Mega Man 4 and Mega Man 5 (NES Reviews)

Mega Man 4
aka Rockman 4: Aratanaru Yabou!!
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December 6, 1991
Designed by Yoshinori Takenaka
Developed by Capcom
Included in Included in Mega Man Legacy Collection

Mega Man 4, after a couple hours of more of the same Mega Man action in an even more obviously rushed game, ends with fighting a boss you can’t actually see. Last bosses in the series have sucked in general but this is a new low. Astonishing, truly. Thankfully, it’s one of many things about the fourth game in the mainline Mega Man series that assured I wouldn’t run out of things to say about Mega Man’s gameplay. Of course, that’s because Capcom screwed the pooch something fierce here. I guess I was mistaken about the formula being bulletproof because I was actually pretty bored playing it. I think this is the weakest roster of bosses yet, the weakest level design yet, and probably the weakest variety of weapons you snatch from them, making for the first Mega Man game I disliked more than I enjoyed. It’s not ALL bad. 4’s claim to fame is being the game that introduced the ability to charge up the pea shooter, which they then smartly designed a few characters to take advantage of. Like these things:

They’re like skeleton versions of Sniper Joe that, if you shoot them with an uncharged pea shooter, they collapse into a pile of bones that will drag out the fight forever plus a week if you try it the old fashioned way. But one fully-charged mega buster shot kills them. Smart design. No notes. But you’ll also notice the background isn’t exactly, how shall I say, inspiring. Just like Mega Man 3, the fourth game has this rushed, half-assed vibe about the level and enemy design. It also doubles the mistake of the original game by placing two items in completely arbitrary locations within the first eight levels. Actually, it’s worse than arbitrary, because one of the locations is literally a pit that you would logically avoid. It comes after you fight the second whale in Dive Man’s stage.

Now two points to the credit of Mega Man 4. The first is that all the other gaps in Dive Man’s stage are blocked by instakill spikes. So it’s not like you can’t completely logic-out that there’s something special about THIS pit. Fair enough. Second is that there’s gaps that players fall down, but they’re easy to recognize because the screen stops scrolling and you reach a dead end. But this gap where the special item is located is at the start of a screen. Something about it just felt arbitrary to me. So what’s the item? A crappy version of Bionic Commando’s arm that I think I found two spots where it was more useful than not. The other item is found at the start of Pharaoh Man’s stage and it’s basically Item #1 from Mega Man 2 redrawn to look like a balloon. I used this a ton in the final levels and apparently was so focused while using it that I forgot to get screenshots of it.

Rush is back, with nothing new about the robotic pooch, though one of the old things sucks now. Everything Rush did in Mega Man 3 he does in Mega Man 4, including starting new games automatically with Rush Coil. Eventually you pluck Rush Marine from Toad Man’s stage and Rush Jet from Drill Man’s stage. Hold on though, because the level you get Rush Marine from would actually be one of the few levels where Rush Marine is actually useful. That sucks. Rush Jet is even worse, because it now goes forward automatically when you jump on it. Uh, question, why would Dr. Light or Right or whatever make it that way? How is that better for Mega Man? It makes no sense! That might be nit-picky, but immersion still matters, right? I guess not, since at more than one point, you fight Slinkies. F*CKING SLINKIES!

Pretty lame, Milhouse. So is the story, which sees Dr. Wily kidnap some other, presumably smarter mad scientist to kill Mega Man for him. How’d that conversation go? Presumably Cossack wants Mega Man to save him and his daughter so when Wily asks “do you have any ideas?” Cossack replies “well, let’s see, I could build eight themed evil robots that, upon their defeat, drop a weapon that will be the weakness of one of the other seven. I know that sounds like it’ll make our defeat inevitable, but trust me, this is a great idea that you should let me do!” Wily is like “see, that’s what I was doing too! Huh, great minds think alike!”

Mega Man 4 isn’t without highlights. Fights with giant whales, giant snails, and giant stacks of rings are always entertaining. Although the actual design of the eight robot masters I think was grasping at straws for ideas (70,000 entries and these eight were the best of the bunch? Really?), the actual fights themselves were a lot more fun than the ones in Mega Man 3. And hell, some of the bosses in the Cossack/Wily stages would rank among the best in the franchise. I especially loved this giant contraption:

But, I was just pretty bored with Mega Man 4. What made Mega Man 2 so damn epic feeling for me is that the levels perfectly matched the themes of the bosses. I didn’t get that from Mega Man 3, and Mega Man 4 doesn’t do much better. The thing I’ll probably remember most is that Toad Man dances. I get why they couldn’t do “Rain Man” because that’s a famous movie, and “Weather Man” is a little too open to joking, but why Toad Man for the rain dance? Why not Precipitation Man? Downpour Man? Whatever. The same “this is SO generic” issue that plagued Mega Man 3 is even worse this time around. There’s a boss that’s literally got a light bulb for a head. So his stage should be filled with light-themed enemies. Or, grasshoppers and totem poles.

Over the last two Mega Man games, there’s a whole “they lost their way” vibe about them. But at least the level design in Mega Man 3 kept a nice, fast pace. I don’t think that’s really the case in Mega Man 4. There’s a flatness about it. Like they really were just rushing it out while the NES still had some life in it. I would have bet the farm that even when that happens, the formula is so perfect that as long as they get the basics right, it can’t be boring. I was wrong, spending most of my time in the levels wishing they would hurry up and get to the bosses. And I don’t think it’s because I just played Mega Man 2 and 3. I had fun enough with them and I’m totally willing to keep playing as long as the games do what Mega Man 2 did: have a theme and stick to that theme through a full level.
Verdict: NO!

So what if they started doing that again?

Mega Man 5
aka Rockman 5: Blues no Wana!?
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December 4, 1992
Directed by Ichirou Mihara
Developed by Capcom
Included in Included in Mega Man Legacy Collection

Oh hey, welcome back, Mega Man! I was worried about you for a while! I’d swear that director Ichirou Mihara had the same thoughts about Mega Man 3 and 4 as I did and decided to finally make a Mega Man game that felt like a no-questions-asked direct sequel to Mega Man 2. If that’s the case, boy, did he succeed! I absolutely f*cking love Mega Man 5! Seriously, how come everyone talks about #2 so much when I honestly think there’s a compelling case that 5 is the best of the NES series. Well, pending Mega Man 6. Originally I was going to include that in this review but I think playing three Mega Man games in single sitting is begging for burnout. Besides, #5 addressed my biggest complaint about 3 and 4: the themes fit the robots now. Not only that, but there’s unique and exciting set pieces to make it not just feel like an empty facade. Look what Wave Man’s stage does:

Yep, that’s a jet ski-like set piece. No Rush upgrade required, either! Hell, Rush Marine was cut from the game entirely. I chose Wave Man’s level first not knowing this was coming and I was dazzled. It wasn’t the only one-of-a-kind moment either. Star Man’s level takes place in space and has the same gravity as Bubble Man’s level from Mega Man 2. Okay, it’s kind of a dirty trick because it’s really just a water level without the facade of water, but it worked! Plus, the level design really leans into it with some hair-raising jumps.

And I especially enjoyed Gravity Man’s stage, which does one of my favorite tropes: upside-down gameplay. I wish the level did even more of it than it does. Okay, so it’s not quite as cool as Jetsons on the Game Boy (don’t laugh, seriously, that game does the upside down gag AMAZINGLY) but it’s really well done. Pretty much all of the level design is. My biggest knock is that it loses steam during the Protoman/Wily stages, but hell, even #2 did that.

It really felt like every wrong about 3 and 4’s theme issues has been righted. Okay, so the story is literally the same as #4 except instead of some random one-off character that I’m not even sure ever showed up again in the lore being framed, it’s Protoman being framed. But who the hell plays Mega Man for the story? Here’s the story: Dr. Wily is a mentally ill genius who can make a robotic ANYTHING and wants to take over the world, but instead of building a doomsday device and blowing up, I dunno, Olympus Mons on Mars to show he means business, he sends armies of robotic bats and evil robots shaped like choo-choo trains. I don’t understand the logic of it but then again I don’t understand string theory either. Who am *I* to argue with the mind of genius?

Mega Man 5 is pretty much everything I loved about Mega Man 2, only not quite as janky. There’s not a whole lot I didn’t like about it. Okay, Rush Jet works the same way it did in Mega Man 4 and there was only really one place where I actually found it useful. It’s also found in an arbitrary level, and so is what replaces Rush Jet: a suction cup dart. I’m not even kidding. It’s a f*cking suction cup dart that flies at a high speed and sticks to any wall so you can use it as a platform (you even get phantom booster to help you get up and on it, very helpful), like they forgot to change the code from Darkwing Duck. Oh, and it’s also the main weakness of Wily’s skull ship. Of course it would be.

And there’s some unexpected twists, like how Protoman’s four levels each end with a generic “Dark Man” fight, only they’re not really all that generic. Each of them feels like they were meant to be a full robot master and that the attack pattern was designed for them as placeholders and they turned out so good they decided to just put them in the game. Why not? The Super Nintendo is out now so it’s not like there’s going to be a Mega Man 6! They’re all pretty good fights, too! All the boss fights are really good, actually. Okay, the weapons aren’t amazing. Like, Star Man’s weapon is just a stripped down version of Wood Man’s. Then there’s Gravity Man’s weapon, which just clears the screen by making enemies lift into the sky. I wondered how it would affect Gyro Man since he’s allergic to it, and it was so bad that I just laughed. It just damages him. How? IT JUST DOES, and I mean that in a “press button to cause automatic damage” sense. It’s SO lazy that I just want to give whoever designed it a hug.

So what were those letters about? Hidden in each stage is a letter that forms M-E-G-A-M-A-N-V, and getting all of them lets you unlock Beat the robotic bird that is useful against both the final Dark Man and the final Wily boss, which is basically the same as exact boss as Mega Man IV only with the added novelty of, you know, actually being able to see the damn thing. At this point I’m convinced that disappointing final bosses in Mega Man is some kind of running gag Capcom had within their offices. The letters are mostly just out in the open. The only one I missed that I had to replay to get was in Stone Man’s level, and that’s because it’s in a hidden room near the start of the stage that I didn’t realize was there until I found other hidden rooms later (including an empty one, weird).

So I really dug Mega Man 5. This stuff isn’t rocket science. Take a boss theme and pair it with a stage that is undeniably linked to that boss. It’s not asking for the world. What irked me about 3 and 4 is that they had some really amazing robot gimmicks but the stages didn’t really match them. Top Man’s stage had a small handful of spinning top platforms (too bad they wasted him on the NES when Top Man would have paired perfectly with an SNES mode 7 stage). Gemini Man’s stage had not a single twin gimmick or any other Zodiac reference besides the boss itself. Toad Man’s level was lacking frog stuff. For the most part, the bosses in those games could have been anyone. In Mega Man 5, yeah, I believe a character named Wave Man would be at the end of that level, or Stone Man in his level. And even when those levels don’t have marvelous set pieces, like Crystal Man’s level:

Yep, that looks like a “Crystal Man’s” level to me (good call changing its name from “Lens Man”), and it’s a solid level. No real gimmicks or set pieces to go with it, but at least the facade is consistent with the theme. Was it really THAT hard, Capcom, that you botched THAT concept twice in a row? You can literally pick any theme for the bosses and the levels attached to them. Virtually no limitations to what you can build a level around. If you’re going to do a level based on a “Needle Man” don’t set it on a f*cking pirate ship. Part of me wonders if the “name the robot” contests were part of the problem. You see, from Mega Man 2 onward, the bosses were designed by contests. Except, Mega Man 2 designed the levels BEFORE selecting the bosses. Man Man 3 and presumably Mega Man 4 also did that (it’s verified for 3 but not for 4), so I assume what went wrong is that they didn’t get enough submissions that matched the level themes. Christ, how bad were the entries that Needle Man (submitted as “Iron Man” not kidding) ended up the boss of a pirate ship stage? Anyway, Mega Man 5 rules. Better than Mega Man 2? Maybe. It’s certainly up for discussion, and I didn’t expect that after 3 and 4.
Verdict: YES!

And Action One Liner theater is cancelled. It blew up in the skull explosion above.