Played this one first before some kind of glitch broke the game right before the entrance to the final dungeon, so I just found a save file for the original GBA and beat it there. Sucks too, I had some stupid good battle chips 😔

It "fixes" the original far less than one would like to think. The map is helpful, but there's still awful backtracking, so now you can just see where you have to stupidly backtrack to. I don't care for the voice clips either. It's basically just "jacking in!" every time you jack in and 'fight good, mega man!" every time you fight but in Japanese and kind of poorly recorded, and I also don't really like the voice clips calling him "Netto-kun" and the text calling him "Lan" either. The extra mission is fine, I guess? The best I could say it wasn't too long an interruption of the main campaign. The extra half star comes from how really real fuckin nice it is to Operate Shooting Star instead of Mega Man near the endgame. Hold down the fire button to rapid fire, automatic charge shots, and that lock-on? Hoo baby. You don't even need any area grab chips! Load up on swords and these viruses are fcukin dead in the water.

Also it bears repeating, but DR GODDAMN WILY??!!?!?!?!?!?!!!!

Give it up, man.