The world's pulse raced with excitement! Everyone truly believed the conniving Dr. Wily had been stopped for good and imprisoned by the valiant Mega Man. Reporters jockeyed with cameramen for snapshots as the infamous Doctor hung his head while being dragged away in handcuffs. Dr. Wily would soon be behind bars. Or would he? Dr. Wily was ready for anything. He had known his dastardly plans would end in failure some day, so after six months without contact his laboratory sprung to life. Monitors whirred into action, lights flashed and the lab control panel booted up. In no time four hidden robots emerged. The robots then began a rampage in search of their master. Wily had done it again. Nothing would get in their way (Mega Man 7 Manual)!
MM7 was essentially an update of the classic Mega Man formula for the Super Nintendo. Mega Man X had already come out, and it was a bit different. This was a return to the series roots. A lot of what makes it fun is how much of it is good, old Mega Man stuff in 16-bit style. It absolutely does feel and play like a standard Mega Man game, just prettier, and that's a plus to me. Some people complain about the sprites, but I really like the big, colorful characters. Also, the Mega Man sprite from this game is like the go-to for sprite altering for comics and such.
The game is one of the weakest, though. Most wouldn't have it anywhere near this high, and they've got some really good points. I actually don't mind having an intro sequence, but I do mind very much only getting four robot masters at a time. For me, that's a very unforgivable sin in a Mega Man game. Most of the fun is having eight levels to pick and choose from, and having to work out what order you should be doing them in by trial and error. Limiting it to four severely limits how much playing around you can do with the game, and also makes it much easier. Just writing about it now makes me angry I left this on my list. It should be banished as punishment.There was a code where you could fix that, though. There was also an epically cool code where you could turn Shade Man's (dumb name) stage in to this:
If you don't actually recognize that, it's the music from another solid Capcom series (which just missed making this list), Ghouls n' Ghosts. I'm a big fan of homages to other games.
Unfortunately, by this time the robot masters were starting to get really stupid. Spring Man is probably the worst, but none of them are particularly interesting. Most of the powers are pretty worthless, though, other than Burst Man's nifty thing where you can trap enemies and bubbles with bombs and then shove them around until you want to push them in to something to blow up. That was fun. Oh, and the music is mostly very lame. Sort of saccharine sweet, even on stages where something more dramatic would be in order. Even the boss battle music is lame.
Still, it's Mega Man, and it looks nice, and it's fun. I'm not sure I'm comfortable putting it on this list for all the games I'm going to leave off, but it's too late to make up for that now. This list stuff is hard.
This game introduced Bass, who I believe has gone on to bigger and better things. I have never played those things.
Best Moment: Going to the Robot Master Museum and seeing suspended animations of some of the coolest bosses from past games.
Best Character: In every Mega Man game, the best character is either Dr. Wily or Rush. In this game, it's Dr. Wily.
Best Music: The Robot Museum
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