The Wily Wars is a decent-enough conversion of Mega Man 1 – 3, I guess, although the Megadrive version of the soundtracks kinda put me on edge: hearing Mega Man 3’s opening theme coming out of a Megadrive rather than a NES sound chip is disorienting, akin to walking into your house after a few days away to find that someone’s moved all your furniture by a few inches.īut we’re here for the sprites, and how does the Blue Bomber look? Rather good, I’d say. In 1994, the first three Mega Man games received a sixteen-bit makeover as they made their way to the… Megadrive? Yes, even after all these years it still seems strange to me to be playing a Mega Man game on a Sega console – although oddly I never felt the same confusion when Mega Man games started showing up on the Playstation. It’s certainly immediately recognisable, and when I decided to write this article I thought to myself “hey, before I look at these sprites I’m going to try to draw the NES Mega Man from memory and see how I close I get.” I bet you can’t wait to see how that turned out. sprite, Pac-Man and the enemies from Space Invaders, but it’s definitely on a rung just below those. It’s maybe not quite in the top tier of iconic game sprites, where you would find Mario’s Super Mario Bros. It’s a sprite that I’m sure we’ve all come to know and love over the years, (I know I have, ever since I first got Mega Man 3,) and it must be one of the most famous sprites in videogame history. The line of pixels that makes up his mouth manages to communicate his grim resolve, but his enormous saucer-like eyes means he still possesses plenty of cutesy anime charm without looking too much like a kitten that’s just snorted a fat rail of coke. With the broad shoulders of a rugby player and wide-splayed legs that provide him with solid footing on even the most perilous terrain, Mega Man is always ready to defend the world from the machinations of the evil Dr. Here he is, the precious and slightly dumpy boy that we all know and love, as he appears in the first six NES M ega Man games and in a host of other spin-offs and merchandising opportunities.

Megaman x sprite sheet