A TMMN Special Report: Hands On with Mega Man 10!

Earlier this week, Capcom announced that Mega Man 10, among other titles, would be available to try in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. Living roughly five hours from Vegas, I heard this news and decided “time to have a little adventure.” Much fortunately, Joveth “Jgonzo” Gonzales and the other guys at Capcom warmly invited me over to their suite at Planet Hollywood for a hands on with Mega Man’s latest adventure. And I’ve just now returned to tell the tale.
I was able to play the Xbox 360 edition of the game. The only stage available for the trial was the stadium themed stage (unfortunately I’m not allowed to divulge the boss’s name now). The stage starts in a stadium field with pitching robots that lob baseballs at you, which sort of arch down at you and come back up. Soon, however, you head underground, facing small locker doors that open from the background and shoot at you, and enemies similar to the Springers from Mega Man 2 – when you disturb these guys, not only do they spring around wildly, but fire off shots as well.

Very soon you get to the game’s mid-boss, which is a large soccer goal-like structure with a robot head. A soccer ball flies in and bounces around the room, and then the robot goal post will try to smash you with its hands, and knock the ball around some more. This was easily the most frustrating enemy in the demo, and took me a couple attempts to beat.

You then face more of the above mentioned robots, along with basket-like robots that toss various kinds of balls at you, and you must head upward using platforms shaped like huge basketball hoops. As you progress upward, you’ll encounter soccer ball shaped platforms that will briefly rise into the air when you shoot them, and fall back down. But after you get back to the ground level, you’ll face against the same platforms but with spikes, lined up in long rows. You must continually shoot at them and pass under when they fly up.

Eventually you head back down and face the same mid-boss again from before, but this time parts of the goal post frame have electrified borders, and its fists have more complex motions. Being fortunate enough to beat this second incarnation of the enemy ends the demo.

I was also allowed to play through the stage in Easy Mode (which, I’ll pitifully admit, was the only way I could beat the last goal post enemy). Enemy placement differs somewhat here and they move slower and take less damage. The goal post enemy only used its fists in this mode. I was able to easily breeze through the stage in Easy Mode, and I can definitely see it allowing people less familiar with Mega Man games to easily get used to the gameplay.

Personally I found the 360 controller to be a tad cumbersome. Not owning a 360, I’m not really used to using it, and I had a tendency to accidentally slip my finger onto the right bumper, which changes your weapon (in this case to Rush Coil). That really messed me up the first time I faced the goalie enemy.

I was informed that Capcom expects Mega Man 10 to release worldwide in early March. However, all other details that weren’t explicitly available from the demoed stage were under lock and key, and try as I might I couldn’t budge any info out of their well-trained PR guys.

I will be updating this post with video footage directly from my gameplay as soon as Capcom’s PR sends out the OK for posting. I will also be writing up some of the discussion I had with Jason Allen, the man on hand to introduce Mega Man 10 to me. Look forward to it!

Driving to Vegas and back in a day is quite a tiring feat, but it was well worth it, even for a single stage. And there are a lot of people I must thank for making this happen. Much thanks to Jovith Gonzales and Jason Allen, as well as everyone on hand at the Capcom show for welcoming me to try out the game. You guys really rock! I must also give thanks to m’boss, BD, for arranging me to get to this shindig. Thanks to the guy at the suite who called out to me that he loves this site. I’m sorry I didn’t notice you ’til at the last moment, I was a little preoccupied. Finally, thanks to my long time friend Cheston for coming along with me on the trip, doing some of the driving and taking some great footage of the game.

I had a lot of fun with Mega Man 10, so definitely get excited for it!

From left to right, me, Joveth and Jason. Thanks you guys!

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