Mega Man was one of Capcom’s very first cash cows. This developer has long proven to be one of the most prolific around, and this run and gun franchise was one of the earlier indicators of their love for releasing sequels. They managed to release six Mega Man titles on the original Nintendo for goodness sake. What I didn’t realize is that the blue bomber managed several outings on the Game Boy as well. When you add up all of these, along with the Super Nintendo titles, you’ll realize that Mega Man was one of the very busiest video game mascots in the eighties and nineties. I only recently learned that the handheld entries existed, and because this is one of my favorite franchises I couldn’t resist but track them all down. I was happy to learn that Capcom didn’t simply port over the NES releases. Unfortunately they took the next easiest route; they simply combined boss characters and stages from the first two titles while adding in only one new boss. The end result is Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge. It’s disappointing, but this Frankenstein Mega Man game is actually pretty good.
While the timeline hasn’t been revealed this title takes place some time after the second game. In Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge the evil scientist has returned, but instead of creating an all new cast of robot masters he simply re-built eight from his former line-up. These include Fire Man, Ice Man, Elec Man, Cut Man in the primary stages. Later on you’ll face off against Bubble Man, Flash Man, Heat Man, and Quick Man. Of course Wily wouldn’t stand a chance seeing as how Mega Man previously defeated all of these guys, but this time he has a secret weapon. The mad doctor has created a new robot named Enker who has been designed solely with the destruction of Mega Man in mind. In my opinion Capcom chose pretty much the best of the best as far as robot masters are concerned from the first two installments. We run into an issue right away however; a few of them are too similar to one another. Fire Man and Heat Man in particular come to mind; who needs two fire based bosses? It feels entirely unnecessary. In addition Cut Man and Quick Man both give you boomerang based weapons. It’s never been so obvious that Capcom has a small pot of ideas to choose from in regards to boss characters in this franchise as it is here.
In typical Mega Man fashion you start the game at a stage select screen. In this case you can only choose between four of the robot masters in the beginning, but the rest of the cast makes an appearance in the last leg of the story. Each enemy is based off of a specific theme or element, and when defeated surrender their primary weapon for you to use. You start off with only the weak buster gun (the only item with infinite energy) and each boss is weak against a specific shot type. This means that, while you’re out of luck for your first stage, once you get going sticking to a specific order will be very helpful. Without a guide or prior knowledge it can be tough to figure out who’s weak against what. This holds especially true given the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, some of the boss characters are too similar to one another. You’ve also got the ‘carrier’ which is gained after you’ve defeated all of the robot masters. This generates a floating platform, and is required at a few specific points in the game. The only new weapon included here is the mirror buster which is left behind by Enker. This is just a straightforward shield, but at least something is new.
I’ve been dogging this game pretty hard so far for being a rehash, but it’s a very good one to be honest. The classic gameplay translates very well to the small screen, and Capcom went to painstaking effort to re-create many of the best moments from the original game. I was initially surprised that they could get some of the more graphically intensive elements in here, but they managed somehow. I do have a few complaints though. The first of these is the fact that the recycled stages are missing elements while others are re-arranged. It’s not a big deal, but it’s not necessarily better than in the original title. Unfortunately the final crop of robot masters do not feature stages of their own. They don’t even get a character select screen, and you instead face off against them by entering warp pods in a small room. This wouldn’t be a big deal except for the fact that they aren’t labeled, and you need prior knowledge of which one leads where to be able to plan your order. It doesn’t make much sense that they didn’t give some indication of this.
My next complaint is the graphics. Don’t get me wrong; Capcom did an incredible job of shrinking down the engine to accommodate the more meager hardware. It looks nice in screenshots and even runs fairly well while in motion. Unfortunately the flicker that plagued the series on the Nintendo Entertainment System is even worse here on the Game Boy. The developers should have limited the number of enemies because this is a frequent problem that causes gameplay several issues. Another problem is the fact that the screen is more zoomed in on Mega Man to better accommodate the tiny resolution of the hardware. This means that enemies and platforms are sometimes obscured just out of view. This leads me to think that Capcom would have been much better off simply designing a new title from the ground up to better take advantage of the system. The soundtrack is pretty decent with faithful re-creations of the classic Mega Man music. In some cases (Elec Man’s stage particularly) I actually prefer the Game Boy re-creation to the NES version.
