I love the Sega Genesis. It was my first console, and the Genesis version of The Pagemaster was my first ever game. Actually, I have no affinity whatsoever for the NES. I’ve never even owned one, and I’ve only played a handful of games for it. Because of my undeniable attachment to the Genesis, I was so excited to see what The Wily Wars would be like.

Turns out that The Wily Wars is like a Bluepoint remake of the first three Mega Man games. They give you the slide in all three games, and they’ve also clearly boosted weapon damage, jump height, run speed, and health across them—it’s to the point that the original Mega Man, one of the most difficult mainstream games I can think of, is reduced to something mind-numbingly simple and surprisingly inelegant. All of the music is slower and completely devoid of its former personality. Also, each game is layered in that trademark Genesis crust, and I could not stand how any of them looked. I didn’t even bother to finish this. I got to Yellow Devil in the first game and was so appalled to see that they give you zero gravity jumps for that fight that I just couldn’t go on. I’ll pick this back up sometime because I’d like to try the newly-added Wily Tower mode, but for now, I’m happily putting this one back in the attic where it belongs. I can’t think of a single good reason to play this over the NES originals.