The Game Boy Mega Man games tend to have a reputation of being nothing more than remixes of their NES counterparts. Barring Mega Man World 5, they’re often seen as nothing but poorly put together remixes slapped on inferior hardware to make a quick buck, and I really don’t think that’s very fair to those games. From what I’ve played of the Mega Man World games up to this point, they’re probably some of the most ambitious Mega Man games I’ve ever played, especially coming off hardware as limiting as the Game Boy. Sure, they use elements from the NES games and that can leave them feeling a bit samey if you’ve played the NES games a lot like I have, but they use these enemies and gimmicks in new and creative ways that still make them feel unique from the entries on NES. Hell, they even opt to go out of their way to add completely new elements to these stages, like, Cut Man’s stage in Dr. Wily’s Revenge is practically unrecognizable from its NES counterpart. And a lot of the time, I end up preferring the decisions made in the Mega Man World games, because there’s a good amount of thought put into the levels designs, especially for a remixed Game Boy game. What I’m saying is that the Game Boy Mega Man games don’t deserve the less than stellar reputation they end up getting, as they have a ton of passion and heart poured into them. At least… the ones made by Minakuchi Engineering do.

Despite doing a pretty decent job with the first Game Boy game, Minakuchi Engineering did not make the 2nd Game Boy Mega Man. Instead, development of this entry was outsourced to a different company, Thinking Rabbit. Upon looking them up on Wikipedia, they’re most well known for publishing the original Sokoban, a puzzle game where you push blocks around. On the surface, this change in developers doesn’t sound like a bad thing. I’m all for giving different developers a chance to craft their own take on a well-established franchise, while giving the main development team time to work on other projects. However, while a lot of Minakuchi Enginerring’s dev team (particularly the lead developer) happened to be huge Mega Man fans, Thinking Rabbit knew next to nothing about the Mega Man franchise, and hasn’t developed another Mega Man game since this one. This, along with the lukewarm at best reception towards the game and music (which I’ll get to later), made me a bit skeptical about this one going in. However, I still wanted to give this game a fair chance despite all the things seemingly going against it, and hey, it’d be interesting getting a look at Thinking Rabbit’s take on the Mega Man franchise. So after all is said and done, what did I think of it?

Yeah, I’m sorry, but this ain’t it. Mega Man World 2 didn’t click with me at all. None of it felt engaging or really that fun to me, and Thinking Rabbit’s lack of knowledge or care about the Mega Man series really showed in this one. But before I get to why I feel that way, I actually want to highlight some of the things that I feel like Mega Man World 2 does better than its predecessor. As you can already tell from the 2 star rating and from what all I’ve said so far, this review isn’t going to be very positive, so I figured I should at least give the game some merit and talk about what I think it does right before going into what it does wrong. The first thing I quickly want to highlight is the fact that they FINALLY gave the Mega Man 3 Robot Masters proper stages. This was one of my biggest criticisms of Dr. Wily’s Revenge, and I’m so glad to see that they fixed it in this entry. In Dr Wily’s Revenge, the Mega Man 2 Robot Master fights were kind of just shoved into teleporter rooms at the end of Enker’s stage, which not only made the game feel way too abrupt, but gave you next to no time to use any of their weapons, as you only got to use them for one stage. Adding the Mega Man 3 Robot Master stages near the end fixes all of these problems, not only by making the game feel more complete, but also by giving you more opportunities to use the latter half of this game’s weapon roster. And while it probably would be better to have all 8 stages available from the get-go, this is certainly a massive improvement over what Dr. Wily’s Revenge did. Another cool thing that Mega Man World 2 did (or, I guess, didn’t do in this case) was that they removed a lot of the spike drops present in Dr. Wily’s Revenge. In the first game’s endgame, you’d have a lot of situations where you’d drop down a screen, and then immediately get killed by a pit of spikes you couldn’t react to because you happened to be in the wrong position. While you could mitigate this with the Carry item, it’s something that you shouldn’t have to do if you don’t know the game. Thankfully, these were a lot less frequent in Mega Man World 2. There was one from what I recall in, I think Metal Man’s stage? Still, I didn’t die to it, and there weren’t any more death defying drops from that point onwards. So overall, Mega Man World 2 isn’t sounding so bad. I mean, it fixed my two biggest issues with Dr. Wily’s Revenge, so why do I feel like this game is so much worse?

To really go into detail on why I don’t like this game very much, like always, we’re going to have to start with the level design. And this is definitely my biggest point of contention with this game. Like I’ve said so many times you all are probably sick of it by now, the level design in Classic Mega Man is one of, if not, the defining factor in making classic Mega Man so great, especially since this is where you’ll be spending most of your time platforming, fighting all the enemies, using your special weapons, etc. So when your game fails at its level design, you’re not going to be having fun for most of your experience. Mega Man 8 is a great example of how poor level design can ruin an otherwise great game. It has a lot going for it, like great bosses, cool collectibles, and neat weapons and environmental interaction. However, the frustrating and boring level design just completely ruined it for me, and I just didn’t end up having much fun with the game. Unfortunately, Mega Man World 2 doesn’t fare much better here. The first issue I have with this game’s level design is some of the absolutely GOD AWFUL enemy placements in this game. I swear, in nearly every level, enemies are placed in a way where it’s either really awkward to take them out, or in a way where it’s damn near impossible to get by without taking damage. Like, good luck doing a no damage run of Air Man’s stage in this game. All of the fan enemies in this game are placed in a way where once they show up, you’re going to be taking damage from the cloud enemies around you because you’re pushed back into their drills. Or in Crash Man’s stage, where the tellies spawn below you, meaning that if you’re riding on the platform, you can’t even shoot them, forcing you to take damage unless you play around it in a really awkward way. Mega Man World 2 is full of awkward enemy placements like this, however, this isn’t my biggest issue with the level design here. While the bad enemy placements are annoying, they aren’t too big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. No, my biggest issue with Mega Man World 2 as a whole is that it is boring as SIN, in more ways than just one. Remember at the beginning of the review, how I discussed the undeserved reputation the Game Boy Mega Man games get? Like I mentioned earlier, the Mega Man World games tend to deviate their level designs from their NES counterparts in really creative ways, either by adding entirely new gimmicks, adding enemies from different stages, or just by using their already existing enemies in creative ways. However, Mega Man World 2 is basically the only entry in this series that opts not to do this. There are very few instances in this game where the levels attempt to deviate from their NES counterparts in any way. The only two that I can think of off the top of my head are some of the Needle Man elements in Wood Man’s stage, and the underwater section in Top Man’s stage. Hell, World 2 will often just shoddily port over rooms and even entire sections from the NES games! And, I’d at least be a lot more forgiving of this, if not for the fact that the levels themselves are insanely unmemorable and boring. Mega Man World 2’s levels suffer from what I like to call “Seven Sirens Syndrome”, where the levels of the game feel like nothing more than going through the motions, without attempting to take any risks or exciting the player in any way. And unfortunately, even with its original rooms and ideas, Mega Man World 2 doesn’t make me feel anything with its levels. Like yeah, it’s certainly a Mega Man stage, but it feels like nothing more than just shooting at enemies used in the most mundane ways possible while occasionally jumping across platforms. It also doesn’t help that this game is insanely easy. Even when you do take damage from an unfair enemy placement, it’s not much, and you’re probably not taking damage from anything else. The frequent health powerups appearing throughout these stages don’t help matters here either. And look, I don’t mind an easy game at all. Pokemon Omega Ruby is one of my all-time favorite games. But when your easy game starts to border on mind-numbingly boring, that’s where I start to take some issues. Mega Man World 2’s levels are just a whole bunch of nothing. Like the reputation of the Game Boy Mega Man series as a whole, they unfortunately remain nothing more than shoddy ports of much better NES stages that you’re better off playing instead.

I’m not going to go too in-depth on the bosses, because what did you expect? They’re, once again, exactly the same as their NES counterparts. I could go into detail again on how I’m not a big fan of the NES Robot Masters, but I’d like to take this time to discuss a change to one of the bosses that I liked. Specifically, Air Man and his tornado patterns. In the NES version, Air Man has a tornado pattern that is completely impossible for the player to dodge (unless they were to use, like, Item 1 or something). However, in Mega Man World 2, not only are all of Air Man’s patterns dodgeable without the need of a utility weapon, but they also make pretty great use of Mega Man’s slide. This is definitely a change I appreciated, as it makes Air Man’s fight a lot more fun to play than its NES version. As for the other fights, though, they’re pretty much exactly the same. And like their NES counterparts, they’re typically either way too easy to cheese, or rely on your inputs, making them way too hard if you don’t understand how they work. The overall selection of bosses is a bit better than Wily’s Revenge, but overall, I’m still not a big fan of them.

Mega Man World 2’s weapon roster is also not great, mainly because it suffers from a lot of the same issues that made Mega Man 2’s weapon roster pretty bad. I don’t feel like this is entirely the developers’ fault, as two of the weapons present in this game are Metal Blade and Mega Man 3’s Rush Jet, two of the most broken Mega Man weapons of all time. However, I do still feel like they should’ve at least attempted to balance these two weapons a bit, as they’re so overpowered, there’s basically no reason to use any of the other weapons. I did play the game without trying to use these weapons, as I wanted to give this game’s weapon roster a fair chance. Unfortunately, the other weapons are nowhere near as good, and only served to make the game’s weapon selection even more unbalanced. While there are some decent ones sprinkled in there, like Leaf Shield and Hard Knuckle, they’re situational at best and don’t see much use compared to your buster. What’s even worse is that they kept that dumbass immunity thing that 80% of Mega Man 2’s enemies had! Like, nearly every airborne enemy in this game is immune to the Air Shooter, and it’s like, where can I even USE this weapon then????? All this shitty mechanic serves to do is limit your experimentation with the weapons, which just doesn’t make any sense in a game series where you’re encouraged to do so. The weapon roster overall really did need some more fine tuning to make it actually balanced, because when you’re not using a weapon that breaks the game in two, you’re using a weapon that ranges from mediocre, to bad, to the Sakugarne. And let’s talk about the Sakugarne real quick. This is the weapon you get from the game’s special Robot Master, Quint, and it’s hands down the worst weapon in the game. It’s supposed to function like a pogo stick where you can bounce on enemies and traverse spikes, but not only can you NOT actually traverse spikes with this thing, but its damage output is laughably bad. Meanwhile, you’re still taking damage from enemies as you bounce on them while the energy gauge goes down faster than the short ass Wily stage where it’s your only chance to even use this weapon. Speaking of which, this seems like a good time to transition into the final part of the game, its endgame.

After beating the first four Robot Masters, like in Dr. Wily’s Revenge, you can move on to the Wily stage. After a cutscene with Mega Man and an oddly-chiseled Wily plays, you can actually get to the remaining 4 robot master stages from here, which is a pretty unique approach that hasn’t been done in a classic Mega Man game since. After you beat all 4 robot masters, you can finally face off against this game’s Mega Man Killer, Quint, a more powerful version of Mega Man sent from a distant future sent to destroy Mega Man. Oh man, this sounds so cool, I wonder how the fight is- aaaaand it’s the most miserable excuse for a Robot Master fight you’ve ever seen in your life. Like, I know I complained about the previous Mega Man Killers when talking about the other Mega Man World games, but at least their patterns are still well-designed, despite the less than stellar execution. But here, Quint just hops towards your location and just bounces on his pogo stick for like, 5 seconds. And that’s all he does for the entire fight! You might as well be handed Quint’s shitty weapon on a silver platter! It’s one of the most pathetic and lazily designed boss fights I’ve ever seen in a video game, and it’s over in like, 5 seconds on top of that. So much for a cool fight with your future self. Anyways, after Quint’s been defeated and you get his weapon, you can finally move on to Wily’s Space Fortress. Unfortunately, I don’t have anything positive to say about this stage. I don’t even have much to say about the stage at all. It’s insanely forgettable, because not only are all of the enemies and stage hazards just placed haphazardly with no real theme to them, but the stage itself is basically over before you know it. The same goes for all 3 Wily phases. They’re incredibly easy to dodge for a Wily fight, and forgettable to the point where I can’t even remember anything about any of the phases this time around. All I can recall about this fight is that after you defeat Wily, Mega Man chases down Wily’s ship and shoots him down with a missile, killing him and thus completely ignoring the very first law of robotics. And with that, the game’s finally over. I’m sorry, I know this part might feel completely anticlimactic to some of you, but this endgame has given me absolutely nothing new or interesting to say without repeating the same shit I’ve been saying about the stages for the whole review. Hell, I would’ve preferred the last stage be a little bit frustrating, or have spike drops like in Wily’s Revenge, because at least then it would’ve given me something, anything to talk about. Well, that technically is the end of Mega Man World 2, but I really don’t want to end off on a note as anticlimactic as this. So before we wrap this review up, I’m going to touch upon something that some of you have probably been clamoring for since the beginning of the review; the music.

I don’t normally ever mention the music when reviewing a Mega Man game, because good music is kind of a given when it comes to this series. Nearly every classic Mega Man track from 1-11 sounds amazing to me, on top of being extremely memorable and having a tendency to get stuck in your head quite easily. Because of this, I kinda find it redundant to mention the music when talking about this series because I mean, all of it sounds good! HOWEVER, Mega Man World 2 might be the only game in the series where this is not the case. You see, unlike the Minakuchi Game Boy games, Mega Man World 2 opts to create original tracks for its Robot Master stages as opposed to remixing them. And while this sounds like a good thing, man, these tracks sure are something. Nearly all of them “bless” your ears with incredibly jarring high pitched sounds that completely ruin the tracks, not at all helped by the awful high pitched sound effects that accompany you throughout the whole game. The thing is, the compositions themselves aren’t actually that bad, as composers like RushJet1 and Tpcool have made them sound great before. However, they’re completely ruined by the awful instruments that they’re cursed to be accompanied with. And with this, I feel like this is a perfect note to end this review off, because in a lot of ways, Mega Man World 2’s gameplay is a lot like its music. Because while Mega Man World 2’s great compositions still manage to sound like shit, its promising elements from Mega Man 2 and 3 still manage to be used in a way that’s both boring and frustrating at the same time. This game shouldn’t have been as mediocre as it ended up being, but it’s very clear to me that Thinking Rabbit put next to no care into this entry before releasing it onto store shelves. The stages are beyond bland and unmemorable, the weapon roster is unbalanced as all hell, and all the promising ideas it does have fall flat on their face. It kinda saddens me to say that out of all the Game Boy entries, this one really is nothing more than shoddily ported elements from the NES games with little thought or passion put into it. And while Minakuchi Engineering thankfully returned to do the rest of the Game Boy entries, there’s next to no reason to invest any time into this one. (4/10)

As some of you might have picked up on, I’ve been in a Mega Man mood recently. Ever since beating and reviewing Mega Man World 4, I’ve been thinking a lot more about classic Mega Man and have been starting to get back into the series after not having played it for a while. And while I’ve really been wanting to finish Mega Man 11, I also thought it’d be fun to look back on some of the earlier Game Boy Mega Man titles that I hadn’t beaten yet. So what better Game Boy game to start with than with the first one? Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge (which, if I may add, has a much better name than the rest of the Game Boy games going forward) is a game that definitely took me by surprise with how good it ended up being, especially for being Minakuchi Engineering’s first attempt at a Mega Man World game. Like the other Game Boy Mega Man games, this game remixes enemies and gimmicks from Mega Man 1 (and sorrrta 2? But we’ll get to that later). While I love the first 2 NES Mega Man games, they can be pretty tough to come back to due to some pretty deplorable design decisions that can make playing these games pretty tedious at times. However, I was pleasantly surprised with how much Dr. Wily’s Revenge fine-tuned the elements of these two games, to the point where I kind of prefer it over Mega Man 1 and 2, even if Dr. Wily’s Revenge comes with its own fair share of bullshit. Overall, it was a nice time if anything, so let’s dive right into the review and talk about why I think Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge is a pretty neat game.

Whenever I talk about classic Mega Man, I like to start with the level design, as it’s an incredibly important part in making any platformer (but especially classic Mega Man) play so well. I won’t go too in-depth on how Dr. Wily’s Revenge tries to shake things up from its NES counterparts, as a lot of what I said in my Mega Man World 4 review applies here as well. Dr. Wily’s Revenge still uses entirely new gimmicks to make the game feel like a fresh experience, and even when it doesn’t, it still uses its pre-existing ideas in creative ways. While Dr. Wily’s Revenge doesn’t use nearly as many entirely new gimmicks and enemies as, say, Mega Man World 4, it more than makes up for it by fine-tuning the elements of Mega Man 1 and 2 to an insane degree. I was genuinely surprised with how much I enjoyed the first four levels of Dr. Wily’s Revenge, and I think part of that came from the fact that they removed a lot of what made Mega Man 1 and 2 tedious, so that they could fine-tune and focus on the elements that made those two games so fun. For example, you no longer have to deal with the terrible, awful, no good carrier platforms in Ice Man’s stage, nor do you have to deal with the pretty redundant yoku block sections there either. Instead, that stage takes you down to an ice cave where you hop on falling icicles to reach higher areas, which is genuinely quite creative and leagues better than Ice Man’s stage in the NES version. Fire Man’s stage also contains falling flame enemies that you have to jump past at the right time, which I prefer over the way they fell in the NES version. I also appreciate the way this game uses Mega Man 2 elements in its Mega Man 1 stages, like the section with the cloud enemies in Elec Man’s stage, which feels fitting for the stage itself and is quite fun. Plus, the flame throwing enemies can finally find their home in an actual fire themed stage! It’s just really nice to see how these older stages utilize newer gimmicks in a way that still feels fitting for the stage itself, and it’s something I wish the Mega Man World games did more often. So, if you couldn’t already tell from the many praises I’ve sung about these first four stages, I think they’ve aged really well and are still pretty fun to play. My only real gripe with these stages are their short length, which I don’t entirely mind, as this is still a Game Boy Mega Man game. However, because of this, some of the stage gimmicks or enemies can end up feeling underutilized at times, mainly the ones in Ice Man’s stage. This isn’t really a massive issue as these stages are still fun, but I’d still like to see these ideas expanded upon someday. But simply put, these stages are surprisingly well designed and fun to charge through. Even if you don’t ever intend on finishing or playing Dr. Wily’s Revenge, I’d still recommend at least checking out the Robot Master stages. They’re definitely the best part of the game in my opinion.

Now that we’ve talked about the stages, let’s discuss the Robot Masters waiting for you inside them. And spoiler alert, they’re not very good. I’ve said this in my Mega Man World 4 review, but I’m not too big a fan of the way the NES Mega Man games handled their Robot Masters. They either don’t have much of a discernible pattern to decipher and can be way too hard to dodge because of it, or are way too easy to the point where the stage may as well just hand you the weapon on a silver platter. Mega Man 1’s Robot Masters are particularly egregioius with this. If you don’t know their patterns, they’re going to be some of the most erratic and unfair bosses you’ve ever had to deal with, but are insanely easy to cheese if you do. Thankfully, Dr. Wily’s Revenge actually opted to change Mega Man 1’s Robot Master patterns, having them play differently to their NES counterparts. While this seems like a good opportunity to iron out the kinks of the old fights, these new fights just kind of just come with new problems instead. And my main problem with all 4 of these Robot Master fights is that they’re WAY too easy to completely cheese. All of them (barring Ice Man, but his fight doesn’t change much to begin with) can be completely invalidated if you’re able to figure out how to do so, which in itself, isn’t hard to figure out in the first place! Like, take Elec Man. He’ll move away from you when he starts the battle. When you shoot, he jumps towards your location. So if you just keep shooting to where he doesn’t get too close, he’ll never shoot his Elec Beam at you, so you’ve basically figured out how to do Elec Man’s fight damage-free, every time. You don’t even have to move! What about Fire Man? This one’s a bit better because instead of only needing to use one button, you need two. He’ll run towards you, shoot out a flame for you to jump over, and then shoot out another one once you attack. But, do you see what I mean? When most of the Robot Masters in the game are so easy to trivialize, you don’t really feel rewarded at the end of the stage. Like, they may as well not even be in the game at all. And sure, you could argue that most Robot Masters are like this, as they become a lot easier once you actually know their pattern. But it’s not just about figuring out their pattern. It’s about reflexes as well. Sure, you can memorize how they move and what they shoot out, but you have to be the one to be able to respond to these movements and actually pull it off. When you know a Robot Master’s pattern, it’s not a guaranteed win, so when you pull off a fight without taking damage or even just without dying, you feel rewarded because your skill and your reflexes were able to get you that far. You should not be able to automatically win once you know the patterns of the Robot Masters. They should still feel challenging to the player, even after you’ve figured out how they move, because they stand between you and those glorious special weapons, and you should feel rewarded for rightfully earning these new tools. Unfortunately, because of these unwhelming fights, Dr. Wily’s Revenge doesn’t really do a good job of making you feel that way.

While we’re on the topic of the game’s special weapon roster, it’s kiiind of a mixed bag??? But not really in the way you’d expect it to be. It’s kinda weird, so bear with me here. At the start of the game, you of course have four robot masters to choose from, and thus, are able to get four special weapons, plus a pretty good utility item in Carry. This is the really good half of DWR’s weapon roster, and the five special weapons you’ll be using throughout most of the game. Mega Man 1 has a surprisingly great weapon roster, and the four weapons they brought to this game still manage to be fantastic, even in these new stages. They see plenty of uses across the game, feel balanced, and are really fun to use when you do so. Upon beating your fourth Robot Master, you also get the utility weapon Carry, alongside their usual weapon. This is essentially this game’s answer to Items 1-3 from Mega Man 2. Functionally, it’s very similar to Item 1, but it spawns directly below you, which is a nice piece of utility for when you need a 2nd jump or need to save yourself from falling into spikes or a pit (Keep this last part in mind, as it will be important later). So, this weapon roster’s looking fantastic already, but what about the other half of the weapons? Well, after beating the first Wily stage, you gain access to half of the weapons from Mega Man 2, as well as Enker’s special weapon, the Mirror Buster. And this is where the weapon roster of Dr. Wily’s Revenge starts to become a mixed bag for me. And it’s weird, because it’s not even like any of these weapons are that bad. Mirror Buster is a pretty solid weapon that reflects projectiles back at foes, even if it is a little situational. The Mega Man 2 weapons are actually pretty decent here too, hell, Bubble Lead even got buffed, which is always nice to see. So, what’s wrong with this half of the weapons? Well, it’s the fact that you don’t get to use them very often, AKA, you don’t get to use them until the very last stage. I know it’s common for Game Boy Mega Man games to save the Mega Man Killer weapons until the last stage, which makes sense, as they typically tend to be quite good. But when HALF of your weapon roster is only available for the final stage in the game, that’s when your weapon roster starts to feel a bit awkward. Dr. Wily’s Revenge doesn’t have a bad weapon roster or anything, but I really wish so much of it didn’t have to be saved for the very end of the game. But while we’re on the topic of this game’s endgame, let’s talk about it, because it’s definitely the longest part of the game, and probably the part I take the most issue with.

Dr. Wily’s Revenge’s endgame is… well, it’s not great. While it’s not anything absolutely atrocious (it’s certainly better than Mega Man 2’s endgame), this is where the cracks of this game really start to show. You start off in Dr. Wily’s Castle, and I have two main issues with this stage in particular, one of which being its length. I know that Dr. Wily stages are meant to feel like gauntlets to fully test out your skill and weapon roster, but this single stage alone is almost as long as the four Robot Master stages combined. The jump in length from any of the Robot Master stages to this one is insane, and is not at all helped by the two mole sections in this stage. I do not like these enemies or any of the sections they happen to inhabit. They weren’t fun in Mega Man 2, they weren’t fun in Mega Man 10, and they aren’t fun here. That’s because these sections always have you slowwwwly inching to the end of the room, while spamming some sort of special weapon (Fire Storm in this case) to try and get through the blockade of boring burrowing bastards. They’re not particularly challenging, they’re not rewarding in the slightest, and only ever serve to increase the length of this already long stage. My other main problem with Wily’s Castle is the leap of faith drops present throughout this stage. I briefly touched upon this when discussing Mega Man World 4’s level design, but I didn’t go into too much detail because these instances were few and far between. But in this stage, if you’re about to drop down into a section, you better know what’s below you, because if you don’t, chances are you'll be taking a faceful of spikes and you’ll have to do a chunk of the stage all over again. The game sort of attempts to mitigate this with the aforementioned Carry item. Like I said earlier, you can summon a platform directly below you when you use this item, which could potentially save you from an imminent spike death. The only problem is, you’d need to know beforehand to have this weapon equipped before dropping into an area, so if you don’t have Carry equipped or ready to be selected, you’re not safe from a potential spike death. Plus, why have these falling sections in the first place? Why not just use more of that room space to create more fun and unique ways to challenge the enemies as opposed to just another section where you drop onto an enemy or onto spikes? Thankfully, the castle stage still manages to be relatively well designed barring those sections, as the rest of the stage has some fun enemy and gimmick usage, plus the weapons are incredibly useful here. But compared to the first four stages, it definitely feels like a big drop in quality. So after you get through Wily’s Castle, you’ve got a choice of four teleporters. You enter them, and now you’re face-to-face with… four of the bosses in Mega Man 2? They don’t get their own stage, which is kind of disappointing, and you instead have to fight them here. There’s not much to talk about with these fights as they’re relatively unchanged from how they were in Mega Man 2, and while they’re a lot better than the first four Robot Master fights, they still don’t feel all that great to fight. But once you’ve defeated them and gained their weapon, you can finally face off against the game’s special boss, Enker. And yeah, this fight sucks too. But unlike Ballade, where his fight just had a lot of problems that were built up over time, this fight just has one thing ruining it, and that’s that Enker’s staff has a HUGE hitbox! So, the gist of this fight is that you’re supposed to react to Enker’s movements across the screen, like whether he’ll run straight towards you, jump to the edge of the screen, etc. However, even if you predict Enker’s movements correctly, you’re punished for it because you’re still gonna get hit by his big ass staff as he’s charging up his attack anyways! If not for that, I wouldn’t mind this fight, but as it stands, it just turns into another awkward “win the damage race” fight, just like with Ballade.

Once you’ve defeated Enker and gained the remaining half of your weapon roster, you still have one more stage left to go. Wily escapes from his castle and the camera pans up to show a giant floating fortress in the sky, also known as the Wily Star. I really don’t have much to say about this stage, mainly just because it’s pretty easy. It’s a bit better than Wily’s Castle, due to there not being too many cheap deaths and none of those mole sections (thank God), but it’s just kind of forgettable, and still really long too. Because of that, I really don’t have much to say about this stage, so once you’ve gotten past everything there and collected that extra life before the final boss, it’s time to face off against Wily. His first form shoots out the sawblade enemies from Cut Man’s stage towards you, while his second form requires that you reflect his shots with the Mirror Buster while dodging a claw that occasionally tries to attack you. One thing that kind of sucks about this phase in particular is that you respawn in the boss room, so if you happen to die too many times on Wily’s 2nd phase and run out of Mirror Buster ammo, you’re basically forced to get game over here. However, you shouldn’t have to worry too much about that, as like Wily Star, both of these Wily phases are pretty easy if you know what you’re doing. Once you get in the groove of things, you should be able to take out Wily pretty easily, and once you do so, that’s the end of Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge.

It was pretty fun being able to finally check out the game that started the Mega Man World saga. While Dr. Wily’s Revenge definitely has a lot of problems, like its endgame, weird handling of weapons, and underwhelming bosses, I still had a fun enough time with it, and I feel like it aged surprisingly well despite these flaws. You could definitely see Minakuchi Engineering’s design philosophy with the Mega Man World games start to blossom here, and while this game admittedly isn’t anything too special in terms of Mega Man games, I could still tell that it had a lot of passion and love put into it. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how Minakuchi Engineering handles the rest of the Mega Man World games from here and… huh? Minakuchi Engineering didn’t make Mega Man World 2? Instead it was done by a developer team who didn’t know anything about Mega Man??? Well, that’s certainly going to be an interesting one to talk about. For now, I’ll leave the review at this. Dr. Wily’s Revenge was definitely an interesting game for me to play and check out. I’d still recommend Mega Man World 5 and even World 4 if you really wanted to play a Mega Man Game Boy game, but after which, come take a look at this one, even if only to see where Game Boy Mega Man got its initial jumpstart. (6/10)

So, it’s been a while, huh? The last review I posted on this website was my Owl House: Witch’s Apprentice review over a week ago, and since then, I kinda fell out of playing and reviewing games, especially since continuously attempting and failing HaraHara in Puyo Pop Fever over and over again was kind of starting to wear on my mental health. So I decided to take a brief break from playing games and worrying so much about making another review. However, on a whim, I decided I wanted to get back into making these reviews and knocking games off my backlog, so what better game to do so than with a really short one? As you can already tell, that game is none other than Mega Man IV… uh, no, not the NES one, the Game Boy one. Yeah, so all of the Mega Man games on Game Boy have abhorrently bad names in the US, so for the sake of not making it too confusing (especially since I’m going to be mentioning Mega Man 4 on NES a few times in this review), I’m going to refer to this game as Mega Man World 4 (or MMW4 for short) from here on. I remember getting Mega Man World 4 on the 3DS eShop after hearing that it was one of the better Gameboy Mega Man games (alongside Mega Man World 5), but I never really got to sit down and play it until recently. And after finally finishing it, I gotta say, for a Gameboy Mega Man game that remixes levels from the NES ones, it still manages to hold its own identity and plays really well, even if it has some strange flaws.

The first part of this game I’d like to discuss is the level design, possibly one of the most important aspects in making Classic Mega Man so good. But before I do, I’d like to really quickly discuss the gist of the Mega Man World games, as this’ll be pretty important when discussing Mega Man World 4’s levels. For those who don’t know, until Mega Man World 5, the Gameboy Mega Man games used remixed levels from the NES Mega Man games, usually with an original boss character near the very end. For example, Mega Man World 4 uses remixed levels from Mega Man 4 and 5 for its main levels, and after you beat all of them, you get to face Ballade before taking on the Wily stage. I often see people mention this as a detriment towards the Game Boy Mega Man games, but I personally didn’t mind this, as (at least for Mega Man World 4), the levels still feel really unique from their NES counterparts. I can’t comment much on the Mega Man 5 levels as I actually have yet to play that game, but as someone who’s played Mega Man 4 a billion times, the levels from those games still felt really fresh and new to me. Part of this comes from the fact that these levels usually opt for new gimmicks to be added to the stages, such as rising platforms for Bright Man’s stage, platforms you can shoot in Crystal Man’s stage, etc. But even with the levels that don’t introduce new gimmicks, they still feel unique because they’re using these familiar level concepts in completely new ways. It also helps that these levels are really fun as well. Hell, I prefer some of these Mega Man 4 levels over their NES counterparts, mainly Pharaoh Man and Toad Man’s stages in particular. A lot of the Mega Man 5 levels also feature branching paths, which is an inclusion I always enjoy from classic Mega Man and makes these levels all the more replayable. Overall, these levels are just generally really fun and well-designed, however, there are quite a few cheap sections that kind of plague the levels. These range from minor but annoying things like cheap enemy placements, to pretty deplorable game design decisions like not knowing to hold left before jumping down and then falling into a pit of spikes. The game also tends to suffer from pretty heavy lag, especially when you’re using a weapon like Pharaoh Shot or Rain Flush. Thankfully, the lag never caused any of my controller inputs to be dropped like in Mega Man 3, but the slowdown can still happen quite often. These issues can get pretty annoying, but they’re few and far between and they’re nowhere near enough to ruin the otherwise really fun level designs and creative concepts of the levels. My favorite was probably Napalm Man’s stage, not only due to the clever use of the gimmicks already present in that stage, but also for its cool original setpieces like the disappearing block paths and the fires that you can put out with Rain Flush. Environmental interaction before Mega Man 7? See, this is one of the many examples of how creative these levels can get. While none of these levels are like, super mind blowing or anything, they’re still really fun and feel really refreshing for a Gameboy game consisting of remixed NES stages. Alongside the original Wily stages and bosses, you can tell that this was the entry in the series where Minakuchi Engineering really wanted to make something original for themselves, as shown by the fact that a year later, they’d cook with Mega Man World 5, one of the most unique entries in the entire series to this day. All-in-all, the levels in Mega Man World 4 were just a really solid time all around and still felt new, even with the reused enemies and setpieces.

I mentioned how the new level gimmicks and the creative enemy uses made the levels feel more unique, but there are two more things that the developers added that made this entry feel fresh. One of which was the introduction of the P-chip system, which is sort of like a predecessor to the bolts seen in later games like Mega 9 and 10, where you collect them throughout your adventure and can spend them at the shop in between stages. Unfortunately, like in Mega Man 9 and 10, this system kind of leaves a lot to be desired. They suffer from the same problem as the bolts in those games where, aside from the Energy Balancer, you really only have E-tanks and Extra Lives left to buy, so if you’re like me and don’t really use E-Tanks, you don’t have much of a reason to come back to the shop or collect any more P-chips. Thankfully, Mega Man World 5 fixed this by adding a lot more cool stuff in the shop you could buy, like upgrades for your Mega Arm. As it stands though, Mega Man World 4’s P-chips are a cool idea in concept (hence why they’d be used again in later entries), but in execution, they could’ve been fleshed out a little bit more. Another element that Mega Man World 4 had that made it feel more unique is the collectibles. Well, I say it makes it feel more unique, but this idea was re-used from Mega Man 5, but in a slightly different way. In the Mega Man 4 levels, you can collect letters spelling “MEGA”, and just like in Mega Man 5, your reward for collecting these is the robot bird Beat, which I never used. Meanwhile, throughout the Mega Man 5 levels, you can collect letters that spell Wily, which… allow you access to Ballade and the Wily stages? I don’t know, that feels like kind of a weird requirement to be able to progress through the game, don’t you think? Eh, at least they aren’t too out of the way, so it’s easy to collect them all on your first try, but it’s still pretty weird to have some of your collectibles be required. Though, despite what it sounds like, I still very much appreciate the addition of these two features to the game, and they help even further in giving Mega Man World 4 an identity of its own.

Another thing that helps make classic Mega Man so good is its selection of special weapons. Mega Man World 4 has a pretty great weapon roster, though, part of that is kind of expected as half of its weapons come from Mega Man 4. Mega Man 4 genuinely has one of the best weapon selections I’ve seen in any game. Nearly all of them manage to be useful in some fashion and genuinely really add to the stages too. Likewise, the Mega Man 4 weapons brought over into this game are just as amazing as ever, with my personal favorites being Pharaoh Shot and Flash Stopper. Ring Boomerang kiiind of got nerfed as it can no longer pierce through shields, but the ability to pick up items from far away more than makes up for it. Even the Mega Man 5 weapons brought into this game are pretty decent, and the excellent Ballade Cracker is the icing on the cake. It’s an exploding weapon that travels fast, and can be fired in 7 directions, yet still manages to be more balanced than the Metal Blade. This weapon roster is just really solid overall. While not as good as base Mega Man 4’s roster, I still felt like the stages were very well built around the game’s weapon roster and they were pretty fun to use. Unfortunately though, as much as I’ve praised the Mega Man World 4’s levels and weapons so far, I really can’t do the same for the game’s main robot masters.

The bosses are another one of the three key factors in making classic Mega Man so great. I mean, they’re what stand between you and the special weapons you get to use, so they’ve got to put up a formidable yet fair fight. However, most of the time, NES Mega Man bosses tend to be… not great? A lot of the time, they typically don’t have much of a discernible pattern, typically relying on the player’s location or inputs (like most of the Mega Man 4 robot masters), and having insanely hard attacks to actually dodge, so the fight just kind of boils down to, “who can outlast the damage race”, rather than actually learning the bosses’ pattern. Other times, it’s WAY too easy, and their pattern is so easy to cheese that you can basically get out of the fight scot-free. From my experience, this felt like the case with a lot of Robot Masters in NES era Mega Man, and it wouldn’t be until Mega Man 7 onwards where Robot Masters and their patterns started to reach their full potential in my opinion. Sadly, the Robot Master fights in this game feel a lot more like the former than the latter, which I guess isn’t really the developers’ fault as they did have to port over these fights. They did change up a few fights from the NES ones a little bit, such as Ring Man firing his rings towards you, making the fight play out almost completely differently from NES Ring Man. I really wish they did this for a lot more of the Robot Master fights in this game, because a lot of these battles just never felt all that challenging or satisfying to me. They’re made even worse by the fact that the screen is so small. Mega Man World 5’s Robot Masters felt pretty well designed around this, but here it just makes the fights feel a lot more cramped than anything. Honestly, if I had to change anything about this game, these fights would certainly be it, because if they tweaked these fights a bit like they did with Ring Man’s fight, I think they could’ve been a lot more fun. However, there’s a lot of room for improvement with these fights, and this is especially true for the game’s special robot master, Ballade.

Look, I love Ballade as much as the next guy. He’s one of the coolest motherfuckers that classic Mega Man has ever introduced! But MAN, this fight just does not feel good to play against. If you’ve played Mega Man 10’s 3rd time attack stage like I have, it’s seemingly a lot like the fight in that stage, and in essence, it’s the same idea. Ballade lays down a bomb to watch out for, jumps towards your location around 1-4 times, runs towards your location, and throws a Ballade Cracker, rinse and repeat. It’s actually a good idea, and has been done quite well in Mega Man 10, but unfortunately, we’re not reviewing that game. We’re reviewing Mega Man World 4, where this seemingly pretty simple fight is butchered by a pretty terrible execution. I have a few problems with this. One of which is that Ballade will stop dead in his tracks whenever he reaches your location, which doesn’t sound too bad, but trust me, jumping over him when he does this is a hell of a lot harder than it looks. He’ll usually stop as you’re making a jump, so you end up just crashing into him and taking a shit ton of damage. Mega Man 10 mitigated this issue by having him run to the end of the screen instead of at your location, so you won’t get blindsided by him just suddenly stopping in his tracks. Speaking of which, another thing that Mega Man 10 has going for it is that Ballade’s fight just feels more natural in that game. There, you didn’t have to worry too much about the amount of jumps he did just because you could react to it quickly enough, But in a game where the screen is shrunken down and the physics are a lot more floaty, it feels like it just doesn’t work. Put all this together, and you’re once again left with a fight that feels like it just boils down to “win the damage race”, which sucks, because in concept and design, Ballade is incredibly cool, but his fight definitely needed some more time in the oven before coming out. After you do inevitably win the damage race, you can move on to the endgame, but before we do, I’d quickly like to discuss the section that comes directly after this. After beating Ballade and getting the Ballade Cracker, you’re then thrust into a chase sequence. The ground behind you is breaking apart and you need to get past a ton of exploding missiles before you fall to your doom, preferably by using Ballade Cracker. However, because you’re so focused on moving as much as you can, and the missiles are basically clustered together, you’ll often end up taking damage from the blast radius. Plus, the layout of the room and the missiles are just really awkward to work with. Your best bet is typically switching between Pharaoh Shot, Ballade Cracker, and the buster, as those are your three best tools to work with when dealing with them. Still, this section really isn’t that fun to go through, and most importantly, just doesn’t feel necessary in the first place. Why even have a chase sequence here? Honestly, if there was one section I’d cut from the game, it’d probably be this. Thankfully, it is pretty short, and after all that’s said and done, we can finally move on to Mega Man World 4’s endgame.

I don’t have too much to say about Mega Man World 4’s endgame since it is pretty short, but I thought it was a lot of fun. Barring the two terrible Met cannon minibosses at the start, the Wily stages felt like what classic Mega Man end game stages should feel like. A gauntlet of everything you’ve learned so far, putting your weapon skills and reflexes to the test before finally facing off against the main man himself, Wily. Like I said, this endgame stage is pretty short, so you won’t have much time to test out your newly acquired Ballade Cracker (and no, the chase sequence does NOT mitigate this). I would’ve added a bit more to this stage, but other than that, it’s a pretty well done endgame stage, even if I don’t have much to say about it. After getting through the obligatory robot master rematches, you can finally reach Dr. Wily himself, and face off against one of the coolest Wily fights in the series. See, rather than just using your standard Wily machine, Wily decided to bring out the big guns, and you’re left facing a huge ass robot, which is just one of the coolest concepts for a Wily boss I’ve ever seen. The fight itself is also pretty fun too. The first phase, where you fight the robot’s chest, can kinda catch you off guard with how fast its hands come out, but once you start to get mentally prepared for when they come, you’ll be able to overcome it. Next up, you face off against the head, and it’s quite a bit easier than the chest phase, but it’s still pretty fun and creative, requiring that you shoot him while his mouth sucks you in. After you’ve beaten that, now it’s time for the final phase. You follow Wily into another room- aaand it’s just another Wily capsule. This is probably the lamest of the three forms, plus it requires you to use a special weapon to beat it, which I’m never too keen on. I don’t dislike it at all, but it’s pretty easy, especially if you use Pharaoh Shot to beat it. After you do, you get a cutscene escaping Wily’s fortress, Ballade sacrifices himself to save you, and then the game’s over. You just beat Mega Man World 4!

Man, I had a lot more to say about this Game Boy Mega Man game than I initially thought. I guess I just really like talking about classic Mega Man, so I guess in a way, this was probably the perfect game to get me back into Backloggd reviews. I had a really fun time with this one. It’s not anything super special, and yeah, it has a ton of strange flaws, but not only is it pretty well-designed, but it’s also quite creative for what they had to work with. You can really tell there was a strong desire to make something more original out of these Game Boy Mega Man games, and that would show when they’d release Mega Man World 5 soon after. And even though I’d typically recommend that game if you were to only ever play a single Game Boy Mega Man, I still wouldn’t overlook this Game Boy gem either. Even if you’ve played Mega Man 4 or 5 a lot, I can still say there’d probably be something here that you’d enjoy. (7/10)