My relationship with this series definitely felt like a guilt-trip. When I was kid I saw a Battle Network game in stores and blindly believed it was a bootleg game. Don't ask me why. I kept perceiving Mega Man as such for a long while until I finally decided to play the og first one on Wii Virtual Console...and I hated the difficulty.
Years later Mega Man was put in Smash and realized I have been too harsh. Then iirc I played 2 on the NES mini and then finally started to play game after game with the Legacy Collections. I was absolutely hyped when I got the X one and in the same year, 2018, Mega Man 11 was released.
This series has an insane amount of games...but they definitely stoppped making as much in the last decade.
Anyways I still have to beat Zero 2 to 4, the ZX duology, Legends duology, Battle Network from 3 to 6 and finally the Star Force ones.