I'm happy!

Played for 20-30 minutes with some Discord friends over stream. If it wasn't clear, I've committed to playing every single Mega Man game in 2024. That includes Wily & Light no RockBoard: That's Paradise. It isn't an insulting game, but it's an uninspired, unattractive, and uninteresting spin on Monopoly featuring some of the classic Mega Man cast. I should also mention that we played on a map called "Hot Zone," and the full map view revealed that the board was... well, it was Africa. There's absolutely no reason to ever touch this, unless you're going for Mega Man completion like I am.

Angel_Arle Rockman reviews
Part 1: Rockman for Famicom
Part 2: Rockman 2: Dr. Wily no Nazo for Famicom
Part 3: Rockman 3: Dr. Wily no Saigo!? for Famicom
Part 4: Rockman World for GB
Part 5: Rockman 4: Aratanaru Yabou!! for Famicom
Part 6: Rockman World 2 for GB
Part 7: Rockman 5: Blues no Wana!? for Famicom
Part 8: Rockman World 3 for GB
Part 10: Rockman World 4 for GB
Part 11: Rockman 6: Shijō Saidai no Tatakai!! for Famicom
Part 12: Rockman's Soccer for Super Famicom
Part 13: Rockman World 5 for GB

Well folks we finally got a spinoff game for the Rockman series. It took us 9 entries to get one but in 1993 AKA the final full year for the Famicom, we would get Wily & Right no RockBoard: That's Paradise. Board games were still very much a thing games were doing and this one tries to copy Itadaki Street which was also a Famicom game. I have never really had interest in this title in the past mostly because I don’t really play these kinds of games but I knew if I skipped it people would have been mad. So I played it a bit and I got a bit to say about it.

There really isn’t a plot to RockBoard besides the goals of each playable character. There’s five in total. The first is Dr. Wily who wants to build evil laboratories for world domination, Dr. Right, who is basically the opposite of Wily and wants to achieve world peace, Dr. Cossack just wants to do more experiments by making labs, Kalinka wants a castle to become a princess, and finally the last character is Roll who wants to build a hospital to save all the good people in the world. There’s no playable Rockman in this game, he’s actually only in a few places like in the beginning where you choose players and the rules and he asks each question for it. I have to assume he’s not playable because I guess he’s never wanted any facility? Blues is also not in this game outside of a card with his face on it. Honestly Roll being playable is probably the biggest oddity since unlike everyone else, she’s practically had no significance on the franchise in the past 8 games, only showing up in the endings of 1 and 4.

When you begin there’s four maps you can choose from which are Green Continent, Cold Island, Continent of Sand, and Megalopolis. Each map represents an actual real life continent of our world. Interesting since the last Famicom Rockman game will have Rockman traveling the world. The goal of each map is to get a certain amount of Zenny and get a certain amount of buildings built. There are two different rules being Bankrupt and Battle Royale but I could not figure out what was different besides you can get an ending on the last map with the 2nd option on. You’ll move using a roulette that goes up to 8 spaces. The way you purchase land is weird, when it’s empty you can buy it for the price listed and you’ll see it’s now owned by you but this also doesn’t stop players from building on that spot, they’ll just have to give the owner of the land money and they’ll also share the money for whoever lands on it. The buildings themselves can go up to three levels and you can also upgrade any place you have if you land on a building that’s maxed out. This also means the only other way to upgrade buildings is to actually land on them. You can also take someone’s land by paying a big fee on it. It’s all dependent on the value of it, same goes for upgrading one. Landing on a property can also very rarely activate someone’s ability. Wily’s takes 300 Zenny from the player, Right involves drawing a card though I’m unsure if it means for him or the player, Cossack makes you roll the roulette again, Kalinka forces you to transform into one of the three Robot Masters for a turn, and Roll makes you lose a turn

Many different spaces also exist in this game like The E-Tank which is where you start but passing it gives you free Zenny. You also get a random reward for landing on it like double the amount of Zenny. The Rush space will have Rush use Rush Coil and land you on the other space adjacent to it. The lottery space lets you pay Zenny in hopes of winning more of it but I sadly never saw anyone win so I never bothered with it. The entertainment space is a property you can buy and once someone lands on it, you can do a betting race with multiple Metalls trying to get to the end. The tunnel space offers either good or bad luck but with my experience it was mostly bad luck. The under construction space makes you lose a turn so try not to land on it if possible. Then there are the transformation and card spaces which I’ll go over in their own sections.

Cards are one of the bigger game changers as you’ll have to select from three cards that you won’t know what has what until you pick. The first group is the Eddie cards which always give benefits mostly involving Zenny, you should usually be happy if you flip one over. Rush cards usually involve movement like moving twice in a row or moving to any spot you want. The Blues and Rockman cards help you defend against hurtful cards though the Rockman card helps with one extra benefit which are the Reggae cards. Those cards give harmful benefits like destroying a building or even getting rid of all Zenny you have! You don’t want him. You might be wondering who even is Reggae? Well he’s a new character who is Dr. Wily’s bird and we sadly barely even see him in the franchise after this. Finally there are the boss cards which do many different things ranging from Robot Masters up to Rockman 4. I never saw all of them, there’s apparently an Enker and Quint card which were bosses from the World games. They can range from stuff like cursing a player to only move 1 space for multiple turns to burning all of their cards or allowing you to pick another card. Use them strategically! Also why is one of them the Pickelman Bull enemy from Rockman 3? He was never a hard enemy.

The transformation space will let you become either Guts Man, Shadow Man, and Dust Man. Oddly the Quick Man one was scrapped. You’ll have to use one for a full lap unless you have a card to stop the transformation. Guts Man can destroy buildings, Shadow Man can steal cards, and Dust Man can take money. While it can be helpful, it can hurt you as you can’t get any Zenny from the E-Tank, can’t do any activities or even buy land or build. This feels like a very bad design flaw as it can actually hurt you if you get this at the beginning, it happened to me the first time playing and I could never catch up.

That’s all you really need to know about RockBoard when it comes to the mechanics. Now is the game fun at all? Well it’s hard to say. I should note I had to do this alone as I always say, I have no friends so I fought against the CPU. I always played as Roll and my goal was to at least get one win. When it comes to the boards themselves they feel fine but I do think the game feels a bit flawed when it comes to ones with multiple paths. IDK if it was because of luck or what but it always felt like it was easier to win depending on where you settle land first at. I dominated on the 2nd board because I was setting up so much on the right side that it made for easy money. Surprisingly I won twice though Kalinka won the first and fourth boards. I actually didn’t play on the last one because I wanted to see the AI go for a round and it felt like it took forever. It’s hard to really say much that wasn’t just it was decent. A lot of the game seems to be luck based. I’ve always had this big thought in my mind that makes me wonder what makes this work so much for people. I’d say I enjoyed it but that probably was because I used speed up on my emulator when it wasn’t my turn.

Now I’m going to say something that might get me hated but I’m not happy with the fan translation for this game. Now I’m glad there is an easy way for people who don’t know Japanese to play the game but the translation is rough. The readme file does warn you it’s not 100% accurate as they had a limit of text they could do but I do wonder if they could have fixed a few things. I think the biggest one I saw is Fire Man’s ability to burn cards, the text made me think it was one random card but no it’s all of them. A lot of the sentences also read out very poorly like one conversation with Roll and Right going “Roll: Yeah,sorry. Dr Right: What’s…!” Granted it is funny but still I feel like it could be a little better. There also was one time Kalinka’s dialogue glitch. Still it’s playable but I hope there’s a possibility it could be refined someday.

Graphically it works, it’s got the Rockman feel to it and there’s not much to complain about especially since it’s a board game. I do think the sprites could look better, it’s weird because some of it is from the previous Famicom games but sometimes it looks kind of off for the standards of the series. The portraits especially feel off though some are better than others. The music is fine but I feel like it kind of reaches this weird area of sounding like music from Rockman 5 but going for a more chillful vibe to it. It’s all just decent and nothing amazing but it was probably never meant to be anything outstanding.

RockBoard is a game I find to be very overhated on this site. Granted not many people have talked about this game or even rated it but at worst it’s boring. The game feels very inoffensive and I do think it’s better than some other board games on the Famicom that I’ve seen but I could probably see more of the flaws if I were to play it more. I wish I could play it with other people but that’s just impossible. I probably won’t ever play it again but at least it’s not the worst game in the series so far. I probably wouldn’t recommend this game nowadays but if you really wanna play something different with friends for once, this wouldn’t hurt to do one game. Decent game and hey at least I won multiple times so at least I got something positive after being done with the game. Next time we’ll be back on the Game Boy with Rockman World 4. They really make these games fast don’t they? See you soon with that!

BONUS SECTION!

One interesting fact about this game was that it was supposed to get a US release under the name Mega Board but sadly was canceled and we probably will never know why that was the case. If I had to guess, it probably was due to it being released in 1993 and probably wasn’t going to make much money so just pulled the plug early. It was also considered to be in the Legacy Collection but that also never happened. I remember there being a story about why it didn’t happen but I can’t remember why exactly. There should be some Youtube video talking about it if you look hard enough.

A Game Boy version was planned but was canceled and we only have an unfinished version of it thanks to it getting leaked a couple years back. It seems to have been made by a company named Dual. Idk if they mean Dual Corporation but we know it wasn’t the same developer. The game however is pretty much the same just being on a Game Boy. It’s not surprising this was canceled as I can’t really see much appeal in this for a Game Boy game.

Game Review - by Kitsune Sniper

This is a board game that stars five Mega Man characters: Dr. Light, Dr. Wily, Dr. Cossack, Roll, and Kalinka, Dr. Cossack's daughter. From what I understand, up to four players can choose one of those characters and play a board game, which seems similar in setup to Monopoly. It also appears to have some mini-games, but I couldn't find any.

The object of the game (and again, I'm guessing) is to go around the board enough times and collect a certain amount of cash, so you can win the game. Along the way you'll get items, and get your character replaced by one of the Mega Man boss characters. Seems fun, but having everything in Japanese kinda spoils it.
(editor's note: this game has since been translated and also the 2020 gigaleaks harbored a secret unreleased Game Boy port)