Wily & Light's Rockboard: That's Paradise (FC)
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Overall Score: X (+Y merits, -Z flaws)
Mega Man Soccer (SNES)
+0 Story: It's a beautiful day outside and Rock, Roll, and Dr. Light are at home watching a sports news program on television. Suddenly, robots invade a soccer field and start causing havoc! Rock, having a strong sense of justice, volunteers to be converted into a footie robot. The opening cutscene contains all the story you're going to get—which is probably for the best, because it's really just an excuse to play soccer. They could've been more creative with the plot, but they could've done a whole heck of a lot worse.+1 Graphics: The graphics have sort of a Wily Wars feel about them, which is to say that they're sufficiently colorful and pleasant to look at, but some of the backgrounds are a little repetitive. Characters are easily distinguishable from one another, even if a few of them look a bit awkward from the back or from the side (we're used to seeing them facing partially forward in cool poses, not standing up straight and hustling across a field, so maybe it can't be helped). The special attacks are interesting to watch, and the cutscene art looks good.
+0 Music: The soundtrack is generally peppy, with most tracks taking on a harder edge in some sections to emphasize the competitive nature of the game. A number of tunes either emulate or directly remix familiar themes from MM1-5, which works well to help the game from feeling like too much of a novelty spinoff. The soundtrack feels very thoughtfully composed, but the melodies and the instruments are very samey—I've played several rounds and listened to the soundtrack multiple times, and I still have trouble calling to mind more than two or three of the tunes on cue, let alone remembering where they appear in the game. Some of the synthesized horns and whiny pitch bends might start to grate after a while, but otherwise it's perfectly acceptable and unremarkable background music.
+0 Sound Effects: Menu noises are SNES-ized versions of anything you might remember from the NES games, and the sounds on the soccer field serve their purposes...but there's not anything particularly noteworthy, good or bad.
-1 Control: The game utilizes just about all of the SNES controller's buttons at one point or another, and the buttons trigger different actions depending on whether you're on offense or defense, so the controls overall are not as intuitive as usual and might require some degree of memorization. Characters handle well enough, though (intentionally sluggish characters notwithstanding), and it's easy to pass and receive the ball. Unfortunately, there's no way (as far as I can tell) to manually switch between characters—you automatically take control of whichever teammate is closest to the ball. This makes it difficult to keep track of where you are on the field, let alone get characters on the opposite end of the field into position quickly enough to intercept an incoming attempt at a goal. Menu navigation can also be a tad clunky, with the same button both confirming and canceling your selection, depending on the screen.
-2 Gameplay: I'll be the first to admit that I'm generally terrible at sports games, so I'm willing to accept that my lousy soccer skills are influencing my opinion here. Still, the gameplay boils down to micromanaging your team lineup and formation, and then kicking a ball back and forth until somebody gets a clear shot of the goal. Yes, I realize this is how soccer is played, but we're talking Mega Man's soccer. Compared to any other Mega Man title, the gameplay is exceedingly repetitive. The different players and their special attacks don't do enough to make one match all that different from another—at least, not as different as any given Mega Man stage is from any other Mega Man stage. Imagine if Mega Man 4's initial eight stages were all variations of Skull Man's stage, with only the enemy speed and placement to really change up the gameplay. The playing fields had the potential to introduce hazards or wacky physics to the game, along the lines of the courts in the Mario Tennis games, but they're entirely for show. Facing off against a human player helps to shake things up, but even then, the game gets old quickly.
+1 Characters: This category (normally "Bosses") is a little fuzzy due to the nature of the game, but the assortment of characters is a good one. From MM1 there's Bomb Man (::ahem:: Bomberman), Cut Man, Elec Man, Fire Man, and Ice Man; from MM2 there's Air Man, Bubble Man, Flash Man, and Wood Man; from MM3 there's Gemini Man, Needle Man, Snake Man, and Top Man; from MM4 there's Dust Man, Pharaoh Man, Skull Man, and Toad Man; even Proto Man and Enker from Dr. Wily's Revenge show up to play. And let's not forget Mega Man and good ol' Dr. Wily. There's a lot of visual diversity on the field, and it's refreshing to have such mixed and equal representation of characters from so many different games (though the absence of any bosses from MM5 is surprising, given that some music from that game is used here). Most characters are sufficiently unique in regard to stats, and their special attack animations are all fairly novel; take away their distinctive appearances, though, and the characters differ only in speed and power—if the AI is significantly different from one character to the next, it's not really noticeable.
-2 Special Weapons: Yes, they look cool. Yes, they can easily turn the tide of a tournament when used well. Yes, they're almost all identical. Twenty-one different characters in the game, each with their own special weapon, and virtually every single one amounts to kicking the ball in a straight line at high speed, incapacitating anyone that stands in the way for 1-3 seconds. To describe this as disappointing is only the beginning—this homogeneity in the special weapons severely damages both the replay value and the freshness of the challenges as well.
-2 Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities: What items/upgrades/support utilities?
-2 Ending: What ending? Upon defeating Dr. Wily, you're treated to...the title screen. It turns out there is an ending where Wily's fortress explodes, the camera pans up to the sky, and Wily's spaceship gets away; then the scene changes to a familiar starfield with the various characters teleporting into a familiar "selected boss" banner with their names displayed below them (which is a very cool effect); then Beat flies in to let you know the game was presented by Capcom...but unless you're hacking into the game data via an emulator, there's no way you'd ever know it was there. It's one thing to have a story that appears in the manual but not in the game; it's another thing entirely to simply not have an ending, as far as anyone playing the game on the original hardware can tell.
+0 Replay Value: There are four modes of play: Exhibition (free play), Championship (story mode), Tournament (single elimination), and League (point-based advancement). The characters available to your team vary by game mode, but you're always free to assign their formations. The game can also be played against the computer or a human opponent. Still, the relative similarities of the characters and their practically identical special attacks limit how different one game is likely to be from the next, regardless of mode. It ends up being a wash, with surprisingly little replay value being added by the things that should add replay value.
-2 Polish: The game is incomplete, and very obviously so. There's no ending! You can see the edge of Dr. Wily's portrait on the player selection screen, but there's no way to play as him! Those alone are enough to factor out any little niceties, especially considering you can find a complete ending and a playable Wily character in the game's code.
+0 Extras/Easter Eggs: The likes of Roll, Kalinka, and some Metalls cameo as spectators and celebrants, and the two-player mode is nice, but they're arguably part of the main game and not really extras or Easter eggs at all. So...we'll call it a draw.
+2 Novelty: Mega Man? Playing sports? With characters from five different Mega Man games? And there's a two-player option? If nothing else, Mega Man Soccer is unique.
Overall Score: -8 (+3 merits, -11 flaws)
+0 Music: The soundtrack is generally peppy, with most tracks taking on a harder edge in some sections to emphasize the competitive nature of the game. A number of tunes either emulate or directly remix familiar themes from MM1-5, which works well to help the game from feeling like too much of a novelty spinoff. The soundtrack feels very thoughtfully composed, but the melodies and the instruments are very samey—I've played several rounds and listened to the soundtrack multiple times, and I still have trouble calling to mind more than two or three of the tunes on cue, let alone remembering where they appear in the game. Some of the synthesized horns and whiny pitch bends might start to grate after a while, but otherwise it's perfectly acceptable and unremarkable background music.
+0 Sound Effects: Menu noises are SNES-ized versions of anything you might remember from the NES games, and the sounds on the soccer field serve their purposes...but there's not anything particularly noteworthy, good or bad.
-1 Control: The game utilizes just about all of the SNES controller's buttons at one point or another, and the buttons trigger different actions depending on whether you're on offense or defense, so the controls overall are not as intuitive as usual and might require some degree of memorization. Characters handle well enough, though (intentionally sluggish characters notwithstanding), and it's easy to pass and receive the ball. Unfortunately, there's no way (as far as I can tell) to manually switch between characters—you automatically take control of whichever teammate is closest to the ball. This makes it difficult to keep track of where you are on the field, let alone get characters on the opposite end of the field into position quickly enough to intercept an incoming attempt at a goal. Menu navigation can also be a tad clunky, with the same button both confirming and canceling your selection, depending on the screen.
-2 Gameplay: I'll be the first to admit that I'm generally terrible at sports games, so I'm willing to accept that my lousy soccer skills are influencing my opinion here. Still, the gameplay boils down to micromanaging your team lineup and formation, and then kicking a ball back and forth until somebody gets a clear shot of the goal. Yes, I realize this is how soccer is played, but we're talking Mega Man's soccer. Compared to any other Mega Man title, the gameplay is exceedingly repetitive. The different players and their special attacks don't do enough to make one match all that different from another—at least, not as different as any given Mega Man stage is from any other Mega Man stage. Imagine if Mega Man 4's initial eight stages were all variations of Skull Man's stage, with only the enemy speed and placement to really change up the gameplay. The playing fields had the potential to introduce hazards or wacky physics to the game, along the lines of the courts in the Mario Tennis games, but they're entirely for show. Facing off against a human player helps to shake things up, but even then, the game gets old quickly.
+1 Characters: This category (normally "Bosses") is a little fuzzy due to the nature of the game, but the assortment of characters is a good one. From MM1 there's Bomb Man (::ahem:: Bomberman), Cut Man, Elec Man, Fire Man, and Ice Man; from MM2 there's Air Man, Bubble Man, Flash Man, and Wood Man; from MM3 there's Gemini Man, Needle Man, Snake Man, and Top Man; from MM4 there's Dust Man, Pharaoh Man, Skull Man, and Toad Man; even Proto Man and Enker from Dr. Wily's Revenge show up to play. And let's not forget Mega Man and good ol' Dr. Wily. There's a lot of visual diversity on the field, and it's refreshing to have such mixed and equal representation of characters from so many different games (though the absence of any bosses from MM5 is surprising, given that some music from that game is used here). Most characters are sufficiently unique in regard to stats, and their special attack animations are all fairly novel; take away their distinctive appearances, though, and the characters differ only in speed and power—if the AI is significantly different from one character to the next, it's not really noticeable.
-2 Special Weapons: Yes, they look cool. Yes, they can easily turn the tide of a tournament when used well. Yes, they're almost all identical. Twenty-one different characters in the game, each with their own special weapon, and virtually every single one amounts to kicking the ball in a straight line at high speed, incapacitating anyone that stands in the way for 1-3 seconds. To describe this as disappointing is only the beginning—this homogeneity in the special weapons severely damages both the replay value and the freshness of the challenges as well.
-2 Items/Upgrades/Support Utilities: What items/upgrades/support utilities?
-2 Ending: What ending? Upon defeating Dr. Wily, you're treated to...the title screen. It turns out there is an ending where Wily's fortress explodes, the camera pans up to the sky, and Wily's spaceship gets away; then the scene changes to a familiar starfield with the various characters teleporting into a familiar "selected boss" banner with their names displayed below them (which is a very cool effect); then Beat flies in to let you know the game was presented by Capcom...but unless you're hacking into the game data via an emulator, there's no way you'd ever know it was there. It's one thing to have a story that appears in the manual but not in the game; it's another thing entirely to simply not have an ending, as far as anyone playing the game on the original hardware can tell.
+0 Replay Value: There are four modes of play: Exhibition (free play), Championship (story mode), Tournament (single elimination), and League (point-based advancement). The characters available to your team vary by game mode, but you're always free to assign their formations. The game can also be played against the computer or a human opponent. Still, the relative similarities of the characters and their practically identical special attacks limit how different one game is likely to be from the next, regardless of mode. It ends up being a wash, with surprisingly little replay value being added by the things that should add replay value.
-2 Polish: The game is incomplete, and very obviously so. There's no ending! You can see the edge of Dr. Wily's portrait on the player selection screen, but there's no way to play as him! Those alone are enough to factor out any little niceties, especially considering you can find a complete ending and a playable Wily character in the game's code.
+0 Extras/Easter Eggs: The likes of Roll, Kalinka, and some Metalls cameo as spectators and celebrants, and the two-player mode is nice, but they're arguably part of the main game and not really extras or Easter eggs at all. So...we'll call it a draw.
+2 Novelty: Mega Man? Playing sports? With characters from five different Mega Man games? And there's a two-player option? If nothing else, Mega Man Soccer is unique.
Overall Score: -8 (+3 merits, -11 flaws)
Mega Man Battle & Chase (PS1)
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Mega Man: The Power Battle (ARC)
-1 Story: Mega Man really only needs a paper-thin reason to go blow up robots, and that's true for arcade games as well. This game shoots itself in the foot by almost giving us a story; the opening proclaims "A.D. 20XX" and then we're off to the races! As with MM3, I'd rather have no pretense of a story than one that's only partially conveyed.
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Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters (ARC)
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