In this review, we cause more robot battling carnage in another Mega Man game, Mega Man – Wily’s Revenge. We find out how this action game plays.
This game was released in 1991 and would kick off the Game Boy series. This series is one that we are already very familiar with as we have reviewed Mega Man 2 (not recommended), and Mega Man 3 (half decent gameplay). So, we decided to try the first game to see how this series kicked off.
The plot is very generic with Mega Man having to fight 8 robot masters Dr. Wily sends. Mega Man must defeat these robot masters and go after Dr. Wily again.
If you are already familiar with how the Game Boy series works, this game is no exception. 4 robot masters from the original Mega Man game (NES version) and 4 robot masters from Mega Man 2 (NES version) are mashed together to provide you with a strange hybrid of the two.
At the beginning, you have a choice of the first four from the first game. You can challenge them in any order, but you must clear all four levels and robot masters in order to challenge the Dr. Wily stage. A bonus robot master is introduced that Mega Man must defeat before you find yourself in the ever-famous teleporter room. This room transports you to one of the remaining four robot masters. All four must be defeated before you take on the games final boss.
In each of the four first stages, you’ll encounter elements from the original Mega Man and Mega Man 2 NES games. This includes scenery and enemies. As a result of this, this game has that element of having an identity crises.
What’s worse is the fact that both Fire Man and Heat Man are both in this game. I don’t get why the decision was made to include both here, but it seemed almost redundant in a way, but there it is.
Some of the decisions to compress the game were understandable. There’s only a limited amount of screen space and limited capacity on the cartridge. So, I can be a little sympathetic in the length of the game.
What I’m not actually sympathetic towards is the lack of energy containers. The game is hard enough as it is with the periodic difficult jumps. Since the concept was already known to have energy containers as something to refill your life, why exclude them here?
Positively speaking, this version does do a surprisingly good job at taking the NES classic and compressing it down into the Game Boy version.
Generally speaking, this game ultimately ends up being a miss for me. If you had a choice at playing the NES version of the Game Boy version, it’s no contest. Stick with the NES versions (especially Mega Man 2 if you can help it).
Graphically, this game has hits and misses. The hits are the interesting backgrounds and well drawn enemies. The detailing certainly had its impressive moments. The misses were the occasional slowdown and flickering that occurs.
The audio was a bit of a miss for me here. There was some music to be had in this game, but there was nothing impressive about it. The some of the sound effects were successfully brought in like the electric trap, but some of the sound effects did leave a bit to be desired.
Overall, this game was a bit of a letdown. There is the confusing decision to bring two fire-related robot masters into one game. There is the fact that two NES classics were bizarrly mashed into one game. The shorter gameplay was understandable, but the lack of energy containers was a surprisingly poor decision. The graphics, while nicely detailed in each level, does suffer from occasional flickering and slowdowns. Still, it’s easy to appreciate the sprite designs. THe audio was a miss. There was music, but nothing too impressive. A few of the sound effects were nicely brought over, but some of the sound effects left a lot to be desired. So, I would recommend passing over this game. You won’t be missing much.
Overall
Furthest point in game: Beat the game.
General gameplay: 15/25
Replay value: 5/10
Graphics: 7/10
Audio: 2/5
Overall rating: 58%
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
