There’s a great article piece written by Ashley Davis at Destructoid.com that shows an innocent person’s triumph and understanding of what “hardcore” retro gaming was all about.

It reminded me a lot of my days as a young boy playing Megaman 3, how I got very frustrated with Megaman’s limitations but soon learned to work around those limits and conquer the bosses by learning attack patterns and how to avoid them. 

Upon playing Megaman 9, 12 years after last playing the old school megaman games, I found myself discovering a lot of the things mentioned in the article…learning obstacles, how to pass through them, how to beat bosses.  Each death was as much a step back as it was a step forward, as I found myself flying through stages at an almost speed-run pace, almost never getting hit, just to get to retry that difficult room that I died in.  It took patience for sure, and I needed to take breaks to save my blood pressure, but passing through them made them feel like they weren’t so bad after all.  I’m certain there’s a lot about life we can learn from these sorts of challenges we face in the megaman series as well.

Each obstacle we face in life is merely a chance to come back harder, faster and stronger.  It may break us in the moment, but the next time we collect the pieces of ourselves and start running again, we’ll be faster, more efficient, less prone to the same pitfalls and laughing as we blast through past mistakes and prevent further similar mistakes.  At the end of the day, you become proud of who you really are.