Not much of the story was given here, simply that Dr. Wily has stolen Dr. Light's robots and Megaman must stop him. No story is given at all throughout the game, but it's really the gameplay that counts in a game such as this.
I suppose it's easy to look back on this game and criticize the simple eight-bit graphics. But if you look past that, it's still a solid, quality game. Actually, if you think back to 1987, when the game was first released, the graphics were quite well done and detailed. Megaman's sprite was very clear, easy to make out, and was animated very nicely when compared to sprites from other games at the time. That could explain why Capcom has never changed the sprite throughout Megaman's entire run on the NES (and GameBoy as well).
The game plays as most 2D platformers; run jump and shoot through various stages. Although this game (and the succeding Megaman games) had many qualities that set it apart from your typical platformer. First of all, is the fact that you can select the order of the robot master's stages you fight in (Most platform games have a preset order that you must go through each time you play). Later, the order of stages is predetermined, but only in the fortress levels. There are only six robot masters that you must fight in this game, compared to later ones, which usually have eight.
That brings up the other feature as to what made the Megaman series such an innovation; Megaman's ability to copy the weapons of the robot masters he's defeated. If you played a MM game before, there's probably no need to hear this, but nearly every boss is weak against at least one of these special weapons. If you're a newbie, it's to your advantage to figure out which weapons work best against what bosses, and plan your strategy accordingly.
Another thing about this game is the fact that many players consider it to be the toughest game on the NES platform, if not the toughest game, period. They call it this for good reason; Megaman has few power-ups and items to help him out in this game (No slide ability, no Rush, no charge shots, etc).
