The Direction of Fear in Mega Man 2

In 1988 Mega Man 2 was released to NESites everywhere, and changed my life twice. I stumbled on it when I was a young man of nine years, and then again recently (yeah, about a month ago, thank you Wii for bringing the classics back!)

So, I want to talk about fear in the awesome game of Mega Man 2. Disclaimer: I’m an excitable person when it comes to games. Disclaimer done.

For those not in the know, Mega Man 2 is the second installment in the acclaimed Mega Man franchise – a series about a robot-badass created by Dr. Light to fight an army of robots led by the dreaded Dr. Wily. You know, your regular action side-scroller that’s a hallmark to the 8-bit NES universe. Just to re-cap for our friends, side-scrollers have a basic rule to them – the character goes from the left side of the screen to the right side, fighting enemies and jumping across platforms to get to the end of the level. Sometimes your character goes up, sometimes your character falls down, but it never NEVER goings back the way it came. Just about every side-scrolling game from Contra to Mario Bros follows this tradition. But in Mega Man 2, the creators added a certain technique that heightens the fear level to bone-chillin’.

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I was running through the first level – all my skills at jump-shooting floating robots re-activated from their decades-long dormancy – and made it to the end. For those who never played Mega Man 2 , at the end of the level when you go to fight the Wiley Robot of the Level (with fearsome names like Cutman…Bubbleman…). To get to them, you have to go through two sets of energy doors. There’s always a pause between those doors for the player to change weapons, and say a quick prayer to the gods of Robotica that your silicon ass will make it out alive. You know that beyond the second energy door is the Enemy Boss. You psych yourself up, you run through the energy doors, and then they close behind you. The game LOCKS THE DOOR BEHIND YOU.

Why is this brilliant? Here, let me describe a scene for you…

You go over to your friend’s house for dinner. Your friend answers the door with a knife in his hands. Behind him you can see food cooking and it smells amazing. You walk inside.

On the Fear table of 1 to pissing myself, I’m at about a 2.

Now, try this out.

You go over to your friend’s house for dinner. Your friend answers the door with a knife in his hands. Behind him you can see food cooking and it smells amazing. You walk inside.

Your friend locks the door behind you.

My fear factor jumps way up the scale. I’m looking for a weapon and scoping out other exits. But…what’s the big deal? The deal is that your friend just eliminated your ESCAPE ROUTE. Sure, you’re in no real danger. Sure, your friend is totally not going to hack you to bits while your back is turned. People survive these dinners all the time. It’s completely irrational to get jumpy.

But it’s completely normal.

I mean, why the heck did your friend lock the door behind you?! What’s the point of that? Why did he bother to make it hard for you to get out, or for anyone else (possibly help?) to get in?

All these thoughts point back to your Fight/Flight instincts. Back in the day, when your ancestors were bludgeoning each other for mates you had to have some wits about you ‘cause you didn’t know when the next alpha male was droppin’ on your ass. You had to make split-decisions on when to run and when to gun. These instincts are triggered from time-to-time even in civilized times like these. It’s what happens when you’re on a stuck elevator – panic sets in because suddenly you’re aware that you’re trapped and you got no way out. Convicts on death row have markedly higher levels of adrenaline once their sentence is given, making them more dangerous inmates, even when their execution is scheduled years down the line. Philosophical careers are made on such theories.

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The game designers in Mega Man 2 understand that fear, that panic, that pathos when they slam the energy doors down behind you. The feeling of being trapped, especially trapped with the Level Boss, ups the pressure on the Player. And as we know, anything that ups the pressure makes for memorable gameplay. I’ll never forget playing Galaga with my brother, when he got to level 74…intensely memorable. Notice I didn’t say “enjoyable gameplay”. Just memorable.

“Locking the door” is not a unique technique to Mega Man 2. In fact it’s used everywhere from Super Metroid to Double Dragon. Mega Man 2 just executes this technique with killer precision and so it’s a great example of how game designers in the NES era had a handle on implementing fear and stress in their game. Given the constraints on graphics and memory at the time, Mega Man 2 does a lot with very little. There are no $30 million audio studios, or hordes of design teams, or 3D animators like there are for titles like BioShock or Call of Duty. No one spent a year digitally rendering the Mega Man 2 movie sequences. But with a little attention to detail like “locking the door” an old side scroller easily bests leading titles of today.

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Playing it again last month made me realize that my nine-year-old self was really being pitted up against an age old psychological exercise. Mega Man 2 let me practice facing my fears in the comfort of my living room while Mom made me lunch. To this day I still get panicked from time to time, but panic comes from the same place that all panic derives. If you buy into the fantasy that the game is a life-or-death situation, what’s the difference between that and an actual life-or-death situation? One thing I do know, if I can beat Mega Man 2, I can probably beat anything else out there. And have a killer high score.

Tom Tancredi

1st Generation Mobile App developer. And I like making video games.

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11 Responses

  1. Jeb Birch says:

    If you don’t lock the door behind living where I do, you will have something to really be afraid of.

  2. Jeb Birch says:

    If you don’t lock the door behind living where I do, you will have something to really be afraid of.

  3. Mary Brady says:

    What a great article. I want to play this again.
    However my favorite old time game was space invaders…the oldest and best.

    Do more articles to get the excitement going.

  4. Mary Brady says:

    What a great article. I want to play this again.
    However my favorite old time game was space invaders…the oldest and best.

    Do more articles to get the excitement going.

  5. Dom says:

    Show up to my door with a power cannon for an arm, and a hunger to steal my power, better believe I’ll lock that door and knife you.

  6. Dom says:

    Show up to my door with a power cannon for an arm, and a hunger to steal my power, better believe I’ll lock that door and knife you.

  7. Jamie says:

    When you have ten pixels and four musical tones to work with, you get creative. There are some amazing ideas in those old Nintendo games which are rarely tapped into… the locked door (and the silence of those hallways) in Mega Man is an atmospheric choice I never thought about until now. Great post, welcome to Pop Ten!

  8. Jamie says:

    When you have ten pixels and four musical tones to work with, you get creative. There are some amazing ideas in those old Nintendo games which are rarely tapped into… the locked door (and the silence of those hallways) in Mega Man is an atmospheric choice I never thought about until now. Great post, welcome to Pop Ten!

  9. Reading this post inspired me to replay Mega Man 2 last night- it’s always been one of my favorites, but I’d forgotten that it’s really one of the best video games of all time- what a masterpiece.

    Awesome post, btw!

  10. Reading this post inspired me to replay Mega Man 2 last night- it’s always been one of my favorites, but I’d forgotten that it’s really one of the best video games of all time- what a masterpiece.

    Awesome post, btw!

  11. Mike says:

    Mega Man 2 last night one of the best mobile game ever develop. I love this masterpiece

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