I recently threw down $5 on the Wii Virtual Console for Mega Man 2, and after randomly picking one of the 8 robot masters to challenge, I played for about 10 seconds before thinking I had made a mistake. Suddenly I remembered my 12 year old self throwing the remote to the floor in frustration after trying so many times to get past that stupid dragon in the first stage of Dr. Wily's fortress, and I was expecting the same thing to happen all over again, so I chose to play another game instead and Mega Man 2 “collected dust” on the Wii's flash drive. It wasn't until an afternoon about 3 months later that I played the game again out of boredom, and found it was just as hard as I remembered it—but out of shear spite, I kept playing until I had beaten the level, and a feeling of real accomplishment came over me.
I spent the next few days picking at the game, and after beating it, went through the game again. After Mega Man beats a boss, he gains their powers, and as each boss is weak to another boss weapon, figuring out which works best for each makes the game a lot easier than it was the first time around, where I went through half the game using only the P-shooter. On my third attempt at the game I beat it in just under 45 minutes, and have been working my way through Mega Man 3 in the same way. It's almost as good as 2, but the series declines sharply from there. Mega Man 2 is a labor of love—Capcom had no plans to do a second game after the first one sold poorly, but the game's director begged for another go, and he was allowed to make the game only if it didn't affect his regular work, which means this game was essentially made off the clock, and it shows. This is the peak of the series, and a better game didn't come along for the system until Super Mario Bros. 3 . The levels are challenging and clever, the bosses are creative, and it's more accessible than other games in the series: it's the only 8 bit Mega Man game with 2 selectable difficulty levels: normal (hard) and hard (harder).
I recently threw down $5 on the Wii Virtual Console for Mega Man 2, and after randomly picking one of the 8 robot masters to challenge, I played for about 10 seconds before thinking I had made a mistake. Suddenly I remembered my 12 year old self throwing the remote to the floor in frustration after trying so many times to get past that stupid dragon in the first stage of Dr. Wily's fortress, and I was expecting the same thing to happen all over again, so I chose to play another game instead and Mega Man 2 “collected dust” on the Wii's flash drive. It wasn't until an afternoon about 3 months later that I played the game again out of boredom, and found it was just as hard as I remembered it—but out of shear spite, I kept playing until I had beaten the level, and a feeling of real accomplishment came over me. 
I spent the next few days picking at the game, and after beating it, went through the game again. After Mega Man beats a boss, he gains their powers, and as each boss is weak to another boss weapon, figuring out which works best for each makes the game a lot easier than it was the first time around, where I went through half the game using only the P-shooter. On my third attempt at the game I beat it in just under 45 minutes, and have been working my way through Mega Man 3 in the same way. It's almost as good as 2, but the series declines sharply from there. Mega Man 2 is a labor of love—Capcom had no plans to do a second game after the first one sold poorly, but the game's director begged for another go, and he was allowed to make the game only if it didn't affect his regular work, which means this game was essentially made off the clock, and it shows. This is the peak of the series, and a better game didn't come along for the system until Super Mario Bros. 3 . The levels are challenging and clever, the bosses are creative, and it's more accessible than other games in the series: it's the only 8 bit Mega Man game with 2 selectable difficulty levels: normal (hard) and hard (harder).
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