Mega Man & Bass (GBA)
+2 Story: Dr. Wily's fortress has been conquered by a robot named King, who is rallying an army of robots to join him in ruling the world. King breaks into the Robot Museum to steal data for his army. (Seriously, what is with this museum keeping dangerous robots' programming on file? I don't recall Madame Tussauds storing the brain patterns of Stalin or Hitler in their wax figures.) This is where the story branches a little: As Mega Man, you're out to stop King from conquering the planet; as Bass, you're out to prove who the superior robot really is. Of course, Dr. Wily is behind the whole scheme—he's the one who built King and staged this whole takeover in the first place—but there's some unexpected resistance as King begins to question his orders. There's a genuine sense of personality in the dialogue and character interactions—Mega Man is still the quintessential good guy; Proto Man is proud and reckless; Bass is as arrogant as ever; King is noble and principled; Dr. Wily is single-minded in his plans for world domination, and he's getting really tired of his creations acting up. It's not the straightforward bait-and-switch routine we've grown accustomed to, and the characters really drive the action this time.
+2 Graphics: This is what MM8 should've looked like. I'm still not wild about the rubberized Mega Man and Proto Man designs, but Bass looks pretty awesome, and the backgrounds have been scaled back to MM7 levels of detail—which is to say they're highly detailed and interesting, but not so shiny that they're distracting. Similarly, the stage enemies look as good as they do in MM8, but they don't shower the area with gears and bolts in an overdone explosion when they're destroyed; again, the detail has been scaled back so that it's still functional and pretty, but unobtrusive. All the new (and returning) bosses look great, too.
+1 Music: This upbeat, percussion-driven soundtrack does a good job of making each theme distinctive. What the music occasionally lacks in melodic strength, it tends to make up for in atmosphere and infectious groove. From the "YEAH! LET'S DO THIS!" title screen to the wonderfully heartbreaking Game Over screen, from the merry carnival feel of Magic Man's theme to the tense cacophony of the final boss theme, everything fits, and a lot of it is catchy.
+1 Sound Effects: Interestingly, many of the sound effects are appropriated from MM7 despite the graphics being in the style of MM8. The sounds that aren't reused fit in just fine with the old ones, and there's a pleasant selection of blips and bleeps with a hint of sparkle and fwish here and there. Yes, "sparkle and fwish."
+0 Control: This is really tough. Mega Man controls brilliantly, and the menu screen is superbly streamlined, especially considering the number of upgrades that could clunkify the navigation. Bass, however, is atrocious. The single greatest problem is needing to double-tap to dash, rather than pressing Down + A like you do to slide as Mega Man. No matter how quick on the draw you are, pressing the same button twice in a row necessarily increases the amount of time it takes to execute that move—and while gamers who are good at button-mashing might not notice the delay, it can be devastating to people such as myself, who can't even get the rhythm right sometimes and end up running into an enemy instead of dashing under as intended. To make matters worse, Bass is immobilized when he's positioned on the ground while firing, so you can imagine there's even more of a wait when switching from firing to dashing. His double-jumping and multidirectional firing capabilities work great, but he's utterly useless when it comes to quick, close-quarters maneuvering...which is half the game, when the edges of the playing area have been cut off from your view to fit comfortably on a GBA screen. The game is hard enough without needing to fight with basic movement controls. Mega Man is perfect; Bass is almost unplayable.
+0 Stages: The challenges walk a fine line between being satisfyingly tricky and frustratingly difficult: a long vertical shaft filled with disappearing bricks and a section where burrowing enemies quickly destroy the ground you're standing on are just two examples. The stages are complex and the enemies are relentless, often giving you little time to breathe both during and between challenges. That's not necessarily a bad thing—intense gameplay can be a fun test of a player's skill if handled properly—but the difficulty of each challenge might change dramatically depending on whether you're playing as Mega Man or Bass. Certain platforming challenges are next to impossible as Mega Man because he doesn't have a double jump, while boss fights are nightmarish as Bass—his rapid-fire capability is rendered irrelevant by the bosses' period of invulnerability between shots, and each shot barely makes a dent. Being able to switch between the two characters at the press of a button (like in Mega Man X7) would've smoothed out the difficulty, but as it stands, there are massive fluctuations from one area to the next. When the character you're playing as is suitably equipped for the tasks at hand, the challenges are demanding but fair; when that's not the case, the game is almost more trouble than it's worth. I'm pleased that special weapon use factors so prominently into the challenge design (the teleporter stage just before King's castle is especially clever), and I like that the game challenges your mind and endurance just as often as your reflexes, but the inconsistent and incredibly broad range of difficulty throws off the flow of the game.
+0 Bosses: There's a really diverse mix of villains here, including two revamped bosses from MM8. Cold Man puts up a unique fight and looks appropriately refrigerator-y; Burner Man is a royal pain on the smaller GBA screen but looks cool tearing you apart; Pirate Man is a fun addition to the Mega Man pantheon and is aesthetically one of my favorites, with the ::ahem:: tide of the battle changing as the water rises and falls; Ground Man's drill obsession and transformation abilities make his design very distinctive, and he's a solid challenge; Magic Man has a very clever pattern (he only shoots when you do) and lives up to his name nicely; Dynamo Man is a delightful little spaceman with a wicked health-recharging gimmick; returning baddies Astro Man and Tengu Man fit in well with the rest of the gang, and they're much less tedious to fight here thanks to some changes to their attack patterns. A couple of these battles can be infuriating and/or next to impossible without special weapons or very specific tactics, but otherwise this is a very creative and visually interesting batch of baddies. I'm less enthusiastic about the fortress bosses, which—like the level design—walk a fine line between being satisfyingly tricky and frustratingly difficult. Tap-dancing on a platform descending into lava while being taunted by a monkey is as ridiculous a challenge as it sounds, and I can't tell whether or not it's one I enjoy. The King Tank battle is too long, but I enjoy systematically taking out its various systems with special weapon use, so it balances out. The King Jet battle is merciless, but it's intense fun as long as you don't suddenly and unexpectedly die, at which point it becomes the worst battle ever; Mega Man is at a disadvantage here without a double-jump. The fight with King is pure memorization for the first half and reliant on quick thinking and quick reflexes for the second half, which means the first half gets boring really quickly when it's the exciting second half that you need to keep practicing...and Bass is at a severe disadvantage without responsive dash controls. The final boss is fine as Mega Man, but kind of overkill so shortly after fighting King Tank, and incredibly cruel when playing as Bass, who can only jump high enough to get into attack range for a split second. The bosses are so much of a mixed bag that the worst parts cancel out the best parts.
+2 Special Weapons: Spread Drill dishes out continuous damage and can be manually split into progressively smaller drills for a wider area of effect; Magic Card has a low casting cost (sorry; couldn't resist) and is great for taking out enemies directly above you and snatching items that are out of reach; Lightning Bolt is an energy hog, but it deals serious damage to everything on the screen while providing an invaluable moment of invincibility; Remote Mine's impressive splash damage and manual aiming and detonation capabilities make it extremely useful; Wave Burner is surprisingly versatile, as it has a variety of effects against different objects and in different environments, plus the obvious bonus of burning things in front of you; Ice Wall is a neat weapon/utility hybrid that takes out ground-based enemies and can be used as a stationary or moving platform to reach areas that are otherwise to high up to access; Copy Vision provides some extra sustained firepower against enemies that are too big or inconveniently placed to attack effectively with your other weapons; Tengu Blade is the only weapon I haven't found much use for—in part because it's often a little too weak and tricky to aim to be worth using, and in part because all the other weapons are so darn good. Every weapon has at least two different ways you can use it, most of the weapons lay on a good amount of hurt, and there are no gaps in Mega Man's defense—on the ground, in the air, directly above, far away, right up close, big enemies, small enemies...everything's covered.
+1 Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities: The comprehensive shop has a lot to offer, and of course there are screws (including some really huge ones!) with which to buy things. Old favorites such as extra lives, health refills, weapon refills, the Energy Balancer, and the Exit Unit are back, along with several new items of varying purposes and degrees of helpfulness. The Com System allows you to talk with Roll for hints; Super Armor reduces the amount of damage you receive; Auto Charger automatically charges the Mega Buster without needing to hold down the button; Hyper Buster lets Bass shoot through walls; and so on. As is the case in MM8, the permanent upgrades make a tremendous impact on the challenge and enjoyment of the game—particularly for Bass, who's at a severe disadvantage in most boss fights until he gets beefed up a bit. Unfortunately, despite a few items that offer different ways to restore your health, the absence of E-Tanks is sorely felt in this game. The Data CDs are an interesting addition, creating an optional scavenger hunt that's usually fun; I don't know whether to blame this on the level design or the utility, but there's one specific CD at the end of Ground Man's stage (yeah, you know the one) that might as well be impossible to obtain, and it'd definitely be more feasible if Rush Search didn't take so long to dig something up or teleport away at the first sign of trouble.
+2 Ending: Wily concedes defeat once again. In the one ending, Mega Man returns home to be cheered on by Dr. Light and the gang. We normally only see the journey home; it's nice to see what happens after the journey for a chance. However, Mega Man beats himself up for not being efficient enough to save King. Character development! Love it. Roll swoops in with a letter from King, reassuring Mega Man that he is still alive, wishes to atone for his transgression, and hopes they can be friends. In the other ending, Bass demands answers from Wily—what was all this fighting about in the first place? Wily confesses that his faith in Bass had been slipping, so he tried to design an even more powerful robot (King) that wouldn't lose to Mega Man so often. Wily tries to sweet-talk his way into Bass's good graces by saying this proves he's the strongest, but Bass doesn't buy it. Wily tries to show plans for a newer version of King, talking about how Bass and King together would be unstoppable, but Proto Man interrupts and destroys the plans. He takes a moment to talk to Bass about why he'll never beat Mega Man—Bass has nothing to fight for; nothing to lose. Bass seems to have a fleeting internal crisis as Proto Man teleports out, and his response that killing Mega Man is motivation enough sounds almost like he's just telling himself that so he doesn't need to think too hard about his existence right now. For both endings, the Data CD total is displayed at the end, and the story plays out on the left half of the screen while the credits roll by on the right side—which is very economical, and helps prevent the ending from dragging with such a slow (but good) musical theme playing. Both endings provide a sense of closure to the story, and there's a satisfying amount of character interaction to help flesh out what these people and robots are like when they're not shooting everything in sight.
+0 Replay Value: With two playable characters and two different endings, the game is at an advantage even before the Data CDs and numerous upgrades are taken into consideration. The only problem is that the stage selection screen is laid out bizarrely, with each defeated robot master opening up a path to one or more other stages. This limits the number of unique stage orders to 352, which is a far cry from the 576 of the five Game Boy games and MM8, or the 720 of MM1, or the 40,320 of practically any other game in the Classic series. Compounding the problem is that a couple of the stages and bosses might as well be impossible without the right special weapons, especially as Bass, so only the craziest and most experienced players will be able to successfully stray very far from a "recommended" order. The teleporter hatch stage is a nice touch, though, offering a quick puzzle break whenever the player feels like it.
-1 Polish: It isn't a bad idea to fit the Super Famicom-sized Rockman & Forte onto the GBA screen by reducing the amount of the playing field shown, but it makes an already challenging game more difficult than necessary; having a "look ahead" option or some sort of marginal control over the view would've been appreciated. Double-tapping to dash isn't a problem in and of itself, but having completely different controls for what is almost the same move between the two playable characters is unacceptable. The extreme inconsistencies in difficulty between Mega Man and Bass also reflect a lack of polish; it's one thing for some sections to be easier or harder than others depending on the character, but we're talking about some sections being designed for one character with an absolutely minimal regard for the other. It's odd, too, that the Data CDs you collect are not unique to your saved game in progress; once you collect them, they're collected forever, even if you start a new game. I'm sure there were other ways to accommodate needing to play as Mega Man and Bass separately to be able to get them all. On a technical level, everything's peachy keen, but on a planning and design level, there's much to be desired.
+1 Extras/Easter Eggs: The Data CDs add a scavenger hunt element to the game, but as mentioned above, you're out of luck once you collect them all. Many of the Data CDs offer interesting and (often unintentionally) funny information about various friends and foes from the Mega Man pantheon, though many of them feel like a waste of time for the amount of effort you put into getting them. Still, the collection quest adds something meaningful to both the gameplay and Mega Man lore.
+0 Novelty: With graphics, bosses, and enemies recycled from MM8 and sound effects reused from MM7, there's a strong case that MM&B is anything but unique. However, the game successfully presents its reused material in new and interesting ways, supplementing it with more than enough new content to stand on its own as a distinctly different entry in the series. Having multiple playable characters was a first for the Classic series, and the stage selection format is hardly typical. The teleporter hatch ministage really has no precedent in the series, several of the upgrades are brand-new, and though the role of King as the not-villain still adheres to the "fake bad guy" trope we've come to expect, King's character development adds some unexpected complexity to the convention.
Overall Score: +11 (+12 merits, -1 flaws)
+2 Graphics: This is what MM8 should've looked like. I'm still not wild about the rubberized Mega Man and Proto Man designs, but Bass looks pretty awesome, and the backgrounds have been scaled back to MM7 levels of detail—which is to say they're highly detailed and interesting, but not so shiny that they're distracting. Similarly, the stage enemies look as good as they do in MM8, but they don't shower the area with gears and bolts in an overdone explosion when they're destroyed; again, the detail has been scaled back so that it's still functional and pretty, but unobtrusive. All the new (and returning) bosses look great, too.
+1 Music: This upbeat, percussion-driven soundtrack does a good job of making each theme distinctive. What the music occasionally lacks in melodic strength, it tends to make up for in atmosphere and infectious groove. From the "YEAH! LET'S DO THIS!" title screen to the wonderfully heartbreaking Game Over screen, from the merry carnival feel of Magic Man's theme to the tense cacophony of the final boss theme, everything fits, and a lot of it is catchy.
+1 Sound Effects: Interestingly, many of the sound effects are appropriated from MM7 despite the graphics being in the style of MM8. The sounds that aren't reused fit in just fine with the old ones, and there's a pleasant selection of blips and bleeps with a hint of sparkle and fwish here and there. Yes, "sparkle and fwish."
+0 Control: This is really tough. Mega Man controls brilliantly, and the menu screen is superbly streamlined, especially considering the number of upgrades that could clunkify the navigation. Bass, however, is atrocious. The single greatest problem is needing to double-tap to dash, rather than pressing Down + A like you do to slide as Mega Man. No matter how quick on the draw you are, pressing the same button twice in a row necessarily increases the amount of time it takes to execute that move—and while gamers who are good at button-mashing might not notice the delay, it can be devastating to people such as myself, who can't even get the rhythm right sometimes and end up running into an enemy instead of dashing under as intended. To make matters worse, Bass is immobilized when he's positioned on the ground while firing, so you can imagine there's even more of a wait when switching from firing to dashing. His double-jumping and multidirectional firing capabilities work great, but he's utterly useless when it comes to quick, close-quarters maneuvering...which is half the game, when the edges of the playing area have been cut off from your view to fit comfortably on a GBA screen. The game is hard enough without needing to fight with basic movement controls. Mega Man is perfect; Bass is almost unplayable.
+0 Stages: The challenges walk a fine line between being satisfyingly tricky and frustratingly difficult: a long vertical shaft filled with disappearing bricks and a section where burrowing enemies quickly destroy the ground you're standing on are just two examples. The stages are complex and the enemies are relentless, often giving you little time to breathe both during and between challenges. That's not necessarily a bad thing—intense gameplay can be a fun test of a player's skill if handled properly—but the difficulty of each challenge might change dramatically depending on whether you're playing as Mega Man or Bass. Certain platforming challenges are next to impossible as Mega Man because he doesn't have a double jump, while boss fights are nightmarish as Bass—his rapid-fire capability is rendered irrelevant by the bosses' period of invulnerability between shots, and each shot barely makes a dent. Being able to switch between the two characters at the press of a button (like in Mega Man X7) would've smoothed out the difficulty, but as it stands, there are massive fluctuations from one area to the next. When the character you're playing as is suitably equipped for the tasks at hand, the challenges are demanding but fair; when that's not the case, the game is almost more trouble than it's worth. I'm pleased that special weapon use factors so prominently into the challenge design (the teleporter stage just before King's castle is especially clever), and I like that the game challenges your mind and endurance just as often as your reflexes, but the inconsistent and incredibly broad range of difficulty throws off the flow of the game.
+0 Bosses: There's a really diverse mix of villains here, including two revamped bosses from MM8. Cold Man puts up a unique fight and looks appropriately refrigerator-y; Burner Man is a royal pain on the smaller GBA screen but looks cool tearing you apart; Pirate Man is a fun addition to the Mega Man pantheon and is aesthetically one of my favorites, with the ::ahem:: tide of the battle changing as the water rises and falls; Ground Man's drill obsession and transformation abilities make his design very distinctive, and he's a solid challenge; Magic Man has a very clever pattern (he only shoots when you do) and lives up to his name nicely; Dynamo Man is a delightful little spaceman with a wicked health-recharging gimmick; returning baddies Astro Man and Tengu Man fit in well with the rest of the gang, and they're much less tedious to fight here thanks to some changes to their attack patterns. A couple of these battles can be infuriating and/or next to impossible without special weapons or very specific tactics, but otherwise this is a very creative and visually interesting batch of baddies. I'm less enthusiastic about the fortress bosses, which—like the level design—walk a fine line between being satisfyingly tricky and frustratingly difficult. Tap-dancing on a platform descending into lava while being taunted by a monkey is as ridiculous a challenge as it sounds, and I can't tell whether or not it's one I enjoy. The King Tank battle is too long, but I enjoy systematically taking out its various systems with special weapon use, so it balances out. The King Jet battle is merciless, but it's intense fun as long as you don't suddenly and unexpectedly die, at which point it becomes the worst battle ever; Mega Man is at a disadvantage here without a double-jump. The fight with King is pure memorization for the first half and reliant on quick thinking and quick reflexes for the second half, which means the first half gets boring really quickly when it's the exciting second half that you need to keep practicing...and Bass is at a severe disadvantage without responsive dash controls. The final boss is fine as Mega Man, but kind of overkill so shortly after fighting King Tank, and incredibly cruel when playing as Bass, who can only jump high enough to get into attack range for a split second. The bosses are so much of a mixed bag that the worst parts cancel out the best parts.
+2 Special Weapons: Spread Drill dishes out continuous damage and can be manually split into progressively smaller drills for a wider area of effect; Magic Card has a low casting cost (sorry; couldn't resist) and is great for taking out enemies directly above you and snatching items that are out of reach; Lightning Bolt is an energy hog, but it deals serious damage to everything on the screen while providing an invaluable moment of invincibility; Remote Mine's impressive splash damage and manual aiming and detonation capabilities make it extremely useful; Wave Burner is surprisingly versatile, as it has a variety of effects against different objects and in different environments, plus the obvious bonus of burning things in front of you; Ice Wall is a neat weapon/utility hybrid that takes out ground-based enemies and can be used as a stationary or moving platform to reach areas that are otherwise to high up to access; Copy Vision provides some extra sustained firepower against enemies that are too big or inconveniently placed to attack effectively with your other weapons; Tengu Blade is the only weapon I haven't found much use for—in part because it's often a little too weak and tricky to aim to be worth using, and in part because all the other weapons are so darn good. Every weapon has at least two different ways you can use it, most of the weapons lay on a good amount of hurt, and there are no gaps in Mega Man's defense—on the ground, in the air, directly above, far away, right up close, big enemies, small enemies...everything's covered.
+1 Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities: The comprehensive shop has a lot to offer, and of course there are screws (including some really huge ones!) with which to buy things. Old favorites such as extra lives, health refills, weapon refills, the Energy Balancer, and the Exit Unit are back, along with several new items of varying purposes and degrees of helpfulness. The Com System allows you to talk with Roll for hints; Super Armor reduces the amount of damage you receive; Auto Charger automatically charges the Mega Buster without needing to hold down the button; Hyper Buster lets Bass shoot through walls; and so on. As is the case in MM8, the permanent upgrades make a tremendous impact on the challenge and enjoyment of the game—particularly for Bass, who's at a severe disadvantage in most boss fights until he gets beefed up a bit. Unfortunately, despite a few items that offer different ways to restore your health, the absence of E-Tanks is sorely felt in this game. The Data CDs are an interesting addition, creating an optional scavenger hunt that's usually fun; I don't know whether to blame this on the level design or the utility, but there's one specific CD at the end of Ground Man's stage (yeah, you know the one) that might as well be impossible to obtain, and it'd definitely be more feasible if Rush Search didn't take so long to dig something up or teleport away at the first sign of trouble.
+2 Ending: Wily concedes defeat once again. In the one ending, Mega Man returns home to be cheered on by Dr. Light and the gang. We normally only see the journey home; it's nice to see what happens after the journey for a chance. However, Mega Man beats himself up for not being efficient enough to save King. Character development! Love it. Roll swoops in with a letter from King, reassuring Mega Man that he is still alive, wishes to atone for his transgression, and hopes they can be friends. In the other ending, Bass demands answers from Wily—what was all this fighting about in the first place? Wily confesses that his faith in Bass had been slipping, so he tried to design an even more powerful robot (King) that wouldn't lose to Mega Man so often. Wily tries to sweet-talk his way into Bass's good graces by saying this proves he's the strongest, but Bass doesn't buy it. Wily tries to show plans for a newer version of King, talking about how Bass and King together would be unstoppable, but Proto Man interrupts and destroys the plans. He takes a moment to talk to Bass about why he'll never beat Mega Man—Bass has nothing to fight for; nothing to lose. Bass seems to have a fleeting internal crisis as Proto Man teleports out, and his response that killing Mega Man is motivation enough sounds almost like he's just telling himself that so he doesn't need to think too hard about his existence right now. For both endings, the Data CD total is displayed at the end, and the story plays out on the left half of the screen while the credits roll by on the right side—which is very economical, and helps prevent the ending from dragging with such a slow (but good) musical theme playing. Both endings provide a sense of closure to the story, and there's a satisfying amount of character interaction to help flesh out what these people and robots are like when they're not shooting everything in sight.
+0 Replay Value: With two playable characters and two different endings, the game is at an advantage even before the Data CDs and numerous upgrades are taken into consideration. The only problem is that the stage selection screen is laid out bizarrely, with each defeated robot master opening up a path to one or more other stages. This limits the number of unique stage orders to 352, which is a far cry from the 576 of the five Game Boy games and MM8, or the 720 of MM1, or the 40,320 of practically any other game in the Classic series. Compounding the problem is that a couple of the stages and bosses might as well be impossible without the right special weapons, especially as Bass, so only the craziest and most experienced players will be able to successfully stray very far from a "recommended" order. The teleporter hatch stage is a nice touch, though, offering a quick puzzle break whenever the player feels like it.
-1 Polish: It isn't a bad idea to fit the Super Famicom-sized Rockman & Forte onto the GBA screen by reducing the amount of the playing field shown, but it makes an already challenging game more difficult than necessary; having a "look ahead" option or some sort of marginal control over the view would've been appreciated. Double-tapping to dash isn't a problem in and of itself, but having completely different controls for what is almost the same move between the two playable characters is unacceptable. The extreme inconsistencies in difficulty between Mega Man and Bass also reflect a lack of polish; it's one thing for some sections to be easier or harder than others depending on the character, but we're talking about some sections being designed for one character with an absolutely minimal regard for the other. It's odd, too, that the Data CDs you collect are not unique to your saved game in progress; once you collect them, they're collected forever, even if you start a new game. I'm sure there were other ways to accommodate needing to play as Mega Man and Bass separately to be able to get them all. On a technical level, everything's peachy keen, but on a planning and design level, there's much to be desired.
+1 Extras/Easter Eggs: The Data CDs add a scavenger hunt element to the game, but as mentioned above, you're out of luck once you collect them all. Many of the Data CDs offer interesting and (often unintentionally) funny information about various friends and foes from the Mega Man pantheon, though many of them feel like a waste of time for the amount of effort you put into getting them. Still, the collection quest adds something meaningful to both the gameplay and Mega Man lore.
+0 Novelty: With graphics, bosses, and enemies recycled from MM8 and sound effects reused from MM7, there's a strong case that MM&B is anything but unique. However, the game successfully presents its reused material in new and interesting ways, supplementing it with more than enough new content to stand on its own as a distinctly different entry in the series. Having multiple playable characters was a first for the Classic series, and the stage selection format is hardly typical. The teleporter hatch ministage really has no precedent in the series, several of the upgrades are brand-new, and though the role of King as the not-villain still adheres to the "fake bad guy" trope we've come to expect, King's character development adds some unexpected complexity to the convention.
Overall Score: +11 (+12 merits, -1 flaws)
Mega Man & Bass: Challenger From the Future (WS)
+1 Story: Assuming the Internet has reliably translated the Japanese game script, the story is as follows: A mysterious group of robots known as the Dimensions begins attacking a city without provocation. Dr. Light and Dr. Wily send Mega Man and Bass, respectively, to investigate the disturbance, and they put aside their differences long enough to get to the bottom of the chaos. The leader of the Dimensions is a robot that looks suspiciously like Quint from MMII, who looked suspiciously like Mega Man. This so-called Rockman Shadow refuses to give any straight answers about his identity or motives until the rest of his group is defeated. Mega Man and Bass play "guess why we're saving the world" right up to the very end, but there's an interesting payoff for being left in the dark all game, and it's refreshing that Wily isn't the villain for once.
-1 Graphics: On the one blaster-for-a-hand, there's a superb amount of detail in the backgrounds (parallax scrolling is a plus), and there's genuine emotion in some of the cutscene illustrations—in particular, the image of Rockman Shadow after his defeat is almost heartbreaking. On the other blaster-for-a-hand, there's rarely a cohesive theme tying together the locations and the enemies, most stages tend to look the same after a while (practically all the foreground objects are either large cubes or small cubes), and the character sprites look like some strange fusion of MM&B and MM (PC). The stage enemies are random animals and inanimate objects that seldom resemble robots. Even the iconic Metall is barely recognizable as such. Bass is tolerable; he's kinda chibi and cute, and hands-down more natural-looking than in MM10. Mega Man looks a little deformed and slumpy (especially when put next to Proto Man), and his sliding animation makes him look like he didn't quite make it out of the trash compressor section of Dust Man's stage in time. I never much cared for Quint's design, but Rockman Shadow makes it passably cool. The other bosses are downright goofy—Aircon Man and Dangan Man look like the Mega Man bosses I dreamed up in third grade, Komuso Man is a regular dude who got lost on the way to a cosplay convention, Konro Man looks like the mascot of the worst sports team ever, and Clock Men...what are they even doing. Compass Man is the only one who feels remotely like he belongs in this universe, but that's probably because he's a fusion of Saturn and Sword Man. The graphics are fine enough on their own, but they're either too dull or too weird to completely fit in with the rest of the franchise.
+1 Music: All the tracks from the original Mega Man & Bass have been reused and, in some cases, repurposed—the character select music is now the stage select music, Burner Man's theme is now used as background for cutscenes for some reason, etc. The arrangements are slightly different (often slower) and the instrument set is much closer to a Game Boy sound than a Super Nintendo one, but the overall quality of the soundtrack remains pleasantly intact.
+0 Sound Effects: Bloopy and chirpy, the sounds have a nondescript "video game" feel about them that isn't particularly good or bad, but also not particularly Mega Man. Actually, they sound a bit more like Gradius than anything. There's enough noise to let you know that things are happening (except for your hero dying; way to make that sound utterly nondescript), and you won't miss anything if you play with the sound muted.
+0 Control: A little floaty, but very responsive. Irritatingly, the weapon menu always starts with the cursor on your default weapon, and not whatever you currently have equipped. Aside from being contrary to basically every other Mega Man game, this behavior makes it more difficult than necessary to remember your place when frantically cycling through weapons or just pausing to take a breather.
+0 Stages: Unfocused level design goes hand-in-blaster-for-a-hand with the samey stage aesthetics to create a recurring sensation of "Wait, what stage am I playing now?" Individual challenges are interesting enough—sneaky time bombs hidden in the floor, rotating enemies that your shots pass through at certain angles, a corridor where the floor keeps sinking, GRAVITY FLIPPING THANK YOU FOR FINALLY BRINGING THAT BACK, parts of the ceiling falling off at you, enemies that swing a chain of shot-absorbing spike balls at you, a variety of tricky minibosses—but there's seemingly nothing deliberate about their arrangement. Each stage is a series of random and sometimes repetitive platforming challenges, and there's neither a visual theme nor a gameplay theme that ties everything together. The one exception is Aircon Man's utterly baffling stage (desert + underwater = sky boss???), which at least commits to an internally coherent theme with something of a learning curve for the underwater section. But the underwater section is awful, so maybe it's better that there aren't more themed challenges. Riding easily perforable sea creatures through a narrow minefield of spikes for so many screens in a row is asking a bit too much. There are some frustrating and flat-out cheap sections, but they're usually limited to a single screen, and some problems can be avoided with the right character, weapon, or item. I think it's more despite the level design than because of it that the stages end up being decent fun; the individual challenges are strong and straightforward enough that you can drop them almost anywhere to create a sufficiently enjoyable challenge.
+1 Bosses: Goofy visual designs aside, the boss fights are pretty fun. Pattern recognition is a big part of the battles, but the bosses' attack patterns are tricky and varied enough that you can't just sleepwalk through the fight once you've cracked the pattern. The bosses do a great job of utilizing the space they're given; you'll fight the bosses on the ground as often as in the air, and the screen is small enough that you don't run into a Slash Man or Sheep Man situation where you're just waiting for the boss to get back into position so you can hit him again (except with Komuso Man, who's invincible and out of reach for just a little longer than I prefer). Another similarity to MM (PC) is that the bosses have no invincibility frames; however, their health bars are longer, so you get the satisfaction of wailing on them with the weapon of your choice but not the disappointment of the battle being over too quickly.
Special Weapons:
Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities:
Ending:
Replay Value:
Polish:
Extras/Easter Eggs:
Novelty:
Overall Score: X (+Y merits, -Z flaws)
-1 Graphics: On the one blaster-for-a-hand, there's a superb amount of detail in the backgrounds (parallax scrolling is a plus), and there's genuine emotion in some of the cutscene illustrations—in particular, the image of Rockman Shadow after his defeat is almost heartbreaking. On the other blaster-for-a-hand, there's rarely a cohesive theme tying together the locations and the enemies, most stages tend to look the same after a while (practically all the foreground objects are either large cubes or small cubes), and the character sprites look like some strange fusion of MM&B and MM (PC). The stage enemies are random animals and inanimate objects that seldom resemble robots. Even the iconic Metall is barely recognizable as such. Bass is tolerable; he's kinda chibi and cute, and hands-down more natural-looking than in MM10. Mega Man looks a little deformed and slumpy (especially when put next to Proto Man), and his sliding animation makes him look like he didn't quite make it out of the trash compressor section of Dust Man's stage in time. I never much cared for Quint's design, but Rockman Shadow makes it passably cool. The other bosses are downright goofy—Aircon Man and Dangan Man look like the Mega Man bosses I dreamed up in third grade, Komuso Man is a regular dude who got lost on the way to a cosplay convention, Konro Man looks like the mascot of the worst sports team ever, and Clock Men...what are they even doing. Compass Man is the only one who feels remotely like he belongs in this universe, but that's probably because he's a fusion of Saturn and Sword Man. The graphics are fine enough on their own, but they're either too dull or too weird to completely fit in with the rest of the franchise.
+1 Music: All the tracks from the original Mega Man & Bass have been reused and, in some cases, repurposed—the character select music is now the stage select music, Burner Man's theme is now used as background for cutscenes for some reason, etc. The arrangements are slightly different (often slower) and the instrument set is much closer to a Game Boy sound than a Super Nintendo one, but the overall quality of the soundtrack remains pleasantly intact.
+0 Sound Effects: Bloopy and chirpy, the sounds have a nondescript "video game" feel about them that isn't particularly good or bad, but also not particularly Mega Man. Actually, they sound a bit more like Gradius than anything. There's enough noise to let you know that things are happening (except for your hero dying; way to make that sound utterly nondescript), and you won't miss anything if you play with the sound muted.
+0 Control: A little floaty, but very responsive. Irritatingly, the weapon menu always starts with the cursor on your default weapon, and not whatever you currently have equipped. Aside from being contrary to basically every other Mega Man game, this behavior makes it more difficult than necessary to remember your place when frantically cycling through weapons or just pausing to take a breather.
+0 Stages: Unfocused level design goes hand-in-blaster-for-a-hand with the samey stage aesthetics to create a recurring sensation of "Wait, what stage am I playing now?" Individual challenges are interesting enough—sneaky time bombs hidden in the floor, rotating enemies that your shots pass through at certain angles, a corridor where the floor keeps sinking, GRAVITY FLIPPING THANK YOU FOR FINALLY BRINGING THAT BACK, parts of the ceiling falling off at you, enemies that swing a chain of shot-absorbing spike balls at you, a variety of tricky minibosses—but there's seemingly nothing deliberate about their arrangement. Each stage is a series of random and sometimes repetitive platforming challenges, and there's neither a visual theme nor a gameplay theme that ties everything together. The one exception is Aircon Man's utterly baffling stage (desert + underwater = sky boss???), which at least commits to an internally coherent theme with something of a learning curve for the underwater section. But the underwater section is awful, so maybe it's better that there aren't more themed challenges. Riding easily perforable sea creatures through a narrow minefield of spikes for so many screens in a row is asking a bit too much. There are some frustrating and flat-out cheap sections, but they're usually limited to a single screen, and some problems can be avoided with the right character, weapon, or item. I think it's more despite the level design than because of it that the stages end up being decent fun; the individual challenges are strong and straightforward enough that you can drop them almost anywhere to create a sufficiently enjoyable challenge.
+1 Bosses: Goofy visual designs aside, the boss fights are pretty fun. Pattern recognition is a big part of the battles, but the bosses' attack patterns are tricky and varied enough that you can't just sleepwalk through the fight once you've cracked the pattern. The bosses do a great job of utilizing the space they're given; you'll fight the bosses on the ground as often as in the air, and the screen is small enough that you don't run into a Slash Man or Sheep Man situation where you're just waiting for the boss to get back into position so you can hit him again (except with Komuso Man, who's invincible and out of reach for just a little longer than I prefer). Another similarity to MM (PC) is that the bosses have no invincibility frames; however, their health bars are longer, so you get the satisfaction of wailing on them with the weapon of your choice but not the disappointment of the battle being over too quickly.
Special Weapons:
Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities:
Ending:
Replay Value:
Polish:
Extras/Easter Eggs:
Novelty:
Overall Score: X (+Y merits, -Z flaws)
Mega Man (PC)
+0 Story: Not that you'll see anything about it in game, but Dr. Wily has hijacked a supercomputer known as CRORQ, which—in addition to being awkward to pronounce—has the power to...um...take over the world, and stuff. And beating up the bosses earns you keycards that will grant you access to Dr. Wily's lair. Hey, it's an excuse to blow up robots.
-2 Graphics: Look, I'm an apologist for this game, and in the grand scheme of early '90s DOS games, the graphics on this one ain't so bad. Compared with anything else that calls itself Mega Man, though, the game is a barely recognizable eyesore. Backgrounds are painfully simple and repetitive (it's honestly a strain to stare at some of these backgrounds scrolling by for too long); foregrounds look generic and muddy; the enemies are run-of-the-mill insects and vermin that don't even look like robots; bosses are pretty decent but could just as easily be from any game other than Mega Man; the stage select and cutscene screens look hurriedly hand-drawn; and Mega Man himself looks less like a Blue Bomber and more like a Pudgy Pillager.
-2 Music: There is none. Absolutely no music. Again, this is par for the course with an early '90s DOS game, but it sure is odd for a Mega Man game.
+0 Sound Effects: There's not a huge variety of sound effects, and there's a tendency toward chirpiness in them, but they get the point across just fine.
-2 Control: This Mega Man was not built for fast-paced combat. Laggy jumping, leaden running, and sluggish shooting make for an inelegant experience. The game is by no means unplayable, but it's so difficult to dodge and fire effectively that intentionally getting hit becomes a central strategy for survival. Barreling through each area with little or no regard for your own well-being is certainly one way to play, but it shouldn't be the only one the control lends itself to.
+0 Stages: Say what you will about this game, but the level design is solid. There's a good mix of platforming and enemy-based challenges: you've got conveyor belts, endlessly respawning bats, disappearing bricks, swarms of mosquitoes, water that pushes you along with the current, lava dripping from the ceiling, ants too low to the ground to hit with your normal weapon, destructible walls that slow your progress, and relentlessly leaping guard dogs, to name a few. The majority of the challenges are at least fair, if not somewhat repetitive—extended sections with little or no variation in what's being thrown at you tend to drag on sometimes, but there's always a power-up at the end of a particularly tricky area, and it's rare that the game is flat-out unfair with its enemy or platform placement (though the few exceptions are horrendous—you try picking up that E-Tank at the beginning of Sonic Man's stage). Really, the challenges in this game are no better or worse than those in any other Mega Man game; it's the challenging controls that make the reasonably well-designed challenges look bad.
+1 Bosses: Although their designs are relatively generic and don't scream "Mega Man," I have a soft spot for all of the Robot Masters in this game. Dyna Man is a hopping maniac with enough randomness in his bomb-dropping pattern to be a bit tricky; Volt Man (who looks more like a robot than almost anything else in the game) is also a hopping maniac, but waiting for that brief opening to drop his barrier (which breaks apart in different directions when he fires it, which is neat) adds some welcome length and strategy to an otherwise short battle; Sonic Man is essentially Heat Man in Bubble Man's body, tossing out a pile of projectiles and zipping (slowly) back and forth between two points. Then there's...um...nobody else? Really, only three Robot Masters? Huh. Well, aside from this penchant for hopping that Dyna Man and Volt Man both have, each boss has a unique design and skill set, and nobody's so difficult that just standing in front of them and mashing the attack key won't work. Boss fights are unusual in that you can rail on the bosses without worrying about invincibility frames; it's not as challenging to be able to turbo-fire everyone to death in a matter of seconds, but boy is it fun. The final boss is perfectly appropriate for a Mega Man game, with two forms, a specific area that's vulnerable to attack, and a design that very clearly looks like a robot. The battle is over pretty quickly if you know what you're doing, but the "death machine marching slowly toward you and cornering you" routine is effective in adding a smidge of tension to the fight.
+1 Special Weapons: There are only three weapons, but more than 66% of them are useful, which is better than I can say for many other Mega Man games. Force Field is powerful and provides continuous protection (sounds like a deodorant, right?); Sonic Wave bounces off of walls and is wide enough to hit those hard-to-reach enemies (that also sounds like a product advertisement!); Nuclear Detonator dishes out a lot of damage to anything in the explosion radius, and you can manually trigger the detonation, but it's too bouncy to aim reliably, and the fact that YOU can be harmed by the blast makes it a liability—but it's not a total loss, because it's great for taking down barrier walls.
-2 Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities: There are no utilities of any kind, but there are 1-ups and large and small weapon capsules and energy pellets. Why, there are even E-Tanks! But there are only two of them in the game, and only one of them is physically possible to obtain—and even then, it's so awkwardly accessible that it might as well be impossible.
-2 Ending: CRORQ explodes, apparently taking Dr. Wily with it...and then we're treated to a single screen that manages to put Wily's trademark groveling, three sentences of end-of-game narration, and the ending credits all in one place. That's fine for a PC game of its time, but it hardly counts for a Mega Man game.
-2 Replay Value: One intro stage, one long-ish fortress stage, and three stages of your choice in-between. That's...six different orders in which you can play through the game. Six. Compared to the hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands for every other game in the series. At least a few areas are large enough to offer multiple paths, and there's a secret or two if you've got Nuclear Detonator.
-1 Polish: There's no excuse for that one E-Tank being completely inaccessible, Dr. Wily's castle doesn't look anything like a castle, and the majority of the enemies don't look anything like robots. However, the game does manage to stay true to its roots in many regards: in addition to the obvious stage select screen, there are boss rematches in the fortress stage, the final boss has two forms, and Wily does technically grovel at the end. The self-destruct option is a nice touch, as there are a few spots where you can get yourself stuck.
+1 Extras/Easter Eggs: Did I mention there's a self-destruct option? Hilarious. It's also a hoot to hold DOWN while jumping repeatedly to cluck like a chicken.
+1 Novelty: This game marks the very first appearance of an intro stage in the series (predating MM7 and even MMX), and the entire game experience is substantially different from normal due to the graphical deviations, control differences, and total lack of music. Having only three robot masters and one fortress stage is also a departure, as is the ability to rail on the bosses without worrying about invincibility frames. The rest of the game is fairly familiar, though—some variations on the enemies and challenges we've faced, but nothing radically outside the norm.
Overall Score: -7 (+4 merits, -11 flaws)
(Last updated Sep 25, 2018)
-2 Graphics: Look, I'm an apologist for this game, and in the grand scheme of early '90s DOS games, the graphics on this one ain't so bad. Compared with anything else that calls itself Mega Man, though, the game is a barely recognizable eyesore. Backgrounds are painfully simple and repetitive (it's honestly a strain to stare at some of these backgrounds scrolling by for too long); foregrounds look generic and muddy; the enemies are run-of-the-mill insects and vermin that don't even look like robots; bosses are pretty decent but could just as easily be from any game other than Mega Man; the stage select and cutscene screens look hurriedly hand-drawn; and Mega Man himself looks less like a Blue Bomber and more like a Pudgy Pillager.
-2 Music: There is none. Absolutely no music. Again, this is par for the course with an early '90s DOS game, but it sure is odd for a Mega Man game.
+0 Sound Effects: There's not a huge variety of sound effects, and there's a tendency toward chirpiness in them, but they get the point across just fine.
-2 Control: This Mega Man was not built for fast-paced combat. Laggy jumping, leaden running, and sluggish shooting make for an inelegant experience. The game is by no means unplayable, but it's so difficult to dodge and fire effectively that intentionally getting hit becomes a central strategy for survival. Barreling through each area with little or no regard for your own well-being is certainly one way to play, but it shouldn't be the only one the control lends itself to.
+0 Stages: Say what you will about this game, but the level design is solid. There's a good mix of platforming and enemy-based challenges: you've got conveyor belts, endlessly respawning bats, disappearing bricks, swarms of mosquitoes, water that pushes you along with the current, lava dripping from the ceiling, ants too low to the ground to hit with your normal weapon, destructible walls that slow your progress, and relentlessly leaping guard dogs, to name a few. The majority of the challenges are at least fair, if not somewhat repetitive—extended sections with little or no variation in what's being thrown at you tend to drag on sometimes, but there's always a power-up at the end of a particularly tricky area, and it's rare that the game is flat-out unfair with its enemy or platform placement (though the few exceptions are horrendous—you try picking up that E-Tank at the beginning of Sonic Man's stage). Really, the challenges in this game are no better or worse than those in any other Mega Man game; it's the challenging controls that make the reasonably well-designed challenges look bad.
+1 Bosses: Although their designs are relatively generic and don't scream "Mega Man," I have a soft spot for all of the Robot Masters in this game. Dyna Man is a hopping maniac with enough randomness in his bomb-dropping pattern to be a bit tricky; Volt Man (who looks more like a robot than almost anything else in the game) is also a hopping maniac, but waiting for that brief opening to drop his barrier (which breaks apart in different directions when he fires it, which is neat) adds some welcome length and strategy to an otherwise short battle; Sonic Man is essentially Heat Man in Bubble Man's body, tossing out a pile of projectiles and zipping (slowly) back and forth between two points. Then there's...um...nobody else? Really, only three Robot Masters? Huh. Well, aside from this penchant for hopping that Dyna Man and Volt Man both have, each boss has a unique design and skill set, and nobody's so difficult that just standing in front of them and mashing the attack key won't work. Boss fights are unusual in that you can rail on the bosses without worrying about invincibility frames; it's not as challenging to be able to turbo-fire everyone to death in a matter of seconds, but boy is it fun. The final boss is perfectly appropriate for a Mega Man game, with two forms, a specific area that's vulnerable to attack, and a design that very clearly looks like a robot. The battle is over pretty quickly if you know what you're doing, but the "death machine marching slowly toward you and cornering you" routine is effective in adding a smidge of tension to the fight.
+1 Special Weapons: There are only three weapons, but more than 66% of them are useful, which is better than I can say for many other Mega Man games. Force Field is powerful and provides continuous protection (sounds like a deodorant, right?); Sonic Wave bounces off of walls and is wide enough to hit those hard-to-reach enemies (that also sounds like a product advertisement!); Nuclear Detonator dishes out a lot of damage to anything in the explosion radius, and you can manually trigger the detonation, but it's too bouncy to aim reliably, and the fact that YOU can be harmed by the blast makes it a liability—but it's not a total loss, because it's great for taking down barrier walls.
-2 Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities: There are no utilities of any kind, but there are 1-ups and large and small weapon capsules and energy pellets. Why, there are even E-Tanks! But there are only two of them in the game, and only one of them is physically possible to obtain—and even then, it's so awkwardly accessible that it might as well be impossible.
-2 Ending: CRORQ explodes, apparently taking Dr. Wily with it...and then we're treated to a single screen that manages to put Wily's trademark groveling, three sentences of end-of-game narration, and the ending credits all in one place. That's fine for a PC game of its time, but it hardly counts for a Mega Man game.
-2 Replay Value: One intro stage, one long-ish fortress stage, and three stages of your choice in-between. That's...six different orders in which you can play through the game. Six. Compared to the hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands for every other game in the series. At least a few areas are large enough to offer multiple paths, and there's a secret or two if you've got Nuclear Detonator.
-1 Polish: There's no excuse for that one E-Tank being completely inaccessible, Dr. Wily's castle doesn't look anything like a castle, and the majority of the enemies don't look anything like robots. However, the game does manage to stay true to its roots in many regards: in addition to the obvious stage select screen, there are boss rematches in the fortress stage, the final boss has two forms, and Wily does technically grovel at the end. The self-destruct option is a nice touch, as there are a few spots where you can get yourself stuck.
+1 Extras/Easter Eggs: Did I mention there's a self-destruct option? Hilarious. It's also a hoot to hold DOWN while jumping repeatedly to cluck like a chicken.
+1 Novelty: This game marks the very first appearance of an intro stage in the series (predating MM7 and even MMX), and the entire game experience is substantially different from normal due to the graphical deviations, control differences, and total lack of music. Having only three robot masters and one fortress stage is also a departure, as is the ability to rail on the bosses without worrying about invincibility frames. The rest of the game is fairly familiar, though—some variations on the enemies and challenges we've faced, but nothing radically outside the norm.
Overall Score: -7 (+4 merits, -11 flaws)
(Last updated Sep 25, 2018)
Mega Man 3 (PC)
-1 Story: THE ROBOTS ARE REVOLTING! And...go. Look, I'll take almost any excuse to blow up robots, but "robots are attacking and need to be blown up" is thin even by my standards. Failing to identify Wily as the obvious culprit from the get-go makes matters worse, because there's that teensy hint of mystery about who is responsible, but no big reveal. Granted, everything we know about the story comes from the back of the game box, but the fact that there is a story means that I can bust the game for having a weak one that isn't even fully developed in or out of game.
-1 Graphics: Still decidedly un-Mega-Man-ish in appearance, but easier on the eyes. There's a lot more variety in the decor, though some sections (particularly throughout Torch Man's and Blade Man's stages) stick with the previous game's muddy and repetitive aesthetics. There's also a good amount of animation; open flames, waterfalls, swaying plants, and bubbling radioactive goo liven up the backgrounds quite a bit. Generic insects and animals still comprise much of the enemy roster, but a couple foes look enough like robots (or at least like fantasy creatures and hired soldiers) to make Mega Man seem like a super fighting robot again instead of an exterminator with explosives. The cutscenes are more detailed and respectable this time around, and the boss designs—while they lack a certain elegance and are flagrant retouches of the bosses from MM2 and MM3—at least look like proper robots this time.
-2 Music: There's only one tune, and it's Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sounds of Silence" on constant loop. Minus the vocals and instruments.
-2 Sound Effects: All the same sound effects from the previous DOS game are back, but Mega Man is about the only thing in the entire game that makes noise anymore. Silent enemies fire silent projectiles, and the last two bosses are the only enemies that make noise if Mega Man doesn't prompt them to. Considering how much longer this game is than the last one, the excessive silence really stands out. Dripping liquid and underwater air bubbles are the only parts of the environment that assert themselves with an audio cue, but the sound effects happen at such short intervals that they quickly get annoying. The noise for the dialogue text is the worst offender; I'm normally pretty tolerant of high-pitched sound effects, but that BEDLEDLEDLEDLE is as obnoxious to listen to as it is to spell.
-2 Control: Things haven't gotten any better since the last game. And now they've added swimming.
-2 Stages: On paper, these stages look really cool. More so than basically any other Mega Man game, a real attempt was made to make each location look and feel like a real place, not just a video game stage. Look at a map of Wave Man's stage, or Shark Man's stage, or Oil Man's stage, and you'll see what I mean. It's impressive and endearing, but it's unfortunately not enough to counterbalance the problems with playing these stages. For starters, these stages are TOO LONG. The standard screen count for the Classic series is in the 20-30 range; although the fluid camera motion makes it difficult to get an exact count, my estimates put this game in the 50-90 range. That's outrageous. At least MM8, which has stages of comparably outrageous length, features several screens that go by very quickly (namely, the sledding sections), packs a decent amount of variety into the challenges, and allows the player to restart halfway through the stage on a game over. MMIII (PC) has the same three or four enemies showing up in every stage, repetitive level architecture, and no gameplay-altering gimmicks to speak of (aside from swimming, which is at least different, if not entirely good). Moreover, the stages aren't purely linear; rooms are vast enough and passageways twisty enough that it's easy to get lost—or, worse yet, knocked off a platform and down several screens to an area you've already cleared. Considering all the instances of inconsiderate enemy placement and oddly spaced platforms, this is something that happens all too often. The bulk of the game is a slog, and not even the varied graphics and location maps can prevent most of the stages from blending together. In my mind, there's the Wily stage, Shark Man's stage, and...the rest of 'em.
Bosses:
Special Weapons:
Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities:
Ending:
Replay Value:
Polish:
Extras/Easter Eggs:
Novelty:
Overall Score: X (+Y merits, -Z flaws)
-1 Graphics: Still decidedly un-Mega-Man-ish in appearance, but easier on the eyes. There's a lot more variety in the decor, though some sections (particularly throughout Torch Man's and Blade Man's stages) stick with the previous game's muddy and repetitive aesthetics. There's also a good amount of animation; open flames, waterfalls, swaying plants, and bubbling radioactive goo liven up the backgrounds quite a bit. Generic insects and animals still comprise much of the enemy roster, but a couple foes look enough like robots (or at least like fantasy creatures and hired soldiers) to make Mega Man seem like a super fighting robot again instead of an exterminator with explosives. The cutscenes are more detailed and respectable this time around, and the boss designs—while they lack a certain elegance and are flagrant retouches of the bosses from MM2 and MM3—at least look like proper robots this time.
-2 Music: There's only one tune, and it's Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sounds of Silence" on constant loop. Minus the vocals and instruments.
-2 Sound Effects: All the same sound effects from the previous DOS game are back, but Mega Man is about the only thing in the entire game that makes noise anymore. Silent enemies fire silent projectiles, and the last two bosses are the only enemies that make noise if Mega Man doesn't prompt them to. Considering how much longer this game is than the last one, the excessive silence really stands out. Dripping liquid and underwater air bubbles are the only parts of the environment that assert themselves with an audio cue, but the sound effects happen at such short intervals that they quickly get annoying. The noise for the dialogue text is the worst offender; I'm normally pretty tolerant of high-pitched sound effects, but that BEDLEDLEDLEDLE is as obnoxious to listen to as it is to spell.
-2 Control: Things haven't gotten any better since the last game. And now they've added swimming.
-2 Stages: On paper, these stages look really cool. More so than basically any other Mega Man game, a real attempt was made to make each location look and feel like a real place, not just a video game stage. Look at a map of Wave Man's stage, or Shark Man's stage, or Oil Man's stage, and you'll see what I mean. It's impressive and endearing, but it's unfortunately not enough to counterbalance the problems with playing these stages. For starters, these stages are TOO LONG. The standard screen count for the Classic series is in the 20-30 range; although the fluid camera motion makes it difficult to get an exact count, my estimates put this game in the 50-90 range. That's outrageous. At least MM8, which has stages of comparably outrageous length, features several screens that go by very quickly (namely, the sledding sections), packs a decent amount of variety into the challenges, and allows the player to restart halfway through the stage on a game over. MMIII (PC) has the same three or four enemies showing up in every stage, repetitive level architecture, and no gameplay-altering gimmicks to speak of (aside from swimming, which is at least different, if not entirely good). Moreover, the stages aren't purely linear; rooms are vast enough and passageways twisty enough that it's easy to get lost—or, worse yet, knocked off a platform and down several screens to an area you've already cleared. Considering all the instances of inconsiderate enemy placement and oddly spaced platforms, this is something that happens all too often. The bulk of the game is a slog, and not even the varied graphics and location maps can prevent most of the stages from blending together. In my mind, there's the Wily stage, Shark Man's stage, and...the rest of 'em.
Bosses:
Special Weapons:
Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities:
Ending:
Replay Value:
Polish:
Extras/Easter Eggs:
Novelty:
Overall Score: X (+Y merits, -Z flaws)
