MaxyBee
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MaxyBee
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Mega Man & 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!
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!
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