Mega Man 7

Mega Man 7
Not even prison can hold Dr. Wily from doing evil deeds!
Protagonist(s): Mega Man Genre(s): Platformer Rating(s): ESRB: K-A Platform(s): Super Nintendo Entertainment System Release Date: JP: March 24, 1995 NA: September 1, 1995 EU: November 20, 1995 Developer(s): Capcom Publisher(s): Capcom Country: Japan Series: Mega Man Predecessor: Mega Man 6 Successor: Mega Man 8

Mega Man 7 is an action, adventure, side-scrolling, platform, and third person shooting video game created by and published by Capcom on March 24, 1995, for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in North America and the Super Famicom in Japan. This was the first game in the main series of Mega Man games, (excluding the Mega Man X games), to be released on a fourth-generation console. The game was re-released as part of the Mega Man Anniversary Collection for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube in 2004, and later as part of the Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch in 2017.

Plot

Six months after the events of Mega Man 6, several robots were mysteriously activated in Dr. Wily's lab, and they cause havoc in the city. While Mega Man goes to check on the occurring chaos, Dr. Wily breaks out of prison. Mega Man goes out to stop him and the new Robot Masters that stand in his way. Along the way, Mega Man meets a new rival in the form of Bass (AKA Forte in Japan), along with his robot wolf companion, Treble (AKA Gospel in Japan).

Why Bass Is Ready for Vengeance (In a Good Way)

1. Really good graphics for Super Nintendo standards, with much bigger sprites than the NES games.
2. The soundtrack is great. While it is not as rock-heavy as the Mega Man X games on the same console, it fits in perfectly with this game's graphics. Highlights include the Wily stage themes, Slash Man's theme, Bass' theme, Junk Man's theme and the Wily Capsule theme.
   • Shade Man has an alternate stage theme that plays by holding the jump button when entering his level before beating him, and that stage theme is taken straight from another Capcom game, Ghouls 'n Ghosts.
3. The game is more story-based, like the Mega Man X games, as there are an intro stage and a middle stage in this game.
4. This game introduces Bass, a robot who first acts as a friend to Mega Man who soon betrays him due to Bass being created by Dr. Wily for the purpose of defeating Mega Man, and is fought twice in the Wily stages, once normally, and again when he fuses with his dog, Treble.
5. This game brought back the letter collectables from Mega Man 5, which spell "RUSH", and gives you the Super Adaptor, a combination of both Rush suits from Mega Man 6, making a very useful weapon after beating the four initial Robot Masters.
6. Along with the 'RUSH' letters, the game includes more collectables such as the Beat whistle, making this game feels like a fusion between classic Mega Man series and the new (at the time) Mega Man X duology.
7. There is a secret fight with Proto Man in Shade Man's stage if you find him in Cloud Man and Turbo Man's stages, which gives you the Proto Shield.
8. There's a hidden versus mode that can be accessed with a password and two players, where Mega Man and Bass can fight each other. The same password can also give you immediate access to the final Wily stage with all of the items if played alone, unlike the previous three games which didn't have passwords that took you straight to the final level, let alone Wily's castle.
9. Some of the Robot Masters' weaknesses show how said robot gets affected by them, making guessing the weaknesses much more rewarding; some examples include:
   • Junk Man's weakness, the Thunder Bolt, electrifies his entire body since it's all made of scrap metal.
   • Spring Man's weakness, the Slash Claw, cuts his coils in half, although this isn't shown in gameplay.
10. The Proto Shield is a great alternative to the Mega Buster, it can deflect small projectiles and ignore enemy damage, but Mega Man cannot move while shooting.
11. The game does some new things with the series that freshened up the core gameplay a bit to make it more fun and enjoyable, such as having to start with only 4 main bosses and then to fight a middle stage boss and then go on to defeat the next 4 main bosses and then go to Wily's Fortress which can be seen as a major improvement over the previous games and does prevent the game from being incredibly stale and adds more length to the game without the need of padding or unnecessarily adding more levels with zero polish, which shows how willing Capcom was to evolve the series in the 4th generation of consoles, which also ended up applying to Mega Man 8 with a bigger retool of certain mechanics and gameplay staples that helped the series be more modern at the time.
12. Solid gameplay as always, with the levels still retaining the challenge that they had from previous entries but are a lot more easier to get into with less cheap enemy placement and more unique obstacles that can be tricky to maneuver but overall can be easily done properly with the right amount of timing involved, and Mega Man still controls as smoothly as he did in past instalments with some mechanics still being intact and not losing their charm that they once had and still being useful for certain situations in the game that require you to use a certain item or weapon to solve a boss fight or open up a certain part of the stage that is required to move forward with the pacing of the game, making the game still have the classic Mega Man charm of past titles with a few things changed that still make fresh amongst other titles as mentioned above.
13. The stages are wonderfully unique with a lot of themes that fit the nature of the certain Robot Master they are used for, and go along with the colorful nature of the series as a whole, such as Spring Man's stage which is a happy and wonderful place full of bouncy springs and goofy enemies that make the stage very memorable and charming to play through and is generally quite fun and well-designed overall.
14. The weapons are still very useful and some of them are improved versions of certain weapons from past games that add a lot more life to them than they had previously which is a good improvement over past weapons where half of them were very situational and the other half were useful but had limited choices to be used in certain areas of a level from one certain Robot Master, which for Mega Man 7 they are useful in all areas and have a lot of use that is limited but still are helpful for the player to progress further in the game.

Bad Qualities

1. The cutscene that plays in the intro stage is very long and cannot be skipped. The same can be said for the rest of the cutscenes in the game.
2. Wily Capsule, the final boss of the game, is notorious for its high difficulty, and is one of, if not, the hardest boss in the entire Mega Man franchise. As a bonus, its weakness, Wild Coil, is the worst weapon in the game. You can hold up to increase its height, but the game never tells you this. Even the game's developers had trouble beating it without using an E-tank!
3. Rush takes damage, making him almost useless when there are tons of enemies on the screen.
4. "I am more than a robot. Die Wily!" Mega Man is very out of character when saying this line in the American version, but in the Japanese version, he doesn't say anything, implying that he crashed.
   • In-fact, when Wily tells Mega Man that he can't hurt him, Mega Man stops charging his shot in Japanese version, while he continues to charge it in the International version.
5. A fully charged buster shot now deals 2 units of damage which makes killing enemies slower than it is that spamming uncharged shots is preferable.
6. There's some mistranslation and awkward English in some parts of the game; the mistranslations were fixed in Mega Man Legacy Collection 2.
   • In Shade Man's stage, Bass says 'Damn', somehow that line escaped translation. Also fixed in the Legacy Collection port.

Reception

Both in the past and present, Mega Man 7 received mostly positive reviews by critics.

Trivia

• According to Yoshihisa Tsuda, the reason why Wily Capsule turned out so hard is because during development, Keiji Inafune said, "Let's make the very last fight insanely hard!".
• The game's graphics were carried over into the two arcade Mega Man titles, The Power Battle and The Power Fighters.
• The game saw a fan remake known as Rockman 7 FC, which is a recreation of Mega Man 7 in the style of the NES games.
• This game took only three months to make, making the shortest time developed Classic Mega Man game.
• This game runs on the Mega Man X engine making development in the game much easier.

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