Mega Man: The Wily Wars (GEN)
+0 Story: Considering 3/4 of the game is a port of the first three NES games, adding a story really wasn't necessary, but we've got one anyhow. Dr. Wily gets his hands on another time machine, and instead of doing something productive with it, goes back to the past to subject Mega Man to the exact same challenges he overcame in MM1-3. For the new Wily Tower segment, there isn't any plot to speak of; destroy the three guardians to gain access to the tower, then defeat Wily. This would have been a great opportunity to add an intro cutscene to MM3, and they could've even adapted MM4's intro for use with MM1, but nooooooo. All we get is Dr. Light pointing at a diagram of Mega Man and a cute little "lights out!" moment that's fun, but mostly useless in terms of storytelling.
+1 Graphics: First of all, the foregrounds and backgrounds are vivid, detailed, intricate, and wonderful. The updated graphics give even more visual interest and a stronger sense of location to the stages of MM1-3—wavy walls of heat make Fire Man's stage feel hot, for instance. The Wily Tower stages could stand to be more varied, but they're animated nicely, and the repetitive aesthetic doesn't clash with the style of the NES stages accompanying them. As for the sprites and cutscenes...whereas MM7 re-imagines the Mega Man universe in 16-bit color, Wily Wars recreates the NES games in the style of a Sega Genesis game. It's a subtle difference, but it's enough for the sprites and some of the cutscenes to feel more like any other Genesis game, and less like something distinctly Mega Man.
+0 Music: Overall, the soundtrack is fine. It's all the same great melodies of MM1-3, plus a handful of new tunes that are just as energetic and percussive, if not quite as catchy. The trouble is, it's inconsistent. The new instruments and slight remixing of the old tunes are sometimes an improvement on the originals, but often they're a notable downgrade (the iconic title screen for Mega Man 3—which, bizarrely, is reused for Mega Man 1—is my go-to example). Like the sprites and cutscenes, the music tends to give off more of a Sega Genesis vibe than a Mega Man vibe (especially with the new save and title screen tunes, which I swear are from Sonic the Hedgehog), but that could also be attributed to my untrained ear—I didn't grow up with any Sega systems, so a lot of Genesis music sounds the same to me, as I haven't had the kind of exposure necessary to really appreciate the finer distinctions between instrument types. At best, the music is great. At worst, it's a bit disappointing. It all evens out to a decent soundtrack, but not as consistently superb as the soundtracks it draws from.
-1 Sound Effects: From weapons fire to enemy explosions, everything's a lot more subdued than usual. The only thing that stands out as mildly irritating is the particularly chirpy sound of a boss's health bar filling up; otherwise, the sound effects don't leave much of an impression at all. This is, unfortunately, especially true of the boss explosions—the majority of the time, you don't even hear an explosion, and the silence sucks all the satisfaction out of your victories.
+0 Control: As far as basic platforming is concerned, Mega Man's controls are tight. Running and jumping are responsive, and the slipperiness of MM1-2 is nowhere to be found. Sliding would be perfect except for the momentary pause at the end as you stand back up. The weapons are where things get sticky—the rate of fire on the regular blaster is notably slower than basically anywhere else in the series, and certain weapons suddenly have an awkward moment where they immobilize you when you fire. Mega Man also hangs in the air for a split second after running off the edge of a platform, so it's possible to quickly turn around and find yourself standing on the platform again when you expected to be falling. There's nothing necessarily wrong with the way the game handles, per se, but it introduces some minor oddities that will throw you off if you're used to the NES games.
+0 Stages: For the most part, The Wily Wars doesn't mess with the challenges of MM1-3; level design, enemy placement, attack patterns, damage output, and weapon susceptibility are the same as before. For the most part. Here and there, things have been tweaked so slightly that only the most obsessive players will notice the difference. Those are fine. It's the numerous boss recalibrations that spoil the fun—Bomb Man is a relentless jerk, for instance, and Quick Man can barely outrun Mega Man anymore. I won't say the alterations are always bad—I like that Flash Man is a proper challenge this time—but the desirable changes are mild, and the undesirable ones tend to sacrifice fun for fairness in an attempt to make the fights more evenly balanced. As for Wily Tower, the special weapons you choose make a huge impact on the fun and difficulty of the challenges—the final form of the final boss is a perfect example, because the fight could be incredibly long and tedious, or over in a matter of seconds, depending on what you bring with you. Regardless of your arsenal, however, the challenges in Wily Tower are a mixed bag. The new bosses are unique, and it's great that the environment often plays a part in the battles. I love the creative and perilous rematch against Buster Rod G, but I can't stand fighting him the first time around due to his penchant for denying you almost every opportunity to get a hit in. Some of the enemy placements and combinations are novel and clever; some challenges are copy/pasted from MM1-3 with little or no variation. So many previously underused or unremarkable traps and enemies get to live up to their potential here (I like all the Big Fish surprises, for starters); so many perfect opportunities to make the most of old challenges are squandered (not a single Mag Fly in sight, the final stage starts pulling out all the stops and abruptly comes to an end, and there's only one block in the entire Wily Tower segment that you can pick up with Super Arm). There's so much that The Wily Wars does well, but there's just as much that it could (or should) do better.
+1 Bosses: Even taking the less-favorable recalibrations into account, the robot masters from MM1-3 are, overall, a good bunch. The three additions to the pantheon fit in quite nicely: The uniquely oversized Hyper Storm H has two (!) health bars to make up for the fact that he's almost impossible to miss, and the constant tug-of-war of being pulled toward him or pushed toward spikes as Metalls rain down make for an interesting fight; Mega Water S looks goofy (even for a Kappa) but is a fair challenge; Buster Rod G is unpleasant to fight the first time, but he's at least got a cool design (if you like monkeys).
+2 Special Weapons: I'll admit that some of the weapons aren't as perfect as they were in MM1-3, and it's a shame that Wily Tower doesn't have any new weapons. However, like everything else in this game, you win some and you lose some—and the weapons are one category that's a definite win. Yes, Rolling Cutter only damages once per hit instead of applying continuous damage like before. Yes, Atomic Fire takes an absurdly long time to charge up. Yes, Magnet Missile takes longer to turn and is woefully deficient in its tracking ability. To make up for it, Hyper Bomb has a shorter fuse (I.e. it's actually useful), Hard Knuckle is faster (I.e. it's actually useful), and Top Spin TEARS THROUGH ENEMIES WHILE USING A CONSISTENT AMOUNT OF ENERGY AND DOESN'T BOUNCE YOU BACKWARD INTO BOTTOMLESS PITS (I.e. it's actually useful). As if that weren't enough, you are allowed to choose any eight weapons from MM1-3 to bring along for each Wily Tower stage, which is quite literally a dream come true for me. I'm too thrilled about what the weapons do right to dwell on the few (mostly minor) shortcomings.
+2 Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities: Magnet Beam, Items 1-3, Rush Coil, Rush Marine, and Rush Jet, and you have your choice of any three for the Wily Tower stages. Rock on. There are a few minor modifications, though: Magnet Beam fires out platforms in clearly defined segments that make it easier to gauge exactly how much length you're working with; Rush Marine can still jump out of the water, but the joyride is over as soon as you land on solid ground (which, realistically, makes more sense than a silly bouncing submarine). All the items from MM1-3 are present and accounted for, and everything except the glorious Yashichi makes at least one appearance in Wily Tower.
+0 Ending: Defeated again, Wily grovels for a few moments...and then out rolls a tiny little...BOMB! Wily runs away as Mega Man recovers from the surprise explosion, and it isn't long before our hero runs after the mad scientist. The tower crumbles unspectacularly (stronger explosion sound effects would've helped), and the chase continues through a fairly uninteresting field. As Wily and Mega Man run, the various robot masters you've fought appear overhead with their names listed...but we once again have no idea who made this game. At the end, Wily trips and falls, and while Mega Man stands around like he's not programmed to actually catch Wily, that sneaky little spaceship arrives and tractor beams Wily into the cockpit. (This is a fun special effect.) Cue the wiggly eyebrows, Wily flies away, and Mega Man jumps in the air to celebrate his failure, with Capcom thanking the player for playing. Satisfactory, but not especially satisfying. The sub-endings, if you will, for MM1-3 have the same structure as before, but the presentation isn't exactly the same: the music speed is different (MM1's is way too fast, and the first half of MM2's is finally just right), and some of the little touches have been lost (such as the sunset in MM1, the scrolling stars for part of MM2, and displaying the robot master details in MM3 long enough for anybody to read them). Given equal weight, the endings are collectively pretty good, but keeping in mind that replaying MM1-3 is technically part of the game's overarching plot, Wily Tower's thoroughly average ending is the primary focus of my rating here.
+2 Replay Value: You get three whole replay-friendly games that can be played in any order, and once they've all been completed, another game is unlocked where you can choose any combination of weapons and utilities for every single stage. 'Nuff said.
+0 Polish: The level of polish is all over the place. There's absolutely zero sprite flicker (making MM2's Boobeam Trap boss the kind of challenge it should've been), but there's sporadically some atrocious slowdown that utterly wrecks the flow of some challenges (it's almost impossible to time Ice Man's pattern correctly anymore, especially in a blaster-only fight). Myriad quirks and little touches that made the NES games so charming have been lost here and there (the aforementioned sunset in MM1's ending), but certain improvements have been made as well (no more spelling errors in the cutscenes, and Mega Man's teleportation animation has some extra detail that makes it look really rad). As discussed earlier, the control is both an upgrade and a downgrade from the NES games. Swapping out passwords for a save feature is a smart move, but the decision to keep Proto Man looking like a tiny NES sprite while Mega Man enjoys a slightly taller and slimmer redesign is baffling. As a standalone game, the level of polish is superb (slowdown notwithstanding), but as a remake, the quality of the changes from the source material fluctuates too much, too often--The Wily Wars is neither the definitive version of these games nor an inferior copy, and the inconsistent level of polish contributes a great deal to that.
+0 Extras/Easter Eggs: Technically, Wily Tower is an unlockable extra...but basically all the goodies from MM1-3 are absent, such as the pause/resume glitch in MM1, so it balances out.
+1 Novelty: Despite 3/4 of the game being a retread of previous games, there's some definite novelty in the presentation—updated graphics and audio make the NES games feel new again, and the various version differences make for an unexpectedly novel gameplay experience as well. Wily Tower might reuse enemies, weapons, and traps from MM1-3, but the bosses are rather unique, and the wonderful weapon selector has yet to be duplicated.
Overall Score: +8 (+9 merits, -1 flaws)
+1 Graphics: First of all, the foregrounds and backgrounds are vivid, detailed, intricate, and wonderful. The updated graphics give even more visual interest and a stronger sense of location to the stages of MM1-3—wavy walls of heat make Fire Man's stage feel hot, for instance. The Wily Tower stages could stand to be more varied, but they're animated nicely, and the repetitive aesthetic doesn't clash with the style of the NES stages accompanying them. As for the sprites and cutscenes...whereas MM7 re-imagines the Mega Man universe in 16-bit color, Wily Wars recreates the NES games in the style of a Sega Genesis game. It's a subtle difference, but it's enough for the sprites and some of the cutscenes to feel more like any other Genesis game, and less like something distinctly Mega Man.
+0 Music: Overall, the soundtrack is fine. It's all the same great melodies of MM1-3, plus a handful of new tunes that are just as energetic and percussive, if not quite as catchy. The trouble is, it's inconsistent. The new instruments and slight remixing of the old tunes are sometimes an improvement on the originals, but often they're a notable downgrade (the iconic title screen for Mega Man 3—which, bizarrely, is reused for Mega Man 1—is my go-to example). Like the sprites and cutscenes, the music tends to give off more of a Sega Genesis vibe than a Mega Man vibe (especially with the new save and title screen tunes, which I swear are from Sonic the Hedgehog), but that could also be attributed to my untrained ear—I didn't grow up with any Sega systems, so a lot of Genesis music sounds the same to me, as I haven't had the kind of exposure necessary to really appreciate the finer distinctions between instrument types. At best, the music is great. At worst, it's a bit disappointing. It all evens out to a decent soundtrack, but not as consistently superb as the soundtracks it draws from.
-1 Sound Effects: From weapons fire to enemy explosions, everything's a lot more subdued than usual. The only thing that stands out as mildly irritating is the particularly chirpy sound of a boss's health bar filling up; otherwise, the sound effects don't leave much of an impression at all. This is, unfortunately, especially true of the boss explosions—the majority of the time, you don't even hear an explosion, and the silence sucks all the satisfaction out of your victories.
+0 Control: As far as basic platforming is concerned, Mega Man's controls are tight. Running and jumping are responsive, and the slipperiness of MM1-2 is nowhere to be found. Sliding would be perfect except for the momentary pause at the end as you stand back up. The weapons are where things get sticky—the rate of fire on the regular blaster is notably slower than basically anywhere else in the series, and certain weapons suddenly have an awkward moment where they immobilize you when you fire. Mega Man also hangs in the air for a split second after running off the edge of a platform, so it's possible to quickly turn around and find yourself standing on the platform again when you expected to be falling. There's nothing necessarily wrong with the way the game handles, per se, but it introduces some minor oddities that will throw you off if you're used to the NES games.
+0 Stages: For the most part, The Wily Wars doesn't mess with the challenges of MM1-3; level design, enemy placement, attack patterns, damage output, and weapon susceptibility are the same as before. For the most part. Here and there, things have been tweaked so slightly that only the most obsessive players will notice the difference. Those are fine. It's the numerous boss recalibrations that spoil the fun—Bomb Man is a relentless jerk, for instance, and Quick Man can barely outrun Mega Man anymore. I won't say the alterations are always bad—I like that Flash Man is a proper challenge this time—but the desirable changes are mild, and the undesirable ones tend to sacrifice fun for fairness in an attempt to make the fights more evenly balanced. As for Wily Tower, the special weapons you choose make a huge impact on the fun and difficulty of the challenges—the final form of the final boss is a perfect example, because the fight could be incredibly long and tedious, or over in a matter of seconds, depending on what you bring with you. Regardless of your arsenal, however, the challenges in Wily Tower are a mixed bag. The new bosses are unique, and it's great that the environment often plays a part in the battles. I love the creative and perilous rematch against Buster Rod G, but I can't stand fighting him the first time around due to his penchant for denying you almost every opportunity to get a hit in. Some of the enemy placements and combinations are novel and clever; some challenges are copy/pasted from MM1-3 with little or no variation. So many previously underused or unremarkable traps and enemies get to live up to their potential here (I like all the Big Fish surprises, for starters); so many perfect opportunities to make the most of old challenges are squandered (not a single Mag Fly in sight, the final stage starts pulling out all the stops and abruptly comes to an end, and there's only one block in the entire Wily Tower segment that you can pick up with Super Arm). There's so much that The Wily Wars does well, but there's just as much that it could (or should) do better.
+1 Bosses: Even taking the less-favorable recalibrations into account, the robot masters from MM1-3 are, overall, a good bunch. The three additions to the pantheon fit in quite nicely: The uniquely oversized Hyper Storm H has two (!) health bars to make up for the fact that he's almost impossible to miss, and the constant tug-of-war of being pulled toward him or pushed toward spikes as Metalls rain down make for an interesting fight; Mega Water S looks goofy (even for a Kappa) but is a fair challenge; Buster Rod G is unpleasant to fight the first time, but he's at least got a cool design (if you like monkeys).
+2 Special Weapons: I'll admit that some of the weapons aren't as perfect as they were in MM1-3, and it's a shame that Wily Tower doesn't have any new weapons. However, like everything else in this game, you win some and you lose some—and the weapons are one category that's a definite win. Yes, Rolling Cutter only damages once per hit instead of applying continuous damage like before. Yes, Atomic Fire takes an absurdly long time to charge up. Yes, Magnet Missile takes longer to turn and is woefully deficient in its tracking ability. To make up for it, Hyper Bomb has a shorter fuse (I.e. it's actually useful), Hard Knuckle is faster (I.e. it's actually useful), and Top Spin TEARS THROUGH ENEMIES WHILE USING A CONSISTENT AMOUNT OF ENERGY AND DOESN'T BOUNCE YOU BACKWARD INTO BOTTOMLESS PITS (I.e. it's actually useful). As if that weren't enough, you are allowed to choose any eight weapons from MM1-3 to bring along for each Wily Tower stage, which is quite literally a dream come true for me. I'm too thrilled about what the weapons do right to dwell on the few (mostly minor) shortcomings.
+2 Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities: Magnet Beam, Items 1-3, Rush Coil, Rush Marine, and Rush Jet, and you have your choice of any three for the Wily Tower stages. Rock on. There are a few minor modifications, though: Magnet Beam fires out platforms in clearly defined segments that make it easier to gauge exactly how much length you're working with; Rush Marine can still jump out of the water, but the joyride is over as soon as you land on solid ground (which, realistically, makes more sense than a silly bouncing submarine). All the items from MM1-3 are present and accounted for, and everything except the glorious Yashichi makes at least one appearance in Wily Tower.
+0 Ending: Defeated again, Wily grovels for a few moments...and then out rolls a tiny little...BOMB! Wily runs away as Mega Man recovers from the surprise explosion, and it isn't long before our hero runs after the mad scientist. The tower crumbles unspectacularly (stronger explosion sound effects would've helped), and the chase continues through a fairly uninteresting field. As Wily and Mega Man run, the various robot masters you've fought appear overhead with their names listed...but we once again have no idea who made this game. At the end, Wily trips and falls, and while Mega Man stands around like he's not programmed to actually catch Wily, that sneaky little spaceship arrives and tractor beams Wily into the cockpit. (This is a fun special effect.) Cue the wiggly eyebrows, Wily flies away, and Mega Man jumps in the air to celebrate his failure, with Capcom thanking the player for playing. Satisfactory, but not especially satisfying. The sub-endings, if you will, for MM1-3 have the same structure as before, but the presentation isn't exactly the same: the music speed is different (MM1's is way too fast, and the first half of MM2's is finally just right), and some of the little touches have been lost (such as the sunset in MM1, the scrolling stars for part of MM2, and displaying the robot master details in MM3 long enough for anybody to read them). Given equal weight, the endings are collectively pretty good, but keeping in mind that replaying MM1-3 is technically part of the game's overarching plot, Wily Tower's thoroughly average ending is the primary focus of my rating here.
+2 Replay Value: You get three whole replay-friendly games that can be played in any order, and once they've all been completed, another game is unlocked where you can choose any combination of weapons and utilities for every single stage. 'Nuff said.
+0 Polish: The level of polish is all over the place. There's absolutely zero sprite flicker (making MM2's Boobeam Trap boss the kind of challenge it should've been), but there's sporadically some atrocious slowdown that utterly wrecks the flow of some challenges (it's almost impossible to time Ice Man's pattern correctly anymore, especially in a blaster-only fight). Myriad quirks and little touches that made the NES games so charming have been lost here and there (the aforementioned sunset in MM1's ending), but certain improvements have been made as well (no more spelling errors in the cutscenes, and Mega Man's teleportation animation has some extra detail that makes it look really rad). As discussed earlier, the control is both an upgrade and a downgrade from the NES games. Swapping out passwords for a save feature is a smart move, but the decision to keep Proto Man looking like a tiny NES sprite while Mega Man enjoys a slightly taller and slimmer redesign is baffling. As a standalone game, the level of polish is superb (slowdown notwithstanding), but as a remake, the quality of the changes from the source material fluctuates too much, too often--The Wily Wars is neither the definitive version of these games nor an inferior copy, and the inconsistent level of polish contributes a great deal to that.
+0 Extras/Easter Eggs: Technically, Wily Tower is an unlockable extra...but basically all the goodies from MM1-3 are absent, such as the pause/resume glitch in MM1, so it balances out.
+1 Novelty: Despite 3/4 of the game being a retread of previous games, there's some definite novelty in the presentation—updated graphics and audio make the NES games feel new again, and the various version differences make for an unexpectedly novel gameplay experience as well. Wily Tower might reuse enemies, weapons, and traps from MM1-3, but the bosses are rather unique, and the wonderful weapon selector has yet to be duplicated.
Overall Score: +8 (+9 merits, -1 flaws)
Mega Man (GG)
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Overall Score: X (+Y merits, -Z flaws)
Mega Man Powered Up (PSP)
+1 Story: As with the original, the story is absolutely threadbare (Mega Man good! Wily bad!), but each of the characters is given a strong sense of personality that comes through in their body language and dialogue. There's a deliberate choice to gloss over any serious or complex elements of the Blue Bomber's backstory, which works well in the context of this game, but it's still a missed opportunity to flesh out the foundation of the franchise.
+1 Graphics: Stylized 3D graphics tend to age better than more realistic ones, so the cartoony look of the game is funny because it's supposed to be, and it's far more successful than MM8 in terms of overall feel. Characters are chibi and cute; backgrounds are colorful and animated, but not distractingly so (with the possible exception of Guts Man's stage, which is right on the edge); and the special effects are vibrant. I still prefer 2D or cel-shaded 3D (like the later X games), but this works, though the kid-friendly look belies the cruel difficulty. Unfortunately, as with MM8, some of the enemy explosions get in the way of the gameplay—even after technically being destroyed, enemies will stick around with a look of surprise on their face (or the equivalent) for a moment before exploding, and you don't always have the luxury of examining them closely to know whether you should run through them now or keep shooting. Explosion animations also don't clearly express the actual hit box and duration of anything that deals splash damage. The charge animation for Mega Man C and Time Man is outrageous; you can hardly see your character through the huge swirling shimmer. And there's really no reason to use a gradient backdrop for an empty energy meter, let alone one so short—a few of the weapon energy bars have a color that starts to blend in with the gradient as they deplete, so good luck to the color-blind guy who perpetually thinks his empty weapon still has one shot left.
+1 Music: The new music is pleasantly peppy, and the remixes do justice to the original NES tunes. Modifying the stage select music to something more dangerous for the Wily stages is a nice touch (one of many elements adopted from the X series), and the game has a memorable main melody that's woven into most of the new music to give the game a distinctive sound. Nothing overwhelming here, but a well-crafted soundtrack nonetheless.
+2 Sound Effects: Arguably the best voice acting in the franchise (it's up there with Tron Bonne), in no small part because the characters are supposed to sound goofy and melodramatic. Everyone has a distinctive voice, and for once, it sounds like the actors were given a chance to practice and record more than one take. Otherwise, everything sounds like a powered-up version of the NES sound effects, with just enough of a cartoony flair to match the visuals.
-1 Control: The more playable characters you have, the harder it is to get everyone perfect. Regular ol' Mega Man controls just fine, but Bomb Man is unnecessarily tricky with the intricacies of aiming his weapon, and Guts Man is nearly unplayable with his sluggish three-step attacks. Mega Man S and Mega Man C have the ability to slide, but it's such an awkwardly slow and short slide that it's a liability to use in combat. The other characters handle well enough. The level editor is cumbersome to the point of discouraging me from using it—which is heartbreaking for someone who spent so much of his childhood drawing up Mega Man stages.
-2 Stages: MMPU recognizes that the original Mega Man is very difficult, but it fails to identify what makes the game fun. MM1's challenges are a matter of pattern recognition, quick reflexes, and creative problem-solving; MMPU's New Style challenges are a matter of identifying the one thing you can do to not die immediately, then replicating that thing repeatedly until either you succeed or fatigue gets the better of you. Level design is haphazard: carelessly placed enemies, jumps that overestimate Mega Man's abilities, sections that give no accommodation to the more limited playable characters, and an overabundance of the aggravating flying Foot Holders (you put them in Elec Man's stage!?!?) demonstrate a clear lack of good planning and thorough playtesting. Challenge stages give you little or no room for error: either you do it perfectly in a single try or you fail. Fun is not derived from practicing thoughtless and mean challenges to perfection before being allowed to proceed to the next stage. Even Old Style fails to completely capture the joy of classic Mega Man, but that's because the updated game mechanics don't work as well with the original challenges.
-2 Bosses: What I said above about the game design is not limited to the stages. The Yellow Devil is a perfect example—in the time it takes you to beat him in MMPU, you could have played through his entire stage (boss fight and all) in MM1. That's a pass/fail boss fight; either you've memorized the pattern or you haven't. There is no reason to spend four minutes proving what the original game lets you prove in 90 seconds. Yet this is how MMPU operates. Surviving CWU-01P on the higher difficulties requires either insane precision or a miracle, depending on which character you're using; the battle demands more mobility (and in many cases, firepower) than any character can muster, and being constantly suctioned toward the middle of the room is an inexcusable complication. Really, surviving anything on the higher difficulties requires either insane precision or a miracle. As fun as it is in concept to square off against a final boss that uses all the same weapons you do, it's only fun if you've got enough weapon energy to keep up with him. Moreover, his ever-changing attack patterns and vulnerabilities overcomplicate the fight, and his practically unstoppable ramming attack throws all fairness out the window. I don't even want to get into how rage-inducing the Robot Masters' overpowered super moves are. At least the Copy Robot and the intro stage boss generally play fair, but they're the exceptions. Unless you're playing Old Style, on Easy, or as Proto Man, the bosses range from barely tolerable to outright cruel (and even the Old Style bosses are more of a pain than in MM1 because of differences in game mechanics). And if you want to play as someone like Guts Man, you might as well save yourself the headache and snap the disc in half right away.
-1 Special Weapons: MM1 has a small but useful selection of special weapons, so you'd think that improving the one weapon that barely works (Hyper Bomb) and adding two more weapons could only improve the score. The critical flaw here is that MMPU reduces your ammo limit to as little as a third of what it is in the original game. Nine shots with Fire Storm is hardly adequate! This means that there's a greater pressure than usual to make every shot count (it's alarmingly easy to run out of ammo in boss fights, and there's little or no room for experimentation), which diminishes the fun of having special weapons at all. Ammo issues aside, the two new weapons bring down the overall score. Time Slow doesn't slow time hard enough to be truly useful, and Oil Slider brings back everyone's least-loved game mechanic from MM8; sure, they add some variety to the lineup, but they're the kind of weapons you only use in desperation once you've run out of ammo on all the good ones. Which, again, happens all the time here. Taking the other playable characters into consideration: Proto Strike is incredible, Mega Man-C's charge shot is a welcome inclusion, and it's actually extremely fun to have any one of the special weapons as your primary weapon. Assuming you're not playing as Oil Man, who's worthless unless he's riding his runaway sled, or Guts Man, whose attack is problematically slow and hard to aim. And assuming you're not fighting enemies who aren't vulnerable to your primary weapon—plinking away at a boss with an awkward and ineffective weapon you can't switch away from is a serious drag (why couldn't the Robot Masters use their super moves from Hard mode?). Considering they're mostly included for kicks and giggles, respectively, I don't hold Rock and Roll too accountable for their limited offensive capabilities—but each of Roll's numerous unlockable costumes counts as a separate character, which means there are over a dozen characters that can only wield a simple beating stick, and that's way too many.
-2 Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities: Where the heck is the Magnet Beam!? Even a modified version with extremely limited ammo would go a long way in mitigating New Style's unnecessary difficulty. For that matter, what happened to the Yashichi? Nevermind Old Style and Construction mode; you don't Power Up a game by taking away its best power-ups.
+1 Ending: Using the original game's ending as a template, Wily begs for mercy, and then we get a text blurb that provides a satisfying bit of closure to the minimal story, followed by Mega Man running home. Credits and artwork of the various bosses appears over the starry sky in the background, unfortunately blocking the most animated portions of the sky. Consequently, the first part of the credits is a little duller than it could be (despite the nice character art). Fortunately, Mega Man changes back into his Rock outfit toward the end, and the background changes with him--now it's a more dynamic (and visible) cityscape scrolling by. I miss the gradual background transition that the original ending has, and the neat sunset transformation effect (this time it's just a flash of white), but there's really nothing wrong with the ending in and of itself. The Old Style ending concludes with Rock arriving home to meet Dr. Light and Roll as usual, but the New Style ending has all the reformed Robot Masters waiting there as well, offering an optimistic, warm-fuzzy kind of ending that fits perfectly with the game's aesthetic.
+2 Replay Value: MMPU boasts eight initial stages that can be played in any order, three difficulty modes for each stage, over two dozen playable characters (if you count all of Roll's outfits), 100 Challenge stages, scads of Construction Packs hidden throughout the game, a Construction mode where you build your own levels, and a separate mode where you can play an updated version of MM1. Why is it that the Classic games with the best replay value are the ones I least want to replay?
+1 Polish: In some respects, the game is delightfully thoughtful. When you start up the game, the title screen greets you with a picture of the last character you played as. The inventory screen is one of the most comprehensive in the Classic series, offering full names and descriptions of the weapons, access to the settings menu, and a way of tracking the high score and best time for the stage you're in. Rather than committing to one difficulty mode for an entire playthrough, the game allows you to choose the difficulty of each stage if you find the challenge factor isn't to your liking. The stage select music changes when you get to the Wily stages. Proto Man is available as a downloadable character, in case you think the normal method of unlocking him is utterly absurd (which it is, because there's virtually no hope of clearing all 100 Challenges at all, let alone without Proto Man). In other respects, the game is woefully thoughtless. As mentioned above, some stages are virtually unplayable as certain Robot Masters. Unlocking new objects and themes for Construction mode is all well and good, but forcing the player to select from a long list of pre-made enemy packs, many of which are somewhat redundant, is both tedious and limiting. Overall, though, the good outweighs the bad (and I don't want to double-penalize the game too much for the playability problems I've already covered).
+2 Extras/Easter Eggs: Even if playing as different characters is a major game component, you have to unlock them all first; therefore, they're extras. Downloadable content adds a lot to the game, whether we're looking at NES-style Construction Packs, Roll's various costumes, or a theoretically infinite number of custom stages.
+1 Novelty: By its very nature, a remake is sort of ineligible for full points in the novelty department, but MMPU tries its darndest to deliver things that few other Mega Man games have. A huge cast of playable characters, free downloadable bonus content, 100 puzzle-oriented Challenge stages, a level editor, collectible Construction Packs, and a super-cartoony look and feel are things we've rarely or never seen before or since. Even the familiar elements are completely revamped in New Style, and only somewhat recognizable in Old Style.
Overall Score: +4 (+12 merits, -8 flaws)
+1 Graphics: Stylized 3D graphics tend to age better than more realistic ones, so the cartoony look of the game is funny because it's supposed to be, and it's far more successful than MM8 in terms of overall feel. Characters are chibi and cute; backgrounds are colorful and animated, but not distractingly so (with the possible exception of Guts Man's stage, which is right on the edge); and the special effects are vibrant. I still prefer 2D or cel-shaded 3D (like the later X games), but this works, though the kid-friendly look belies the cruel difficulty. Unfortunately, as with MM8, some of the enemy explosions get in the way of the gameplay—even after technically being destroyed, enemies will stick around with a look of surprise on their face (or the equivalent) for a moment before exploding, and you don't always have the luxury of examining them closely to know whether you should run through them now or keep shooting. Explosion animations also don't clearly express the actual hit box and duration of anything that deals splash damage. The charge animation for Mega Man C and Time Man is outrageous; you can hardly see your character through the huge swirling shimmer. And there's really no reason to use a gradient backdrop for an empty energy meter, let alone one so short—a few of the weapon energy bars have a color that starts to blend in with the gradient as they deplete, so good luck to the color-blind guy who perpetually thinks his empty weapon still has one shot left.
+1 Music: The new music is pleasantly peppy, and the remixes do justice to the original NES tunes. Modifying the stage select music to something more dangerous for the Wily stages is a nice touch (one of many elements adopted from the X series), and the game has a memorable main melody that's woven into most of the new music to give the game a distinctive sound. Nothing overwhelming here, but a well-crafted soundtrack nonetheless.
+2 Sound Effects: Arguably the best voice acting in the franchise (it's up there with Tron Bonne), in no small part because the characters are supposed to sound goofy and melodramatic. Everyone has a distinctive voice, and for once, it sounds like the actors were given a chance to practice and record more than one take. Otherwise, everything sounds like a powered-up version of the NES sound effects, with just enough of a cartoony flair to match the visuals.
-1 Control: The more playable characters you have, the harder it is to get everyone perfect. Regular ol' Mega Man controls just fine, but Bomb Man is unnecessarily tricky with the intricacies of aiming his weapon, and Guts Man is nearly unplayable with his sluggish three-step attacks. Mega Man S and Mega Man C have the ability to slide, but it's such an awkwardly slow and short slide that it's a liability to use in combat. The other characters handle well enough. The level editor is cumbersome to the point of discouraging me from using it—which is heartbreaking for someone who spent so much of his childhood drawing up Mega Man stages.
-2 Stages: MMPU recognizes that the original Mega Man is very difficult, but it fails to identify what makes the game fun. MM1's challenges are a matter of pattern recognition, quick reflexes, and creative problem-solving; MMPU's New Style challenges are a matter of identifying the one thing you can do to not die immediately, then replicating that thing repeatedly until either you succeed or fatigue gets the better of you. Level design is haphazard: carelessly placed enemies, jumps that overestimate Mega Man's abilities, sections that give no accommodation to the more limited playable characters, and an overabundance of the aggravating flying Foot Holders (you put them in Elec Man's stage!?!?) demonstrate a clear lack of good planning and thorough playtesting. Challenge stages give you little or no room for error: either you do it perfectly in a single try or you fail. Fun is not derived from practicing thoughtless and mean challenges to perfection before being allowed to proceed to the next stage. Even Old Style fails to completely capture the joy of classic Mega Man, but that's because the updated game mechanics don't work as well with the original challenges.
-2 Bosses: What I said above about the game design is not limited to the stages. The Yellow Devil is a perfect example—in the time it takes you to beat him in MMPU, you could have played through his entire stage (boss fight and all) in MM1. That's a pass/fail boss fight; either you've memorized the pattern or you haven't. There is no reason to spend four minutes proving what the original game lets you prove in 90 seconds. Yet this is how MMPU operates. Surviving CWU-01P on the higher difficulties requires either insane precision or a miracle, depending on which character you're using; the battle demands more mobility (and in many cases, firepower) than any character can muster, and being constantly suctioned toward the middle of the room is an inexcusable complication. Really, surviving anything on the higher difficulties requires either insane precision or a miracle. As fun as it is in concept to square off against a final boss that uses all the same weapons you do, it's only fun if you've got enough weapon energy to keep up with him. Moreover, his ever-changing attack patterns and vulnerabilities overcomplicate the fight, and his practically unstoppable ramming attack throws all fairness out the window. I don't even want to get into how rage-inducing the Robot Masters' overpowered super moves are. At least the Copy Robot and the intro stage boss generally play fair, but they're the exceptions. Unless you're playing Old Style, on Easy, or as Proto Man, the bosses range from barely tolerable to outright cruel (and even the Old Style bosses are more of a pain than in MM1 because of differences in game mechanics). And if you want to play as someone like Guts Man, you might as well save yourself the headache and snap the disc in half right away.
-1 Special Weapons: MM1 has a small but useful selection of special weapons, so you'd think that improving the one weapon that barely works (Hyper Bomb) and adding two more weapons could only improve the score. The critical flaw here is that MMPU reduces your ammo limit to as little as a third of what it is in the original game. Nine shots with Fire Storm is hardly adequate! This means that there's a greater pressure than usual to make every shot count (it's alarmingly easy to run out of ammo in boss fights, and there's little or no room for experimentation), which diminishes the fun of having special weapons at all. Ammo issues aside, the two new weapons bring down the overall score. Time Slow doesn't slow time hard enough to be truly useful, and Oil Slider brings back everyone's least-loved game mechanic from MM8; sure, they add some variety to the lineup, but they're the kind of weapons you only use in desperation once you've run out of ammo on all the good ones. Which, again, happens all the time here. Taking the other playable characters into consideration: Proto Strike is incredible, Mega Man-C's charge shot is a welcome inclusion, and it's actually extremely fun to have any one of the special weapons as your primary weapon. Assuming you're not playing as Oil Man, who's worthless unless he's riding his runaway sled, or Guts Man, whose attack is problematically slow and hard to aim. And assuming you're not fighting enemies who aren't vulnerable to your primary weapon—plinking away at a boss with an awkward and ineffective weapon you can't switch away from is a serious drag (why couldn't the Robot Masters use their super moves from Hard mode?). Considering they're mostly included for kicks and giggles, respectively, I don't hold Rock and Roll too accountable for their limited offensive capabilities—but each of Roll's numerous unlockable costumes counts as a separate character, which means there are over a dozen characters that can only wield a simple beating stick, and that's way too many.
-2 Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities: Where the heck is the Magnet Beam!? Even a modified version with extremely limited ammo would go a long way in mitigating New Style's unnecessary difficulty. For that matter, what happened to the Yashichi? Nevermind Old Style and Construction mode; you don't Power Up a game by taking away its best power-ups.
+1 Ending: Using the original game's ending as a template, Wily begs for mercy, and then we get a text blurb that provides a satisfying bit of closure to the minimal story, followed by Mega Man running home. Credits and artwork of the various bosses appears over the starry sky in the background, unfortunately blocking the most animated portions of the sky. Consequently, the first part of the credits is a little duller than it could be (despite the nice character art). Fortunately, Mega Man changes back into his Rock outfit toward the end, and the background changes with him--now it's a more dynamic (and visible) cityscape scrolling by. I miss the gradual background transition that the original ending has, and the neat sunset transformation effect (this time it's just a flash of white), but there's really nothing wrong with the ending in and of itself. The Old Style ending concludes with Rock arriving home to meet Dr. Light and Roll as usual, but the New Style ending has all the reformed Robot Masters waiting there as well, offering an optimistic, warm-fuzzy kind of ending that fits perfectly with the game's aesthetic.
+2 Replay Value: MMPU boasts eight initial stages that can be played in any order, three difficulty modes for each stage, over two dozen playable characters (if you count all of Roll's outfits), 100 Challenge stages, scads of Construction Packs hidden throughout the game, a Construction mode where you build your own levels, and a separate mode where you can play an updated version of MM1. Why is it that the Classic games with the best replay value are the ones I least want to replay?
+1 Polish: In some respects, the game is delightfully thoughtful. When you start up the game, the title screen greets you with a picture of the last character you played as. The inventory screen is one of the most comprehensive in the Classic series, offering full names and descriptions of the weapons, access to the settings menu, and a way of tracking the high score and best time for the stage you're in. Rather than committing to one difficulty mode for an entire playthrough, the game allows you to choose the difficulty of each stage if you find the challenge factor isn't to your liking. The stage select music changes when you get to the Wily stages. Proto Man is available as a downloadable character, in case you think the normal method of unlocking him is utterly absurd (which it is, because there's virtually no hope of clearing all 100 Challenges at all, let alone without Proto Man). In other respects, the game is woefully thoughtless. As mentioned above, some stages are virtually unplayable as certain Robot Masters. Unlocking new objects and themes for Construction mode is all well and good, but forcing the player to select from a long list of pre-made enemy packs, many of which are somewhat redundant, is both tedious and limiting. Overall, though, the good outweighs the bad (and I don't want to double-penalize the game too much for the playability problems I've already covered).
+2 Extras/Easter Eggs: Even if playing as different characters is a major game component, you have to unlock them all first; therefore, they're extras. Downloadable content adds a lot to the game, whether we're looking at NES-style Construction Packs, Roll's various costumes, or a theoretically infinite number of custom stages.
+1 Novelty: By its very nature, a remake is sort of ineligible for full points in the novelty department, but MMPU tries its darndest to deliver things that few other Mega Man games have. A huge cast of playable characters, free downloadable bonus content, 100 puzzle-oriented Challenge stages, a level editor, collectible Construction Packs, and a super-cartoony look and feel are things we've rarely or never seen before or since. Even the familiar elements are completely revamped in New Style, and only somewhat recognizable in Old Style.
Overall Score: +4 (+12 merits, -8 flaws)
