There's three new Mega Man 9 DLC packs hitting WiiWare today (October 20th, 2008), with XBLA following on October 21st, and PSN releasing October 23rd.
Today's menu offerings are: Special Time Attack Stage, Hard Mode, and Expert Mode. Click here for a gallery of a few choice screens!
My favorite so far is the all-new Special Stage (not to be confused with Special Sauce). It's great because:
1) It's pretty hard but beatable by humans.
2) It has really creative uses for all of your different weapns.
3) Do I have to even mention it? New Boss: Fake Man! I am a super sucker for bosses of any kind, and Robot Masters maybe most of all.
As for the other DLC packs, we heard the masses crying out that "Mega Man 9 is great, but frankly it was a little too easy!" And so we bring you Hard Mode, and the jaw-dropping Expert Mode.
The difficulty on Expert Mode is reported to be "three times" as hard as the default MM9. I like to imagine some Giant Dial of Evil-ness attached to the MM9 production line, and Inafune-san cranking it alllll the way up for this one, cackling with dark glee.
If you thought there were a few enemies in unfair places before--woo!--wait until you play these modes. Rough! Attention noobs: DO NOT PURCHASE EXPERT! Or, alternately, buy it for someone you dislike.
I'm terrible with speedruns, especially in Mega Man games, so having a stage designed specifically for time attack is pretty sweet, and challenging. There were a good deal of things that caught me off-guard, and of course having a new boss is awesome. Hero mode was great too. Adding and moving around enemies and powerups (or rather, the removal of the latter) actually changes the gameplay significantly. There were several times where I would drop off a ladder into the next room because I'm used to knowing what's down there only to be attacked by totally different enemies, hah. I'll tackle Super Hero mode later today.
Niko02:53 PM CST