I'm surprised to see this title have so much hate. Yeah it's not the best mega man ever but it's decent for the first Mega Man on the Game Boy. I'm surprised at how it transitions decently most of the time, and the arrangements of classic themes, as well as the new ones, are great. Elec Man's theme is a stand out in this regard, it feels triumphant. In addition, all these stages also take elements from various stages and bosses in Mega Man 2 in creative ways and even add some interesting gimmicks of their own. The Rolling Cutter is also improved from MM1, becoming a multi hit move gives it an actual niche beyond "it kills Elec Man".

There are downsides to this game though, mostly coming down to how cramped things can be on the game boy. It feels like they didn't take this into account when adjusting Mega Man for it so certain obstacles, like the Saw Blade enemies or the fall-into-spikes rooms come at you much quicker than you can react, forcing you to take a hit or death. Bosses are also much tougher to dodge with it being much harder to jump out of the way here due to Mega not being able to jump as high, and collision still does a ton of damage. The bosses die in like 2 hits if you have their weakness but that goes into the opposite problem.

Hopefully future games in this series can improve on the concept of "Game Boy Mega Man"