Okay, we're getting warmer: Mega Man 2's American boxart is no prize, but maligned as it is, I like to think it's not the catastrophe that was the original. Say what you will about inaccurate character design, but as they feature something resembling actual proportion, I think of it as a relative success in that patented 80's way of box arts fulfilling the template for our imaginations. This fantastic Eurogamer interview with artist Marc Erickson reveals it was a uncoordinated hodgepodge of circumstances -- a hapless art director's interpretation of Mega Man ("he's obviously shooting, so he must be using a pistol"), Erickson simply assuming the character was an actual man, and an overall lack of cooperation between the various Capcom branches in conserving the original character design. Simply put: let us not judge Erickson for simply doing his job.
Nay, we are here to judge Mega Man 2, otherwise known as one of the finest classics of the 8-bit era and what truly etched our Blue Bomber into gaming history. By the same token of the former, it's no stretch declaring it one of the NES's masterworks, and for my money, I consider it the system's finest third-party effort. When considering how many Mario knock-offs stumbled and fell in their ill-fated attempts to capture the golden goose, that it can stand arm-in-arm with the actual Marios and Kirby's Adventure is a miracle I cherish dearly. There's no slippery controls, no projectiles nonsensically thrown in arcs, no absurd difficulty for the sake of absurd difficulty -- it's just a damn good video game, one I'd dare even say reaches the vertigo of perfection.
