Mega Man

[Thad]

Oh, cool. May have to check this one out.

And it reminds me I should finish the SML2 color hack, too.

[Thad]

The Pocket got a WonderSwan core so I tried out Rockman and Forte.

The core's not perfect -- there's visible tearing in places -- but I'm impressed by how good the WonderSwan's 2D B&W graphics look.

Course, that's on the Pocket's excellent screen; I don't know what it would have looked like on authentic hardware because I've never actually played a WonderSwan. Graphics hardware only takes you so far with a shitty display; Virtual Boy had some good-looking 2D B&W graphics too, if you look at them on a screen that's not a damn Virtual Boy. But on the Pocket, at least, WonderSwan has some crisp 8-bit visuals. I like them. Sound...not as impressive, though they did a decent enough job remixing the boss music from the SFC version.

Speaking of, it's not the SFC game, which is good, because I've seen what the SFC game looks like cropped to the GBA's resolution and about the only thing I can recommend about that port is that it describes Dr. Light as "douchie".

Anyway! This is an original game, and, judging by the first level, it isn't very good. The enemies are boring, there are too goddamn many instant death spikes, and the first boss is repetitive bullshit and God help you if you picked Forte because trying to whittle down his health without a charge shot takes forever.

I'm...not sure I'm going to bother finishing the first level of this game. It's worse than the Game Boy Mega Man games. Maybe not worse than Mega Man Xtreme. Speaking of which: I don't know if this is part of the original script or an error in translation, but...apparently the plot is that this fucking guy looks exactly like Mega Man?



So it's dumb for...kind of the opposite reason of Mega Man Xtreme's plot, whose big twist is that the two characters who look exactly the same are twins.

[nosimpleway]

That looks like Megaman in the same way that Sonic Adventure 2 starts out with Sonic getting mistaken for Shadow, I guess?

[Thad]

Look, it was dark, okay?

[Niku]

wait they brought back fucking QUINT for wonderswan r&f?

[Thad]

Don't be ridiculous. That's Rockman Shadow. This is Quint.



Completely different.

[Thad]

Mega Man: The Sequel Wars



Neat.

The Mega Man 4 portion is available for download; 5 and 6 are still forthcoming.

Apparently it's designed to be played on a real-ass Genesis, which is nice; it's always a pain when someone releases a ROM hack and only tests on emulators and it doesn't work on real hardware.

And it uses SRAM, not EEPROM. And passwords just in case you don't have a flash cart that supports SRAM saves.

Gonna have to try this one out. Someday, when I have time to play games again.

[Thad]

Mega Man: The Sequel Wars

Played through Toad Man's stage as Mega Man to get a baseline for how it plays.

Initial impressions:

* I do not like the default control scheme or sound font. Fortunately, you can revert both to match Wily Wars.
(The default control scheme -- A to shoot, B to jump, and C to slide -- is probably more sensible than the Wily Wars version; as I've remarked in the past, B makes the most sense as the jump button in a platformer since it's adjacent to both the other buttons, but the vast majority of Genesis games put jump on C so that's where my muscle memory expects it.)

* There are a whole bunch of other customization options, too, and some QoL improvements like an Exit function (that can be used any time, not just on stages you've finished; pairs well with the Infinite Lives option).

* The text has been revised slightly. The intro now contains the phrase "super fighting robot Mega Man".

* It plays pretty smoothly, on the whole. I only noticed a little bit of slowdown.

* I don't feel like Toad Man was always this easy? I mean he's definitely the easiest, which is why I chose him first, but he never even used his weapon on me, and that's without me using my charge shot.

* The "got weapon" screen actually lets you test out the weapon now, which is a neat addition (though not immediately obvious).

* Oh hey, looks like there's a 1.1 version; I'm using 1.0. I wonder if 1.1 fixes Toad Man.

[nosimpleway]

From what I recall Toad Man is the easiest MM4 boss because he's so easy to lock down. If you use the charge shot you give him enough time to do a Rain Flush, but just using plain ol' regular lemons you knock him out of the attack, he jumps to a new spot and tries again. You can plink him from full without him attacking once, which I can only assume is intended when his attack covers the whole screen and can't be dodged once it starts.

[Thad]

Huh. Guess I probably never noticed because I never tried a "no charge shot" run until Legacy Collection.

[Thad]

* I do not like the default control scheme or sound font. Fortunately, you can revert both to match Wily Wars.
(The default control scheme -- A to shoot, B to jump, and C to slide -- is probably more sensible than the Wily Wars version; as I've remarked in the past, B makes the most sense as the jump button in a platformer since it's adjacent to both the other buttons, but the vast majority of Genesis games put jump on C so that's where my muscle memory expects it.)

Okay, I fired it up on my Pocket and now the control scheme makes sense; with the default Genesis button mapping on the Pocket this is just standard Mega Man X controls (including L and R to cycle weapons, plus X as rapid-fire). It's been awhile since I fired up a Genesis emulator without using a Genesis-style controller, but I'm guessing this is the default mapping in common emulators, and given that a lot more people are going to be playing this ROM using SNES-style controllers than Genesis-style ones, this default makes good sense.

[Thad]

Japan-Exclusive Demo for Mega Man Legends 2 Receives English Translation

They call it a demo but at a glance it looks to be a unique, standalone series of short missions.