Celebrate 30 years of Mega Man with the return of Gintendo
A deep-dive into the design and history of an NES classic.
Mega Man for NES — the first one — turns 30 years old this weekend. I find that pretty hard to believe. Or at least, I don't want to believe it, anyway. I have been playing Mega Man since the very original game, which I picked up despite its terrible box art in anticipation of the incredible-looking Mega Man 2, and that means I am now quite old. But, well, such is life.
I'm not dead yet, and neither is Mega Man, so I've decided to celebrate the occasion with a two-part Let's Play of the NES game that kicked it all off. Part one is up and available for your personal edification now — though, please be warned that the voiceover audio is somewhat less than perfect. I'm working on resolving that issue for future videos.
In fact, these voice audio issues have been the entire reason I've shifted Gintendo from live to prerecorded format. The slightly choppy audio in this video is nothing compared to the ear-splitting distortion my live streams have suffered from lately.
Remember the Gintendo stream series? Once upon a time — like, a few months ago — I played classic games live on stream and generally just kind of chilled out, sipping a drink and bantering with the stream audience while I struggled with the lopsided difficulty of games made decades ago. And it was good! But then, I flew too close to the sun. I attempted to defy God and technology by live-streaming a picture-in-picture map-making stream setup for Cart-ography, which was fine for a few episodes. But after a while, the audio on those streams started to degrade. The issue isn't the mic (I've had the same problem with multiple mics, whether traditional or USB-based, and those mics work fine for other purposes) or my computer (I record podcasts and Works videos on this system every week without trouble). It is… a mystery. I think I'm simply being punished for my hubris.
But if you can deal with the choppy sound of this stream, I promise future Gintendo Let's Plays will sound much better. There's some pretty decent game commentary here, I think, so hopefully you can put up with half an hour of mild frustration just this once. The second half of this playthrough will arrive later this week. And, if all goes as planned, I can get back to posting Cart-ography videos in this Let's Play format as well. For now, though, let's wish that very awkward-looking robot a happy 30th.
