pretty solid remake of the NES originals + some cool "postgame" content after you beat Mega Man 1-3

definitely worth checking out if you love early classic mega man, but also be afraid of it being such a faithful remake that some of the flaws were remade as well

my only real gripe is that i think the music has less punch compared to the NES original, but it's not bad imo

My favorite game on the Genesis and a game I've sunk countless hours into speedrunning. I like some of the more minute changes in the formula that a normie would not appreciate such as the knockback cancelling by pausing or the screen wrapping. The music is pretty good but not as good since the Genesis doesn't have amazing music. The normal cartridge lags a lot as a warning. Playing the retro bit collectors cartridge or the switch online version has 0 lag. It also includes Wily Tower which has 3 new robot masters and unique stages where you pick your own weapons out of everything from MM 1-3. You will then realize how broken the magnet beam is. I love this game to death, its that simple.

Mega Man: The Wily Wars is a compilation of the first three NES games remade for Sega's 16-bit system. All three games have been rebalanced, everything looks more detailed than its NES counterparts, and re-arranged music to have that Genesis feel. For a while, North Americans had to result to reproduction cartridges and emulation because it was only released on Sega of America's discontinued service, the Sega Channel. This service allowed you to play Genesis games online while also bringing over three Genesis games exclusive to the Sega Channel, and The Wily Wars was one of them. Thankfully that has now been fixed with its re-release on the Sega Genesis Mini (which I played for this review) and more recently in 2022 to the Genesis Nintendo Switch Online service. Now more people than ever can experience this lost classic on modern devices and see how Mega Man was translated on a non-Nintendo console. For this review, I want to talk about my experience with these three games, so I'll try to keep it brief

Mega Man:
I like this one surprisingly enough, coming from a guy whose second least favorite Mega Man game is the first one. I was competent enough into beating the game without using save states, and as someone who has replayed 1-5 this year, I feel proud of myself for this one

Mega Man 2:
I found this to be the hard one out of the three. Robot masters can take many more hits even with their weaknesses. I did struggle near the end of Wily Castle and unfortunately had to use save states to get through Stage 5. Other than that, I had no such issue with the rest

Mega Man 3:
This was another surprise to me because I found this to be the best out of the Genesis trilogy. Out of all three, I found this to have the most changes in its difficulty balance, making the game much smoother for me to play through, unlike its NES counterpart. It's funny how I came from disliking it in the NES version to liking it in the Genesis version

As you can see, I found myself having a solid experience with these three games overall. Though I did find myself having to make some tighter jumps with enemy projectiles like Guts Man's boulder in Mega Man 1, and Wood Man's Leaf Shield in Mega Man 2; don't know what that was all about. I found the music to receive mixed receptions from those who played the game; some people liked it, and some people hate it. As a fan of video game music, I enjoyed listening to the 16-bit renditions of classic songs, and was pleasant to the ears

Each game now has a save feature to mark your progress, which is great for MM1 because there was none in the NES original, so I appreciate that addition. One new addition that they added to The Wily Wars is Wily Tower. After completing the three Mega Man games in the collection, you will unlock a brand-new scenario featuring brand-new levels and three new robot masters to defeat. What's exciting is that we can mix and match weapon and support abilities from Mega Man 1, 2, and 3 to take with us into battle and can be swapped out between stages, allowing a great deal of fun experimentation within these original stages. While I was a bit bummed that this mode was brief and only took about half an hour for me to beat; I can't deny that I had fun while playing this mode and this will be the biggest draw for those who played The Wily Wars before

Mega Man: The Wily Wars is what I consider the Super Mario All-Stars of Mega Man. These are solid remakes, and while by no means replaceable of their respective counterparts, this is more centered for the curious who wants to experience Mega Man's outings on Sega consoles. I recommend this to any Mega Man fan who wants to give this compilation a shot

This compilation combines the first three Mega Man games with upgraded 16-bit graphics and was only released on the Sega Channel in the west. New features include a save system for each game and a new area called the "Wily Tower" in which Mega Man can equip any 8 weapons and gadgets from the first three games. The three stages feature enemies from the three games, as well as a trio of powerful robot masters called the Gemini Unit. The Wily Tower lasts about forty minutes on its own, making it the longest Wily Castle in any Mega Man game. While the remakes aren't 1:1 with their original game, they are enjoyable enough to be beaten, with only a few slowdowns, some of them making titular bosses like the Yellow Devil much easier.

This trilogy of games remastered for the Sega Genesis has been a very enjoyable experience.

The first thing you may notice is that the gameplay doesn't feel as good, it feels strange to jump and shoot, this is even more noticeable since the level design is the same as the original games. The slowdowns it suffers sometimes don't help either, but after a while you get used to it all.

But well, let's go to what stands out mainly in these games: the graphics. I liked them a lot, the art style here I feel has not been seen in another 16-bit Mega Man game or similar, as the color palette used instead of being colorful as in other Mega Man games tends to be more "realistic" (taking into account that it is a game for Genesis in pixel art, of course). There are some stages that were drastically improved and really give a different feeling when playing them, the enemies look good, and the robot masters even better. What did leave me disappointed is how characters like Dr. Light, Roll and Proto Man look, I feel they could have done a better job considering how the rest of the characters do look good.And the music, some arrangements sound good, others didn't sound as good to me, but all the songs in Mega Man 3 sound great.

Additionally, this game after beating the first 3 Mega Man, unlocks an additional Mega Man game, although it is not a complete game as such, since it only consists of 3 Robot Masters (with totally new designs, stages and music) and a new Wily Fortress, also with new bosses. I really liked this add-on, the stages and music are good.

Conclusion
In conclusion, it has been an interesting way to revisit these 3 games, certainly the gameplay could have been polished a bit, but it is still enjoyable.

I recommend it to anyone who wants to play Mega Man, Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3 with a different look.

If we were to judge this game as a port, I would say that artistically, it exceeds the NES versions, but music wise, it's hit-or-miss. Ultimately, if you had to choose between NES or Genesis, I would lean towards NES, but these versions don't slouch.

Mega Man 1, 2, and 3 are fine games, but I find that the extra Wily levels are nothing to truly write home about, just neat additional tidbits, that do in fact have neat music accompanying them, at the very least. If you are in the mood to replay the NES originals and are all too familiar with them, I recommend the Wily Wars for a change of pace.

At the end of the day, this game is a nice coat of paint for games that already aged well without it.

Um remake inferior aos jogos que refaz já falha em sua concepção. Nem na estética audiovisual, aspecto que mesmo remakes polêmicos costumam se sair satisfatoriamente, ele supera o material original: a música é decididamente melhor no NES e a reimaginação da maioria dos estágios não me agradou muito. Apenas Mega Man 3 ficou mais ou menos consistentemente bom no áudio e vídeo, e ainda assim com exceções.

Os controles sofreram um downgrade ainda maior. O input lag é notável e a física do Mega Man inconsistente. Se você jogar a versão europeia, que era a única disponível no ocidente até pouco tempo, vai sofrer ainda mais, já que não ajustaram o game à refresh rate menor do padrão PAL (que era 50hz, contra 60hz dos EUA), fazendo com que o game fique bem lento. Mas mesmo rodando na velocidade correta (algo que pode ser resolvido em emuladores modernos, que podem forçar o jogo a rodar no padrão NTSC) há outros problemas, como o rebalanceamento da dificuldade que achei completamente desnecessário.

Mesmo com tantos problemas, ainda é Mega Man, e três deles. Mesmo um Mega Man com problemas é melhor que muito jogo por aí.

Ah, e depois que você zera os três jogos, tem um pós-game exclusivo com novos estágios e chefes, chamado Wily's Tower. É um remix interessante, utilizando inimigos de toda a trilogia e permitindo você escolher escolher 8 armas dentre todas as 24 de MM1, MM2 e MM3. Não é muito desafiador - afinal, você pode selecionar combinações roubadas como Metal Man + Elec Man + Rush Jet - mas é legalzinho.

A solid remake of the first 3 Mega Man titles, considering the context of the time. The Mega Drive Soundtrack really slaps, while not taking to much of the identity of the NES versions. Performance was improved in all titles, which is especially awesome for MM 3. The power of the 16-Bit Mega Drive also gave the opportunity to overhaul nearly all graphics from the original. Stages have way more background details and replaces a lot of the black spaces form the originals. Mega Man himself looks closer to his actual artwork and less like little Timmy's first pixelart.

The Wily Tower is really fun as a post game reward and adds a lot of replay value.

My only gripe would be the controls. They aren't really sloppy or anything but Mega Man seems to stick to the ground a bit to much while changing directions. The best desrciption would be "Sticky Feet". But you can adjust to that over time, but some sections in MM1 and MM2 are definietly made tougher because of it. I think Quick Man's Stage is nearly impossible without using Flash Man's ability, which makes the boss fight against the bot himself really painful.
But other than that: Really solid for 1994.

Pretty solidly weaker than the originals if you ask me. A lot like Super Mario All-Stars in that it looks far uglier, sounds far worse, and doesn't really bother with actually fixing the original games' issues. It just feels to me like lackluster or outright bad ports that were quickly pooped out by Capcom as part of a deal. I suppose Wily Tower is kinda cool, but you have to slog through the bad ports to reach it.

I'm pretty outspoken about my opinions on both this and Super Mario All-Stars, but not many people seem to agree. I don't really get it. I suppose it must have been convenient to own all the games in a bundle at the time, but in both cases nothing is really improved upon, and oftentimes it is actually worsened. In the days of emulation and rerelease compilations, there's no reason not to just play these games in their original forms.

Remakes are always a hot topic, aren't they? The Wily Wars is no different-- even if not all that many people have played the damn thing. I've no need to discuss the actual games in this review; if you want to see those, they're all here: (MM1, MM2, MM3). Instead, I'll be focusing on the things that have changed in between the versions.

So, let's get the elephant in the room out of the way first: I disagree heavily with the common connotation that the Genesis versions of these games have worse presentation-- they simply don't. All of the games consistently look better than they did on the NES. The music is a lot more mixed, though... there's quite a handful I think are better or equal to their original counterparts but there's also tons of tracks that got ruined. It isn't unlistenable, but it is unfortunate.

No, my issues with the game arise with the various gameplay changes. For example, Mega Man walks like he has to contemplate the idea of going forward every time you want to move from a standstill, and it totally destroys the natural flow of all of these games. There were various times where I wanted to be quick on the draw with my platforming but I couldn't because I physically just can't move. This is totally eliminated by shooting as you walk, but like, why is it even a thing? There's also some other pretty big things, like a damage decrease for many bullets (that look like yours) down to 1 hit point, and a couple of sections where it feels like they didn't account for the game running differently. Flash Man is totally fucked in this game-- it has to be played to be believed.

This isn't to say all of the changes are bad: in fact, most of them are good. A lot of the shittier enemies and bosses in the first 3 games have been seriously toned down to be bearable. Fire Man, Elec Man, Quick Man? All gutted. There's also a few bosses who've been made harder which I appreciated too. Contrary to what I've seen others say there was no slowdown either-- this is apparently not true on console/emulator, but I played the Switch Online version of this game, so I'm reviewing that.

It's why I think the remakes are ultimately decent but not much more. They fix some of the larger issues and other minor bugs (especially in 3) in these games, but they really don't do much else and actively break other things. I can't fully recommend playing them because of the poor controls but most other things are better when you get down to it.

Oh yeah, and the Wily Tower is there too.
It's mid.