GAME REVIEW: Mega Man 6 (NES)

They're fighting at a mini-golf castle!

We're here! The end of Rockapalooza is here and I'm playing the first Mega Man game I ever owned.

I'd like to note that Capcom didn't publish this game because they were moving on to the 16-bit era... yet the copyright still displays their logo and fanfare!

Let us begin.

STORY

(SPOILERS!)

Robots from around the world are gathered together for the First Annual Robot Masters Tournament, sponsored by the strange billionaire Mr. X. Eventually, the number of participants in the tournament is reduced to eight finalists:

Blizzard Man, a Canadian-built robot originally built to monitor the weather conditions at the South Pole.

From China, the agricultural robot Wind Man.

 The British gladiatorial unit Knight Man.

Plant Man, a botanical robot from Brazil.

Greece's Centaur Man, a robot archaeologist.

Flame Man, a thermal-powered robot from Saudi Arabia.

The United States' warrior robot Tomahawk Man.

Japan's samurai robot Yamato Man.

Then, Mr. X reveals takes control of these eight finalists and reprograms them to use in his bid for world domination! Rock confronts Mr. X about it and is told that the billionaire was the mastermind behind all of Dr. Wily's schemes and that ol' Al was no longer needed.

Rock goes off to put a stop to the eight robots' rampage and then goes after Mr. X's fortress. Once he's stopped, Mr. X that he is really...

Whoever didn't see this coming, raise your hand.

So Rock goes after Wily and manages to arrest him and everything is gumdrops and peppermints until Mega Man 7.

(END SPOLIERS)

GAMEPLAY/CONTROL

Controls are the same, I'd be beating a dead horse by now talking about them.

Some people consider the gameplay to be inferior to the previous couple of entries, but I honestly don't see that much. The stage layout is pretty much on par with MM4 and MM5, if you ask me. Mr. X Stage 2 is really of linear, sure, but the latter two sections make up for it. Not only that, but the last third of Plant Man's level REALLY gave me a hard time as a kid.

Also, we are introduced to the Rush Adaptors in this game. 

Power Mode allows you to bust blocks that may or may not have items like a 1-Up or E-Tank behind them; it also can be used to attack enemies... but its range is really short. One cool thing about it is that it knocks away come smaller enemies, like the robot hockey pucks in Blizzard Man's stage, and even takes out shielded enemies when their defenses are up.

Jet Mode allows you to fly for a moment. It REALLY helps out with some of the platforming sections, allowing you to take shortcuts and can even allow access to alternate routes.

Jet Mode is the shizz-nit!

The downside to all of this is having to switch back and forth between modules. It may not sound bad, but imagine you're in Jet Mode flying over this huge gap. You reach the other side, but there's a block in your way, so you switch to Power Mode and bust it. On the other side, there's another big gap that you have to fly over. Kinda slows things down!

Also, the bosses (especially the ones for Mr. X's stages) are pretty underwhelming. The Mr. X Stage 1 boss was a pretty interesting concept and one for Wily Stage 1 looked cool... but the Mr. X Stage 2 boss is one of the most irritating in the Classic series:

You're supposed to hit it with Silver Tomahawk, but it always moves up and down the wall shooting at you. All the while you try to get out of the way for its shots and hit it, exploding boulders are dropped from above.

Also, I'd like to note that the inclusion of mini-bosses returns after its nadir in MM5: we've got two Gorilla Tanks in Plant Man's stage, two Metall Pottons (those things that dispense Mets) in Tomahawk Man's stage and one in Wily Stage 4, and (my favorite) Gamarn-and-Gamadayu in Yamato Man's stage.

Beat also comes back! You have to defeat Tomahawk Man, Knight Man, Centaur Man, and Yamato Man in an alternate room in their stages to get the B, E, A, and T panels. People complain that he sucks in this game because he can't attack bosses... but screw them! That's a small price to pay when you have something that stupidly powerful to attack normal enemies and often one-shot the stronger ones!

All in all: bosses aside, gameplay pretty much stays the same course as MM5. Kinda wish they kept the M-Tank, though...

SOUND/MUSIC

This game probably boasts my favorite soundtrack in the entire 8-bit Classic games.

The western theme of Tomahawk Man's level pretty much defines this game, along with the epicness that is Yamato Man's theme. Also, when I play against a boss, the riffs in the battle music makes me think I'm watching a bullfight.

The Mr. X theme sounds really futuristic and the **** theme is moody, yet smooth as well and I think I like it a little better than the "Wily Castle 1" theme in MM2 (Someone also said that it sounds a little like Michael Jackson's  "Earth Song", but I don't hear it).

GRAPHICS

The excellent soundtrack is matched with really good graphics. The sprites are solid, as usual, and for some reason being in Yamato Man's stage and looking at Wily's castle really makes me think of Samurai Pizza Cats and the ill-fated 1995 edited dub of Dragon Ball.

Well, so much for trying to avoid spoilers...

Was his contractor Emperor Pilaf or Big Cheese?

Speaking of anime, Keiji Inafune's otakuism strikes again with the boss for Mr. X stage 3:

What's more, the boss of Wily Stage 1 (yeah, the cat's out of the bag now, so I won't bother censoring his name any longer) is clearly inspired by the Mechasaurii from another Go Nagai work: Getter Robo.

Then there's the Wily Stage 2 boss:

For some reason, I keep seeing it as a descendant of the Czar Tank!

One last note in terms of graphics: if you revisit certain stages AFTER unlocking Beat, the background and foreground graphics will change. For instance: Tomahawk Man's stage will take place in the early morning rather than the afternoon, the sky in the first room of Knight Man's stage will be grey instead of orange, and Yamato Man's stage will take place at sunset.

VERDICT

Some people tend to dismiss this game as complete garbage. For my money, it's pretty good. It may have some rough edges and stupid-looking bosses, but I think it's a better introduction to the series for newcomers than MMII... it's not as easy as that one, but not as hard as Mega Man and Bass. The story may be laughable (seriously, Rock falls for "Mr. X's" ridiculously obvious disguise, who throws it off nonchalantly?), but nobody really gives a darn about storyline unless it's an RPG or a Phoenix Wright game.

I say lay aside the naysayers, give this game a chance, and draw your own conclusions. With all the varying routes in the levels, you've got a little replay value as well.

Give it a shot!

AND WE'RE DONE WITH ROCKAPALOOZA!

In hindsight, it's kind of a bittersweet thing, considering how the franchise has pretty much died due to Capcom's neglect and stupidity. It was fun to revisit some of the games I grew up on (and tried out three I had never played until this marathon). Now I can safely say that I was able to take down the Yellow Devil in MM1 without using the pause trick.

Good times, good times...

But now I must move on to new stuff. Considering dipping into some movies, anime, and cartoons on occasion.

I'm DLAbaoaqu. Full-on!

• Mega Man 6 is owned by Capcom and Keiji Inafune
• Mazinger Z and Getter Robo are owned by Go Nagai and Toei

GAME REVIEW: Mega Man V (Game Boy)

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.)*

YES!! This is the last of the Game Boy Mega Man games! So let's delve into Dr. Wily's revival of Gravity Man and Star Man and... wait what? No more recycled Robot Masters!?

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

GAME REVIEW: Mega Man IV (Game Boy)

Um, Napalm Man, I think it would be in your best interest

to get yourself looked at before you explode. You're belching fire.

Ironically, this might have been one of my first encounters with the Mega Man franchise. Not in the form of the game itself, but rather an ad for it:

I think I first saw this in an issue of Boys' Life 

magazine maybe twenty years ago as of this post.

So after one little trip back to the console entries, we return to the Game Boy games. After the immense difficulty (real and fake) of Mega Man III, let's see if Capcom and Minakuchi were able to learn from their missteps.

STORY

(SPOILERS!)

So yeah, Dr. Wily survived crashing into the ocean and apparently stole from the other four Robot Masters of Dr. Cossack's from some robotics expo and reprogrammed them to go on a rampage. Mega Man, as always, goes out to stop them. Once that foursome's beaten, Wily unveils his giant mobile base that Rock immediately fights. Our hero infiltrates the big mecha and fights Wily's latest Mega Man Killer: Ballade. Round one goes to Rock, who goes on to fight four MM5 Robot Masters: Napalm Man, Stone Man, Crystal Man, and Charge Man. Once they're out of the way, Ballade comes back and transforms into what looks like a prototype of Turbo Man.

Rock manages to defeat him and copy his weapon. Then he and Wily escape the collapsing mecha. Wily flees to his starship; Rock pursues (after getting Rush modified for space, of course). He goes in, beats the eight Robot Masters once more and fights Wily's super robot. Of course, the bad doctor manages to escape while the ship enters a self-destruct cycle. Rock is saved by Ballade, who now regrets trying to fight him. He detonates himself in order to blast a hole in the hull so that the vacuum can suck Rock out into space.

END OF SPOILERS

GAMEPLAY/CONTROL

I don't need to discuss the whole "A" to jump and "B" to shoot mechanics, so I won't.

One thing one might notice is that while the Mega Buster has returned, it comes with a recoil effect that knocks you back when a full shot is fired. I'm guessing Capcom threw that in to give the idea of how powerful it is, but I feel that it's a little unnecessary and slightly counter-productive... especially if fired near a ledge.

All that aside, it's great to see that they realized they got a bit carried away with the MMIII stage layout and tried to ease back a little. Still has its rough parts (latter third of Bright Man and second half of Crystal Man's stage, I'm looking at you two), but is a bit smoother.

There's also a new feature: the shop!

Yeah, those of you who stuck to console games and overlooked the Game Boy entries probably think MM7 was the first game in the series where you could buy items! Sorry, the correct answer is this game. The "money" here are P-chips (big ones are worth eight, small ones are worth two), which you can use to buy different types of tanks, E-cans (collect four to make an Energy Tank), 1-Ups, and the Energy Balancer. 

The E-Balancer will refill the weapon with the least ammunition, regardless of the weapon you're armed with. For instance, if the Mega Buster is selected when you possess the E-Balancer and Charge Kick is empty and you come across a weapons capsule, it will refill Charge Kick's energy. 

Yeah, with this baby, you can pretty much toss out

cycling though your weapons database when you need ammo!

Unfortunately, you can kiss refilling weapons energy between stages goodbye as well in this game. As it turns out, you have to purchase a refill for your ammo at the shop. Your health gets restored with each completed level though.

Ooooh! Letter panels are back!

You've got your B-E-A-T panels for the MM4 section, which you use to (of course) unlock Beat. Not only that you have W-I-L-Y panels for the MM5 section. Beat's panels are optional, but these are required if you want to beat the game. They unlock the second round with Ballade and ultimately Wily's starship.

...oh, and another thing... Rush Jet only travels in a straight, unalterable line now. Okay, that's it for the gameplay... I think.

SOUND/MUSIC

Nothing really blew my mind in terms of music this time around... until I got to the bosses (the non-Robot Masters):

For some odd reason, its into makes me think of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man". 

The stage music for the Robot Masters is decent as well: good remixes of their respective themes. Charge Man and Crystal Man's themes were the big standout for me.

GRAPHICS

The game begins with an excellent intro. It did its job so well that it saved me the trouble of making a trailer for this game... it's ALREADY a trailer for it! 

Most of the sprites were reused from MM4 and MM5, not much to say there aside from the fact that the transition went well (as usual).

Moving backgrounds return as well, notably in Charge Man's stage and Wily's starship. Given that the former is a carbon-copy of his MM5 train, taking place INSIDE of Wily's mobile base, I couldn't help but crack a Flintstones joke.

As for Wily's space cruiser, when you get inside the layout can screw with your eyes:

I know it may not look that bad, but keep in mind: this is a still image. The background is animated and that raised platform on the right side kinda blends into the turning gears and stuff. The cylinders on that platform move, too. First time playing the level, I couldn't find the top of it and I died.

Other than that patch of illusion-based psyche-outs, the graphics are as good as the last game.

Also, they tossed in some pretty detailed cutscenes (by Game Boy standards, anyway), like Rock exchanging fire with the mobile base, Ballade's death, etc.

And that's not all! They also threw in visual shout-outs to classic anime. We already know about Mega Man being an expy of Astro from Astro Boy and Proto Man being influenced by Racer X from Speed Racer, but this entry delivers even more!

First we have Dr. Wily's starship... which reminds me of the Arcadia from Captain Harlock and the Yamato from the Space Battleship Yamato franchise:

L to R: the Arcadia, Wily's cruiser, the Yamato.

Doesn't stop there. Take a look at Wily's super robot! It has the Gundam's "V" antenna and Gigantor's pointy nose!

L to R: Gigantor/Tetsujin No. 28, the final boss for MMIV, RX-78-2 Gundam.

Consarned whippersnappers with yer Naruto 'n yer Bleach 'n yer Sword Art Online, this is the kinda of stuff that real anime strive to be!

VERDICT

So far, the best of the five Game Boy Mega Man games, taking the top spot from MMI, with MMII tied with MMIII for third. It recaptures the challenge that was lost in MMII, builds upon what worked in MMI, tempers out the rough parts MMIII had (mostly), and brings some new stuff to the table that would be a staple for the remainder of the Classic series. It may have some stupid and unneeded parts, but the good tends to trump the bad. Not a disappointment, but a storehouse of surprises!

I'm DLAbaoaqu! Full on!

Mega Man IV is owned by Capcom and Keiji Inafune

Columbo is owned by NBC and CBS

Gigantor/Tetsujin No. 28 is owned by Mitsuteru Yokohama

Mobile Suit Gundam is owned by Yoshiyuki Tomino and Sunrise

Space Battleship Yamato is owned by Leiji Matsumoto and Yoshinobu Nishizaki

Space Pirate Captain Harlock is owned by Leiji Matsumoto

I almost forgot: Proto Man's in the game. 

You don't fight Blues or anything... he acts kinda like Eddie: giving you random items. He can even refill all your ammo and health if you're lucky enough.

...and that's it for real. Bye!

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!

GAME REVIEW: Mega Man III (Game Boy)

What's up with the hook on Rock's back?

Mega Man II was a pretty underwhelming experience: too easy for a Mega Man title, poor instrumentation, so on and so forth. Its developer, BIOX, was given the boot; the job would be given back to Minakuchi Engineering, who worked on Mega Man I: Dr. Wily's Revenge. As noted at the end of the MMI LP, I stated that it was really challenging, but it was fun at the same time; you didn't want to give up if you died. Will the same amount of Real Difficulty return for this game?

Let's dig in.

Story

Dr. Wily survives the Rush Torpedo at the end of MMII and has reappeared, making a bid to control the world's petroleum supply. He is reusing four Robot Masters against Mega Man.

Overview

When starting the game, you can choose to fight Gemini Man, Snake Man, Spark Man, and Shadow Man. Once they're beaten, you proceed to Wily's Castle. After beating a Big Suzy, you are sent to fight four more Robot Masters: Drill Man, Dive Man, Dust Man, and Skull Man (did he hijack Dr. Cossack's robots again?).

After they're beaten, you fight Wily's new Mega Man Killer: Punk.

When Punk's beaten, you go after Wily's Ocean Fortress.

                     Gameplay/Control

Once more: the main controls are the same as the rest of the NES/Game Boy portion of the series. Nothing new there... except the ability to charge the Mega Buster! 

Yeah! MM4's addition to the series is brought to the Game Boy!

In regard to stage layout, it's all over the map. As lazy and simplistic as MMII's stage design was, MMIII tried to make up for its predecessor's lack of challenge... by going overboard. Some stages aren't so bad (Gemini Man, Skull Man, Drill Man, for instance), but others had really poor layout issues:

Exhibit A

Early in Spark Man's stage, you have to make a two-space jump. However, there is an overhang that makes jumping difficult. Complicating matters is a large pipe behind you that drops large blocks of junk.

Exhibit B

When we get to Dust Man's stage, there's an overabundance of three-space jumps. Normally, this isn't a big deal. In this game, however, it feels like Rock has a cinder block tied around his feet. Because of this, you have to be on the very edge of the platform in order to clear the jumps. There were SOME instances of this problem in Snake Man's level, but in Dust Man's it takes center stage.

As irritating as the three-gap jumps are, they've got nothing on the spikes!

Exhibit C

(Tip: Let this platform get as high as it can and then STEP off! Jumping will kill you!)

After playing through this whole game, I can honestly say that someone at Minakuchi had a love affair with spikes. Spark Man's stage (above) has these issues... but that is nothing compared to Dive Man's. 

Of course, the jacked-up difficulty isn't limited solely to the stages. There's also the new Mega Man Killer, Punk:

The unpredictable movements can easily lead to a deduction of eight points off of your life bar. His weapon, the Screw Crusher, removes the same amount as contact with him would. My recommendation: bring E-Tanks.

Ironically, the final stage isn't that bad (aside from the room of spikes near the start).

MUSIC/SOUND

MMII's soundtrack had some good compositions, but the choice of instruments caused it to founder. It's disappointing, as I said before, because the music of the Mega Man (and classic Capcom games in general) is one of the franchise's strongest assets. In MMIII, the player is treated to very faithful recreations of MM3 and MM4 tracks. Snake Man's theme was a great carry-over, but Shadow Man's lost the craziness of the "Runaway Piano" riffs. Punk's theme, as short as it is, is pretty cool as well.

GRAPHICS

They really went above and beyond this time! In addition to the crisp look of the sprites and stuff, some of the backgrounds are animated. Snake Man, Dr. Wily's Ocean Fortress, and the latter part of Skull Man's stage are my prime examples of this. In Gemini Man's stage, you have an animated FOREGROUND, of sorts.

If you weren't familiar with MM3, you'd think that this stuff was a hazard!

VERDICT

I really wanted to like this entry. I really did. However, it seems it could have used a little more time testing. I'm all for a challenge and I know Mega Man's supposed to be a hard series... but Capcom and Minakuchi went a little overboard with the spikes and three-space jumps. The music and graphics are good, but as my old axiom says: they are NOT gameplay. If it just had a little more time to be streamlined, it could have as great as MMI. Unfortunately, it seemed as if they were trying to make up for MMII's ease by making this entry all but unfair (seriously, sometimes, it's necessary to get hit in order to advance).

All in all, better skip this one.

I'm DLAbaoaqu. Full-on!

GAME REVIEW: Mega Man II (Game Boy)

Could have been MUCH better.

For the 99.581% of you who don't know, I have been doing a Let's Play marathon of the Mega Man Classic series on my YouTube channel... well, everything before Bass' debut. Originally, I gave a short review of each game during the credits of each one I beat. This died out with the previous one I had beaten: Mega Man 4. I feel doing it this way would be a little easier (saving me the headaches from when Google decides to sign me out while annotating the videos).

Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge (MMI, for short) was good transfer of the Blue Bomber from console to handheld. It was difficult as all get-out, but it ticked you off just enough that you just wanted to keep going. Enemies from MM1 and MM2 were seamlessly carried over; some of the music even outshines the MM1 (in my opinion at least). It proved popular enough that it got a sequel.

However, for some reason, Capcom decided to get another company to develop it. 
MMI was worked on by Minakuchi Engineering; MMII would be done by a group called Biox.

It wasn't a very good move. The company didn't know much about Mega Man as they went into it and it garnered a pretty disappointing reception. Keiji Inafune himself doesn't like MMII because of Biox's lack of footing and actually went back to working with Minakuchi for MMIII through MMV.

According to TV Tropes, Biox had chiefly worked on Game Gear and Master System games prior to this. Among them was Tails' Sky Patrol.

Well here's a possible candidate for the future.

Biox, as far as I know, is defunct. Its website reveals that it hasn't been updated since 2004 and that its last known game came out during the PS1/Saturn era.

But enough history. Let's talk about the game.

STORY

Dr. Wily's broken into the Chronos Institute and has stolen an experimental time travel device -- the Time Skimmer. Unfortunately for old Al, it can only go forward in time. Jumping about thirty-seven years into the future, Wily somehow captures Mega Man and reprograms him into Quint to destroy Mega Man in the present. Now Rock has to face eight revived Wily-bots from his previous adventures, Quint, and the mad doctor himself. Will he survive?

GAMEPLAY/CONTROL

Control's pretty much what you'd expect from Classic Mega Man, "B" to shoot, "A" to jump. Nothing much to write home about.

Level layout, however can be cramped and claustrophobic. MMI had a similar issue, and yes, I know it's necessary because of the Game Boy's small screen... but sometimes things get tight. There also tends to be bad enemy placement at times (such as those spring enemies in Metal Man's stage), on your part and sometimes the AI's.

TIP: Remember Friender from MM2? If you have Metal Blade, hold onto the ladder and 

spam the game's lone unit with it until it blows up. It won't hit you at all!

SOUND/MUSIC

Normally, the Mega Man franchise churned out stellar music. MM1 had a number of great ones (the credits theme just makes you want to go jogging on a beach) as did MM2's and its successors. MMII's soundtrack, though, makes me think of a Tiger Electronics handheld crossed with an early-90's Santa Claus brooch that plays a high-pitched version of "Jingle Bells". Unlike MMI, where the Robot Masters' themes were remixed, here new songs were composed... and they don't sound very pleasing for the most part -- they get kinda screechy; other times, full of static (case in point: Hard Man's stage). Kinda sad, really. The compositions sound like they'd fit in with the rest of the series... it's the instrumentation that does it in.

Nothing much in terms of the regular sound effects sound that weird to my ear. The most obvious thing is the 1-Up noise, which now sounds like two Mario coin sounds strung together.

GRAPHICS

No obvious drop in graphical quality after the transfer from console to handheld. The backgrounds, this time around, haven't taken much of a step up from MMI, but they still aren't terrible. The sprites have been adapted well but nothing really becomes laughable until the final fight with Wily.

BAHAHAHA! Would you look at that! He's a shrinky-dink! Probably stands has high as Rock's thighs... at best!

...

Hey... wait a minute! DOES HE HAVE A SHRINK RAY?

That might explain the proportion issues at the end of MM3!

VERDICT

It's a rotten shame that the awesomeness of the Mega Man Classic series eventually produced this... but, like they say, even the big boys make mistakes. The music, which is usually one of the games' strongest assets is dampened by a poor choice of instruments. Other than that, Biox's lack of familiarity with Mega Man led to some pretty easy stages. I'll recommend it ONLY to people just starting to get into Mega Man, those in search of a challenge look elsewhere in the series.

I'm DLAbaoaqu. Full on!

Next video is Mega Man III... and BOY is the difficulty back!

• Mega Man is owned by Capcom
• Tails' Sky Patrol is owned by SEGA