F.X. Nine is a pseudonym used by Seth Godin for the Worlds of Power series. He was the creator of the series and wrote outlines for each book. Authors were hired to write the novelizations based on Godin's vision and outline.
Let me start with something that kind of blew my mind:
All these Nintendo books were a Seth Godin joint. Yeah, THAT Seth Godin. The Linchpin guy.
Don't be fooled, from what I'm reading, Godin didn't actually pen this one. All the Worlds of Power books were written under the pen name F.X. Nine, which was a name used by a collection of authors.
This one belongs squarely to Ellen Miles, who appears to be primarily a writer of children's books about puppies.
Now let me talk about a little something that pissed me the hell off:
This book has Mega Man 2 tips in it at the end of some chapters. Which seems awesome, and in a pre-internet age would have been helpful. However, these tips are bullshit!
I don't want to get all nerdy and talk continuity errors in the Megaverse here, but one tip tells players that beating the levels in the same order as they're written about equals success. This is a whole thing in Mega Man. You can pick the order you fight the other evil robots, and then use their powers to fight other evil robots. So I get a buzzsaw, see a guy who looks like a big tree, and that seems pretty simple. The problem, I looked at quite a few different orders you could use to beat the game, and NONE MATCHED THE ONE IN THIS BOOK! Now, at first I thought it was so cool that the book contained this secret. Maybe a good trick to get a kid to read. But you make the kid read, then punish the little dweeb with bad information? For shame. Here's a guide with SIX ways to go about it, all different from the one laid out in the book (http://www.gamefaqs.com/nes/563442-me...).
There's also this subplot where Mega Man has somehow been turned human. Which doesn't make sense and also has no effect. He still drinks energy tanks, whatever the hell those are, and still has all his robobilities. It reminds me a little of the Japanese kid who drank gasoline in order to become a Transformer. "I wondered why the house smelled like petrol" his father said. Jesus (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newst...)
Okay, all that aside, my least favorite part was that Mega Man had to make with a terrible pun every time he beat a bad guy. "I guess you're all hot air, Air Man!" and stuff like that.
In honor of this great achievenemnt, and because I don't like to complain about things without taking a stab myself, here's my puns for all robot masters.
1.) Air Man: Looks like you got blowed, Air Man.
2.) Aqua Man: Aqua Man? More like Aquaman, the comic character people love to hate!
3.) Astro Man: Maybe you should call yourself Astro Boy. Wait, no. He's an awesome robot. Scratch that. You suck.
4.) Blade Man: I guess you're not...cut out for this gig.
5.) Blizzard Man: You're a blizzard, I'm the snow plow. Boom.
6.) Bomb Man: I'd say I'm da bomb now. Idiot.
7.) Bright Man: Not so bright without a head and hard-earned robot consciousness, are you?
8.) Bubble Man: You just got popped, son.
9.) Burner Man: Stick to warming up Hamburger Helper for the lonely, Burner Man.
10.) Burst Man: Pardon you while you burst.
11.) Centaur Man: Haha, oh god. Why even bother?
12.) Charge Man: Now I'm in...charge!
13.) Chill Man: The heat is on. Your face. Which I'm shooting with my gun.
14.) Cloud Man: [shoots head off, which goes flying] He always had his...head in the clouds.
15.) Clown Man: Joke's on you.
16.) Cold Man: It's about to be a cold day in hell.
17.) Commando Man: The only thing you're in command of is your own explosion!
I would love to give this a 5-star rave for nostalgia alone. I can practically smell the gradeschool book fair on every page. But this slim novelization of Mega Man 2 isn’t good for much more than the memories. It’s clear the author wrote it from scant information, some plot points/boss weaknesses/etc. are just plain wrong. Also Dr. Light, smartest genius in the world, presses the wrong button on his machine and turns Mega Man into a human? What?! Bonus points for an afterword suggesting kids who like Mega Man should try Heinlein, Asimov and the Phantom Tollbooth. All good recs.
Not going to change the world or anything, but I could totally see myself loving this as book as a kid.
I will say, Mega Man becoming aware he is human and having to learn to deal with the fear of mortality caught me off guard for what is an otherwise "Hero goes here, hero fights bad guys, hero wins." story.
8/10
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
As a piece of video game history, this is very intriguing. As an actual novel? It definitely reads like an early junior fiction piece of literature based on a video game from the late 1980s.
The best thing about this abomination of letters, really the only positive thing there is to say about this for lack of a better word „book“, is the amazing cover picture which is directly taken from the NES game - but then censored so that Mega Man doesn‘t hold a gun in his hand anymore. Which results in him now happily shaking an empty fist in the general direction of his enemy.
What's more awesome than a book about Mega Man? Fucking Mega Man 2!! OH HELL YEAH!!!!....well it would have been awesome if it wasn't for all the stupid puns and tarded catch phrases they made up. It was like playing the game, only combining one of the Roger Moore James Bond film lines, and then any line after what's-his-nuts from CSI Miami puts on his glasses. Other than that, great read, if you're 11.
Of all the Worlds of Power/Nintendo books I've revisited as an adult, Simon's Quest is the only one that even remotely still holds up as a good story that uses the game as a springboard to get going. This one just didn't feel written by a gamer, even with the boss tips at the end of the chapters. It would seem some articles of nostalgia really should remain firmly in the past. Oh well, there's always the Mega Man 2 game. That shit never gets old.
I just picked up almost all of these in a lot online.
I had this one and Ninja Gaiden when I was a kid.
I was 9 when this book came out, and at the time it was pretty amazing.
These arrived the day one of my childhood friends died. This book, combined with all the memories former classmates were sharing, really took me down a rabbit hole. I have remembered things this week I haven’t thought about in years. I can piece together entire weeks of what my life was like at 9 or 10. This book was a part of that time.
So yeah, the writing isn’t great. It feels like the author was given a list of enemies with pictures attached, watched a few minutes of game play, and burned through this book.
BUT I learned a lot of enemy names. I saw the entire game as I read, remembered the music (some of the best NES music out there). And sometimes, as I read I processed this in first person, seeing almost a film adaptation of the game. It added a new layer to the atmosphere.
Not the greatest book, sure, but a book I read while carrying a lot of pre-existing knowledge into the experience. As such, it was a unique reading experience.
I’m looking forward to reading Ninja Gaiden again and checking out some of the others for the first time.
Ahh, childhood. I read this as a grade schooler, and now in my mid-thirties for pure nostalgia sake. And so I'll post two reviews:
As a kid: [5 stars] I loved Mega Man games, not just because they were fun, but because of the whole atmosphere. The strange locations, the odd bosses who seemed so mysterious and alone, and the music, all joined together for a really otherworldly experience. This book, to my young imagination, fit this atmosphere perfectly.
As an adult: [3 stars] In many cases, my memory of the atmosphere strong and pretty accurate. The scenes of battle with the robot masters are usually really, really short, and most of the book is descriptions of Mega Man traveling through different locations. Levels for Metal Man, Flash Man, Wood Man, and Quick Man struck me as a kid, and I thought they were easy to imagine as an adult, too. It was fun to revisit.
Mega Man 2 is my all-time favorite NES game, and if I had picked this up at a book fair as a kid, it'd probably be my favorite book. But since I snagged it on eBay as an adult, it's pretty damned cringe-y. I expected terrible one-liners and a ridiculous story, but did anyone edit or proofread this book? I couldn't overlook some glaring inconsistencies in spelling (Wily/Wiley), misplaced line breaks, etc.
To its credit, this is very true to the videogame. The boss order is similar to what I'd use, and at least a handful of the weapon weaknesses are accurate too. Apparently this was written as a sub-par strategy guide in novelized form.
Listen: the Worlds of Power books hold a special place in our heart, but even for a kids' book, this one is bad. It reads like a person who is dictating essentially what happens while they watch someone play through the game (with an inexplicable subplot of Mega Man becoming human).
Yeesh.
Listen to our entire talkthrough of this book with special guest Scott Niswander (It's Probably Not Aliens, NerdSync) anywhere you get podcasts or here:
This book is somehow 83.62% accurate to the game (Mega Man just spams Metal Blade everywhere). The remaining 16.38% is not accurate to the game, however!!!!!!
As a kid, I hated this book. It got most of the details of the world of Mega Man wrong, unnecessarily inserted a plot about Mega Man becoming human, and gave game tips that were often incorrect.
As an adult, I additionally note that the action is complete garbage. There's no cleverness to how Mega Man defeats his numerous opponents, it's basically "Mega Man shot the robot until it died," ad nauseum. The author could've at least used Mega Man's newfound fleshiness as a weakness, but the story proceeds in exactly the same way it would if Mega Man was still a robot.
F.X. Nine? More like... F... X... Bad Author?
...
I should've come up with a better insult than that. I'll workshop it and get back to you.