[played on original SNES hardware as Mega Man]

I think it’s fair to say that Mega Man & Bass is probably the most disliked Classic MM game by a wide margin. It’s gained quite the reputation for being an incredibly tricky and punishing experience, and in a series that’s known for being difficult, that’s saying a lot. When I was going through the series last year, I wasn’t initially planning on playing through MM&B, but eventually did give it a go as Bass and stopped right at the penultimate stage out of frustration. But something funny happened recently. I got the urge to play the first few stages as Mega Man just to see how he felt, and it ended up really clicking! A few days later, I made my way through the whole thing in just a few sessions, and had a pretty good time! And now I’m gonna talk about why this incredibly challenging game was a whole lot of fun for me.


Mega Man as a franchise was already solidified by 1998, but MM&B makes a few changes and additions to help it stand out. The first of which being that you get to play as someone besides the Blue Bomber: his rival, Bass! Instead of having a slide and charge shot, Bass gets a MMX-like dash, double jump and a rapid-fire arm cannon that can be aimed in any direction, although it can’t initially shoot through walls and does pitiful damage against bosses. The other big feature of MM&B is that, like I said at the start, it’s really difficult. But honestly, I thought it was still fairly manageable! I’ll get more into specifics when I talk about the levels, but there’s quite a few elements that can help you tip the scales, the first of which being Auto’s shop. It’s an interesting fusion of how it was in 7 and 8; bolts have returned to being enemy drops, but a lot of the items you can buy are equipable, and they include enhancements like taking less damage, saving more energy when using Robot Master weapons and dealing double damage when you’re near-death. These can really come in handy, and given that you’re able to swap between them at any time, switching things up when the situation calls for it can help a bunch.

Another useful asset comes in the form of the various Robot Master weapons, which are a really solid bunch! Ice Wall’s a great mobility tool, Wave Burner’s an excellent close-ranged option for weaker enemies, Spread Drill and Remote Mine do plenty of damage, Copy Vision can help reduce button-mashing and Magic Card’s useful for snatching goodies from hard-to-reach places. Overall, it’s an excellent selection of weapons, and due to how the stages are laid out (in a grid system where beating one unlocks the path to another), you get more of an opportunity to use them since you’ll be guaranteed to have them for certain levels.

Now we get onto the stages, which I thought were really good! They’re certainly challenging, but they never feel impossible as either character; so long as you use a bit of patience, memorization and utilize everything in your arsenal, you should be able to get through most of them without much issue. It also helps that they’re not too long, so getting a Game Over doesn’t feel like a massive setback (and for me, it helps me become even better at remembering the layouts and obstacles so I can smoothly get through next time). And in traditional Mega Man fashion, there’s a ton of variety which makes every level feel distinct and unique, which is an element of the series I really enjoy!

Unfortunately, there’s quite a dip in quality when you get to the Fortress stages. I don’t think they’re as bad as people say, but they feel a lot sloppier and way more frustrating than the regular levels. It feels a lot closer to the type of game I hear MM&B be described as, which is a shame.

Now it’s time for the presentation, and I’m probably gonna gush a lot because I adore how this game looks and sounds! You can tell Capcom really had a grasp of the hardware by 1998, and they absolutely knocked it out of the park. The graphical style definitely takes cues from Mega Man 8, but it doesn’t even look like that much of a downgrade; everything’s still colourful and immensely detailed. In fact, I’d say it’s on-par with a lot of the Sega Saturn’s 2D games in terms of fidelity, which is really impressive for a console that was first released in 1990! The soundtrack’s also great like usual, with a ton of catchy and melodic tunes. My personal favourites are probably the Robot Museum, Cold Man, Magic Man, Tengu Man and Pirate Man themes.


Despite the general reception, I really liked MM&B! I guess it’s not too surprising given my love of intense difficulty, but I’m so glad I found this much to love, and as such, I think this is a new favourite in the series for me! I’ll have to do a proper playthrough as Bass someday (and find all those data CDs), but that probably won’t be for a while. Overall, if you’re fine with really hard games and are patient enough, I think you might find something to appreciate in this one!

Primer megaman que terminó completo.
Tiene un buen diseño de niveles aunque tiene unas partes que flaquean mucho, lo que más me gusta es que tiene rejugabilidad con la recolección de los discos con los 2 personajes ya que el escenario está construido para pasarlo de forma diferente con cada uno.
La música es mucho mejor en la versión de GBA y los jefes varían mucho en dificultad dependiendo del personaje.
Megaman tiene varios pros, por su parte el diseño de niveles se acopla bien se nota que hay partes donde lo favorecen y otras que no. Aunque no es una crítica ya que se manejan con Bass así que es más de rejugabilidad que otra cosa. Aunque megaman si necesita más los poderes que Bass para pasar ciertas zonas.
Bass es mucho más ágil respecto a Megaman con su doble salto y se siente más fácil manejarlo que megaman aunque la desventaja del Buster jode un poco en las primeras zonas.
Con respecto a la tienda hace más digerible el combate que puede llegar a ser muy útil en los tramos finales.
La versión de GBA si bien tiene los problemas de la pantalla no daña tanto la experiencia como muchos dicen.

Initially received the Game Boy Advance port as a gift, but never made it far. After selling the cartridge, I downloaded a ROM hack translation of the Super Famicom version, and years later, beat the game with Bass, using save states before bosses. Immediately after, I started a new file with Mega Man in order to collect the remaining CDs, and used save states generously.

As someone who considers himself a stalwart fan of the classic Mega Man series, I knew I had to get around to playing this game to completion eventually, but kept putting it off, and I've come to find it was with good reason. Hastily cobbled together with assets from Mega Man 8, Mega Man & Bass is the Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels of the Mega Man series, and it nearly pushed my patience to its limit.

I went in fully expecting this to be a better game than 8, so the question is, is it? At first I thought, "yes" but quickly changed my mind. Gone are the annoying snowboard sections and other quirky gimmicks shoehorned into the previous game, and the shop system is now more in-line with that of 7, as well as IV and V on the Game Boy. It also presents a challenge that its predecessor sorely lacked. So what's the problem? It's unforgiving on every level, that's what. First off, you have absolutely no reason to play as Mega Man; Bass's mobility and multi-directional buster makes him the objectively correct choice, unless you hate yourself. Stages are filled with cheap enemy placement seemingly designed to spite the player, and littered with blind jumps that killed me many a time. And though the shop system has been restored, E Tanks are still missing for some reason; W Tanks are also absent, so if you run out of weapon energy trying to beat the stage boss, you're not getting it replenished until your next game over. And of course, the development staff didn't learn their lesson from 7, and imported much of the graphics made for their PlayStation game into this SNES title. Sure, it looks pretty, but shouldn't that have been a given by 1998?

But the biggest issue I had with Mega Man & Bass, by far, was with the fortress stages. King Stage 2 is a frustratingly long gauntlet nearly twice the length of a normal stage, with not one, not two, but FOUR BOSSES. Checkpoints are sparse, and if at any point you run out of lives, congrats, you're starting from the beginning. The final stage is no better, because instead of allowing you to re-fight the robot masters in any order like before, it forces you into a linear path, facing one boss after another, with additional bullshit platforming sections in-between every encounter. The fortress stages made me realize that Mega Man 8 wasn't too easy, it was simply more forgiving, and forgiveness is nowhere to be found in this hellscape of a game.

By the way, if you're looking to collect all 100 database CDs, don't. The only reward is the accomplishment itself, and a nauseating number of them are hidden underground, which need to be retrieved using Rush Search, the most obnoxious utility item in the series. Several of these CDs are deliberately placed in areas with large amounts of enemies that, if allowed to come in contact with Rush, cancel his digging animation while wasting weapon energy. And even if you know where to dig, he'll dig up a piece of trash if you're off by a few pixels, or if you're lucky, you'll be treated to an animation of him getting his face sprayed with water or his nose pinched by a crab. Why exactly do I need to purchase an item that shows the vague location of these underground CDs when I already bought Rush Search? Hell if I know.

TL;DR - Mega Man & Bass's omission from Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 was a blessing in disguise, as this game does not deserve to share the series' legacy with the numbered entries. It's a frustrating, poorly designed slog that's difficult for all the wrong reasons, and one that I would recommend against playing it at all costs. Please skip this and go straight to 9, you'll thank me later.

My first playthrough was with Mega Man and it was a miserable experience most of the time. Some enemies take way too many hits, most robot masters are too difficult to fight without their weaknesses and the level design can be infuriating, like cheap traps, the typical disappearing blocks but here they have inconsistent timing and the biggest annoyance are large rooms where you cannot see what is below or above you, so you may end up jumping into hazards sometimes instant-death ones.
And I played the Super Famicom version, I dont want to imagine how bad those parts are on the smaller GBA screen.

My second playthrough with Bass was a little more enjoyable. Mainly because I was familiar with the boss weaknesses this time and because of his double jump that makes some parts less frustrating. But it also makes others too easy.

If you don't feel the urge to play through the entire series like I did at the time of writing this, I'd say you can ignore this one or just play through it as Bass.

(This is a review of the SFC game, playing as Mega Man. I will revise or provide an additional review one day with the GBA port and Bass)

Maybe it’s the re-use of assets, maybe it’s how different it feels from the first generation of Mega Man titles, maybe it’s how ridiculously cheap it feels at times, but if someone had told me this was a fan-game that Capcom decided to publish for whatever reason I would believe it. It just feels so off.

The gameplay is rough. Mega Man’s descent from one of the tightest action-platformers into a loosey-goosey one where it’s never clear if it’s you or the game’s fault for any given sudden death is disheartening. The robot masters are alternately minor distractions or cheap nightmares, save for the rare gem of Dynamo Man, who is incredibly exciting to face off with, even with his weakness in play.

The item store returns again, with a few good options and a WHOLE PILE of needless crap, all at prices that really push the player to grind bolts, which is a miserable concept for a Mega Man game. Even the really useful ones are lesser to what has come before, or as cheap as reducing energy use or increasing health gain, which feel more like the way things should have been as default than actual fun power-ups.

Nothing feels good. Enemies aren’t that satisfying to destroy, hard jumps feel more like luck than tests of skill, and so satisfaction is low. Using the aesthetics of MM8 really drives home that Mega Man needs a level of simplicity to its visuals and feedback to get that serotonin flowing.

All this said? The King/Wily levels are some of the series’ best in the 16/32-bit generations, and course corrected a bit on what I was sure was going to be one of the worst in the series. Not that I’d want to be that harsh, but as a sort of Mega Man 8.5, released as late as 1998, I was hoping for something that built upon the presentation-lead design of that game, and polished things up to a mirror shine. Alas, hopping back from the PSX to the SNES has reduced that presentation to… basically nothing. Some speech bubbles and a tiny little window for an ending scene during the credits.

This review feels a little scatty, though I’ll put that down to this taking almost a full month to complete. Hopefully as we see out the final 3 games of the classic series I can pull myself together, and maybe the games will, too!

GBA Version: This review is Going to be Complicated...

To start Off well, This is the only Megaman game So far that I needed To use Save State (Most of the times I Saved were in Front of the Boss door) The lack of E-tanks Also helps in this Aspect.

Now talking about the Playable Characters and Stages.

Bass:

bass is very More or Less at the beginning, The good thing About it is That it can shoot in 8 Directions and Has the Double jump and The bad thing is that its Shot does very Little damage, it Only gets very Good Towards the End with Items from the Shop making it the Beginning It's Very difficult in My opinion

Megaman:

Honestly, Megaman is very Good at the Beginning and in the Middle of the Game because of His Charged shots. But at the End it gets a Little Complicated Because of the Stages designs, But other Than that He is The best Character to Start with.

Stages:

To begin with, I want to say that I hate the Stage designs in This game, Depending on the Character You are Playing, it Can be Very Easy or Very Difficult to Pass the Stage and The Worst Stages are the king's Without a Doubt. The worst of All Is that the GBA Screen doesn't Show Everything, Causing you To fall Into holes and Take Random Damage.

It's not a Bad game But it's a Terrible Megaman to Begin with. Maybe I'll play The SNES Version... Maybe.