Mega Man IV

"Great improvement on an already great game"

Dr. Wily never seems to learn from his mistakes and sends out another 8 of his Robot Masters (from Megaman 4 & 5 on the NES) to try to take over the world. Again nobody can stop him but Megaman

Gameplay
The same solid controls from Megaman 3. He can slide, shoot his Mega Buster and use his robot dog Rush. His bird Beat is also introduced in this game. Protoman and Flip-Top are also present in the game and give Megaman much needed power-ups through-out the game. This game also introduces P-chips which can be used to buy power-ups from Dr. Light.
This time after you beat the first 4 Masters, you go to a mini level and fight the rather cool Ballade. After this you can choose from another 4 Masters. The Robot Masters in this game are: Toad Man, Ring Man, Pharaoh Man, Bright Man, Napalm Man, Crystal Man, Stone Man and Charge Man. After those 8 you must fight against Ballade again.
However in order to go to Wily this time you must find four letters which spell WILY in the last 4 levels. Wily's level consists of several stages and at the end you must beat all 8 Masters again. After that you must take on Wily himself which isn't exactly easy. Like the previous Megaman games there's also a password save present, but the passwords are very long which makes noting them down a real pain.

Graphics 9/10
The sprites come directly from the NES games and the backgrounds are amazingly detailed with some nice animations (like the rain in Toad Man's stage). But it gets better, beacause this game has a very nice intro and ending, and there are even some ''cut-scenes''. The boss select screen also looks very good with large detailed pictures. There is more slowdown in this game than in the previous Megaman games, this is inevitable since there are alot of thing going on at the screen at once and the old GB just can't handle that much animation I guess.

Sound 8/10
The music is from the NES games and sounds very good. Too bad Capcom still didn't get rid of the bad sound effects, especially that damned bleep effect for the arm cannon :(

Conclusion
The game feels and plays mostly like Megaman 3 but only with more levels, better graphics and more extras. A definate must buy for any action platform fan!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/09/00, Updated 03/09/00