I fucking love Mega Man.  I have been playing Mega Man since I was 6 and first had an NES.  Mega Man 3 was my first, 4 was my favorite (nevermind that I missed 5-7), and I still have my copy of 8 for the ps1, which also celebrated the Blue Bomber’s 10th anniversary.  When I discovered the X series, I fell in love all over again.  Which is amusing in retrospect because that was literally 4 years later.  I love the X series just as much as the classic.  X2 is not my favorite though.  X3 and X4 fight for that spot.  X2 is still very important though.

Why?  Because it inspired my first attempt at writing prose.  Yes, I’m saying I wrote Mega Man fan fiction here, except it was less fan fiction in the sense you usually picture.  I didn’t create my own characters or my own storylines, things that a lot of us might start out doing and are important to building our own voices.  What I did instead was turn the gameplay into prose.  It started in my 7th grade English class.  The teacher wanted us to do 10 minutes of writing at the start of class every day.  Whatever we wanted.  I had been playing this recently and it was on my mind so I went for it.

The jet bike on the cover?  Featured prominently in Overdrive Ostrich’s stage.  I started there.  I wrote about the level, about X’s traversal through the base, driving through the artificial sandstorm, taking down the missile, and finally battling the big bird himself.  It was fun.

I did it again at 14, though more in a terrible rip-off of Ocarina of Time than a proseing of Ocarina, but that’s another story.  That little experience of using my writing journal to explore prose was a very strong foundational exercise for me as I ended up doing it again in late 2013/early 2014.  And while X2 is not my favorite, it’s still a fun time.

I love Mega Man.