-Megaman, why are you helping me?
-Because we are both robots.
I played the Mega Man World V DX fan hack. Minakuchi puts on an absolute clinic in how to make a great Mega Man game. The formula that we know and love remains intact here, but it’s been refined to a science and the level design is often more original than Capcom themselves tend to be. There’s so much personality in Mega Man V’s memorable new enemies, its fun platforming challenges, and its spacey, high-tempo music. Interestingly, there are no Robot Masters, and, for the first time in the mainline series, Dr. Wily isn’t the final boss! Instead, Minakuchi puts forth 8 new “Stardroids,” all of whom are based on planets and have very good designs. A couple of the Stardroid weapons are essentially the same as ones in prior games, but most of them are as good as we’ve ever gotten in any other game. This is one of the best titles on the Game Boy. Outstanding.
-Because we are both robots.
I played the Mega Man World V DX fan hack. Minakuchi puts on an absolute clinic in how to make a great Mega Man game. The formula that we know and love remains intact here, but it’s been refined to a science and the level design is often more original than Capcom themselves tend to be. There’s so much personality in Mega Man V’s memorable new enemies, its fun platforming challenges, and its spacey, high-tempo music. Interestingly, there are no Robot Masters, and, for the first time in the mainline series, Dr. Wily isn’t the final boss! Instead, Minakuchi puts forth 8 new “Stardroids,” all of whom are based on planets and have very good designs. A couple of the Stardroid weapons are essentially the same as ones in prior games, but most of them are as good as we’ve ever gotten in any other game. This is one of the best titles on the Game Boy. Outstanding.
This game replaces the Charge Shot with a new attack called the Rockin' Arm, and this thing rules so hard. Like, it's a little TOO overpowered, especially with the Clobber Hand upgrade (this turns it into the "Me When I Fucking GET You" attack. It's a little inconsistent in how it activates, it seems; you either have to hold B or mash B to get it to work, and it only works on certain enemies, but it will just start GRIPPING the everloving shit out of whatever it touches and kills it extremely fast) and the Mega Hand upgrade (this one just turns your fist into a weapon like Boomerang Cutter. You just fire your Rockin' Arm at close or far range and it'll bring back ANY item it collides with. Makes a lot of the puzzles to get extra lives and E-Cans a lot easier lol). But it's really fun to use either way.
It's just kind of a shame that I had so much fun messing around with the Rockin' Arm that I never found a reason to use Tango. Really cute cat companion that contrasts Rush as a character, but Tango's just kind of useless imo? He curls into a ball and just follows you around? And then he vanishes when you leave the room. I feel like the game never really put me in a situation where I felt like I NEEDED to use Tango to get through anything the Rockin' Arm or one of the Space Rulers' weapons couldn't handle.
And speaking of, I absolutely need to mention that I'm totally in love with the Space Rulers. Why these awesome characters are stuck behind a Game Boy game very few people probably played and even less finished is certainly a choice on Capcom's part. They're so cool! Them all being themed after the planets of our Solar System was such a unique choice rather than just doing (Thing) Man again. Not that I have a problem with Robot Masters at all, but this game doing something so radically different stood out to me as something worthy of praise. Most of the Space Rulers had really nice weapons aside from Uranus' weapon just being Super Arm. Mercury's weapon being a lifesteal was especially interesting.
And the final confrontation against Sun God was nothing short of awesome. If you asked me to pull out one scene from the entire series as a way to explain what I love about Rock as a character, it's his exchange with Sun God after beating him at the end of this game. It's the perfect summary of his character and what he stands for.
IDK, I love Rockman 4-6, but 6 being about some tournament with the third consecutive bait-and-switch twist villain "oh, it was Wily all along!" as a quick setup for 7's events was really lame. Personally, I think THIS game deserved to be Rockman 6 on the NES. The story, the gameplay, and the characters all deserved better than the Game Boy. At least this game has real support for the Super Game Boy, which means I'm not staring at brown and red the whole game like RMW1-4.
It's just kind of a shame that I had so much fun messing around with the Rockin' Arm that I never found a reason to use Tango. Really cute cat companion that contrasts Rush as a character, but Tango's just kind of useless imo? He curls into a ball and just follows you around? And then he vanishes when you leave the room. I feel like the game never really put me in a situation where I felt like I NEEDED to use Tango to get through anything the Rockin' Arm or one of the Space Rulers' weapons couldn't handle.
And speaking of, I absolutely need to mention that I'm totally in love with the Space Rulers. Why these awesome characters are stuck behind a Game Boy game very few people probably played and even less finished is certainly a choice on Capcom's part. They're so cool! Them all being themed after the planets of our Solar System was such a unique choice rather than just doing (Thing) Man again. Not that I have a problem with Robot Masters at all, but this game doing something so radically different stood out to me as something worthy of praise. Most of the Space Rulers had really nice weapons aside from Uranus' weapon just being Super Arm. Mercury's weapon being a lifesteal was especially interesting.
And the final confrontation against Sun God was nothing short of awesome. If you asked me to pull out one scene from the entire series as a way to explain what I love about Rock as a character, it's his exchange with Sun God after beating him at the end of this game. It's the perfect summary of his character and what he stands for.
IDK, I love Rockman 4-6, but 6 being about some tournament with the third consecutive bait-and-switch twist villain "oh, it was Wily all along!" as a quick setup for 7's events was really lame. Personally, I think THIS game deserved to be Rockman 6 on the NES. The story, the gameplay, and the characters all deserved better than the Game Boy. At least this game has real support for the Super Game Boy, which means I'm not staring at brown and red the whole game like RMW1-4.
This review contains spoilers
Really cool game. Even from the start of the game the super arm felt original and yet familiar. Its upgrades felt worth buying. The boss weapons were ok, but they were outclassed by the super arm. The bosses themselves felt unique and memorable and I loved the fact that I faced a new final boss.
Overall a pretty good game and, most impressive, on the game boy handheld console.
Overall a pretty good game and, most impressive, on the game boy handheld console.
Okay so this is a weird case, Megaman 1-4 on gameboy are watered down versions of the NES games, but this fifth game is actually completely original, so I wanted to look at it. And colour me surprised, this game is a hidden gem!
They put so much effort in this and it’s ahead of it’s time, considering it included features that wouldn’t show up in the console games for years, such a shop to buy upgrades and a more elaborate story. It’s still simple, but there’s actually dialogue between characters and the setting of travelling the solar system creates a memorable experience. It is all in black and white, but the detail is no less apparent, i really like how this game looks, smaller screen aside.
The game is classic Megaman, you run, shoot and use special weapons which are.. okay, not the best selection but a few stand out with some unique properties, like a gun that can heal you if you catch the ejected bullet.
The levels are fun, and I only noticed a Few cases of overly punishing level design. The bosses are great and overall I think the challenge level is spot on.
While Megaman V may just be more of the same, I think it’s one of the better classic games, and really should been included in the legacy collection. While not mind blowing, this is how you do a gameboy version right - 7.5/10
They put so much effort in this and it’s ahead of it’s time, considering it included features that wouldn’t show up in the console games for years, such a shop to buy upgrades and a more elaborate story. It’s still simple, but there’s actually dialogue between characters and the setting of travelling the solar system creates a memorable experience. It is all in black and white, but the detail is no less apparent, i really like how this game looks, smaller screen aside.
The game is classic Megaman, you run, shoot and use special weapons which are.. okay, not the best selection but a few stand out with some unique properties, like a gun that can heal you if you catch the ejected bullet.
The levels are fun, and I only noticed a Few cases of overly punishing level design. The bosses are great and overall I think the challenge level is spot on.
While Megaman V may just be more of the same, I think it’s one of the better classic games, and really should been included in the legacy collection. While not mind blowing, this is how you do a gameboy version right - 7.5/10
Mega Man is such a fascinating series. I’ve been on a mission to complete every game in this series, from mainline to the most obscure spin-off titles, and Mega Man V is one of those immensely satisfying payoffs that makes this sort of series completion checklist so fun to do. With Mega Man moreso than most series, you really have absolutely no idea what you’re going to get; the spectrum encompasses everything from “suspiciously poignant in a backstreets alley” bad to “where has this been all my life what the fuck” greatness. Mega Man V is in the latter camp, and after the credits rolled I had to take some time to sort my thoughts on how…this is just straight up one of my favorite Mega Man games now?
The previous four GB entries demonstrated a steady increase in quality as the team’s confidence increased and the focus of the titles became less about emulating their console counterparts but more about capitalizing on their own unique ideas and premises. The difference in quality between GB Mega Man I and GB Mega Man IV is shocking to say the least, but even with IV’s good ideas and more concise design I still found myself more frustrated than not. Mega Man V, on the other hand, is the team who worked on these games reaching the absolute apex of their creativity. Aside from series icons who appear in literally every entry, essentially everything in this game from top to bottom is completely new. It was such a breath of fresh air, especially when considering that the prior 4 GB entries all borrow heavily from the mainline series, and that alone gives Mega Man V a lot of credit in my book. But new elements alone don’t matter at all if said new elements don’t work for whatever reason. Thankfully, Mega Man V nails the execution. Robot Masters this time around are all based on planets which gives the game a really unique identity and a thematic throughline that makes the entire experience feel much more cohesive. I love many of the series’ Robot Masters, but oftentimes it just feels like a random collection of hoodlums (and while that’s part of the charm for sure, I just really like Mega Man V’s unique approach to this). Levels and stage gimmicks are consistent and based around the space theme too, not to mention just generally used pretty meaningfully in most instances. They even trimmed a lot of that “Mega Man stage hazard bullshit” as I’ve come to call it (aka the ‘I fell into a pit of spikes that I never could have possibly known was there/got hit with some bullshit offscreen thing that there was no way to react to’ that was egregiously present in the past 4 GB entries especially).
Moment to moment platforming, enemy placement, and boss design was all very thoughtful and there’s even a pretty fun line up of special weapons thrown into the mix. There’s even this really unique feature where your buster gets powered up substantially at game over benchmarks, creating a really interesting system that gives players struggling a safety blanket and gives experienced veterans a challenge. This dichotomy alone gives the lives system more weight than literally every other game in the series, where the only consequence of lives is a lost stage checkpoint. Mega Man V is the whole package, really, and I’m sad that the team behind it didn’t continue to a 6th entry even if V’s ending does serve as a lovely little sendoff to the GB lineup. What a unique little subseries that, while far from perfect, had a lot of good ideas that inevitably bled into the design philosophy of mainline entries (7’s chip system originated from IV? who knew!)
The previous four GB entries demonstrated a steady increase in quality as the team’s confidence increased and the focus of the titles became less about emulating their console counterparts but more about capitalizing on their own unique ideas and premises. The difference in quality between GB Mega Man I and GB Mega Man IV is shocking to say the least, but even with IV’s good ideas and more concise design I still found myself more frustrated than not. Mega Man V, on the other hand, is the team who worked on these games reaching the absolute apex of their creativity. Aside from series icons who appear in literally every entry, essentially everything in this game from top to bottom is completely new. It was such a breath of fresh air, especially when considering that the prior 4 GB entries all borrow heavily from the mainline series, and that alone gives Mega Man V a lot of credit in my book. But new elements alone don’t matter at all if said new elements don’t work for whatever reason. Thankfully, Mega Man V nails the execution. Robot Masters this time around are all based on planets which gives the game a really unique identity and a thematic throughline that makes the entire experience feel much more cohesive. I love many of the series’ Robot Masters, but oftentimes it just feels like a random collection of hoodlums (and while that’s part of the charm for sure, I just really like Mega Man V’s unique approach to this). Levels and stage gimmicks are consistent and based around the space theme too, not to mention just generally used pretty meaningfully in most instances. They even trimmed a lot of that “Mega Man stage hazard bullshit” as I’ve come to call it (aka the ‘I fell into a pit of spikes that I never could have possibly known was there/got hit with some bullshit offscreen thing that there was no way to react to’ that was egregiously present in the past 4 GB entries especially).
Moment to moment platforming, enemy placement, and boss design was all very thoughtful and there’s even a pretty fun line up of special weapons thrown into the mix. There’s even this really unique feature where your buster gets powered up substantially at game over benchmarks, creating a really interesting system that gives players struggling a safety blanket and gives experienced veterans a challenge. This dichotomy alone gives the lives system more weight than literally every other game in the series, where the only consequence of lives is a lost stage checkpoint. Mega Man V is the whole package, really, and I’m sad that the team behind it didn’t continue to a 6th entry even if V’s ending does serve as a lovely little sendoff to the GB lineup. What a unique little subseries that, while far from perfect, had a lot of good ideas that inevitably bled into the design philosophy of mainline entries (7’s chip system originated from IV? who knew!)
This was the last of the GameBoy games I played, and I was ready for a pretty good time. I'd heard for many years from other sources that this was the best of the GameBoy Mega Man games, largely due to how much genuinely new stuff it had, and I was ready to see which between this and the fourth entry was actually the superior game. It took me about 2.5 hours to reach the end of Mega Man's space adventure~.
In a change from the other GameBoy Mega Man games, this one actually has a more involved story than the others outside of breaking the trend of having robot masters from the NES games. In addition to canonizing the other four GameBoy entries as their own series, rather than as mid-adventures of the NES games, this game sees you fighting not robot masters, per se, but invading alien robots known as the Space Rulers, who hail from and are named after the 8 planets in the solar system, along with their mysterious leader simply named: Earth. Earth actually hecks Mega Man up pretty bad in the opening scene, so Dr. Light repairs him and gives him a new weapon to fight these new foes with. It's not quite the mega buster, but it's more like a mix between the mega buster and the melee-focused Rush transformation from Mega Man 6. The shop from Rock Man World 4 even returns, and Mega Man also gets a new companion for this adventure: a weaponized robot kitty named Tango~.
The punch weapon doesn't knock you back like the weapon from Rock Man World 4 did, but it does mean you can't fire while the fist is traveling out and returning, and it makes for a game that seems to want to be different simply because it can. It's not just a different way to play, but it feels like an actively negative change. The bosses themselves range from pretty good to sort of messy, and the stages range from pretty fun romps of action to longer, repetitious journeys that feel more like a slogs. Overall, I do like the new robot masters a fair bit, but this game's boss and stage design feel like it's often closer to Rock Man World 3 than 4, and that's not a good feeling. While it is nowhere near as messy as Rock Man World 3's downright vindictive stages and bosses, bosses like Mercury who have weapons that steal your money, weapon power, and even E-tanks leave a very rotten first impression that gets reinforced from time to time with other bosses who feel more cheap than they have any right to.
The presentation is arguably the best in the series. The new boss designs look great, and the music is also most certainly the strongest out of all of the GameBoy games. Unfortunately, another feature this game shares with Rock Man World 3 is that you do occasionally get slowdown that affects gameplay to the point of making things needlessly difficult, but it's not nearly as constant a problem as it is in the third game.
Verdict: Recommended. This game did annoy me quite a few times with how mean it is sometimes, but it's still a very solid game. It tries a lot of bold things, and while I don't like it as much as the fourth GameBoy game, it's still a good time that's well worth giving a go (if you can find a way to play it that doesn't break the bank too badly).
I quite enjoyed playing through all these GameBoy Mega Man games. I'm not sure I like many of them better than the NES games, but I don't think the best of them are outright worse than those games. At the end of the day, I just prefer the larger resolution of the NES and the stage design it allows for compared to the more cramped experiences offered on the GameBoy entries. My ranking of the GameBoy Mega Man games is: IV > V > I > II > III
Playing on the 3DS Virtual Console, collected all items and cleared the game. For future replays, I will play the colorized ROM hack, Mega Man World 5 DX, using mGBA on my modded Wii.
This review contains spoilers
This is a surprisingly satisfying finale to the GB Mega Man series, and that it does it by being almost completely its own thing is wildly impressive!
Apocalyptic states for humankind as the Stardroids create mass destruction, and Mega Man can't even fight them! What a lead-in, and a great excuse to reinvent the wheel by giving Mega Man a rocket punch, an attack that isn't necessarily better than the charged shot he had in prior games, but has pros and cons to weigh against normal attacks, and upgrades that give you the ability to grab and tickle enemies to death, as well as retrieve items from behind obstacles and over greater distances. I don't know that I'd want this in every Mega Man game, but it's an immediate indicator that things are different here, and it only grows from there.
The boss order is... largely redundant. Some bosses are weak to multiple weapons, but also some weapons aren't available until after you've beaten the second wave of bosses, leaving weakness exploitation for the boss rush section, which is already how I prefer to play these games!! It's like they knew! What the focus instead seems to lay with is intense pattern-based fighting with your buster and nothing else, where correct sliding and jumping makes you feel like an absolute king taking on this tough new style of opponents. And when it inevitably turns out Wily is involved, it still feels fresh enough that he's just a familiar face. He's not even the final boss! What a choice!
I don't actually have that much to say about this game. It's just well-designed, and eleven games deep into classic Mega Man it's also the first game to really feel like it wants to reach out in truly new directions. An absolute high for the handheld era, and every bit as good as the better NES games.
The cat's shit.
Apocalyptic states for humankind as the Stardroids create mass destruction, and Mega Man can't even fight them! What a lead-in, and a great excuse to reinvent the wheel by giving Mega Man a rocket punch, an attack that isn't necessarily better than the charged shot he had in prior games, but has pros and cons to weigh against normal attacks, and upgrades that give you the ability to grab and tickle enemies to death, as well as retrieve items from behind obstacles and over greater distances. I don't know that I'd want this in every Mega Man game, but it's an immediate indicator that things are different here, and it only grows from there.
The boss order is... largely redundant. Some bosses are weak to multiple weapons, but also some weapons aren't available until after you've beaten the second wave of bosses, leaving weakness exploitation for the boss rush section, which is already how I prefer to play these games!! It's like they knew! What the focus instead seems to lay with is intense pattern-based fighting with your buster and nothing else, where correct sliding and jumping makes you feel like an absolute king taking on this tough new style of opponents. And when it inevitably turns out Wily is involved, it still feels fresh enough that he's just a familiar face. He's not even the final boss! What a choice!
I don't actually have that much to say about this game. It's just well-designed, and eleven games deep into classic Mega Man it's also the first game to really feel like it wants to reach out in truly new directions. An absolute high for the handheld era, and every bit as good as the better NES games.
The cat's shit.
Mega Man on the Game Boy usually recycled ideas and enemies from the NES games but this game created a new story with unique characters and upgrades that make it stand out among the other portable Mega Man games. The story is cool and inventive, the new ability is fun and distinct, and overall this is a solid Mega Man game. Its value doesn't just lie in its portability, instead, this game is up there with some of the best entries in the series.