After being high as a kite on Mega Man IV last week, I was eager to see what Mega Man V involved. It’s something of a benchmark for the series—all original content; no reused bosses or assets from the NES games. Mega Man goes up against the brand-new Stardroids with a new weapon from Dr. Light: a rocket fist. The Buster still fires regular shots, but charging it up unleashes Mega Man’s jet-powered forearm which catapults out and comes flying back. It’s a strange mechanic, but upgrades to the rocket fist (via Dr. Light’s improved P-Chip shop) make it more useful, especially for grabbing unusually placed items.

Other than that, players will be treading familiar territory. The level design isn’t as creative as it was in MMIV, and the Stardroids are very easy to destroy, whether or not you’re using the right Master Weapon. I should mention that two of the Master Weapons—Salt Water and Electric Shock—are some of the most uninspired that the series has seen. Even their names are half-hearted. The most interesting addition is Mega Man’s new pet, a robotic cat named Tango, who appears and starts careening (slowly) around the room as a buzzsaw.

After beating four of the Stardroids, you get to fight a new variation on the Yellow Devil. Then, after beating the other four, you actually get to fight all the Mega Man Killers from the previous games, which is pretty cool. MMIV introduced cutscenes, and MMV beefs them up; there’s an impressive amount of story here. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t display with its GBC or Super Game Boy color enhancements, which seems strange, given that it’s $1 more than the other Game Boy Mega Man games. But I can’t complain too much—despite being bizarrely easy, MMV is a fantastic swan-song for the GB Mega Man series. While it’s too bad we never got that Mega Man handheld collection for GBA (yes, I still hold a candle for that cancellation), we at least now have the complete “Rockman World” collection on 3DS. I’ll toast to that.