“Mega Man 9” looks like a game from the ’80s. While most might dismiss it because of this, the gaming community knows exactly why this game looks and plays the way it does. The reason is simple: newer is not always better.

Over the past 10 years, Mega Man has been through many changes both in appearance and gameplay. After the release of “Mega Man ZX,” the blue bomber had produced four game series. Mega Man is now the gaming franchise with the largest number of games in the world, but when it comes to fun and quality, it’s always the original Mega Man that gamers turn to.

Capcom, the creators of the series, apparently took note of this; after 10 years, they’ve ­created a true sequel to “Mega Man 8.” This release marks the beginning of Mega Man’s downgrade to a better series.

Mega Man isn’t the only character to be downgraded, Wario, Mario’s popular nemesis, has returned to his 2-D roots with “Wario Land: Shake It!” the fifth installment of that series. Using an incredibly ­detailed animation style, the second-party developer Good-Feel Games has created what is essentially a play­able cartoon. The visual style, merged with the motion controls of the popular Wii gaming console, make for a great combination of new and old technology.

A third, more unsettling title has caught the attention of the gaming community. “Silent Hill: Homecoming,” the sixth in the series (eighth counting the arcade and cell phone versions), remains true to the previous ­entries, even though it is now developed by American com­pany Double Helix. To this day, the Silent Hill series remains largely untouched (with minor changes to the more problematic areas), and we can expect the series to deliver trademark symbolic and disturbing imagery along with the occasional scare.

Though we live in a world of quickly progressing tech­nology, there is still a demand to return to simpler methods and styles. As long as this feeling exists within the gaming community, we can expect old to become new again in video games.