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Why Everyone Hates It: My the release of Mega Man 6, not only had the series worn out its welcome with a string of increasingly mediocre sequels, and those who had not totally lost interest already had access to the flashier and more complex SNES spinoff, Mega Man X. The fact that the recycling of boss concepts had reached the point of including Plant Man didn't help matters.
Legitimate Issues With the Game: Mega Man 6 suffers from a lot of the same problems that plague Mega Man 4 and 5. The boss concepts are less than compelling, the ability to fire charged blasts largely invalidates the need to ever switch weapons, and most fail to be interesting enough that this is a problem.
Why I Like It Anyway: While it still fails to hold a candle to the second and third games, Mega Man 6 stands out from the general downward trend that took hold of the series and its many spinoffs, not only by giving the NES a nice swan song, but by making a huge change to the gameplay, at least by Mega Man standards.
Nearly every game in the original Mega Man series features Rush, a robotic dog that can turn into a springboard, sluggish flying platform, and occasionally a submarine. Mega Man 6 replaces these with the ability to turn Rush into two different kinds of power armor, one offering an extremely short range but powerful alternate attack, the other with a jet pack. Unlike every other upgrade in the series, neither of this has an ammo gauge, instead being balanced by restrictions on attack range and maneuverability.
While the high damage option doesn't bring anything particularly new to the table, the jet pack really breathes some fresh air into the series. Aside from being an obvious aid to various platforming challenges, it grants access to alternate paths through levels, and later portions of the game make use of it for some tricky controlled fall maneuvering challenges.
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Despite the Rush Armor concept being generally well received by those who played the game, it failed to carry over into sequels for quite some time. The Mega Man X series took off nicely, placing its emphasis on permanent upgrades, environmental changes, and generally doing away with the notion of a cutesy supporting cast entirely. When the main series jumped to the SNES, it was a rushed disaster of a game that played things very conservatively. Later spin-offs either hopped to different genres, or in the case of the Zero games, opted for arcade style difficulty in somewhat spartan fashion.
Eventually, the armor gimmick did make a comeback in Mega Man ZX. Rather than the simple weapon upgrades found in other games, defeating ZX bosses opens up whole new modes. Again, much like the Rush Armor upgrades, we have new basic attacks and special movement abilities, without relying on limited ammunition, although this is in addition to alternate attack forms which work as expected. Mega Man ZX of course is a somewhat overlooked DS title, playing like something of a hybrid of a traditional Mega Man game, and a plot heavy Metroid-like game with a large interconnected world. It also has the distinction of being a spin-off of a spin-off of a spin-off, having splintered off of the Mega Man Zero series, which in turn broke off from Mega Man X, which again, was the original far future offshoot of the classic Mega Man series.
Eventually, the core series decided to get back to the basics, imbuing Mega Man 9 with essentially starting over with the engine, move set, and design philosophies of Mega Man 2, with only the standard springboard and jet forms of Rush remaining from any later games. An alternate mode of play was introduced as a downloadable extra, then later fully integrated in Mega Man 10, bringing back the charged shot and slide ability from the later NES games, but unfortunately, the most interesting feature of 6 has yet to make a comeback.
