Capcom’s goal as a developer and publisher has always seemed to be to put their most successful franchises on as many platforms as possible. They don’t develop a lot of original properties, but they have one of the strongest stables of iconic video game characters that it’s not a big deal. Of these Mega Man and Street Fighter have seen the most releases on the biggest variety of hardware. The former is the topic of this review today. The Game Boy wasn’t quite up to the task of perfectly replicating the original Mega Man series, but Capcom couldn’t be bothered to create brand new installments in the franchise for the popular handheld. Instead they did a kind of ‘mix and match’ combining assets from the various titles and toning them down to cram on to the more limited hardware. I don’t actually think this is too bad of an idea to be honest, and I rather enjoyed the first portable Mega Man title. Unfortunately the second (dubbed II instead of 2 like the NES title) doesn’t fare quite as well. Capcom made some odd choices in my opinion, and the conversion did not go so smoothly this time around which is a major bummer.
Despite combining elements from previous titles Capcom still attempted to incorporate a storyline here once again which is commendable. Dr. Wily is back again and has this time obtained a time machine. This has allowed him to bring back previous robot masters that have been defeated by Mega Man in prior adventures. Furthermore the nefarious professor has brought a future version of the blue bomber back in time in the form of a new android named Quint who brings with him a new weapon called the Sakugarne. The story is pretty cheap, but that’s the case with just about every title from the original series so I can’t fault Mega Man II too much.
What we have here is a basic combination of robot masters from Mega Man 2 and 3 along with new versions of their stages (which are toned down to an appropriate level for the hardware). You begin by selecting from one of four robot masters and must play through a similarly themed stage and do battle with them at the end. Defeating the boss in question gives you their weapon to use during gameplay, and once again we have the same rock paper scissors process where robot masters are all weak against a specific weapon gained from another. Upon defeating the four primary bosses you are warped to a chamber featuring the same number of stages instead of having them all available from the beginning. This effectively replaces the typical Wily stages which is a bit disappointing but okay overall.
Okay so the first problem I have with the game is apparent right from the start. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; every Mega Man is best measured by the robot masters contained within it. Unfortunately the developers chose the absolute worst ones from the games they chose assets from here. Well maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but they definitely made some poor choices here. The starting line-up includes Air Man, Crash Man, Metal Man, and Wood Man. It’s just sad. Personally I only ever liked Metal Man from these choices. For the second half of the game you’re given four portals instead of a selection screen which I would have much preferred because there’s no way of knowing who you’re going up against unless you’ve played this one before. The secondary robot masters are Hard Man, Magnet Man, Needle Man, and Top Man.
Thematically these are all a mess except except for our magnet based foe, and the choices here represent my biggest problem with the third installment on the NES. I mean, why are Hard Man and Top Man even a thing? All of their old weapons are represented here, and it’s interesting that Needle Man is weak against the Air Shooter here. Capcom chose poorly when they decided which robot masters would make the cut here. Rush also returns, and has his old functions like the jet, spring, and submarine. The new power up gained from defeating Quint is okay but it isn’t anything special. It’s just a drill that Mega Man hops around on, and Capcom could have done better than this. This, and Quint, are ultimately forgettable.
The stages feature many of the same elements as they did in the NES games, but the developers re-worked them due to the limited hardware of the Game Boy. They’re recognizable for the most part, but they’ve been noticeably toned down. The stages have significantly fewer obstacles, and the general design isn’t nearly as tight as in the games this is based upon. My biggest issue is Air Man’s stage. Unfortunately the Game Boy simply wasn’t up to the task of correctly rendering some elements of the level. I found myself making blind jumps simply because the platforms with faces on them couldn’t load until I got right up to them. This is unacceptable because it led me to a few unexpected deaths where the obstacle wouldn’t load and I simply figured I had to fall down to access the next section of the stage.
Another problem is the fact that the characters are all scaled up to help on rendering. Some of the larger opponents are overly blocky, and not in a good way. Furthermore there are fewer enemies on-screen, and even despite this Mega Man II suffers from some obvious slowdown that’s even worse than the NES titles in some cases. The level designs feel watered down and are significantly less interesting than in the past. More care could have been put into this aspect of the game because it’s bad by the standards of this franchise.
The graphics aren’t bad from screenshots or when there aren’t a lot of enemies on-screen. Mega Man’s size is a bit of a turn off, as is that of the enemies, but that’s to be expected given how difficult it is to see on the original Game Boy’s screen. Everything is heavily pixelated here, and while that’s attractive in some cases it isn’t here. Most of the enemies are recognizable and some of their animations are impressive. Unfortunately there’s far too much flicker and slowdown. I secretly refer to this title as Mega Man molasses because the engine chugs along like the gears were soaked in the stuff.
The robot masters all look like they did in the original titles, and I have no complaints on that front. Unfortunately the menu system suffers from one major problem. Due to limited screen space the developers couldn’t put the whole name of the weapon in the menu, and for some unfathomable reason each are limited to two letters. It’s downright impossible sometimes to tell what you’re selecting. The rush items are easy to tell because they all start with the letter R, but others aren’t so easy. The initials chosen for these don’t make sense in some cases, and so you’re basically forced to determine this by trial and error which is awful. Furthermore the soundtrack isn’t all that great. You would think that being partially based on Mega Man 2 it would be, but that’s not the case. The composer here neutered the themes, and I can’t really recommend turning the volume up at all.
Of all the Mega Man titles for the Game Boy II feels the most phoned in. The developers weren’t ambitious at all, and clearly didn’t care enough to optimize the engine. Worse yet they chose the worst robot masters to include. I feel bad for anyone who got this instead of any of the other portable titles in this franchise, because Mega Man II kind of sucks. It’s best left only to the biggest fans of the franchise.
