By Justin Polak
Co-Founder, Ambassador to the Mushroom Kingdom

I love Mega Man 2 as much as a proud father loves a son. When I was a child, Mega Man wasn’t just a simple Nintendo game for me.  It was a freaking lifestyle. I had a rockin’ blue sweat shirt and stylin’ blue sweat pants. When I wore those clothes to school, I became Mega Man. If my mother would have let me get away with it, I would have proudly worn a blue bike helmet or something similar.

Even to this day I am filled with insurmountable joy when I run through the game.  A couple years ago I ended up playing through Mega Man 2 after getting destroyed at a bar. I had a female friend who is seven years younger than me accompany me home that night. She was too young to see the big deal about Mega Man, so in my drunken state, I educated her. I was partially blackout drunk and I still managed to beat the game with little problems. Of course, this was all because I just had to show her how awesome Quick Man’s laser death trap sequences were, but I digress…

Roughly twenty years ago, it was an average, dull day in elementary school. Every once in awhile the teacher would pass out Scholastic Book Club catalogs, and I largely ignored them. I was one of the unfortunate children that let public school ruin reading for him. However, something in that catalog caught my eye that day.  I recognized the legendary awful box art of Mega Man 2 within the catalog’s pages. Upon further investigation it turned out that it was a Mega Man 2 novel.

I think my arm transformed into a cannon at that moment. I proceeded to blast the classroom door off with a single precise shot and raced home as fast as I could. After entering my mother’s room and besting her in battle, I received the “Please Mommy Buy This For Me” power. Thankfully, she forked over the money and in a couple of weeks; the book came into my anxious hands that fateful day.

I swear to God it was the best damn book I have ever read at the time. Just the fact that one of my favorite games of all time was novelized was the most brilliant idea ever for me at that point in my life. I probably re-read the book dozens upon dozens of times that year in school.

Unfortunately, tragedy struck. At the end of the school year I accidently left the book behind during the traditional end of the year locker clean up. I actually took the loss pretty well, because as great as I thought the book was, nothing would even come close to actually playing the game. But story does not end there. A couple of years ago, it was an average, dull day in the Ice Arena Pro-Shop, where I worked at the time.  The only computer I had access to had severely filtered internet, but I was able to browse Wikipedia to my heart’s content. I was reading up on Mega Man articles on the off chance I would learn something new when I suddenly remembered the Mega Man 2 novel.  Before I knew it I was on eBay, and I easily found a copy of the book. The asking price only required an old, wrinkled American dollar, so I ended up happily purchasing the book right then and there. About a week later, I found the book in my mail box. I dropped everything I was doing and read through the book in one sitting.

Now that I’ve had a few years of owning Worlds of Power: Mega Man 2 in my adult life, I thought it would be a fun idea to revisit the book yet again and share my thoughts to all of you.  Join me, get your weapons ready, and let us blast our way through the Mega Man 2 novel!

Air Man. Art from pressthebuttons.com

Air Man was the scariest looking robot that Mega Man had ever seen.  He was big and he was strong, but the scary thing about him was his mouth.

Air Man’s mouth was a huge, gaping hole that took in air and then blew it out in terrible gusts.  Even though he was a robot, his body seemed like it was made out of clouds.  As he moved, wisps of fog drifted off his pointed shoulders.  Miniature tornadoes flew from his mouth, pointing their tails straight as Mega Man.

Air Man stood with his back against a wall, spitting out hundreds of tornadoes.

“Destroying you will be a breeze, Mega Man!” he shouted.

Wow.  Just…wow.  How many things are wrong with this picture?  Granted, this is a preview of the action to come before the adventure even begins. Maybe the rest of the book is better, but still, I have to tear this apart.

First of all, AIR MAN IS NOT MADE OF CLOUDS!  Yes, the author said, “even though he was a robot,” but still.  C’mon, man!  All the robots are made of metal! Or maybe some sort of metallic material! And they don’t look like anything other than that material! The point is Air Man isn’t a cloud! He doesn’t look like a cloud! Everyone knows that Air Man eats clouds for breakfast and shits thunderstorms! I would hate to think what would happen if this author wrote a Final Fantasy VII novel. I can see it now…

Cloud jumped from the top of a rusty train in Sector 7, ready for action as Shinra soldiers donning blue armor and night vision goggles charged right at him.

But Cloud floated down gracefully with his purple uniform bought by his parent’s at the dollar store.  This was because Cloud’s parents were the clouds itself.  They don’t make much money and aren’t very bright, hence the name.

And while I enjoy an incredibly lame pun as much as the next man, I slapped my forehead when reading Air Man’s deadly threat.  I’m surprised Mega Man didn’t blow up immediately after hearing it from the sheer awfulness of that pun!

I’ll give the author credit for being creative, but I guess the point I was trying to make in the first place is this:  One of my pet peeves when video games are put in the hands of other entertainment mediums is the unnecessary changes that inevitably happen. Just describe Air Man as he appears! What I imagine is some cloud with a “gaping hole” awkwardly staring at Mega Man firing enough tornados to fill the entire screen! I guess if that were the case, the memetic “I Can’t Beat Air Man” song would actually make sense.

Return to Primary Ignition tomorrow for Part II, as Justin examines the book, awkward chapter by awkward chapter.