I'm a big Mega Man Fan (megafan, in the common parlance) so the GB titles have represented a pretty big gap in my resume so to speak. I am setting out to rectify this.

The game was outsourced and came out in the same year as MM4 so this falls nicely into the zone of 'console experience crammed into your portable with mixed results.' I think this is one of the better games in that vein I've played, even if we're talking about a really low bar here. I've previously said that Castlevania the Adventure felt like a Klik N Play game and I think that's also true here, but more complimentary. The gameboy was our home for KnPcore games. It's just the feel of the movement, the very screen-based nature of the play, and the way the little bullets come out.

What really works here are the visuals. Meggin' Man is all about big, expressive characters and in order to translate that to the small screen they had to give up a lot of screen real estate but they DID and while the game is full of hateful bullshit, especially in the lategame, it didn't usually feel like I was fighting the camera or anything. Some enemies, like the torch guys who throw fire, are definitely made to feel a bit more artificially tough with the zoom-in but they are the minority. The weapon acquired screen is the coolest one I've seen in the entire series with a sick cross-section of your boy himself too and that's gotta be worth something.

There's only four robot master levels, featuring masters from MM1 but featuring some stage hazards and enemies from MM2 as well. The weapons work the same as you'd be used to from the NES but they're really super useful against normal enemies now, which is really nice! The weapons felt like a big deal and since the bosses all die extremely quickly to their weaknesses you should be using them liberally. There are only two Wily levels but INEXPLICABLY the first one has you fight four guys from MM2 and a new dude named Enker and ALL OF THEM drop weapons that you get to use for just ONE LEVEL. This feels like the game was intended to be longer but instead just gives the finale a real manic energy to make up for the plethora of bullshit, both insta-kill and regular variety, thrown at you.

I'm definitely not likely to replay this any time soon but I had a good time and am looking forward to seeing what the rest of these bring to the table.

Reviewed on Dec 06, 2022


Comments