Before I even had a chance to contemplate selling blood in order to afford it, Chronicle Books has cancelled plans to release a Mega Man history book. I don’t know what this book would have consisted of, I just know I would have bought 100 copies of it. Even though I already know most of the history of Mega Man, this no doubt would have included plenty of pretty pictures, and I will never, ever get tired of staring at sprites from this series.
(GoNintendo, via Kotaku)
The 10 Biggest Asshole Bosses in Gaming – Part 1
The boss is a vital part of single player gaming. For many games, the boss is the only part of the game that comes anywhere close to being a match for playing against another human. The boss represents the ultimate challenge in a game, the last obstacle in a long road toward saving the princess/city/world/precious, precious gold. Often, the boss is fighting for money, revenge, or just some sweet, sweet poontang. That said, some bosses are just total assholes. Here’s a list of the worst offenders.
10: Elec Man (Mega Man)
One might say that I can replace Elec Man with, oh, say, literally any robot master in Mega Man 1-9, Dr. Wily (or any variant thereof), Proto Man, or even some of the regular enemies from the series (those goddammed robot birds or the Big Eye [this guy: 
] come to mind), but Elec Man really goes over the cliff in the asshole department.
Even before you reach him, Elec Man is going out of his way to piss Mega Man off. Unlike most of the other enemies, he doesn’t seem to be trying to kill Mega Man, he just wants him to be really frustrated when they fight. Elec Man’s tower is full of 70 foot tall ladders, and little switches that deliver a mild electric shock that causes the Blue Bomber to plummet all the way to the bottom of the chamber he just spent the last hour and a half climbing to the top of. He also converted most of his Roombas into little Battlebots (remember that show? Me neither.) that, while they don’t do much damage to Mega Man, are extremely difficult to hit and can only be briefly frozen rather than killed, and as a result tend to knock him off of platforms. Throw in the dreaded disappearing blocks, and you’ve got Mega Man’s equivalent of spilling hot coffee on your dick while stuck in a traffic jam.
He even looks arrogant.
Keep in mind, by the time Mega Man has reached Elec Man, he’s been shocked, shot, pushed off of platforms, trapped, stabbed, and is just generally pissed off. To top it off, the last part of the stage, rather than being a simple walk through a door like most bosses, is an arduous climb up the longest ladder in the game, chock full of electric switches and floating robots, and when you fall, not only do you have to start the climb over again, but you usually end up getting hit several times on the way down. When he finally gets into the little garage Elec Dick lives in, staggering from low health, all Mega Man wants to do is hit him a couple of times with the weapon he’s weak against and leave. No such luck. Elec Man’s weakness is the Rolling Cutter, which, due to the change in the angle it comes out at while jumping, is nearly impossible to hit someone with without getting hit. On top of that, Elec Man jumps around like a 5-year-old on meth, flipping back and forth and shooting enormous bolts of lighting at you that take out roughly 1/5th of your total health. With most bosses, if you’re low on health when you go to fight them, you can just die and start over with full health. With Elec Man you have to climb the Hell Ladder every time before you even get to him, so you’ll probably only have half of your health bar, which he’ll quickly reduce to nothing. Not that he really cares if you die, mind you, he’s just really more worried about pissing you off, and if straight-up killing you is a way to do it, then he’s willing to give it a try.
Biggest Display of Dicketry:
After the first portion of climbing, there’s a large energy power up in a little alcove directly across from a large pit. By this point, you’re probably pretty low on health, and it looks perfectly reasonable to jump over, get it, and jump back. When you actually get to the platform, however, you realize you’re hopelessly, hopelessly fucked. The roof over the alcove makes it exceedingly difficult to jump back out, and if you can’t make it, you die instantly. It’s kind of akin to hanging a carrot in front of a horse, except instead of leading the horse around with it until he catches it, you lead him into a furnace.
