"This is the Wall. Every Mega Man game released in the US, and then some. And we're gonna play them all."
— Rick & John, announcing The Mega Let's Play
The younger, bigger brother of 2013's The D-Pad: The Legendary Let's Play. Not satisfied with playing a dozen or two games and being done with it, The D-Pad opted to try something different as a followup to the first Franchise Play experiment, by declaring that they would play the entire Mega Man franchise, rather than just the "core series".
On December 17, 2014 (while The Legendary Let's Play was wrapping up), The D-Pad released an announcement teaser
for the series, showing off the 64 games they intend to tackle (though some previously missed games have since been added to the mix). The series began with a Capcom retrospective on January 19, 2015, and has released daily video content since then, including standard Let's Play videos, an opening and closing analysis of each game they play, and even reviews of the various televised Mega Man media in a crossover with Seriesly.
Due to the scope of the project and the limitations of YouTube playlist sizes, the series is split into several parts on YouTube. The overall block of videos is viewable in a special dashboard playlist, and more links are listed on the series' recap page.
Provides examples of:
- Arc Words: "A storm is coming."
- The Bad Guy Wins: When Rick and Evil Ben square off in the Mega Man & Bass finale, the usual outro appears on-screen, until Evil Ben interrupts it to shoot Rick with his own time-travel gun. Rick vanishes into an alternate past, where no Mega Man games exist, leaving John at the mercy of Evil Ben.
- Beard of Sorrow: Rick slowly winds up growing a beard from the summer of 2016 on, signifying a similar mental snap that Ben endured during his time in the alternate world.
-
Bonus Episode: Rick and John specifically kept their hands off the controller for Mega Man X for fear of blasting through it too quickly to enjoy. To make up for that, they held a race to see who could beat the game faster. - Bonus Material: The Seriesly crossover episodes feature reviews of the Ruby-Spears cartoon from The '90s and the Battle Network-inspired anime from the Turn of the Millennium. While they weren't essential to the viewing experience of the Let's Plays themselves, the former reinforced the Mega Let's Play's growing Metaplot, while the latter helped inform the backdrop to Rockman.EXE WS.
- Call-Back: Happens anytime Rick and John lace meaningful Foreshadowing into the live segments.
- Minakuchi Engineering was the developer behind Mega Man: The Wily Wars, after Rick and John had a good long laugh about Mega Man on the Genesis being a ridiculous notion.
- Cluster F-Bomb: The Game Boy games and the DOS games frequently drive the crew to this.
- Continuity Nod: The ending to The Wily Wars takes place in an alternate timeline where the Legendary Let's Play never ended, and the team never played any Mega Man games at all.
- Crossover: With Seriesly, three times so far. While it's mostly an In Name Only crossover, it's actually used as a plotline in the third crossover, with Ben mimicking the standard Bond Gun Barrel intro the review series started each video with.
- Dark World: The alternate past visited by Ben and Rick seems to be completely devoid of Mega Man games, as well as any mainstream Kirby or Sonic games.
- Let's Play: Over 370 episodes by the end of January 2016.
- Significant Reference Date: The announcement trailer was released on the 27th anniversary of the original Mega Man, and the 21st anniversary of Mega Man X in Japan.
- The first video proper was released on the 21st anniversary of Mega Man X's American release.
- The first video proper
- Tempting Fate: Just before playing Mega Man X, the guys have a laugh about how silly a Mega Man game on the Sega Genesis would be.Rick: "Mega Man? On Genesis? That's a good one!"Rick and John share a good laugh... which quickly turns into a horrible scream.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: An element of time travel has been overtaking the series' Metaplot, playing with several different Time Travel Tropes, sometimes even interchangeably. The order in which they appear is as follows:
- In a test of Rick's Arm Cannon Time Machine, he sends Ben back one week to avert a minor recording error in The Wily Wars. From the viewers' perspective, the episodes were presented in the correct order, meaning Ben's mission succeeded.
- Rick and John then send Ben back one month with a pair of boxes containing The Wily Wars and Rockman.EXE WS. The games arrive safely, and are played as intended. Ben discovers that he has no way (as far as he can tell) to return from the past, meaning he has to live on the streets for a full month before he can go home again.
- Despite narrowly avoiding two separate instances of meeting alternate versions of himself, the Object Loop caused from trapping the two games on The Slow Path ad infinitum reveals itself as a Temporal Paradox, resulting in an Alternate Timeline where The D-Pad: The Legendary Let's Play never ended, and The Mega Let's Play never occurred at all.
- Somehow, Ben is able to Flash Sideways to an extent by recording his own episode of Seriesly, allowing Rick and John to become aware of Ben's predicament. Ben eventually escapes this timeline, through means not yet explained. While Ben retains knowledge of the alternate timeline, Rick and John do not, suggesting they triggered a Reset Button upon their return to play Mega Man X2.
- Realizing that Minakuchi Engineering is somehow at the center of the time travel dilemma, Rick sends the team's copy of Mega Man X3 into the future to stall for time. However, it is revealed that the game will eventually resurface, leading Future!Rick to accept that despite his best efforts, he will eventually have to bring this conflict to a resolution.
