Mega Man 2: The Long Road Home


Welcome to the 32 Game Endings of Christmas, our daily look at some of the most memorable finales of all time. Every day between Thanksgiving Day (November 24th) and Christmas Day (December 25th) you will see a new installment, complete with information about the ending and why it's memorable in the first place. Best of all, you'll be able to see the video for yourself! Needless to say, beware of some very old spoilers below!
Golden Axe: Death Adder Escapes
[ Company: Capcom | Year: 1989 | Grade: A ]

Mega Man 2 (NES)
While Mega Man was a well-received action game, it wasn't until Capcom's 1989 sequel that the series really hit its stride. Not only is this an all-around better platformer, but it also has one of the most memorable 8-bit endings of all time. To celebrate the fifth day of Christmas, Defunct Games is proud to take a look at the final moments of Mega Man 2 for the Nintendo Entertainment System!

Previously On Mega Man 2: Stop me if you've heard this one before: The nefarious Dr. Wily has created a bunch of evil robots (each with one single super power) that will aide him in taking over the world and, if all goes well, kill Mega Man. This time around Dr. Light's friendly good-natured robot has had to go head to head against robots with the abilities of wood, bubbles, air and flash, all in a quest to take down Wily once and for all.

Unfortunately, that's easier said than done. The evil doc has built a brand new fortress full of unexpected surprises. Not only will you have to take on each of the eight robots a second time, but you'll need to disable Wily's holographic machine to stand a chance. It's a tough slog, but if there's one thing Mega Man doesn't do, that's give up.



How It Ended: You've managed to defeat Dr. Wily, his pesky robots and his high powered holographic machine. You would think it's time to celebrate a job well done. Sadly, that's not what Mega Man takes from this

Mega Man may have been dealt a bad hand recently, but he'll get back up and do battle again!
experience. After defeating countless robots, Mega Man is left to walk home to depressing music. It's enough to make a robot cry ... if they had human emotions, of course. We are treated to Mega Man cycling through his earned skills, each correlating to a different weather condition back home. We see fall, winter, summer, rain and everything in between. Apparently it's a long walk home from Dr. Wily's fortress.

But just as we're about ready to cut ourselves, Mega Man stops and looks at the green fields of the village. The rain has stopped and the sun was out, our hero was finally home. In the final shot we see Mega's helmet left on a hill with nobody

It took Mega Man SIX YEARS to finally think about putting Dr. Wily in jail!
around. Dr. Light's creation was finally home. And now he can go back to living his life as a traditional boy. That is, until Dr. Wily rears his ugly head and builds eight new robots for Mega Man 3.

How It Should Have Ended: Forget the mopey walk home and the depressing music, Mega Man 2 should have ended with Mega Man calling the cops and arresting this psychopath. Although we never see any of these robots kill a human, one has to assume that trying to take over the world through a robot army has to be against the law (even in the year 200X). Eventually the authorities did wise up to Wily's evil intentions, though it took them until Mega Man 6 to finally throw him behind bars. Maybe Dr. Light should have built a smarter robot.