Barring the grating, off-key tracks in this game, this game plays a lot smoother than Rockman World 1 and your Rock Buster pellets shoot a lot faster too. This does a lot to make this experience more bearable than its predecessor. But where RMW1 was exceedingly difficult (for better and worse), RMW2 its exceedingly EASY. I got to max lives by the second level not even trying to grind for drops, lives were simply that abundant in the drop rates of enemies (unless I just got REALLY lucky?) Even after I quit the game for a few hours to play other games with my friends, I came back and got back to 9 lives and no game overs by the end of Wily Castle.

The game benefits the most from the addition of the Slide and Rush powerups. It's the most satisfying thing ever to finally be able to slide underneath Air Man's tornadoes lol. In some ways, I like this game more than its console counterpart for this reason.

Like with Enker, you get a pretty cool weapon from beating Quint in Wily Castle: Sakugarne. And similarly, you really don't get to utilize it that much, unfortunately. It's Wily's weakness, but you take contact damage from using it against him in a three-phase fight, so it's not a very fair tradeoff. And any situation you might want to use Sakugarne in, Rush Coil is just better.

Also I thought it was cool that Quint is apparently Rockman from the future. I'm curious how Quint fits into the storyline if he's from 32,000~ years in the future with a Rock that's reverted back to a house-keeping robot when the Rockman X series shows that Rock is nowhere to be found only 100 years into the future. I've been told that the World games are all canon somehow, and that I should play them before 10, so I'm curious to know if Quint ever makes/will make a reappearance in future games to explain this.

I ran into a funny glitch that, because the game doesn't pause to refill Health or Weapon Energy, if you pause and switch weapons while Weapon Energy is refilling, your other weapon will stop filling up and the new one will continue filling up from where the other one stopped.

I loved the Wily Station level with the Salvadore Dali background. I can only imagine how great this would look in full color (really wishing Mega Man Mania wasn't cancelled).

Overall, if I was a kid with a Game Boy dying to play Rockman on the go, I think I'd be happy to own both Rockman World titles I've played so far for theoretical car trips in the 90s. They're not spectacular, but they're serviceable.

You ever wind up being the B-Team to a B-Team and have to make a Mega Man 2 demake for the Game Boy in roughly 6 months?

Imagine if you were in that circumstance, and proceeded to only demake half of Mega Man 2, because that first B-Team already used the other half of the game's bosses in their Mega Man 1 demake. But god help you, you need to pad the game out, so you then throw in half of Mega Man 3 for no fucking reason other than some weird ass sense of tradition, before having you fight the easiest boss in the entire franchise who gives you a weapon that will literally kill you for using it, and will kill you faster than the boss that's supposedly weak to it. Also you've inexplicably made a Mega Man game thats braindead easy for 90% of its runtime, and has a Sonic Chronicles tier soundtrack to top it off.

Honestly, the only point the game made my neurones fire off anything at all was when I walked right onto the second screen of Metal Man's stage and immediately fell onto a pit of spikes, probably the single worst first impression a game has given me.

How to counter Mega Man II bossfights:
Metal Man: Quick Boomerang/Metal Blade
Air Man: Leaf Shield
Wood Man: Atomic Fire
Crash Man: Save State/Load State

This was the only one in the series that was a replay for me. These games (as I'm sure many reading this are aware) are quite a bit harder to find in the States, and they go for quite a heftier price tag over there as well, so this was all I had for GB-based Mega Man when I was younger. I remembered it being fairly easy, which is why the difficulty of the first entry in the series had caught me a bit off guard in how difficult it was, but after all that other Mega Man, it was quite jarring to go back to something quite so easy as this. It took me around an hour and a half to beat the Japanese version of the game.

Most of these GameBoy Mega Man games don't really have much of a story beyond "Wily is back, go beat him", and despite the fact that it wasn't made by the same company as the first GB Mega Man game, this one is no exception. Like in the first Rock Man World game, Wily is back and he's brought four robot masters from the NES game that this shares a number with, and four from the next one. In this case, that means four robot masters from Mega Man 2 (the four who weren't in the last game), and four from Mega Man 3. However, unlike the first GB game, the second group of four robot masters actually have their own stages instead of just filling the void of the boss rush. That makes for eight robot masters stages, one big Wily stage, and a special boss unique to this game: Quint.

This game isn't just easy, it's way too easy. And not in the way that NES Mega Man 2's normal mode is quite easy compared to a lot of the other NES games, but it's so easy it's often downright boring. It has the same "Mega Man is just too big" stage design as the first GB game, but things just mostly feel a bit too empty and slow as a result. The gameplay isn't terribly snappy because there just isn't much to fear for your death other than falling into the pits littered about the place. But those slow stages give way to very simple boss fights that are for the most part pretty easy with the mega buster and comically simple with the boss's weakness. Even Quint is a pretty underwhelming boss fight. Add in that you also have the slide dash from Mega Man 3 and E-tanks from Mega Man 2 and you have a game that is super duper forgiving to the point that it really fails to make much of an impression at all.

The presentation is fine, but really not that memorable in any particular way. It's a good recreation of the sprites they're going for, but it still feels very simplified and "NES Lite" in its presentation. That extends to the music as well, which delivers a few less than inspired new tracks as well as just adequate iterations of the included robot masters' themes.


Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. If you're in the mood for an easier Mega Man game, this will certainly fit the bill. I don't really have much all to say about this game other than that it's too easy for its own good. That isn't inherently a flaw, but for a series like Mega Man, it means that a lot of veterans will likely come away from this game not feeling terribly satisfied. Rock Man World 2 succeeds in being a competent action platformer, but it fails in delivering what most fans would probably want from their 8-bit Mega Man.

Pretty good! I had a little moment with this one outside of the intended game, as I realised retroachievements had an achievement for beating each robot master buster only, and decided that sounded really fun, and you know what? It was! The mega-compact boss areas lend themselves really well to a tight back and forth combat that’s more engaging than just cheesing it with the correct weapon, and it forced me to be a better player and survive longer. And by freeing up my weapons I got to use them more in stages, which made those feel less limited. A winning strategy that I might do again in the future.

The 4 plus 4 approach to Robot Masters feels stronger here for the second wave all getting stages (and passwords, thankfully). It substantially fleshes the game out over its predecessor and gives the new dev team more space to work out what the hell a Mega Man game should even be. I feel like they do a fairly decent, if limited, job on these. Like none of these levels are memorable, and they all sound terrible, but they feel like Mega Man in a way that satisfies enough to keep you playing.

Wily is… too easy in this, and bizarrely small, though not as easy as Quint, a sub-boss so easy that he doesn’t even get a health bar. Still, you get a hilarious pogo stick/piledriver, which is a fun reward that late in the game.

Finally, a shout out to Rush, who once again gets to be good AND not be clothing, which is every dog’s dream. I enjoy seeing him next to Mega Man on the weapon get screen, one of the cutest in the franchise. I don’t want to keep judging these games by how they use Rush, but I’m quickly realising that he’s the canary down the coal mine for Mega Man. Happy dog, happy life. Three stars.

A definite step forward from the first Mega Man on Game Boy, but still not a huge leap. The stages and Robot Masters are designed a bit better, the music is way less grating, and the game is quick and eminently playable. I’m also a big fan of the weapon from Quint (the second of the “Mega Man Killers”), which is a… bladed pogo stick named Sakugarde? Unfortunately, you only get to use the Sakugarde for a single level, and then you get what might be the lamest Wily fight that I’ve seen in ANY Mega Man game.

Mega Man II is fine, but there’s a good reason why it’s a footnote beneath the NES’s stellar Mega Man 2.

Maybe it's just relief to actually enjoy Mega Man again after coming from Dr. Wily's Revenge, but Mega Man II was a way more enjoyable experience than I was expecting. Nothing flashy, or even anything amazing. But just coherent, well put together levels and action platforming that you've come to enjoy from the Mega Man series. The focus on vertical stages instead of the typical screen scroll was much appreciated, and even the traditional screen scroll sections felt much better by comparison.

Still it's a Game Boy Mega Man title, so it's nothing spectacular. The music is actually...worse somehow from the previous game, which blows. Also sucks there's no original Mega Man Killer in this game. But outside of some minor level design gripes, this is a title much more respectful of your time.

This game fixes a lot of the issues of the first game like the screen crunch and (mostly fixes) the unfair screens. But in exchange, this game does several things worse.

The issue that this game is most well known for is every single sound being an octave too high. This makes all the sound effects and especially BGM hard to listen to, but listening to the corrected soundtrack it's okay. I did miss the arranges of the NES music the last game went with as here they are all original tracks, but songs from Mega Man 2 like Metal Man's theme, wood man (very nice) and Top 27 Anime Boobs (aka Crash Man) are iconic tracks that I would have loved to hear in a Game Boy style arrangement.

These versions of the GB stages feel closer to their NES counterparts, which is a little less exciting as when playing the previous title I only had half of an idea of what to expect and would be surprised by what other elements (or even unique elements) would be thrown in. Now it feels like portable versions of the NES stages, for better or worse, which made me wonder why I wasn't playing those games instead. The fall into spikes and die rooms from Wily's Castle were moved to Metal Man way earlier in the game and the Yoku Blocks feel far less consistant here than in the previous game. Despite this the game as a whole is overall notably easier than the first since everything else is much more fair, but really that translates to blowing through it a lot quicker. The bosses are copy-pasted from the NES so expect to take hits on some bosses, but E-Tanks are in abundance in this game so you'll never really have an issue.

The stage count increases from 6 to 9, as the game handles its Robot Master roster in an interesting way: the first 4 you'll know who you pick, but in the second half you won't know who's stage you're going to in a blind playthrough until it's already begun. This also allows you more time with the second half of the weapon roster (which pulls from Mega Man 3) allowing them to actually see practical use.

Speaking of Mega Man 3, the slide and Rush parts are also here which are a welcome addition. They're all their MM3 counterparts except Rush Marine controls worse. This means you have the busted Rush Jet that never gets used up if you spam jumps while on him! Don't forget the Metal Blades are in this game, meaning you have all the tools you need to blast through the stages with reckless abandon once you get those two.

In some ways it's a better experience than the previous, but I think I prefer that game to this, as its challenge at least justified its short length while here you get both the best weapon and transport item in Mega Man history in an already fairly easy game.

Does the game not stopping when you heal/grab energy feel uncanny or is it just a me thing?

Ignoring the blatant disregard the composer had for the project when configuring the music (comfirmed btw, dude apologized publicly about it).

This game isn't much worse than base Mega Man 2, i know it isn't even close to being the same game, but weirdly enough, much of the same issues still apply.

It's a very fun game with some nonsensical enemy placement at times, and bonus point to MMII over MM2 for not having absolute garbage for final stages.

Would definitely recommend as a time waster if you don't mind playing on mute.