Topic: Mega Man IV (Game Boy) Review

[Halbred]

It feels like the first time.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/reviewmini/37471/mega-man-iv-game-boy-review

Fresh off the surprisingly good Mega Man Land III, Capcom (actually Minakuchi Engineering) asked itself “how can we make this more awesome?” Their answer is Mega Man Land IV, a rip-roaring, gloves-off celebration of all things Mega Man. Yes, you still fight four bosses from Mega Man 4 (NES) and four bosses from Mega Man 5 (NES), but the level designs are so completely different that you may as well be playing a different game. Notably, each level is significantly longer than its NES counterpart, and it uses elements from the NES games in imaginative and stronger ways. For example, in Napalm Man’s NES stage, you shoot giant drills in an isolated hallway, but in this game you use the drills as platforms in increasingly creative ways to get through the stage. Charge Kick is suddenly situationally useful for breaking certain blocks, while Ring Boomerang picks up items that are otherwise out of reach.

There are even a few enemies that encourage use of Rain Flush! Seriously, everything about this game is better than its NES forbearers. You get to fight another member of the Mega Man Killer team (Ballade) who has an awesome weapon that you have to use to escape from Wily’s castle. This is insanity for a Mega Man game. What? Brand-new, challenging, lengthy stages and creative uses for Master Weapons isn’t enough? How about throwing in a simplified version of the Shop from Mega Man 7 (SNES)? Yes, kids, now you collect P-chips and use them between stages to buy items from Dr. Light. You can also find Mega Man’s pet bird, Beat, by collecting the “BEAT” letters in the first four Robot Master stages. You can revisit stages to farm P-chips and grab BEAT letters that you missed, of course, although there’s no way to exit a stage without getting to the end.

The game is also impressively challenging, and I made good use of the Restore Points now available.

Bottom-line: there’s no downside. This is one of the best Mega Man games ever made, and I can’t wait to play Mega Man V.

[Phil]

Hi there. You guys have the NES version of Mega Man IV shown on the sidebar of this review (at least for the North American release). Was that intentional?

[ClexYoshi]

yyyup! <3 Ballade Cracker is pretty amazing. Actually, as mentioned with the situational use of the charge kick, a lot of the Mega Man 5 stuff in particular is better off thanks to the smaller screen space. Particularly the dreaded and hated Power Stone [no, not the kickass Dreamcast game] fares as a good answer to enemies above Mega Man thanks to the fact that it no longer has as much screen to uselessly spin around and thus has a better rate of fire.

I've been enjoying Zach's trip down the history of Portable Mega Man and how he's enjoyed each game more and more. I await with bated breath his review of Mega Man V.

Soon, the tragedy of Mega Man Anniversary Collection (GBA)'s cancellation will be amended... sort-of. they had made some pretty tall promises with that game, such as the fact that they were going for recreating the games in a GBA engine rather than going for proper emulation so they could have a color mode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47ynwrgIfEk

[Art_de_Cat]

The bad thing is this reminds me of why there isnt colorization for the older games like in way of super gameboy enhancements, hell they even brought the color changing back in the gba to a degree, so just shameful the 3ds isn't doing it.......

[azeke]

^ yep, i really wished there was a color support when i played Donkey Kong '94. A great game regardless, but still.