Hard Hat - Rebuild Released!

Thank you for taking the time to check out my Mega Man fan game.  It's crazy to me that it has been 20 years since the first Hard Hat game (even crazier that I made 5 of them in that time) and this one took the longest by a wide margin.

Looking back at the original files I started work on this around June of 2022.  I didn't work on it in earnest at that time but it was something that I poked at.  I wasn't really sure I wanted to make it.  It had been over a decade since Hard Hat 4 at that point and I had closed out the series.  What would be the point?  

Around August I realized my 40th was right around the corner and it really had been 20 years since the original Hard Hat's release.  Feeling nostalgic I booted up the original and my memory of the game was very different that what it really was.  HH1 was the first game I considered properly completed and, well, it showed (lol). I got it in my head that I wanted to remake it the way that my memory remembered it as a 20 year anniversary remake. My goal was a Mega Man 2 or 3 feel as those were the two I really grew up with.

The original Hard Hat games were brutal in difficulty but upon reflection I didn't find the difficulty to be the fun kind.  Enemies having i-frames? What kind of monster was I?  Requiring damage boosts? Not the worst but not fun for a vanilla either.  The bosses were routinely too fast that you couldn't react. That just feels cheap. 

In the last decade since HH4 I have watched a ton of video game streams and speed runs.  I paid particular attention to the things that were annoying and what people liked to see.  I watched what they found frustrating and tried to take it to heart.  I wanted to make a balanced, while still challenging Mega Man fan game.  I wanted it to be fun while also being rewarding.  Making the levels I actually decided to make them without enemies first. I would sometimes even draw them out before making them in the engine. 

All that said, I still wasn't 100% sure it was something I wanted to work on.  It was slow going at the start (had to really dust off the programming muscles) and it was just a silly nostalgia project. There was no real need for it.  Nevertheless, I decided to put out a demo of the first 4 bosses (that's the way I always did it in the past so it felt right). I figured I'd get to the "half way point" (sure lol) and would have had my fill.  Then the comments started coming in.

I am honestly so humbled every time I read how important this game was to some people's childhood.  It's a silly Mega Man fan game where you play as a Metool named Hard Hat (because that is what I called them as a kid). The story is stapled together with jokes me and my friends Bob and Dan used to make (like Wily Brows and the Hard Hat's must be pissed off all the time).  It's really not that deep so I couldn't believe the love the remake demo trailers were getting.  It has been a decade+ since the last HH and people still remembered it so fondly. I can't thank you all enough for still loving and caring about this disgruntled Metool for the last 20 years.

So, I decided I would finish it before years end of 2023.  It had to be done in '23 for it to be 20 year "rebuild".  And I did (with only days to spare).  I sincerely hope that you find enjoyment in my nostalgia project. 

Thank you!