MEGA MAN RETURNS FINALLY,THE ROBOT HERO GETS HIS DUE

摘要

Like'80s movie stars, classic videogame characters have now been around long enough to mount Rob Lowe-like comebacks. After all, these iconic figures aren't just flecks of light platform-jumping on a screen. They're tiny Rorschach blots onto which Gen Xers can project their receding childhoods. Which makes those characters very hard to kill. Take Mega Man. The heroic little robot with big power-ups debuted in an eponymous Nintendo game in 1987 and has spun off 131 titles; his games have sold more than 30 million copies. He even had a TV show. But by 2011, the Blue Bomber was doing the equivalent of supermarket ribbon-cutting. He was passed over for the Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 videogame, and Capcom, the Japanese company that spawned him, announced it was euthanizing two new Mega Man titles in the pipeline. Mega Man fans (they are legion) made their displeasure known. The Internet is good for this. After all, his numbers weren't in the Mario range, but he was no Atari E. T. either. So Capcom went into appeasement mode, rereleasing six classic Mega Man titles in May. And in October he finally makes his debut in the popular Super Smash Bros. franchise, while tabletoppers will get Mega Man: The Board Game. The resurrection of this 8-bit alter ego-and the entire vintage videogame trend-is like Lik-a-Stix for our juvenile id. The Blue Bomber provides simple pleasures in a complex world, and if you're looking for a nostalgia fix, it's hard to beat the speed and pluck of Mega Man.