Mega Man's 25th anniversary continues! After winning the Rockcan Sound E Can and shredding tears of happiness with the inclusion of the iconic character in Super Smash Bros. earlier this year, the year of celebration goes on!
And what better way except for those previous two topics can we celebrate the Blue Bomber's fighting? With entertaining fan made games of course! What follows below isn't just reviews of the latest Street Fighter X Mega Man, Mega Man Revolution and Mega Man Unlimited games, which have all of their definitive versions released this year.
No, as bonus entries, I am throwing in the "Famicom" versions, or NES counterparts of Rock Man 7 and Rock Man 8, the Rosenkreuzstillete games as well as Mega Man Origins. These were released years earlier, but are also worth playing for any fan who awaits Capcom's next move with the huge franchise.
Rock on!!
Mega Man Origins
It works, but that’s about it. Everything is ripped
from earlier Mega Man games, the .wav versions are worse than the NES
originals, the weapons acquired are way too similar and bosses are boring and
hardly different.
Controls aren’t really similar, they appear more floaty and
bugged sometimes when entering screens. The story is just very bad, even below
the standards.The worst critique is when looking at the laughable
level design, it’s so bad. But it works from beginning to the end. And that’s
why I am content with it. This is the only one which should be considered skippable.
Street Fighter X Mega Man
Good way to celebrate the 25th
anniversaries of both Street Fighter and Mega Man. The game puts you up against
8 street fighters, and the final stages consist of rematches, a Balrog chase
level, a tricky Vega fight and M.Bison as the final boss, with secret extentions being
possible in the form of Sagat and Akuma.
The regular stages were too short for
me, but the boss designs and even the weapons were well done. Quite
challenging, but rather short.
Rating: 7.5
Mega Man Revolution
This is honestly a well done fan game, it feels like
an 8-bit version alright. My only concern is that charging up the mega
buster/arm was sometimes buggy and thus, my executions were not as precise as
usual with Mega Man games.
MMR is something I would like to create on my own as
well, but entirely different. Music was lackluster but exceptions include Sand
Man and Ghost Man. There were other minor bugs but it works in overall.
Revolution was very generous with extra lives throughout the stages and by the
way the enemy percentage of item drops was high too. The Wily stages are decent and boss fights were given
variant attacks and animations, which is good.
Weapons acquired were alright.
There were some creative designs but I was hoping to see more. The shop did
offer useful items for the whole walkthrough.
Rating: 7.8
Mega Man Unlimited
This is a very genuine feeling fan game for the Classic
Mega Man franchise that on top of that is perhaps about as large as Mega Man 3
and it can easily sit with the most difficult entries like MM&B, 1, 9 and
10.
Normal stages(and round 2 with the robot masters) are quite larger, and
checkpoints are limited, usually after defeating a mini-boss. The lead designer intended for the stages to be done this way, but like others have said, double checkpoints would had encouraged more of us to continue.
Design wise, each stage is very different from the
others as it is reflected back by enemy design, level design and certain
hazards unique towards each of them, such as low gravity, exploding platforms
and conveyor belts. Or enemies with pots of gold that associate with rainbow lore.
Acquired weapons are created in such ways so that you
will have to use them and not just rely on the Mega Buster. It’s really not
recommended to do a buster only run, because even I had a hard time with
Unlimited.
Yoku Man is a great idea, acting as a special hidden
boss. Things like how he shows up at the stage select screen and how his stage
and music play out just reeks of creativity. Other bosses that impressed me in
overall were Rainbow and Yo-yo Man.
The Wily stages are very tough. E
and W tanks are your friends, don’t be discouraged to use them, as this game is
hard, like really hard. This isn’t recommendable for beginners towards the
franchise at all.
So it turns out that Mega Man Unlimited was worth
waiting for. Makes me feel jealous a bit how pretty much everything feels just
like a regular Mega Man game. Anyhow, this is a great fan game, if you had to choose only one, go for Unlimited.
And since this is the best fangame of all of them, let me put up a little top 9 MMU Robot Masters list which I enjoy showing off: 9.Tank Man, 8.Jet Man, 7.Glue Man, 6.Comet Woman, 5.Yoku Man, 4.Nail Man, 3.Trinitro Man, 2.Rainbow Man, 1.Yo-yo Man.
Rating: 8.6
Rock Man 7
Downgraded version of Mega Man 7 on the SNES, Rock Man
7 plays much alike, but there are differences involved such as the intro stage,
robot museum stage and Auto’s shop being removed. A better change is that all
of the eight robot masters are instantly available here. Controls and music are
very faithful, my only issue is that I cannot seem to get a full screen going
for the window of this fan game.
Rating: 8.2
Rock Man 8
The same team that developed Rock Man 7 Famicom version
is back with part 8, which has become better. Not only because this project was
more challenging to create, but they included Time Man and Oilman as bonus
bosses instead of Cut Man and Wood Man, respectfully found in the Saturn
version.
There are some things cut out such as cut scenes, but the challenge
remains, and it was fun to go through this a second time. However, a full screen option wasn't available here either, which is annoying.
Rating: 8.3
Rosenkreuzstillete
What at first looks as a ridiculous feminine game is
soon to be a very faithful Mega Man game, with smooth controls, creative level
design and a great soundtrack on its own. It isn't available in English, but navigation is easy enough to figure out.
Little references to other
games are mentioned, and level design plus weapons were diversive. Also a very difficult game running through it the first few times, but any Mega Man based game eventually gets easier. Eventually.
Rating: 8.4
Rosenkreuzstillete Freudenstachel
The sequel lets you play as one of the boss characters
from the original, Freudia. Playing kind of like Bass in Mega Man & Bass,
she acquires her own kinds of weapons from the other bosses which somehow are
willing to fight her now as well(I cannot read Japanese).
Each boss has been
redesigned apart from their appearance, so their tracks, attacks and levels are
completely different. Once again did I notice just about every reference there
was in here as well, much like with the previous game.
As far as challenge
goes, the first 8 bosses are capable for veteran Mega Man gamers, but the 4 new
ones after that can be considered tricky. The final stages can be very
unforgiving, as well as the battles with Iris, but there are always E-tanks and
practice to consider.
Rating: 8.4
