Our talk about cyborgs today reminded me of one of my favorites: Megaman! I'm not sure if everyone's familiar with the little blue feller, but he's been around for a while--subject first of videogames (the first probably starting on the NES late eighties) but then starring in television shows and the like.
This image is a little deceiving, as he usually has a gun on one of his hands, which he use for the distinct purpose of charging up lasers with which he destroys vile looking robots--mechanized bats and penguins, spinning spikey wheels. And the one who gave Megaman this power? The mysterious Dr. Light (whose qualifications, I assume, are in astrophysics or somesuch degree) who looks like Santa Claus in a labcoat. He seems to be the only character in the storyline who's fully human.
So, the Megaman games foresee a future in which it's cyborgs versus the evil Dr. Doppler's army of machines. I think Dr. Doppler is a cyborg himself, as well as the higher-ups in Doppler's Army all seem to be vaguely more human (some names I remember are Vile, Bit and Byte) than the lesser robots. If effect, the more important a character is to the storyline, the more humanity he or she possesses. Megaman's hero and mentor, for example, Zero, while a solidly built cyborg, has a long blond ponytail coming from his (her? cyborgosity seems to blur the line between sexes) helmet, an obvious depiction of humanness. And Megaman himself is very human looking--rather adorable, if I do say so myself.
And it occured to me that playing as Megaman, you as player are waging war against the complete mechanization of society--cyborg you may be, but you are desparately fighting with the part of you that's human. So Megaman really is Albert Borgmann, come to life in 16 bit glory.
3 comments:
It's Dr. Wily, chief.
Dr. Doppler is only in like 1 megaman game, and it's one of the later ones.
Those suck.
Hm. I couldn't remember. It's been a long time. I just played the "Mega Man X" series for the super nintendo, and I remember Sigma, Doppler...something something.
But Wily was the grey haired frazzled fellow on the TV show, I guess?
Dr. Wily was in the original games, as well as the cartoon. He's the whole reason that Mega Man IS Mega Man.
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