Mega Man 9, XBLA

Damn nostalgia made me buy this after a few tries of the demo.

Yes its an 8-bit game, yes its old school, you don't even have the charge buster or the sliding ability anymore. jump and shoot, that's it! You only use 4 buttons: jump, shoot, pause and weapons menu. You would think that the shoulder buttons or the trigger buttons would serve as a way to cycle through your collected weapons but you would be wrong.

You press the back button to access the weapons menu, I keep going for the start button which pauses/pause menu. X and B fires while A makes you jump. You start armed only with you default buster cannon and "R. Coil" for high jumps using Rush.

During gameplay you come across screws big and small which you can use to buy stuff Roll is selling you (wow what brotherly love). among these we find energy tanks, 'hairstyles' (use mega man without his helmet), add-ons to manage weapon energy, and other one-time use items.

The story begins with Dr. Willy repenting for his actions in the past, some time later, guess what? Robots running amok, again. There's a twist though, they're not Willy's. They belong to Dr. Light. A video or Dr. Light asking Dr. Willy to join him in his quest for world domination is displayed on the news, Willy rejects him. Mega Man decides to go do something about the robots while the others figure out what is going on.

After you kill a robot boss (not sure if its every time) there's dialogue that drives the story further. A funny thing I noticed is that when you arrive at a robot boss's gate you see "Dr. L." instead of the traditional "Dr. W." logo.

The game is difficult!! I think that the levels themselves are harder than the actual bosses. You just need to run through them many times until you memorize what it is you need to do like before. The pay off is shouting in excitement when you kill the damn robot boss at the end for making you go through all that to find him.

There's achievements and challenges like going through a level without being hurt, do a level without your helmet, etc.

Thoughts?