Mega Man V

"Finally, original bosses!"

Back in the old NES days, Megaman was one of the most popular series' around. Then one fateful day, Capcom released a Megaman game for Game Boy. Much to many people's dismay, this game wasn't all new, it only had bosses from Megaman 1 and 2. When the sequel was released it had bosses from Megaman 2 and 3. This pattern continued through Megaman 3 and 4 (for the Game Boy). But in Megaman 5, players finally got original bosses!

If you've been living under a rock for the past few years, I'll explain how Megaman works. Megaman's a robot who gets a choice of stages to do in any order. At the end of each stage, there is a boss. Beat the boss, and you get to use the weapon that he used on you. After all the bosses, you got a crack at Dr. Wily's castle. It's a real fun game, and for once, a Game Boy Megaman isn't just a re-hash of a NES Megaman. Instead of having bosses with "man" at the end of their names, the bosses of Megaman 5 were all named after planets. This gave players a new challenge, as they couldn't just use old strategies from other games on these bosses (for obvious reasons). It was also tougher to figure out which boss was weak against what weapon, because you couldn't use logic (like Fireman must be weak against Iceman).

The graphics of this game are excellant, considering that it's a Game Boy game. Everything looks big and lots of detail is added, making it look just like the NES games (with the lack of color of course). The sounds are on par too, and they fit well with the game.

If you're a Megaman fan and you have a Game Boy, Megaman 5 is your best bet. Of course, all of the Megaman games are great, but 5 is the best, and the new robots are fun to challenge. Keeping this with you in the back seat during car trips really helps pass the time!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 08/07/01