it again, or pay a late fee before you could rent again. Blockbuster Video was the most widely known and prolific among the larger chains, but there were also a good many smaller mom ‘n pop stores out there as well, often with games the big boys might not have carried, and some have even outlasted those retail giants.

While most days of the week would get you one night with the game or movie of your choice, going on Friday meant you had it to yourself for the whole weekend. For movies, that was okay — in most cases, how many times are you going to watch a movie before Monday rolls around? But for video games? That was a whole different story. This is important, so keep it in mind for later.

Anyway, this is how I first came to play Mega Man. I rented it despite the now infamous box art (which I’ve since come to embrace), more on account of magazine coverage and the building hype towards its sequel. And it kicked my butt. I might have beaten Cut Man before it had to go back to the rental store. I think I’d rent it again once or twice before Mega Man 2 finally arrived, but it didn’t quite convince me to give my life over to the series.

Mega Man 2 gets a lot of hype and a lot of praise, and for good reason. It took what worked in the original game and refined it, while improving on other areas. And it felt more balanced as well, for the most part. Unlike the first game (which I still love, mind, it just took me longer to warm up to), Mega Man 2 just really clicked with me. So much so, I had managed to complete it before the game had to go back to the rental store.

A lot of people talk about the challenge of these games, and they’re not wrong. And I won’t say there aren’t Mega Man games that give me trouble (see: Mega Man the first, two paragraphs above, for an example), but Mega Man 2 was not one of them. Not enough to keep me from doing what needed to be done over the course of two days and three nights, at any rate.

That kind of presented a conundrum: I loved Mega Man 2, but did I want to buy Mega Man 2? $50… that’s a lot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures, back in those days. Or, potentially, another game.

Ultimately, I decided no. If I wanted to play Mega Man 2 again, I’d just rent it again (assuming it was available at the given time). Simple enough, right? After all, it’s not like the Nintendo (what many of us called the NES back then) or video rental stores were going anywhere, right? They’d be here forever!

And so it went. A new Mega Man game would come out, I’d rent it, and I would beat it. Mega Man 4 admittedly tripped me up more than most, but after being inspired by seeing the ending on an episode of GamePro TV, I went back and finished it. Emboldened by this, I went back and beat the original Mega Man as well, and then on to Mega Man 5.

As for the Game Boy games? Well, my parents didn’t allow me to have a Game Boy, or any portable system, for that matter, so those were out. Despite this, through various friends and folks, I did get to play the first two, and beat the second. I’d circle back around to Mega Man IV once the Super Game Boy became a thing, but that’s another story.

Put simply, I loved the Mega Man games, but it just seemed more prudent to rent, rather than to buy. And that’s how I figured it would remain.

But then, something happened. Something I was not expecting.

The X factor.

After vague teases of a “Super Mega Man” in various magazines, we began to get details on Mega Man X. For a while there, it seemed like every month or two, something new would come out about the game, snowballing more and more. Wall-jumping. Dashing. Charging special weapons. Collecting Heart Tanks. Environmental changes when you take out certain bosses. To say nothing of the art and graphics in those early screenshots. Everything looked magnificent. It was like Mega Man, but more. Mega Man to the nth power. Mega Man X.

I should also point out this was well before the internet, so things like seeing it in motion or hearing the music and sound effects weren’t even a part of the equation.

If I there was ever a Mega Man game that I knew rentals would be insufficient for, it was this one. Just being able to rent it whenever would not be good enough. Somehow, I knew this was a game that I would want to play repeatedly, whenever I wanted — waiting for the weekend and hoping it wasn’t already checked out simply would not do. Once my path was clear, I saved my money.

Now, here’s the thing about new games back then: For the vast majority of the time, they did not have release dates. SEGA pioneered the practice a couple of years earlier with “Sonic 2sday,” and the now-defunct Acclaim would parrot the idea a year later with Mortal Monday, to commemorate the home release of Mortal Kombat. But those aside, you were generally given a month as a release window, and if you were lucky, the game you were looking for might even make it into your neck of the woods during that same month.

Me? I was lucky.

I forget precisely when I began, but in January of 1994, I would routinely call the Walmart at our local mall on shipping days and ask to speak to someone in the electronics department. Once connected, I asked about Mega Man X. Looking back, I’m hoping they were more amused by an over-excited kid than annoyed by some brat who clearly didn’t have better things to do.

Either way, I eventually scored pay dirt when I called one day and found out that yes, the game had indeed arrived. Looking back, the rest of that day was something of a blur — I want to say I wasted no time in going down there immediately and grabbing a copy, but the reality is that I think I asked them to hold a copy for me, and had to wait until sometime after my dad got home from work before we could go out and get it. And, knowing us, we probably stuck around there a bit for some shopping before I got to go home and finally play the long-awaited game.

I think one of my parents might have even questioned if I was sure this was the one I wanted to get. With no hesitation, I assured them that it was.

Getting home with the game that night and hooking up the Super NES to the family TV, I was ready to show off my newest acquisition. I’d been reading up on everything I could about the game, and I was ready. I still remember getting a feel for the controls like it was yesterday, missing that first jump deliberately so I could show them the cool wall-climbing mechanic…

…and promptly falling to my death in front of everyone.

Yeah, I’m not sure if it just wasn’t quite conveyed well enough in the magazines, or if I simply misunderstood — X could stick to walls, similarly to Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden… but not exactly like Ryu did. You had to keep pressing against the wall for it to work. Whoops.

Suffice to say, I got the “hang” of it in short order.

Another fun little anecdote from around that time: A very good friend of mine and I were very firmly rooted in the “Console Wars” of the era. Granted, we begrudgingly liked stuff we’d see on the other’s platform of choice, but at the end of the day, they were SEGA, and I was Nintendo.

Sometime in February that year, they came to stay over for the weekend. They had their SEGA Genesis in tow, with their latest acquisition: the newly-released Sonic the Hedgehog 3. We checked that out, then I got to show off Mega Man X.

I do believe that was when they ceded the war. I think it was Armored Armadillo’s stage that did it.

Suffice to say, while Mega Man X was the first Mega Man game I ever bought, it would certainly not be the last. I’d come to learn that hey, stock actually does rotate at some video rental stores, even/especially at bigger ones like Blockbuster. That goes double when there are more platforms in play than just Nintendo’s — SEGA was eating up space, and right on the horizon was a little up-and-comer from Sony called the “PlayStation.” Which, incidentally, might just be the first and only platform I own every North American Mega Man game for. (Oh, I guess we could technically say the SEGA Genesis there, too.)

Oh, and yeah, I went back and got those NES games I thought I’d be able to rent in perpetuity. Well, the first four, at least, to say nothing of various collections released since then.

So, that’s my tale. I know a lot of Mega Man fans didn’t start at the beginning, and as you can see, even some of us who did weren’t necessarily buying them. But what about you? What was the first Mega Man game, if any, you ever bought? And what made you finally decide to pull the trigger? Tell me all about it in the comments below, or on Twitter @TheMMNetwork!

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