Mega Man & Bass

"Casual gamers need not apply."

INTRODUCTION: Here, we have yet another adventure in the classic Mega Man series, and would you know it-it's a port of a Japan only Super Nintendo game. A good one at that. Not a perfect port, and not a perfect game by any means, but still worth a look if you're up to the challenge. Lets dig into this game and see what makes it worth your time or why you should steer clear of it.

STORY: To keep it simple, there's this new bad guy in town who calls himself the Robot King. Using an army of, you guessed it, robots and six new robot masters he constructed (With two robot masters from Mega Man 8 rebuilt and brought along for the ride) he plans on wiping out humanity and you guessed it, taking over the world for his robots, seeing mankind as an aberration. What else is new? So guess who's job it is to stop the king and his vast, mighty robot army? The blue bomber Mega Man and his rival Bass, that's who! The Robot King's goals go against everything that Mega Man and his creator Dr. Thomas Light stand for (To make a world where robots and humans can live in peace, and a peaceful world in general) and since the Robot King has proclaimed himself the strongest robot in the world, a certain airhead won't stand for this and sets off to remind the king and his pawns who the REAL strongest robot in the world is. Essentially, it's a tale of two robots with unique motives- one who just wants to save the world, with the other in on it just to cater to his own ego. Nice story, overall.

GAMEPLAY:

If you have ever played a traditional Mega Man game in your life, you should probably know what to expect from a game like this. To the unenlightened, let me sum up the goal and gameplay of the standard Mega Man game like this-You're this little blue robot kid named Rock (AKA Mega Man) who goes around with a arm cannon called the Mega Buster (Read: Pea shooter) shooting his way through hordes of robotic foes, all while navigating tricky levels loaded with many traps and hazards that impede Mega Man's progress, and at the end of each stage you fight a boss which you must defeat and when you do you get that bosses weapon forever. (But with an ammo limitation for those weapons, unlike the Mega Buster) Oh, did I mention that you can choose which stage you can enter instead of progressing through them in a linear fashion? (Although there is a rock, paper scissors like order going on where you take a certain bosses weapon and go to the boss who is weakest against that weapon…J) And when you beat all of the bosses, the final levels are unlocked and you must complete them in a linear fashion, all while using the items and skills you have gained beforehand, fighting a new set of bosses (Who do not surrender weapons to you) as well as the bosses you previously fought and finally confronting the main villain in a climatic battle of good and evil to conquer the game and determine the fate of the world.

But some new changes have been thrown into the traditional Mega Man formula to make this game feel fresh.

While in most Mega Man games you have the freedom of choosing any stage in any order you like, it's much more constrained here, even more so than Mega Man 7 or 8. (And some of the Game Boy Mega Man games, from what I've collected) After you beat the obligatory intro stage (A tradition that's been going on since Mega Man 7) you are presented with only THREE of the 8 levels. But with each level you beat, you get access to the other levels, and considering how tough the later levels are, I'm not surprised they held you back!

Also, the most obvious change is when you first select new game at the startup screen, you can choose between which of two playable characters you can go on an adventure with! (Not unlike Mega Man X4, another good game in the successor series to the classic Mega Man series)

Mega Man & Bass both have their own set of strengths and weaknesses. Mega Man has the advantage of a charge buster which deals more damage in one shot and the slide move which lets him get through tight crevices inaccessible to Bass. Bass, on the other hand has the advantage of a rapid fire gun which can mow down regular enemies quickly (But isn't ideal for enemies with invincibility periods, specifically the Robot Masters) can be aimed in almost every direction (Except straight down) at the price of having to stand still to do this. (You can still shoot in air, but only left or right like Mega Man) Also, Bass has a dash move (triggered by tapping left or right twice quickly) which lets him speed through the levels and he even has a nifty double jump! However, both characters get the same set of weapons from the robot masters they defeat.

To make the duo's quest a little easier, Capcom was generous enough to bring back the shop feature from Mega Man 7. (But more user friendly this time around) In the levels, sometimes when you destroy an enemy, in addition to the standard health and ammo they drop, they will also occasionally surrender bolts. These are used for currency for the shop, which is accessed from the level select screen-it can be accessed from there at anytime. Items range from standard extra lives, to interesting items like the one time use spike shield, which keeps you from getting killed when you touch a bed of spikes that litter the stages. (Which I should mention equal instant death in the Mega Man universe) While the game is still quite tough, with or without these handy items, they do help to ease the pain.

I should also mention that this game comes with a convenient four file save feature, which records what character you were playing as, the levels you have beaten, what weapons and items you have and how many bolts you have! (CD's are saved into system memory and aren't tied to your save files-I'll get to that in a little bit.) After each level is beat (Or if you get a game over) you are prompted to save, which I liked due to how user friendly it is.

The Levels themselves aren't bad, but nothing incredible either. The game gets off to a decent start as you make your way through the Robot Museum (Which also briefly appeared in Mega Man 7) or as I like to call it, the most impractically designed museum in the history of museums. It ends with a brief encounter with the Robot King (Who cuts down your friend Proto Man before your eyes as he tries to stop him-don‘t worry, he lives) who promptly flees and sends the first boss, Green Devil (A boss recycled from Mega Man 8, albeit with an all new attack pattern) after you. After that, it's on to the standard levels, including the standard ice stage (Cold Man) a jungle fortress (Burner Man) an underground temple (Ground Man) an ocean base (Pirate Man) a planetarium (Astro Man, from Mega Man 8) a sky fortress (Tengu Man, also from Mega Man 8) a power plant (Dynamo Man) and oddly, a carnival with trains. (Magic Man) The final levels take place at the castle of the Robot King, which contain some of the most grueling stages in the game.

But to give the two characters the upper hand are the aforementioned weapons they get from beating a levels boss. These include creative weapons like the Ice Wall, which can be pushed towards enemies to smash through them, and even double as a makeshift platform! These weapons are effective, fun to use and are generally creative and are ideal for helping you fight the enemies and bosses, which is good since in this game you need all the help you can get!

But one thing must be known before you tackle MM&B: This game is TOUGH. This is not a game you can breeze through in a day, at all. You have to be patient, dedicated and be a glutton for failure and punishment in order to get the most out of this game. This game is for hardcore gamers only, if the title of this review didn't already give that away.

To give more incentive to play this game, Capcom also threw in a “CD Library.” Scattered throughout the stages of this game are 100 Data CD's, which contain some personal information on old and new characters from the Classic Mega Man series. It contains standard fare like Mega Man himself, his family, to more obscure characters like Tango the Cat, The Mega Man Killers, the Genesis Unit (From Mega Man: The Wily Wars, for Sega Genesis in Europe and Japan) and the Star droids. (Mega Man V for Game boy) But getting all of these CD's, heck even getting HALF of them is no walk in the park. Many of them can only be accessed by a specific character, be it due to level design or just being easier to get with another character! It doesn't help that some can only be found with the Rush Search item! (When you get it, the hidden underground CD's are revealed by a light sparkle above where they are-you can't miss them.) These CD's do give some more motivation to play this game, but it is rather annoying to have to play as a specific character to get a specific CD…

So the game is tough, but for those who can tolerate it's masochistic difficulty will unearth a fun, satisfying game beneath. The stages are clever, well designed and theres never any shortage of action. Having two playable characters, the CD's and a shop aren't bad touches either.

GRAPHICS: Mega Man & Bass, strangely enough recycled sprites from the game Mega Man 8 and put them into this game. While the sprites that are reused are identical, they aren't as crisp looking and aren't as fluid. There also isn't as much stuff going on at anytime as there was in Mega Man 8. The sprites have been enlarged considerably as well, but they don't look pixilated like you‘d expect them too. While I'd call it lazy to just literally take sprites from MM8 and reuse them, they also made new sprites in MM8's graphical style to accommodate the recycled material. And it's not a particularly bad thing either, since Mega Man 8 had great, slick looking 2-D graphics and that has been passed on to this game, at the cost of less action going on screen at one time.

While this game essentially looks identical to it's original Japan only Super Famicom (For the unenlightened, that was the name of the Super Nintendo in Japan) version, some minor changes have been made. The contrast for the sprites has been adjusted (Apparently to compensate for the original GBA's lack of a backlit screen) and the view of the screen has been cropped, to accommodate the GBA's smaller screeen.

SOUND: Mega Man & Bass continues the tradition of having catchy, memorable tunes that fit each stage, which is a good thing and this game is a slight step up from the sleepy, forgettable jazz/fusion styled soundtrack of Mega Man 8. However, due to the GBA speaker being a piece of crap compared to a TV speaker, many of the music tracks from the original have had changes made to the instrumentation to accommodate this. While the original beat and a few instruments are still intact, most of them have been change to more electronic, fuzzier quality sounds. Some tunes benefit from this (Level select screen and boss intros) while others suffer from it. (Burner Man) The sound effects are identical to the original, and they get the job done. So sound isn't bad, and even the quality downgrade doesn't kill these fine tunes.

REPLAY VALUE: The game is fun enough that you'll be motivated to come back and replay it every so often, and having two playable characters and the CD's helps as well. Not much more to say than that.

OVERALL RECOMMENDATION: If you like your games as tough as nails or as hard as concrete, or if you just want another Mega Man game to kill time, I'd say go ahead and get this game if you can find it-hopefully you can pick it up for dirt cheap prices. Just know what to expect when you're getting this. So in other words, if you want a fresh new Mega Man game or a tough, challenging game that will last you a while, check this game out-but if you're just looking for a more casual game without any hassles, by all means look elsewhere.

PROS & CONS:
+Good graphics and art style
+Passable music
+Same old tried and true fun classic Mega Man gameplay, albeit much more difficult
+Good replay value thanks to the two playable characters and CD collecting
+Good weapons
+Okay Robot Masters and decent stages
-You must have a tolerance for it's high difficulty to get the most out of this game
-Conversion of this game from the original Super Famicom version resulted in some issues, mainly:
*The cropped view of the screen
*Lack of a separate dash button for Bass
*Most of the original instruments for the music are either changed or are much lower quality.

Overall Score: 7/10

Grade: B-

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/13/09

Game Release: Mega Man & Bass (US, 03/10/03)