News You Can Bruise for 2008 October 11

Today I was using a pen and ran out of ink. In the past I've always lost the pen before that happened. This is one of the dumbest milestones imaginable but I wanted to commemorate it.

I've made no secret of my distate for the ridiculous Robot Masters in Mega Man games. But upon playing Mega Man 9 my wrath abated somewhat. It's an expertly crafted game, except for the damn amorphous blob in Dr. Wily's castle that's impossible to beat. But more than that, the bosses in that game made me appreciate Drs. Light's and Wily's business plan.

It's pretty simple, the same as the car companies. They keep making the same robots over and over again with cosmetic differences, so they can sell you a slightly different model every year. Among their offerings are:

• 3 construction robots: Guts Man, Metal Man, Concrete Man
• 3 demolition robots: Bomb Man, Crash Man, Grenade Man
• 4 wiring robots: Elec Man, Spark Man, Bright Man, Plug Man
• 6 mining robots: Hard Man, Crystal Man, Drill Man, Ground Man, Stone Man, Jewel Man
• 6 submersible robots: Bubble Man, Dive Man, Wave Man, Burst Man, Aqua Man, Splash Woman
• 6 robots for low-temperature operations: Ice Man, Flash Man, Gemini Man, Blizzard Man, Freeze Man, Frost Man
• 5 robots for high-temperature operations: Fire Man, Heat Man, Napalm Man, Flame Man, Magma Man
• 7 robots for the "aero" side of aerospace: Air Man, Tornado Man, Gyro Man, Wind Man, Cloud Man, Tengu Man, Tornado Man
• 4 robots for the "space" side: Shadow Man, Star Man, Astro Man, Galaxy Man

That's 44 of the 70 Robot Masters. The others are mostly terrible one-offs, with a couple products that failed and tried to make a comeback later. Do you really need a specialized robot just to cut things? (Cut Man) No? How about now? (Sword Man) The secret is to ignore all the weird one-offs like Centaur Man and Clown Man and focus on the core business. If you're interested in a more sophisticated analysis the Mega Man Knowledge Base groups the Robot Masters by their weapon types, rock-paper-scissors style, and comes to much the same conclusions.

Not only does Mega Man 9 have great level design, it's got the best boss weapons of the series. Yeah, I said it, better than in Mega Man 2. The Crash Bomb and Quick Boomerang are fun, but the Black Hole Bomb and Concrete Shot are more fun. I, for one, welcome our new Robot Masters.