The only GB Mega Man game I owned as a kid was the second one, and I remember quite liking it. In my most recent Mega Man marathon craze, I thought it was about time I give some time to the other GB Mega Man games, and I picked up the first one to finally give it a go. It took me about 3 hours to complete the Japanese version of the game on my GameBoy Player.

The plot is very standard Mega Man, even for Mega Man. Dr. Wily wasn't actually defeated even though you thought he was, so you'll need to go back and defeat the four old robot masters he's reconstructed to put him away "once and for good" (I'm sure we'll get him this time, everyone ;b). This being a GameBoy game, it is in more of a GB-sized package in not just literal format but in gameplay as well.

Unlike the NES counterparts, there are only four robot masters to select from at the start. Even though this game started development and was released after Mega Man 3, there are four stages containing bosses from Mega Man 1 which you can pick from at the start. Though the bosses themselves are ones you've seen before, their stages are totally new, and even their patterns can be quite different. I often found the bosses here to be re-balanced in a way that made them much more enjoyable fights than the NES games, particularly Ice Man and Fire Man. Of course, after those four main stages, you have a handful of Dr. Wily stages containing their own bosses, but instead of a boss rush of bosses you've already fought, it's four more bosses from Mega Man 2. Though these fellows don't have their own stages, they do grant their powers after defeating them, and they also are followed by this game's sole unique robot master, Enker, who also gives his own special power after being defeated. Overall, the bosses are pretty darn solid, and I really liked the reworks they received to make them make more sense on a GB-sized resolution.

The stages are generally pretty well designed and fun, but damn are they hard. Despite coming out after Mega Man 3, you have no special platforming tools or E-tanks to aid you in this adventure. Some stages, particularly that five-boss Wily stage at the end, are really damn tough to do with only three lives, even fighting bosses with their weaknesses. This is easily one of the hardest games in the series that I've played. The game also doesn't have the best difficulty curve, with some robot master stages being quite significantly harder than others. It's not quite Rock Man 2 levels of hard, but it's not gonna be easy to get to Dr. Wily at the end. This has to do not just with the aforementioned lack of help devices, but also with the GB's natural resolution. In order to get that same look the NES games have, Mega Man is quite big on screen. The stages are generally designed around this, but stages and boss fights can still quite often feel cramped.

The presentation is quite nice, if nothing really unexpected. The large sprites look right out of the NES game, and are very pretty on the GB screen. The framerate manages to be quite stable and solid too, thankfully. Although there isn't much new designed for this game, what is there looks pretty too, and Enker is a robot master as faithful as any. The music is largely recycled tunes from the NES games, but that isn't really a bad thing. Good music is still good music, although on that note, it's a shame that a lot of it is from Mega Man 1, as that game has a decidedly weaker soundtrack than its two immediate sequels.

Verdict: Recommended. This is a really solidly done portable version of Mega Man. The difficulty and slight areas that need design polish are really the only things that makes it at all difficult to recommend. If you're a Mega Man fan, this is definitely a game you should pick up, especially given that it's only a few bucks on the 3DS Virtual Console, and a relatively cheap game to acquire physically.

Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge doesn’t utilize the Game Boy’s smaller screen size in any meaningful way, all of the levels are SHORT and poorly realized, and there’s almost no strategy to any of the boss fights. Notably, this game does introduce Dr. Wily’s “Mega Man Killers” with Enker, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of those guys. Enker is neat! The music and ending movie are alright, too. Still, it’s hard not to feel like Dr. Wily’s Revenge is much more than an entirely compromised pastiche of the first two Mega Man NES games for the Game Boy. Feels like more of a novelty than anything else.

You ever wanted to play Mega Man 1 on the Game Boy? Here you go, except it's got worse everything!

I guess it's commendable for Minakuchi Engineering to attempt to squeeze a smaller scale Mega Man on the Game Boy, but this has gotta be one of the most aggressively forgettable games I've played in some time. Genuinely can barely remember anything about the game as I'm typing this review, aside from Cutman being probably the hardest robot master in sone asinine twist of fate, a few annoying spots of level design that mostly come home to roost in the final level, and the fact they not only didn't even have all the Mega Man 1 robot masters in the game, but just decide to throw half of Mega Man 2's bosses at the end game instead? I guess they already had Mega Man II in some sort of preproduction, given it came out less than 6 months after this one, but the double take I did jumping into a boss teleporter and seeing Heat Man was the kind I get once in a lifetime.

Just play the NES version and Powered Up, it's hard to call DWR anything more than just kind of a weird, of its time novelty that doesn't do anything for the franchise beyond introducing the Mega Man Killers. Hope the others have better boss fights, cause Enker got the shortest of the short end of the stick.

I'm not a fan of platformers on handhelds pre-DS. Screens are way too small for very good level design. This was a thing I forgot before going into Dr. Wily's Revenge for the first time.

I don't like being negative off the bat with titles I don't like, so the good: I liked the stages! In theory seeing remixed Mega Man 1 stages were pretty cool, even if all of them felt like they dragged on due to the sheer amount of screens. Enker is cool as hell! And seeing his introduction was neat.

This game is probably the worst Classic title though. Nothing feels great, platforming, shooting, defeating enemies and bosses. This is a slog of a title and I could not wait to be free of it.

A quick diversion from the mainline Mega Man games for the GB series, which if this first entry is any indication is just... fine. Okay. Some neat presentation for the weapon get screen and the approach of Wily's castle. Some... nope, that's it. It's okay. I like how it picks four robot masters each from Mega Man 1 and Mega Man 2 respectively. I like the little extra boss and the reflector power-up it grants. That's it. It's fine. Rolling Cutter is absurdly powerful. The uh... the disappearing platform sections feel less cheap than in the mainline... Jesus this game is insubstantive. But, ultimately, inoffensive.

Hard to review, but I deserve to do a brief one now and then.

1 of 2 Mega Man games on the gameboy that are worth playing. This is because the other games are just watered down inferior ports while this one and Mega Man V are sort of original games.

Dr Wily's revenge is somewhat of a Mega Man 1.5 rather a port of 1, as it reuses half of the robots masters from 1 and 2, but has it's own unique levels.

The levels here aren't very well designed as the games they were based on. The screen is smaller so the sprites are bigger making jumping around and fighting bosses seem too cluttered and cheap. Mega Man controls pretty much exactly how he does in the NES games with just less screen space.

The novelty of this game was just having a portable mega man back in the day, however nowadays there are so many ways to play much better mega man games portably than this one.

Only give this a try if you are a die hard Mega Man fan wanting to see more original content for the blue bomber.

Played the GBC conversion hack. All I got to say is that it's pretty much an old-school Mega Man game, just on a smaller screen, which definitely doesn't help with the frustrations that stem from the "hard platformers" of the era. I know that there is a case to be made that the hard difficulty is to make the short game last longer, but the style of difficulty where the solution is only found with trial and error has aged terribly.

Still, I managed to enjoy myself with this game. I admit that I consulted a guide that told the order I should tackle all the bosses, which really trivialized the vast majority of them. The platforming was passable, although the controls were a bit stiff and sometimes you needed way too precise inputs to clear an obstacle without taking a needless hit. However, once you clear a level, the satisfaction is immense. That feeling is probably the only thing the game has going for it.

So if you're one of those people who love old Mega Man games, this is a mobile version of those and worth a try. For the rest of you I recommend moving along.

Pobre megaman de game boy, consegue ser tão desajeitado...

A jogabilidade não ficou tão ruim assim, o único problema dela seria o megaman ser "escorregadio", há uma estranha precisão nos pulos, as vezes ele se movimenta mais do que o normal.

Na questão de level design, tem partes do jogo que parece impossível não levar dano, só sendo possível de passar com tranquilidade usando os ataques de outros chefes. E falando neles... é... eles são muito idiotas. Primeiro que se tu usar a fraqueza deles, eles são mortos com 4 hit, e se ir na buster, por algum motivo a I.A deles tem a necessidade de ficar grudado no megaman, entro dentro de ti (lá ele) e te destruindo por dentro (lá ele denovo), é bem chato enfrentar um chefe pela primeira vez, ainda mais que eles não recuam com os tiros e o cenário é pequeno para se movimentar.

Em poucas palavras, não envelheceu tão bem, poderia ser divertido naquela época, mas ficou injogavel para muitos no futuro em que estamos.