Capcom, I don't really know how to say this. It's a little awkward, but damn it, it's the truth. We've known each other a long time, and you've always been a good friend to me, but this year, things have gotten more serious. With Street Fighter IV, HD Remix, Commando 3, 1942: Joint Strike and two versions of Bionic Commando, it's like you've gone out of your way lately to show me what I mean to you, and now that you've announced Mega Man 9, it's time for me to return the favor. Capcom, I. . . I love you.
Jesus, I don't know what came over me there. But with Mega Man 9 just unveiled in all its eight-bit glory, my old-school-gaming glands are all swollen and red, and I think it's squeezing out the blood flow to my brain. The early Mega Man games are masterpieces of their era, and they feature some of the most unforgettable stages on the NES — a series of giant constructions that, high-tech though they may be, maintain a playground-like innocence. World-building obsessives that we are, we couldn't let this glorious day go by without commemorating the ten greatest classic Mega Man levels of all time. — Peter Smith
Elec Man
Keiji Inafune's first attempt at Mega Man was promising but ultimately half-baked. The play was there but the world itself was still confused, its six core stages shuffling back and forth between "gamey" abstraction and eerie pastoral. Elec Man's tower was one of the series' first real successes, an ascent that felt like a true structure and not a background for a sprite to jump about, a dangerous place pulsing with energy that could obliterate our diminutive hero using the very power that fueled his mechanical innards. — John Constantine
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