GAME REVIEW: Mega Man 5 (NES)

"Darn it, Rock! Toho didn't cast you for this movie!"

Yay! We've got our first NES Mega Man game on the blog! Aside from that, I don't have much of an intro so... 

...

*Runs*

STORY

(SPOILERS!)

Eight new Robot Masters have appeared and are attacking the world... with Proto Man as their leader? Proto Man even goes as far as to kidnap Dr. Light! Mega Man immediately sets out to take down the eight 'bots:

After that, the Blue Bomber goes to Proto Man's castle...

Yes, apparently he has a castle...

...where he confronts his brother, whose iconic whistle is at a deeper pitch. Turns out that this Proto Man was a robot called Dark Man... built to frame the real Proto Man. Upon his destruction, it is revealed that the mastermind behind all this was...

FACT: In the Classic series, if it LOOKS like the new

villain is the game's respective Big Bad, don't believe it!

Dr. Wily will ALWAYS be the one pulling the strings!

So Mega Man goes to Wily's latest castle and kicks his butt once again. Wily begs in the form of doing push-ups (as per tradition)... before his castle begins to collapse. The real Proto Man shows up at the last minute to save his brother and Dr. Light.

END SPOILERS!

GAMEPLAY/CONTROL

Nothing much has changed in terms of control. "A" is jump, "B" is shoot, hold down "A" to charge the Mega Buster, blah, blah, blah.

However there is some good news and some bad news:

BAD NEWS: You lose the Mega Buster's charge if you take a hit and have to recharge your shots because of that.

GOOD NEWS: Someone at Capcom realized how potentially annoying losing your grip on the ladders is... so they let you HOLD ONTO THE LADDERS WHEN YOU CHANGE YOUR WEAPONS!

Kind of a shame it took so long for them to get it looked into.

It should be noted that this entry marks the first appearance of the bird robot Beat. In-universe, it is explained that Dr. Cossack (the false villain for MM4) built him as a present for Rock. When you collect all eight panels in the Robot Masters' levels that spell out "MEGAMANV" in order to unlock Beat.

Beat kicks so much butt in this game! He can home in on any enemy (including bosses)! In fact he almost makes the Dark Man series and the second part of the final boss look like the Dr. Eggman fight at the end of Emerald Hill Zone in Sonic 2!

Forget what the inter-titles for Nosferatu said, 

THIS is the Bird of Death!

Some stages have their own gimmicks as well: Gravity Man and Star Man's stages are among the first to play around with gravity (walking on the ceiling with the former and higher jumping in the latter). For those of you who played MM9, remember the bubbles section of Splash Woman's stage? You have something similar half-way through Wave Man's stage!

GRAPHICS

MM5 stays the course in terms of graphics: foregrounds, backgrounds, sprites. It's solid. We've got some more moving backgrounds, courtesy of Wave Man, Charge Man, and (to a minor extent) Gravity Man's stages. Enemy designs are pretty much what you'd expect.

All that, plus the Mega Buster has a new animation. Not that much more I can say about the graphics... so let's move on to audio.

MUSIC/SOUND

No change in sound effects. The soundtrack, however, is yet another home-run courtesy of Mari Yamaguchi (who later went on to do UN Squadron, Super Ghouls n Ghosts, and Mega Man 10). The themes for Gravity Man, Star Man, and Charge Man are epic... but the real stand-out is the track for the Proto Man stages:

For some reason I think of Power Rangers when I listen to this. Am I alone in this opinion?

VERDICT

As kid, I never quite enjoyed it as much as I did MM6. It's still a good game, though. To this day, when I think of MM5, fighting robots on a large train comes to mind. The storyline aspect introduced in MM4 continues here. The challenge is still pretty much on the same level as its predecessor. Go play it; it may not be as notable as 2 and 3, but I think it's worth playing. Try it out!

I'm DLAbaoaqu. Full on!