Thirty-two minutes into playing my WiiWare version of “Mega Man 9,” I have only managed to defeat one robotic boss.

Remember me breezing through most “Mega Man” stages without dying? That is not the case at all with “Mega Man 9.” In fact, it’s the exception; I’m barely making it past the first checkpoint before rediscovering the Game Over screen.

I’ve never had this much trouble with a “Mega Man” game before. There are a couple of reasons for that…

The original “Mega Man” is arguably the hardest game in the series, but I’m hard pressed to believe that’s because Keiji Inafune and his team at Capcom intended to make something bitterly difficult to screw with players’ heads; that’s just how games were designed back then. Games of that era were ridiculously difficult and “Mega Man” was no different.

“Mega Man 9,” however, comes during an era of game features like a “no fail” mode in “Rock Band 2″ and regenerating health in “Halo.” “Mega Man 9″’s difficulty is intentional. Its deaths were engineered to be cheap. Every time you die and it feels like it wasn’t your fault, they were trying to make you upset. That’s one of the reasons we’re “Mega Man” fans, right? It’s just how they work.

There are many places in “Mega Man 9″ where you will make a standard jump to the next platform, only to have an enemy jump from the ground and knock you into a pit. There’s no way you could have known that without dying first and coming back with the memory of that enemy’s placement. These design choices are littered throughout “Mega Man 9.” Almost every level has a near-impossible jump you will miss the first time.

I’ve only managed to reach two robot bosses so far: Galaxy Man and Magma Man. You don’t have the luxury of save states in “Mega Man 9,” which means replaying entire levels. Some of the robot bosses patterns this time are unlike anything seen in previous “Mega Man” games, which means you’re going to be hard pressed to beat anything your first play through.

Galaxy Man, for example, shoots a floating vortex ball that sucks players in to damage them. As if that wasn’t enough, Galaxy Man is waiting underneath the ball. If you aren’t far enough away from the vortex when it decides to land, prepare for pain.

But it’s a good kind of frustrating. You’ll find yourself turning off your Wii in anger…only to return 30 minutes later. So far, “Mega Man 9″ succeeds at channeling that old school addiction that fuels the reason I play through the entire “Mega Man” series every few years. It’s here, alive and well.

That said, if you are a casual player, buyer beware: “Mega Man 9″ is not for you.

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