[Neph]

First Impressions:

Holy fuck, I'm out of touch with old school games. Started out with Jewel man's stage and proceeded to get my ass handed to me. Maybe it wasn't the best place to start, but all I can say is holy fuck...

More impressions to come.

Edit:
Yea... My happy memories of Mega Man must stem from Mega Man X and not any of the NES games. I've tried out all the levels, and all of them are tough. Comparably, the levels are harder than Sigma's Fortress. A lot of this stems from the fact that Mega Man is vulnerable from all sides, can't shoot upwards, and can't shoot at things parallel to his feet. Mega Man X at least fixed the feet thing with charged shots. Oh, and he doesn't move too quick either -- I must have depended upon the dash in Mega Man X too much. I've heard that you can get the dash upgrade somewhere in this game, but haven't found it yet.

There's some cool things going on in the stages, but unfortunately, it's those cool things that kick your ass and send you back to the beginning to try again. A lot of it is vicious platforming that outright kills you and has you restart from the beginning/checkpoint. It's certainly doable, but man it's got a high learning curve. The problem (which can probably be applied to old school games in general) is that there is a lot of little shit that you have to remember, and if you don't, then you'll die and go back.

I managed to make it all the way to fight Splash Woman, but was on my last life, died, and would have had to retry the entire stage. It's a little frustrating, to say the least.

On a positive note, the music is great. Really captures the old NES feel.