I had heard from a few people on the Slack chat that this was the best of the GameBoy games, so I went into this one with high hopes. Granted, after my experience with just how rough the third Rock Man World game was, I was a little wary, but I went in hoping for something better at the very least. While I wasn't 100% overjoyed with what I found, I definitely understand why this game is held up above the other Mega Man games on the handheld. It took me around 2.5 hours to clear the Japanese version of the game.

As with the previous three GameBoy Mega Man games, this one's story is ultimately pretty simple and just boils down to stopping Dr. Wily as he tries to take over the world with four robot masters from Mega Man 4 (the four who weren't in the previous game) and four robot masters from Mega Man 5. There's even letters of Beat's name to collect to get him as a special weapon, just like in Mega Man 5~. You also have your E-tanks, slide dash, and chargeable mega buster, but with a few new twists this time. You can also collect mini-E-tanks, and four of them combine to make one normal (actually useable) E-tank, and there's even a shop you can collect money to buy powerups in, just like in Mega Man 7.

However, the most important basic mechanical change is how your charge shots work for your mega buster. Unlike in all of the other 8-bit Mega Man games, when you fire a fully charged shot, you get bounced into the air slightly with a bit of recoil. This is something kinda neat that makes the game unique, but also probably the thing I like about it the least, as it makes certain bosses not feel too great to fight, since you can't jump immediately after shooting a charged shot. It isn't so much an outright bad thing, so much as it forces you to learn a new way to play Mega Man in a way I didn't really wanna engage with.

That said, the bosses and stage design in this game are all really damn solid. The GameBoy rebalanced versions of a boss or two are just a bit too hard, such as Ring Man, and the end Wily Machine is also a bit too hard for its own good with how quick your reaction time needs to be, but the boss fights are overall really well done and fun. The stage design too is much more of the quality you'd expect from the NES entries to the series. They have the "Big Mega Man" sprite problem, but the stages are designed around that in much better ways than the past couple entries, and it feels more like "Mega Man" rather than just "Mega Man BUT on the GameBoy".

The presentation manages to be pretty darn good as well. It's still quite a pretty game, and while it doesn't manage to be totally free of slowdown, it's much better optimized than the third Rock Man World game was, and the gameplay is never made significantly more difficult due to the slowdown like what is so common in the third game. The music is also generally quite good, with fine new tracks as well as good GameBoy renditions of the NES tracks you know.


Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is definitely my favorite of the GameBoy Mega Man games. While I'm not super in love with the change to how the charged mega buster works, everything else about it is much more along the caliber of design you'd expect from the series, and it's a very welcome jump in quality after how rough the third game in the series was.