E3 2008: Mega Man 9 Makes Dreams Come True

We posted the debut trailer for Mega Man 9 last week, and I was floored by how retromazing the music was. Well, when I hit the floor at E3, the first thing I did was run over to the Mega Man 9 setup as it’s my most anticipated title for this year. After spending nearly an hour with the demo’s two playable stages, I think I am completely satisfied… at least for now.

So what about the music? It’s everything you could have imagined from the previous trailer. While nobody at Capcom was able to give me the names of the composers working on the title, rest assured that I’ll be asking next week at Comic Con.

Check out our impressions of the game and the music after the jump.

Two stages were available for play: Concrete Man and Plug Man. Unfortunately neither robot master was actually featured in this build of the game, as players were treated to a “Coming Soon!” message when reaching their respective lairs. That didn’t stop me from playing both levels numerous times, however.

Concrete Man’s stage was pretty straight-forward, with rock-dropping birds and annoying bots that popped up out of pits. The elephant enemies that were spotted in the trailer were actually the most challenging part of the level. The music sported some cool synth drums that were immediately reminiscent of Woodman’s stage from MM2. It was bass-heavy and awesome, and the arpeggios took the win.

Plug Man’s stage (pictured above) was an absolute bitch. Disappearing blocks… constantly, and in very tricky arrangements. I’m actually going to blame my inability to pass the stage on the controller, as I’ve never found the Wii Remote on its side to be satisfactory when playing NES games. Does anyone know what I’m talking about? It’s not as responsive as a classic NES controller… but maybe I just suck. The stage’s music had a groovy bass line and a high-pitched melody that was oh-so-sweet.

This game is freaking awesome, and the Capcom rep I was talking to said the US team handling the game was equally impressed by the audio. He said that they would definitely be pushing for an iTunes release at the very least, so at least we know somebody is on our side with this one.

The E3 build will also be on display at Comic Con next week, so if you can make it out to San Diego, I’d highly recommend it. Is this game on the top of your list? Are you excited about a prospective release on iTunes?