Mega Man Classic: Is the Charge Shot and Slide good?

[time gear]

An interesting topic/debate I've seen in regards to Mega Man 9 and 10. Mega Man 3 introduced the Slide, and then Mega Man 4 introduced the Charge Shot. These abilities remained a part of Mega Man's moveset until Mega Man 9, which opted to revert him to his Mega Man 1 and 2 moveset limitations. Mega Man 10 kept him this way, and then he gained both abilities back in Mega Man 11.

I've seen mixed opinions of this over the years. Before Mega Man 9, there wasn't much in the way of public outcry to remove the two iconic powers, and as far as I know from what I've heard the reason why they were removed was because Mega Man 2 sold better than the follow up games. As Mega Man 9 and 10 were intended to cash in on nostalgia, they opted to make Mega Man play similarly to how he did in Mega Man 2 in the hopes it would boost sales.

Since then, ignoring which side is the most popular, there seem to be two main sides to the debate. One side says that the Slide and Charge Shot are iconic abilities to the character that were fun to use and should have never been removed. They argue that the Slide and Charge Shot enhance the gameplay and increase the skill ceiling in a fun and interesting way, as well as make Mega Man worth playing next to Proto Man and Bass. The other side says that the removal of the abilities is a return to form for the Classic series and should have never been brought back in 11. They argue that things should be kept simple and that the slide and charge shot make things too complicated and skill based.

Personally, I'm in favor of Mega Man having his Slide and Charge Shot. Proto Man has the slide as well, and Bass can dash similarly to X and after. Mega Man not being able to do this as well makes him feel rather slow. Proto Man has the Charge Shot as well as his jump shield, and Bass can aim his shots while standing still. Mega Man not having anything to compete with this makes him feel weak. As a result, Mega Man feels both weak and slow compared to the other two playable characters, and there's little incentive to play as him unless having 3 shots instead of Proto Man's 2 is that important to you in MM9, but even then Bass has that beat with 4 that auto fire and can be aimed in MM10.

I have seen it brought up before however that this makes sense if you think about the three characters as difficulty options. Bass is Easy mode, Proto Man is Normal mode, and Mega Man is Hard mode. However, this doesn't really entirely make sense when you take into consideration how the characters are unlocked. Mega Man 9 starts you out with just Mega Man. The original game featured Proto Man as paid DLC, and the Legacy Collection version has him as unlockable. Mega Man 10 starts you out with Mega Man and Proto Man, but the original game featured Bass as paid DLC and the Legacy Collection version has him as unlockable. If the three characters were meant to be difficulty options, why would normal and easy mode be behind paywalls and later limited to being unlockables/cheats? Additionally, Mega Man 10 comes with a built in difficulty option anyway, letting you make the stages themselves into easy mode variations that make Mega Man 2 look hard by comparison.

What do you think? Are the Charge Shot and Slide good additions to Mega Man's moveset that he should keep moving forward, or were they a mistake that should be removed moving forward?

 

[clairebun]

I took a minute to play devil's advocate for Mega Man 1/2 movesets in my head -- on the one hand, there is a good argument to be made that having more options does not necessarily make a game easier to play; inevitably the game will become designed around the added complexity to compensate, and a simpler game design is often more approachable to players with less experience. On the other hand, the first two games would have been way less of a bitch if you could slide, so maybe what I just said is complete bullshit. Yeah, fuck no-slide.

The slide itself is well balanced in that it speeds up gameplay and grants evasiveness, while sacrificing the player's offensive capabilities. It also allows the designer to create rooms which force players into a slide state, opening the game up for obstacle courses that you wouldn't get in a no-slide Mega Man game.

The slide received basically no changes over each iteration, which makes its overall value to the series pretty easy to measure -- but the charge buster has actually varied quite a bit terms of its attributes, namely attack power, width, and whether taking damage interrupts the charge. In Mega Man 5, the charge buster is over-centralizing, whereas in 7 it's relegated mostly to small enemies and a couple boss encounters. Depending on the mechanics, you'd also have to rate it in comparison to the player's other weapons; Mega Man 5's weapon selection was pretty weak whereas 7's was pretty well balanced. So there is a lot more to take into consideration.

I think the first Mega Man X made considerable improvements on the concept of the charge shot -- it helps that the boss weapons all had lots of utility in their own right, but an upgrade ability to charge those boss weapons made it feel much more like an integrated central gameplay mechanic and opened up further playstyle options. Other balance tweaks, like the charge shot's ability to flinch many bosses, also made the charge shot feel more gratifying to use; flinching is a mechanic that had been absent since Mega Man 1, and the charge shot + other weapons felt like an appropriate way to bring this back.

Ultimately, the slide and the charge shot are pretty supplemental and don't affect the core design of a Mega Man game in the way that something like X's wall hopping would. You really could remove them both from most Mega Man games and, in most cases, you'd only have to change a few rooms and a couple of object interactions. It's really more of a question of balance -- does their inclusion increase depth of gameplay or does it reduce it? This is also the same question you would ask in Mega Man 11's case, which introduces slowdown and rushdown mechanics through its "time gear" gimmick. In most cases I would say their inclusion is generally beneficial, but it always depends on the execution.

 

[time gear]

This is also the same question you would ask in Mega Man 11's case, which introduces slowdown and rushdown mechanics through its "time gear" gimmick.

A small correction here, "time gear" is my username. The gimmick in MM11 is referred to as "speed gear" in game.