Mega Man & Bass is an entry in the classic Mega Man series, with option for controlling either Mega Man or Bass, due to Dr. Wily and Dr. Light making a truce to fight against King. The game was originally released only in Japan, but a later Game Boy Advance port had an international release.
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I beat this game for the first time very recently and it really boggles my mind that this game has people who like it so much. It's not as nearly as bad as some people make it out to be but it's also definitely a weaker Mega Man game. The stage design is somewhat unusual for the series and has some cool stage gimmicks but the game doesn't really benefit from the different stage select layout as much as people think it does (name one weapon outside the Ice Wall and maybe the Wave Burner that you really used in more than one stage for some kind of shortcut or gimmick) but I think where this game is really at its worse is the boss design: seriously those fights are pretty lame. They're either kind of unfair to the player or mind-numbingly repetitive. I found that using their weaknesses is almost necessary for some fights, and the ones where it isn't are the repetitive ones. I think my least favorite one is Magic Man, because it feels like the devs didn't even glance at Mega Man while designing him. Though the worst fights are without a doubt the King Tank and Plane bossfights, which is funny considering that the fights that come right afterwards are some of the easiest in the game. The Bass route I honestly can't even remember much about even if I finished it after the Mega Man route, I guess it goes to show how easier the game can be with him. That multi-directional buster does wonders.
Beaten with a translation hack ages ago, with both characters and probably heaps of savestate abuse.
While I really like its soundtrack and Mega Man 8's visuals make the step down to SNES hardware admirably, Mega Man & Bass is a right fucker of a game. The markedly high difficulty level turns the game into a chore way too often, especially during the grueling endgame castle stages. It's even worse if you play as Mega Man, since a lot of the challenges seem to be designed with Bass' 8-way autofire weapon and double jumping in mind.
While I really like its soundtrack and Mega Man 8's visuals make the step down to SNES hardware admirably, Mega Man & Bass is a right fucker of a game. The markedly high difficulty level turns the game into a chore way too often, especially during the grueling endgame castle stages. It's even worse if you play as Mega Man, since a lot of the challenges seem to be designed with Bass' 8-way autofire weapon and double jumping in mind.
In my continued slow crawl through the classic Mega Man series, this was a game that I was dreading to get to a bit, given its reputation and my previous attempt at playing it being rather unpleasant. Fortunately, this was a case of misplaced pessimism, because this is honestly one of the coolest games in the series despite some bumps along the way, with a fantastic sense of style and level design that manages to forgo a string of typical issues I have with the series as a whole.
In a series that centres itself around refinement and repetition, with each iteration being largely the same but with subtle changes and evolutions upon the core experience, I feel like Mega Man and Bass is a game to epitomise the benefits of such an approach, feeling like the end result of so many previous attempts, with a couple of bigger changes to shake things up. The way that this becomes most clear to me is in the way the game looks, feeling like a better version of what Mega Man 8 was doing, keeping a lot of the fidelity of those sprites and animations, but toning them down enough that everything has a certain sense of visual clarity to it that 8 lacked sometimes. There's no more weirdness with overanimated elements leading to everything looking off, and the fact that this was all done on the Super Famicom is insane to me as well. Beyond this great example of applying a sense of restraint in a way that strictly benefits the experience, I also just can't help but stare in awe at a lot of the vibrant backgrounds as well, being more effective than ever before at establishing locations that feel more tangible in-world, adding so much more to the experience of diving deeper into these platforming challenges.
The level design itself also feels like a huge step up to complement this, not just looking great, but playing fantastically too, with the gimmicks they utilise generally being rather short lived and more to add a bit of flavour to each individual level instead of be annoying distractions, elevating the more pure Mega Man gameplay as opposed to taking poorly conceived left turns. Everything certainly is on the more difficult side as well, but it still feels less annoying than some past games, with a less frequent reliance on instakill mechanics being especially merciful. None of the other games have had such a consistently fun set of robot master stages as this one, with even its most difficult moments still mostly being fun to figure out the optimal route through, and usually feeling far more mechanically dense than past games in a way I enjoyed (the opening level had a windy section for example).
My enjoyment of these stages does come with the caveat that I played through the game as Bass, which I definitely think was the right call considering the way that this oddly just doesn't feel like it was designed with Mega Man in mind. Bass' double jump, dash and 8 directional blaster all feel essential in getting through the game without immense amounts of frustration, the levels being possible to complete with just the one jump and slide of Mega Man, but just barely, to the point where you'd occasionally have to rely on luck to succeed. I see the idea they had in mind here, as Mega Man's charged buster is a far more effective boss killing tool than Bass' gun due to that one not being able to charge up and deal more than 1 point of damage at a time, but it feels very uneven when Bass' weaknesses aren't nearly as pronounced, given that he still has access to boss weapons and his enhanced mobility makes some attacks easier to dodge. It's certainly more difficult, but not to a point that really feels as close as stages straight up not feeling designed around a character.
Another thing that stood out to me about this game was how boss weaknesses were handled in such a way that you couldn't just trivialise the fights once you found the correct weapon to use. It certainly does more damage, but they rarely will outright shut a boss down in the same way as in some other games, and often are a bit finicky to use to make actually hitting the boss in their weakness a skill in itself, most clearly shown in the burner man fight requiring knowing the correct openings to push him into spikes with Cold Man's power. I appreciate the way that this forces the player to still engage with the robot master fights past the first one you choose to fight, becoming somewhat knowledgeable about how to deal with their attack patterns instead of blitzing through them all. Unfortunately all of my appreciation for the game and its bosses comes with the caveat that King stage 2 is the worst level in the entire series to me so far, being a seemingly endless gauntlet with 4 separate bosses interspersed throughout, some of them being the most tedious and frustrating ones in the game, with a great deal of them being responsible for the infamy this game garnered, turning such an incredible game into a downright wretched experience for as long as it takes to get through this part (a long time considering it's where the game peaks in difficulty).
Despite my complaints with the final stretch of the game, I still think that this is one of my favourite classic Mega Mans for all it succeeds at in further refining and adding to a formula that had been extremely tried and true at this point, with each fundamental change being really interesting and touching upon aspects that I previously had disliked, leading to the most consistently fantastic game in the series until those final moments. It's challenging for sure, and kinda insufferable if you're not playing as Bass, but it's a really fun time and mind blowing to exist on the console it was on.
In a series that centres itself around refinement and repetition, with each iteration being largely the same but with subtle changes and evolutions upon the core experience, I feel like Mega Man and Bass is a game to epitomise the benefits of such an approach, feeling like the end result of so many previous attempts, with a couple of bigger changes to shake things up. The way that this becomes most clear to me is in the way the game looks, feeling like a better version of what Mega Man 8 was doing, keeping a lot of the fidelity of those sprites and animations, but toning them down enough that everything has a certain sense of visual clarity to it that 8 lacked sometimes. There's no more weirdness with overanimated elements leading to everything looking off, and the fact that this was all done on the Super Famicom is insane to me as well. Beyond this great example of applying a sense of restraint in a way that strictly benefits the experience, I also just can't help but stare in awe at a lot of the vibrant backgrounds as well, being more effective than ever before at establishing locations that feel more tangible in-world, adding so much more to the experience of diving deeper into these platforming challenges.
The level design itself also feels like a huge step up to complement this, not just looking great, but playing fantastically too, with the gimmicks they utilise generally being rather short lived and more to add a bit of flavour to each individual level instead of be annoying distractions, elevating the more pure Mega Man gameplay as opposed to taking poorly conceived left turns. Everything certainly is on the more difficult side as well, but it still feels less annoying than some past games, with a less frequent reliance on instakill mechanics being especially merciful. None of the other games have had such a consistently fun set of robot master stages as this one, with even its most difficult moments still mostly being fun to figure out the optimal route through, and usually feeling far more mechanically dense than past games in a way I enjoyed (the opening level had a windy section for example).
My enjoyment of these stages does come with the caveat that I played through the game as Bass, which I definitely think was the right call considering the way that this oddly just doesn't feel like it was designed with Mega Man in mind. Bass' double jump, dash and 8 directional blaster all feel essential in getting through the game without immense amounts of frustration, the levels being possible to complete with just the one jump and slide of Mega Man, but just barely, to the point where you'd occasionally have to rely on luck to succeed. I see the idea they had in mind here, as Mega Man's charged buster is a far more effective boss killing tool than Bass' gun due to that one not being able to charge up and deal more than 1 point of damage at a time, but it feels very uneven when Bass' weaknesses aren't nearly as pronounced, given that he still has access to boss weapons and his enhanced mobility makes some attacks easier to dodge. It's certainly more difficult, but not to a point that really feels as close as stages straight up not feeling designed around a character.
Another thing that stood out to me about this game was how boss weaknesses were handled in such a way that you couldn't just trivialise the fights once you found the correct weapon to use. It certainly does more damage, but they rarely will outright shut a boss down in the same way as in some other games, and often are a bit finicky to use to make actually hitting the boss in their weakness a skill in itself, most clearly shown in the burner man fight requiring knowing the correct openings to push him into spikes with Cold Man's power. I appreciate the way that this forces the player to still engage with the robot master fights past the first one you choose to fight, becoming somewhat knowledgeable about how to deal with their attack patterns instead of blitzing through them all. Unfortunately all of my appreciation for the game and its bosses comes with the caveat that King stage 2 is the worst level in the entire series to me so far, being a seemingly endless gauntlet with 4 separate bosses interspersed throughout, some of them being the most tedious and frustrating ones in the game, with a great deal of them being responsible for the infamy this game garnered, turning such an incredible game into a downright wretched experience for as long as it takes to get through this part (a long time considering it's where the game peaks in difficulty).
Despite my complaints with the final stretch of the game, I still think that this is one of my favourite classic Mega Mans for all it succeeds at in further refining and adding to a formula that had been extremely tried and true at this point, with each fundamental change being really interesting and touching upon aspects that I previously had disliked, leading to the most consistently fantastic game in the series until those final moments. It's challenging for sure, and kinda insufferable if you're not playing as Bass, but it's a really fun time and mind blowing to exist on the console it was on.
Sure, this game is super hard for a Mega Man game but I don't think it's as bad as people make it out to be, I rather enjoyed this one, the music is also super great and catchy, I think it's good time for anyone who is used to classic Mega Man and wants more challenge, and yes I even liked the GBA version and played the game as both Mega Man and Bass, I can knock the game down for King's stage 2, that one was straight up badly designed (even tho i personally enjoyed it, but that's just me with a lot of Mega Man games under my belt), the game could've been better without that stage.
This game is hard. You might be saying “of course it is it’s a mega man game” but you have to understand. It’s hard, for a mega man game. It’s a hard mega man game. It is the Lost Levels of mega man.
What I’m saying here is this game is downright impossible
What I’m saying here is this game is downright impossible
This is the ideal Mega Man. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like. Needs more Rock Ball tho.
I first tried playing this game long, long ago on the GBA port, as my introduction to Mega Man as a franchise (alongside X7, but that's a story for another time), and at the time that did me no favors whatsoever with my feelings for the series whatsoever. MM&B is, as its reputation certainly suggests, a hard as hell game, and being forced to play on a limited controls layout (no third button for Forte's dash) and even more limited screen-space made this all even worse. Thankfully however, revisiting this game in a proper environment and after a hefty dose of other games in the series as training helps put the game into a context where it can and does truly shine.
One thing in particular that sets the game apart is that between the myriad upgrades the game provides through the shop, along with the arsenal of weapons this go-round, you're given what is easily the all-around strongest incarnation of Rock in the series up-to-date (let alone Forte being an X function). This makes the level design, which is particularly nasty compared to past games, much more bearable overall, and in fact helps the game emphasize its kit in a way few other games in the series do. The way that the levels are designed to accommodate both Rock and Forte's unique movesets, and the ways they both have to use weapons/upgrades to compensate for their respective shortcomings, makes for really interesting decision-making that past games wish they could live up to. 8 COULD have been this in theory, but didn't get a proper chance to really explore this by the time the Wily stages hit.
King Stage 2 is still going to be a contender for the most fucked up thing in an official Mega Man game, and the game is mean as all hell, but it's a satisfying culmination to the trilogy of games (7, 8, MM&B) that, frankly, should have defined the series moving forward. This game with 8's presentation would be peak (also, More Rock Ball).
I first tried playing this game long, long ago on the GBA port, as my introduction to Mega Man as a franchise (alongside X7, but that's a story for another time), and at the time that did me no favors whatsoever with my feelings for the series whatsoever. MM&B is, as its reputation certainly suggests, a hard as hell game, and being forced to play on a limited controls layout (no third button for Forte's dash) and even more limited screen-space made this all even worse. Thankfully however, revisiting this game in a proper environment and after a hefty dose of other games in the series as training helps put the game into a context where it can and does truly shine.
One thing in particular that sets the game apart is that between the myriad upgrades the game provides through the shop, along with the arsenal of weapons this go-round, you're given what is easily the all-around strongest incarnation of Rock in the series up-to-date (let alone Forte being an X function). This makes the level design, which is particularly nasty compared to past games, much more bearable overall, and in fact helps the game emphasize its kit in a way few other games in the series do. The way that the levels are designed to accommodate both Rock and Forte's unique movesets, and the ways they both have to use weapons/upgrades to compensate for their respective shortcomings, makes for really interesting decision-making that past games wish they could live up to. 8 COULD have been this in theory, but didn't get a proper chance to really explore this by the time the Wily stages hit.
King Stage 2 is still going to be a contender for the most fucked up thing in an official Mega Man game, and the game is mean as all hell, but it's a satisfying culmination to the trilogy of games (7, 8, MM&B) that, frankly, should have defined the series moving forward. This game with 8's presentation would be peak (also, More Rock Ball).