YMMV / Mega Man 8

---

• Awesome Art: The art style, designs, animation, and backgrounds are all amazing, and generally considered to be the best in the franchise.
• Contested Sequel: One of the least popular games in the Classic series. Its criticisms include the lack of enemy weaknesses, which renders special weapons much less effective than usual; gimmicky stage designs, including four autoscrollers; and the notably lower difficulty than usual. It's commonly believed that its tepid reception caused the decade-long gap until the next game.
• Fanfic Fuel: Duo and the unnamed evil robot, later called "Trio" by the Archie adaptation, further opened up outer space as a setting for the games after Mega Man V had utilized the Stardroids, who were of alien origin. Some fans also like to expand on Trio's role in fan works that adapt the games, such as Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch, which features him as a playable character and as a major antagonist, being the main boss for the 8 portion of the game and later the boss of the V portion. In Make a Good Mega Man Level: Episode Zero, he's the Final Boss.
• Game-Breaker: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Ham and Cheese: In a game where most of the voice acting is considered middling to bad, Douglas Kendall goes crazy as Grenade Man, doing a boisterous, almost Fat Albert-esque voice to convey Grenade Man's deranged personality.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The stage select is accompanied with a globe of the earth◊, with Dr. Light's Lab being in Denver, CO. Note the position in the second select screen of Wily Tower...then note that this was made before September 11th, 2001.
• Memetic Molester: Clown Man likes to use his long hands to grab Mega Man from below...Yikes. And then there's his death quote...
  Clown Man: "See you in my dreams..." ^note The fact that this was actually intended as a Shout-Out to Pennywise, one of the most well-known Monster Clowns in fiction, arguably doesn't help his case.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Doktah Wahwee. So notorious, in fact, that Capcom themeselves ended up referencing it at their E3 2018 showcase for Mega Man 11.
    • "Say 'Rascally Rabbit!' from this Bob and George comic was another rip on Dr. Light's voice acting in this game, and was a minor meme in the early 2000s during the height of B&G's popularity.
  • "Don't run AWAY, coward. You'll PAY for this INsult. OUI'LL be back..."
  • Jump! Jump! Slide! Slide!
  • Many of the boss quotes are dripping with memability, but standouts include:
    • Both of Frost Man's quotes, thanks to his silly Simpleton Voice.
    • Pretty much everything Grenade Man says.
    • Aqua Man's "Handsome Guy" comment is probably the most infamous of them all.
  • "Bass, why you don't understand?"
• Narm: The English voice acting gives a lot of unintentional laughs, as almost everyone is so miscast that even Rush somehow manages to get in on this, despite "speaking" in barks and growls. Particular mention goes to Mega Man's voice actress not bothering to deepen her voice and thus sounding like a little girl instead of a boy, and Dr. Light having a funny accent that results in him calling Dr. Wily "Doktah Wahwee".
• Narm Charm: A lot of the voice acting, for pretty much the same reasons as above. The corny acting gives it another layer of light-hearted enjoyment, regardless if it was intentional or not.
• Polished Port: The Sega Saturn version, for adding some new content such as a Bonus Mode (featuring some exclusive artwork), PCM encoded audio replacing the internal MIDI system (with a completely different Tengu Man theme to boot), and Cut Man and Wood Man being fought for two bolts that were previously just laying around. Sadly, the Anniversary Collection and Legacy Collection 2 rereleases do not use this version.
• Porting Disaster:
  • The Anniversary Collection ports all around. In particular, the GameCube version, which has numerous issues with sound emulation, such as skipping through parts of music tracks, and bosses' voices inexplicably speeding up; not to mention there were bouts of slowdown that were certainly not in the original game. Similarly, the PS2 version has input lag, which is particularly noticable in Frost Man's stage and the beginning of Wily Tower 1, which could hinder game progress significantly in those stages. Additionally, the Xbox version of Anniversary Collection is also quite blurry compared to the original game.
  • A pirated version by Makon Soft called Rockman 8 attempted to port the game to the Game Boy, but fell flat. Mega Man's gameplay is broken, the stage graphics are mismatched, the music is horrible, and the bosses are not the actual bosses from the original name. While the graphics themselves are not bad, the graphics are in 2½D even if Mega Man treats them as 2D graphics.
• Questionable Casting: Ruth Shiraishi as Clown Man. While the idea of Clown Man having a feminine voice could work in theory, Shiraishi doesn't seem to put very much energy into the role, and as a result, Clown Man doesn't sound quite as hammy, playful, or creepy as you'd think he would. His defeat quote, "See you in my dreams," sounds more like a bored, snarky teenage girl than a creepy clown.
• Replacement Scrappy: When it comes down to restoring energy on a whim, Rush Charger takes the place of Energy Tanks, except it's not as reliable.
• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic: This game addresses the issue with Mega Man 7's Robot Masters being too easy due to their weapon weaknesses stunning them and resetting their A.I. into an easily exploitable pattern. Weapon weaknesses now only stun Robot Masters in certain situations and do not reset their A.I. into a predictable pattern, meaning most of them will still require some effort even with their weaknesses. ^note The exceptions to this are Astro Man, who can be just as much of a Zero-Effort Boss as Cloud Man since the Homing Sniper will always stun him; and Aqua Man, since Astro Crush always resets his A.I. by stunning him and shattering his water tank, forcing him into a refill animation during which he's vulnerable to another Astro Crush.
• The Scrappy: Aqua Man tends to be hated, owing to his surprisingly difficult boss battle (if you lack the Astro Crush), his rather inefficient special weapon, and his obnoxious Ambiguously Gay personality.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The lack of weapon weaknesses for regular enemies is often criticized. Despite a lot of the weapons having potentially interesting utilities, this makes a lot of them rather unimpressive outside of their gimmicks, since a charged Buster Shot always does the same damage or better (the major exception being the Flash Bomb, which has a Damage Over Time mechanic that lets it overshadow the Mega Buster against certain targets). While this doesn't render them useless, and 8 isn't the only game in the series to do this, it's rarely seen as a point in the game's favor.
• Scrappy Weapon: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: this is a major point of criticism by many longtime Classic series fans. But the game somewhat counterbalances this by removing E-Tanks, replacing them with Rush Charger. Even then, it's only easy by Mega Man standards — and there are still a few specific bits that'll make you tear your hair out.
• So Bad, It's Good:
  • The English voice acting. Half of the characters are miscast, and most of the acting is very wooden and sometimes downright sloppy — both cutscene and in-game voice clips are full of trips, stutters, and miscues. It gets even funnier when you realize that Roll sounds manlier than Mega Man himself! Dr. Light seems to have issues with his accent and even stumbles over his lines (most noticeably in the scene where he and Mega are watching over Duo), and Duo has no emotion at all. Bass's name is mispronounced as if he were a fish. The only voices who sound decent are Dr. Wily, Roll, and Sword Man.
  • Grenade Man's "Say hello to my cute bombs!" sounds like they hurriedly threw out a Scarface joke. Doesn't necessarily prevent it from being amusing.
• That One Boss: Has a page shared with the rest of the franchise.
• That One Level: Also has a page.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The robot Duo fights in the first cutscene crash lands onto Earth along with him, and is confirmed to still be alive once Duo wakes up. Despite the potential for Dr. Wily to rebuild the evil robot to mirror Dr. Light rebuilding Duo or show up in the story in some other fashion, he never appears or even gets acknowledged after Mega Man and Duo team up. ^note Duo likely assumed the other robot was still alive after he saw the Evil Energy sample.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Among the comically bad voice acting, Douglas Kendall's English performance as Doctor Wily is a highlight, sounding genuinely mad when he is laughing in the movie cutscenes and conveying the sense of being a serious threat to the world. It's fitting as Dr. Wily is harnessing Evil Energy and being corrupted from its influence.
• Viewer Name Confusion: As mentioned in the main page's Gratuitous Japanese entry, whether Tengu Man's Razor Wind move is named "Kamaitachi" or "Yama Arashi" is left to the viewer. For further confusion, it should actually be "Kamikaze" going by the original Japanese version (and it's still fairly easily for players to mishear that as "Kamaitachi").
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Though some are a bit mixed on the exaggerated Toon Physics of Mega Man's animation, you generally won't find anyone that smack-talks the rest of the visual presentation. Whereas Mega Man X4 onwards would use pre-rendered CGI for background art, everything in Mega Man 8 is pixel art at its finest with smooth animations to go all around and plenty of detail in the environments. Maybe it didn't save 2D visuals in gaming at the time, but it was Vindicated by History now that people look back on the era.

---