How toyetic can you get?
("Toyetic" is a word created by marketing people. It means an object or device,
featured in a cartoon, that could easily become a mass-produced toy.)*
STORY
(SPOILERS!)
One day, Rock and Roll were taking a walk, when a new robot, the Stardroid Terra, shows up. It turns out that he is immune to the Mega Buster and thus takes down Rock with ease. While Dr. Light repairs our hero, four other Stardroids (Venus, Mercury, Mars, and Neptune) begin attacking Earth. Once Rock is fixed, he takes them down using his new "Mega Arm" weapon. Terra, in response, releases a Yellow Devil-like boss called Dark Moon to destroy Rock, but it fails.
With Terra's goons driven off Earth, the battlefield shifts to space. With Rush adapted for space travel, Rock goes head to head with four more Stardroids -- Uranus, Pluto, Saturn, and Jupiter -- before beating Terra once and for all. As soon as Terra is reduced to scrap, we find out that Dr. Wily was behind the whole Stardroid invasion!
C'mon, Al! Your track record for being upfront about
world conquest was as clean as a whistle up until
now... on the Game Boy at least!
Rock and Rush fight their way into the Wily Star (yes, he plagiarized the Death Star like Dr. Eggman did) and fight the rebuilt Mega Man Killers and Quint one more time. After refighting the Stardroids and beating Wily's latest machine, the doctor reveals his trump card: the ancient robot Sunstar.
Rock defeats him, but Sunstar is damaged beyond repair and is about to self-destruct. Rock escapes the ancient robot's explosion, which took the Wily Star with it.
(END SPOILERS!)
GAMEPLAY/CONTROL
Once more, the fluidity of MMIV is preserved for its follow-up. Nothing much to say about the controls, so I won't bother since everyone knows the basic controls by now. The shops are back and I've already explained how they work in the last review.
This game, like its predecessor, brings a few new things to the table. You don't use the Mega Buster this time, but the Mega Arm. Once more, Inafune's old-school otaku status plays into this: it's based on the Rocket Punch from the Mazinger metaseries:
Also, we're introduced to a robot cat, Tango. He rolls into enemies, Sonic-style, and damages them. However, the big draw back is that it's not very useful during the latter parts of the game. I only used it TWICE when playing myself.
There's even a part of the game where it becomes a shoot-'em-up... though the homing enemies are probably among my least favorite in the series.
MUSIC/SOUND
What else can I say about the music? It's classic Capcom. Venus, Mercury, and Wily's themes were the big standouts for me. Didn't hear any uncanny resemblances to famous songs this tie around.
Also, they gave Tango a little meow sound effect. Not a very big point, but pretty cute.
GRAPHICS
Once more, they stayed the course with the graphics. Now, the prominence of cutscenes, started in MMIV continues here. I really don't have much to say, good as usual.
VERDICT
I'm sorry if this review sounds like a cop-out in comparison to the last one, but so much was grandfathered over from MMIV. It does break the trend of recycled Robot Masters, giving us the debut (and likely only game) of the Stardroids and it's nice to see the Game Boy-exclusive bosses one more time (before becoming downloadable content for MM10). Many consider this the best of the Game Boy titles, but I put it on the same level as MMIV. I WILL give it this: it IS the most original of the five. Check it out if you never played it.
I'm DLAbaoaqu. Full on!
- Mega Man V is owned by Capcom and Keiji Inafune
- Mazinger Z is owned by Go Nagai
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