I do like that these games started out as mostly "the NES games but on game boy" and slowly established their own identity and story. It's like M.E. was pushing to make their own Megaman game, which they got with MMX3
@consvolt-void Yes, then Dimps made Sonic Rush, which was an even different-er beast(and imo even better, which could just be bias I'll admit). Shame they went out with Sonic 4
Thank you, I've always held this sentiment as well. You could probably remake 7 1:1 on the Gameboy, and the game would feel identical, audiovisual downgrades aside. I'm kinda shocked nobody's ever done this as a GBC home brew.
The Game Boy games in a nutshell: I: A decent first stab. II: A hollow disaster. III: A frustrating improvement. IV: A genuinely good romp. V: An original work of art.
I had the third one as a small kid. It wasn't frustrating. What was frustrating (at the time) was picking out one of your few new games of the entire year with your Christmas or birthday money, and beating it in a day or a weekend. That was very sad. With UA-camrs, they want to plow through a dozen games they downloaded for free to beat in a day, to get footage to edit for the next 40 hours. The slightest challenge tilts them and is seen as a flaw, because the game is not their focus. I can see that in the gameplay, knowing some of these games by heart and knowing they are not inordinately hard even for a kid squinting at a fuzzy, unlit, green liquid crystal display in the back of a van. I've noticed this trend in a lot of UA-camrs, and it gives a bad name to legit decent games.
Mega Man II is not a bad game, the soundtrack was just painful to listen to. Not saying it’s terrible but the instruments are too high pitched which makes it hard to listen to.
I like how in Mega Man And Bass that actually have the CD Data of the Robot Masters from Rockman World V as well as the three Robot Masters from Wily's Tower. It proves that the Classic series pays attention to continuity.
this is genuinely the only joke with this punchline that i’ve seen where the punchline both works in the context of the joke and as an actual value (quintillion being the 5th “-illion” for those curious)
24:10 "Some games like Metroid 2 had special color palettes..." Metroid 2 (released in 1991) wasn't ever actually enhanced for SGB. The SGB just had automatic palettes and stock borders built in for a small list of first-party Nintendo GB games. GB games released after 1994 were often enhanced with full color palettes and custom borders, such as Donkey Kong 94, Mole Mania, and the gen 1 Pokemon games.
The four (three?) already? Or Wily adding to this series? Either is good. But the unit should never lose novelty and get to the point where it’s Koopalings.
Megaman V is personally one of my favourite Classic Megaman games, which i think is insane because i didn't think a gameboy game could stack up to the Console ones, but it definitely surprised me.
i am a bit concerned by the fact they call it "Megaman 7 styled" but then have enemies with a load of frames that would have been more at home in megaman 8
@@alex_-yz9to "Styled" doesn't mean "sticking to limitations". PC games can afford that kind of freedom. _Including bigger number of frames for certain animations._
@@alexfischer7876 a little bit of internal consistency wouldnt have hurt since some of the assets still looked like they had less frames than the others... and making the "Grid" more clear visually instead of having certain assets look like slide holes when they arent but also having some slide segments look impossible to fit through when its the way foward
I’m glad you brought up how World 4 introduced the P-Chip/Bolt system that Mega Man 7 would make standard. It means that the Game Boy games have their own important legacy to the Classic series.
I loved these games. Played them for the first time when they came out on the 3DS Virtual Console and I'm glad they're available again on NSO due to the price of the likes of 4 and 5. Sure, I won't choose them over the NES games most of the time unless it's exactly 5, but they're a group of the best Game Boy games to be adapted from NES titles and at least worth a playthrough each.
Mega Man 3 on NES was my first MM game and have gotten every game released after, including the gameboy ones as they came. I really do enjoy them and go back to them often enough. The GB games really did have some original ideas that the console version took: Time bomb platforms in 3, The whole 4 boss then 4 more bosses, MM4 GB was the very first with shop and currency, among other things. Mega Man 5 GB is the only classic mega man game in the entire series where Dr. Wily is not the final boss as well as Mega Man travels around our solar system. @22:12 To avoid wily charge attack you just keep shooting lemons at the boss to slow his advancement
One thing I really like about MMV on GB is that it was a satisfying finale to the GB Mega Man games. Fighting all the Mega Man killers one last time, and a unique end boss that wasn't Dr. Wily. It feels like how I would expect the classic Mega Man series to end.
The spikes in the first fortress for Wily’s Revenge are designed around “carry”, which spawns a platform below you and is one of the best utility weapons in the series. The issue is even if you do get the extra life at the start which requires you to use it, it doesn’t really convey how useful it can be.
I recommend everyone watches Simply Simon's playthrough series of the World series, to catch all the nuance that J really skimmed over here. There is a lot here in design that surpasses the NES games in quality and it's shame he missed the point so to speak.
MM2GB was my first Classiv Mega Man game. Miiiight have been my first overall. I have such a soft spot for that game. Glad there are patches now to correct the music pitch, because the compositions are pretty great! Looking forward to the next episode
Using MM7 as the template for the MMV remake was confusing to me at first, but when you think about it, MM7 is much closer to the GB games in terms of sprite sizes and number of enemies on screen at once compared to the NES games, so it actually makes a lot of sense. I'm so pumped for the remake 😎
In 1998 I found MM 1 in Germany as "Dr. Willy's Rache". Knowing Mega Man only from the TV series and stories in the Playground I was... underwhelmed. I learned to appreciate the series more and became a collector in 2000.
So fun fact about the mm2 music, the soundchip was REALLY glitched which caused the music to be so high pitched. But imo if you hear the way that the music was meant to sound, its one of my favorite soundtracks in the series (and the remixes are phenomenal, i mean megaman 8-bit deathmatch manages to make QUINT'S theme into an absolute threatening banger
Those actually were my first exposure to Megaman at all, because among the friends I had as a kid, not a lot had of them had an SNES. But basically all of them had a gameboy. And thus, I came across some of those games through my friends. I actually didn't know they had SNES originals until like 15 years later X3
If you pay attention, you'll notice that in Mega Man V a lot of the enemies are based on classic Mega Man enemies but they look different because they're supposed to be alien robots. Then, in the later Wily stages, after you find out that the Stardroids are actually Wily robots and not aliens, you'll see weird versions of some of the enemies where they're halfway between the classic versions and the alien versions which hits home the idea that Wily was just modifying his old creations to look alien for his Stardroid ruse.
8:03 I thought this was a joke, but unless this is an elaborate image edit than I am *shocked.* Did the developers of Mega Man II have the Time Skimmer and used it to see into the future and saw the _Its morbin time_ meme, to which they thought "Yeah let's do a little trolling."
Absolutely love your look back at the older Mega Man stuff that I grew up with. I was mostly big on the first three NES titles but I did spend a fair bit of time playing borrowed copies of the Gameboy titles as well, really remember loving 4 a lot.
I spent two years tracking down these fucking games back when I was 12. I biked all over my city, mowing lawns, cleaning gutters and eavestroughs, raking leaves, shoveling snow, you name it. I went bloody everywhere on my bike. Toys R Us, Woolco, everywhere you can imagine to find these goddamn games. 1 - 3 were easy enough to find, they were available everywhere. I never saw 4 at retail anywhere, and only got it because a buddy in grade 5 traded me a bunch of gameboy games for some of my toys and he happened to have a copy. 5, though, was an amazing stroke of luck. After exhausting every avenue I could think of, I ended up at an enthusiast gaming shop, and gave them some money as a kind of bounty on Megaman 5, with the arrangement being that in the unlikely event it got traded in, they'd call me and I'd bike across town and buy it, and if not, I'd at least have store credit. Anyway, not too long after, someone traded it in, they called me up, and I biked on down and grabbed it. To this day, I've never seen a boxed CIB copy of Megaman V. I doubt there are any left.
Mega Man 5 on the Game Boy was my first MM game. It was so unique. StarDroids instead of Robot Masters, and Sunstar as the final boss. 5's story made its way into the GigaMix manga. Like the game, Dr Wily activates the StarDroids and Sunstar without realizing how unstoppable they are.
Thank you for reviewing these games - I have fond memories of them all. I have three areas to comment on in response to your review. One thing you probably didn't notice in the first three Game Boy Mega Man games, is that, at least when using arm cannon, some of the robot battle difficulties were actually reversed. You noticed how easy Elec Man and Snake Man were, and then just defeated the rest with weapons they're weak to, but that meant you didn't see how easy or difficult the other robots were with the arm cannon. But whereas in NES Mega Man 1, Cut Man was relatively easy and Elec Man was hard, in Dr. Wily's Revenge, Elec Man was easy and Cut Man was hard. Similarly, I remembered NES Mega Man 2's Crash Man being hard, but his Game Boy version was the easiest of the early four. And NES Mega Man 3's Shadow Man was virtually impossible to beat first, but his Game Boy version is easy with the Mega Buster, whereas the other three of the first four felt harder. This comparison seems to go away in Game Boy Mega Man IV, where there didn't seem to be any difficulty inversion at all. There's one thing you may not have been aware of that actually made the first four Game Boy Mega Man games relatively harder: The Game Boy Classic passive-matrix LCD screen with all its non-backlit motion blur. Don't get me wrong - I loved that old screen and its vaguely greenish color palette and I even have a nostalgic spot for the motion blur. But it certainly made it a bit more of a challenge to see action clearly on the screen - and that's *if* you were playing the already non-backlit screen in good light to begin with. Mega Man V was for Super Game Boy so could be played without motion blur that time, along with all the previous Game Boy Mega Man games, and I even later completed V on Game Boy Classic, too, for fair comparison. Then there's the music in Game Boy Mega Man II. That game doesn't reuse any music verbatim, or even remixes, but instead has a lot of "sound-alike" versions of NES themes that are otherwise original compositions on Game Boy. And you'll notice that the first four robot level themes follow this rule. But the music for the Magnet Man, Hard Man, Top Man and Needle Man stages had all the sound-alikes mismatched. The Game Boy Magnet Man stage's music is a sound-alike of NES Hard Man music stage and vice versa, and the same swap happened with Top Man and Needle Man's themes and sound-alikes. And it's been observed that if you take *any* of Game Boy Mega Man II's music and lower it an octave, it sounds like more normal game music. Bioxz's problem with that game wasn't just that they didn't have any passion for Mega Man that Minakuchi Engineering had - Bioxz also cut a lot of corners, and certain aspects of the game, *like* its music, sound like Bioxz didn't really bother with testing or debugging it, and as a result, of all the Game Boy Mega Man games, II feels the most like hastily-developed shovelware. Indeed, II was actually released only five months after Dr. Wily's Revenge in Japan, and the two releases were only *two* months apart in North America.
Dr. Wily; Mwahaha! I have a brilliant idea! Instead of making a whole new set of robot masters to defeat Mega Man, I'll simply rebuild some of the ones he's already destroyed! Metool: Brilliant? Sounds more like lazy to me. Wily: You *dare* to question your creator?! Metool: What're you gonna do about it? I'm invincible. -Five Minute Theatre - Definitely a series that got better with each new iteration. I hated Dust Man's level too, especially because you have to beat it to get the Rush Jet which would have helped a ton to get through it. I remember thinking that that game's final Wily stage was the 'oil platform' he'd taken control of and modified with his usual skull motif and traps since it rises out of the sea as you travel towards it, but apparently that part was entirely made up for the US version.
When I was a kid I only had a few games for the Gameboy for a few years. Pokemon Red, gold and MegaMan one and two. Those were the first two mega man games I ever beat and I played the hell out of them.
0:16 since the GBA is compatible all the way back to the original Game boy, you're better off sticking with that. But if you wanted to go back any further, your best bet is the Game boy color, also because of the backwards compatibility. You can even pick a black and white color skin, similar to the Game boy Pocket.
There's also a shades-of-green palette like the original GameBoy. I personally really like the original GB. It fits well in my hands, and I just like how it looks. I grant the screen smears pretty bad, but... eh.
Eddie was named Flip-Top in the original localization for Mega Man 3 on the NES, and they kept that name for a while. I think it wasn't until around 6 or 7 that they finally changed it to Eddie.
22:13 you dodge the charge attack by shooting it. But beware the 3 shot on screen maximum, so as he's far away, you have to space out your shots until he gets closer, when you can just spam it until he stops charging
Mega Man 3 GB isn't just my favorite GB Mega Man game, it's simply my favorite classic Mega Man of all time. It was truly brilliant from start to finish, and my personal measuring stick for every MM game before or since. My only nitpick on it was that Dust Man's stage in it is exceptionally long and brutal. It's basically the first Wily stage.
Mega Man World 4 is my favourite GameBoy game in the franchise and one of my personal best ones overall. It may not be as original as its direct successor, but I find it to be the most fun and well-balanced game out of the World series, with a great mix of new and old music and great visual presentation. It's nice to know a new perspective on it though, so thank you for the time. Also, about World 5, I feel like you didn't do it justice. I know there's not much time you can dedicate to each entry, but I didn't like how you skipped even some of the major gameplay events. Anywho,
I still remember my shock when the Mega Man _Hunters_ all came back in _MMV_ . My immediate thought after the end of the game was "That's it. That's *Game Boy* 's swan song. They won't put another Mega Man on this system." ....and I would have been right, had Mega Man Xtreme not gone 'halvses' on GBC!
In Mega Man World 4, you stop that final boss charge attack by shooting it repeatedly with the Buster as it rushes towards you. That will push it back a little with each shot and, if you hit it enough, stop it from reaching you.
It's nice having the gameboy games on switch. Now hurry up and give me a Legends Collection. I've made my peace with never getting MML 3 but they ought to put MML 1/2 and TMoTB in a collection.
I honestly would say that Megaman World 5 is one of my favorite games from the original Megaman series. I just love the original levels, the story, the Stardroids and the final boss Sunstar so much and im really looking forward to the fanmade remake.
I should also point out Mega Man V has a rom hack that make it Game Boy Color compatible. That's how I played it and it really brings the game to life. Makes you think it's a lost NES game.
22:13 you’re supposed to equip the regular mega buster and rapid fire uncharged shots that bounce off but also push the boss backwards. If you time it right you can avoid damage altogether.
I grew up owning MM 2,3,5 and 6 on the nes but only owned MM4 on gameboy and honestly I'm glad I did. Such a fun game. I really like MM2, 4 and 5 on gameboy. The first and third are good too but those three are my favorite to replay.
The GameBoy Mega Man games are severely underrated. Even the earlier 'bad' ones are basicaly on-par technologically with the first Mega Man which hasn't aged well (though it gets a pass for being the first). But Mega Man 5 on the GameBoy is amazing. They knew they were done with the GameBoy so they made their own original game with original robots. And the fact that the last one has a boss rush of all the GameBoy-exclusive bosses (Enker, Quint, Punk, and Ballade) before you finish the game. And people sleep on the fact Wily literally built a Death Star and activated an ancient extinct alien race's doomsday device just to kill Mega Man. Kinda weird that he isn't treated as the insidious and evil lunatic he is until you get a handful of entries into the X series. AND LOOK HOW MUCH THESE GAMES GAVE TO US! Seriously, the first one gave us a boss rush of 4 different robot masters than the 4 stages, which evolved into the second game giving us 4 stages, then 4 different stages, something that would be done again later in Mega Man 7. Mega Man IV gave us the Part system, something used again in Mega Man V, Mega Man 8, Mega Man & Bass, and X5, 6, 7, 8, the Zero series, the ZX series, and Legends. Also in regards to the "high-pitched" music of Mega Man II - apparently that's a rendering glitch. Yeah, they just shipped it with a glitch.
The original GB only ended production in 2003! A lot of the parts for it were even incirporated into the GBA and by extension the DS (such as the GBA containing the Gameboy's sound hardware)
You forgot to mention Mega Man World II having completely original soundtrack. Speaking of MMWII, I recommend a fangame called Quint's Revenge. I think the Wily Iron Golem (Final boss of Mega Man World IV) Charge Attack you must shoot at the chin.
World 4 is my favorite gameboy game. 4 and 5 together are practically the bardock special of megaman games considering how often sunstar and the wily golem show up or are referenced in fan works.
@@gjergjaurelius9798 The main problems people had were the instrumentation being extremely messed-up (headache-inducing in a franchise renowned for awesome music) and the graphics being weaker than the rest of this series, as well as being very easy for a MM game.
Fans are working to make the GB anniversary collection a reality with GBC enhanced versions of all 5 games. 1, 2, 3, and 5 are done, and when 4 is finished they're going to put them all together as a GBA game package. They really help these games, as a lot of the slow down is removed, and the details of the later ones really pop with colour.
It took some getting used to the floaty physics and movement in the game, but other than that I actually enjoyed V on the gameboy. I love the idea of the Stardroids, and reviewing the previous ones helped recognize how V fleshed things out from its predecessors. I can’t wait for the MM7 style remake!
Quick question J Will you ever take a detour and cover a game such as Darkwing Duck (NES)? It's basically a Mega Man game with a Darkwing reskin, it was even made by Capcom themselfs.
I own the Mega Man II on the game boy, my brother got it for me for christmas one year. Never played the NES Mega Man 2, so the game boy version holds a spot in my heart. when i first got it i was a stupid kid and couldnt beat it but its easier now that im a 30ish year old dude.
III was my first MM GB game. It was good but brutal. Never finished it back in 2005 thanks to Punk. Then in the mid 2010s, got back to the entire series and finished the GB games thanks to sailing the seven seas. My personal favorite is IV thanks to it being then best classic experience in handheld and amazing OSTs. V may technically the best and original ideas, but I still prefer IV thanks to its innovation and enjoyability.
I own Japanese carts of all these games, and for a big Mega Man fan all are worth experiencing, but only V is really worth holding on to or replaying. I feel bad saying that because III (minus Dust Man's stage) and IV are quite good, but the differences between them and the NES originals aren't impactful enough, especially with the NES games available portably as well.
GB mega man 4 and 5 are honestly really solid entries in the franchise and I don’t see nearly enough people talking about them. I honestly prefer these versions to their NES counterparts.
The Gameboy MegaMan games did get better with each release. MegaMan V was the best because of the Stardroids. I would love to see something inventive like that in more fan games, since Capcom refuses to make more MegaMan games.
If you're gonna get a GB, get a GBA-SP with a back-lit screen. Nothing else is worth your time. Also, Tango isn't exclusive to World 5. He also appears in Proto Man's campaign of Mega Man 10. He's the cat that appears in the shop.
But a GBA SP Mk2 isn't an original GameBoy, which is what he was talking about. Personally, I always found the two SP models(both frontlit and backlit) to be very uncomfortable in the hand. I prefer the regular GBA.
@CptJistuce I know. I'm saying that the GBA-SP is the better option because of the back-lit screen and backwards compatability. However, if he's going for the most authentic approach, the original GameBoy is the best option.
MM World 4 was really fun, probably my favorite of the bunch. In the Wily 3 fight, you can spam uncharged shots to keep Wily from dashing into Mega Man. In general, I enjoyed all 5 to some degree. Not as good as the console games, but some fun stuff I ended up liking it more than Mario Land 1. I like Quint's/MM World 2's main theme. Though it is a bit pitchy.
I do like that these games started out as mostly "the NES games but on game boy" and slowly established their own identity and story. It's like M.E. was pushing to make their own Megaman game, which they got with MMX3
Just like Sonic Advanced.
@@consvolt-voidyou mean sonic 4, 5, and 6?
@@jackhumphries1087 Only the best titles for the best portable trilogy.
@consvolt-void Yes, then Dimps made Sonic Rush, which was an even different-er beast(and imo even better, which could just be bias I'll admit).
Shame they went out with Sonic 4
@@HordikaNate3821no they went out with Sonic Colors DS and Generations 3DS, Sonic Rush 3 and 4
20:20 - I've been saying it all along. SNES Mega Man 7 is more of a spiritual successor to the Game Boy games than it ever was to the NES ones.
The layout, the shop system... it's all coming together.
@@alexfischer7876 Also the cramped levels and big character sprites. In MM7, it's hard to dodge most things due to lack of room.
Thank you, I've always held this sentiment as well. You could probably remake 7 1:1 on the Gameboy, and the game would feel identical, audiovisual downgrades aside. I'm kinda shocked nobody's ever done this as a GBC home brew.
The Game Boy games in a nutshell:
I: A decent first stab.
II: A hollow disaster.
III: A frustrating improvement.
IV: A genuinely good romp.
V: An original work of art.
But all of them added some interesting stuff into the lore.
_Mega Man Killers (Enker, Punk, Ballade), Quint, the Stardroids and Sunstar, to be exact._
I had the third one as a small kid. It wasn't frustrating. What was frustrating (at the time) was picking out one of your few new games of the entire year with your Christmas or birthday money, and beating it in a day or a weekend. That was very sad.
With UA-camrs, they want to plow through a dozen games they downloaded for free to beat in a day, to get footage to edit for the next 40 hours. The slightest challenge tilts them and is seen as a flaw, because the game is not their focus. I can see that in the gameplay, knowing some of these games by heart and knowing they are not inordinately hard even for a kid squinting at a fuzzy, unlit, green liquid crystal display in the back of a van. I've noticed this trend in a lot of UA-camrs, and it gives a bad name to legit decent games.
@@bluedistortionsWhy the hell do you hate youtubers so much?
@@mortenera2294 he's right though. A lot of youtubers and game journalists have this problem.
Mega Man II is not a bad game, the soundtrack was just painful to listen to. Not saying it’s terrible but the instruments are too high pitched which makes it hard to listen to.
I like how in Mega Man And Bass that actually have the CD Data of the Robot Masters from Rockman World V as well as the three Robot Masters from Wily's Tower. It proves that the Classic series pays attention to continuity.
It’s Quint’n Time!
I can see why this game made a quintillion dollars!
*Ba Dum Tss*
THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT
One of the games of all time
this is genuinely the only joke with this punchline that i’ve seen where the punchline both works in the context of the joke and as an actual value (quintillion being the 5th “-illion” for those curious)
24:10 "Some games like Metroid 2 had special color palettes..." Metroid 2 (released in 1991) wasn't ever actually enhanced for SGB. The SGB just had automatic palettes and stock borders built in for a small list of first-party Nintendo GB games. GB games released after 1994 were often enhanced with full color palettes and custom borders, such as Donkey Kong 94, Mole Mania, and the gen 1 Pokemon games.
Yep. It's obvious palette 4-G was specifically made for Metroid II.
I loved when quint said "it's quint'n time" and then quinted all throughout time and space
3:23 “Industrial Wizard” is a pretty cool name for a scientist
The Megaman Killers need a larger role in future games
The four (three?) already? Or Wily adding to this series? Either is good. But the unit should never lose novelty and get to the point where it’s Koopalings.
Honestly? I thought they were forgettable besides maybe the one that changed to a good guy in the end (forgothis name lol)
Same with the Staroids
It would be cool if they got repurposed as mavericks in a new Mega Man X game
They got those dlc stages with obtainable special weapons in 10 at least. Also would require Capcom to make real megaman games again.
Megaman V is personally one of my favourite Classic Megaman games, which i think is insane because i didn't think a gameboy game could stack up to the Console ones, but it definitely surprised me.
Definitely.
This is the first I've ever heard of the Mega Man V remake. Who needs Capcom when fangames are so good?
I know it's unlikely but I hope J gets to try Rockman Minus Infinity, Rock Force, SFR, Unlimited, or Rock and Roll.
Don't forget about the whole *_Mega Man World DX_* series of colored versions.
Only _Mega Man IV (Rockman World 4)_ is left to colorize.
i am a bit concerned by the fact they call it "Megaman 7 styled" but then have enemies with a load of frames that would have been more at home in megaman 8
@@alex_-yz9to
"Styled" doesn't mean "sticking to limitations".
PC games can afford that kind of freedom. _Including bigger number of frames for certain animations._
@@alexfischer7876 a little bit of internal consistency wouldnt have hurt since some of the assets still looked like they had less frames than the others... and making the "Grid" more clear visually instead of having certain assets look like slide holes when they arent but also having some slide segments look impossible to fit through when its the way foward
I’m glad you brought up how World 4 introduced the P-Chip/Bolt system that Mega Man 7 would make standard. It means that the Game Boy games have their own important legacy to the Classic series.
22:13 You "dodge" that attack by rapidly firing lemons on the robots chin, which pushes him back.
So that's where Spamton NEO got that attack from!
Darn!!! I wanted to tell him 😞
Hey, go easy on J. He's a Sonic fan. You know how hard it is for them to try new things.
-A Sonic Fan
Yeah, it's basically a more difficult version of Guts Man G's charge attack.
though you have to space out the lemons as he begins his charge, because you're only allowed three shots on screen at a time (even reflected)
I loved these games. Played them for the first time when they came out on the 3DS Virtual Console and I'm glad they're available again on NSO due to the price of the likes of 4 and 5. Sure, I won't choose them over the NES games most of the time unless it's exactly 5, but they're a group of the best Game Boy games to be adapted from NES titles and at least worth a playthrough each.
Mega Man 3 on NES was my first MM game and have gotten every game released after, including the gameboy ones as they came. I really do enjoy them and go back to them often enough.
The GB games really did have some original ideas that the console version took:
Time bomb platforms in 3, The whole 4 boss then 4 more bosses, MM4 GB was the very first with shop and currency, among other things.
Mega Man 5 GB is the only classic mega man game in the entire series where Dr. Wily is not the final boss as well as Mega Man travels around our solar system.
@22:12 To avoid wily charge attack you just keep shooting lemons at the boss to slow his advancement
One thing I really like about MMV on GB is that it was a satisfying finale to the GB Mega Man games. Fighting all the Mega Man killers one last time, and a unique end boss that wasn't Dr. Wily. It feels like how I would expect the classic Mega Man series to end.
I could've sworn that Inafune brought M.E. in to do Megaman 7. That game is literally a scaled up World game, structure, screen real estate and all.
The spikes in the first fortress for Wily’s Revenge are designed around “carry”, which spawns a platform below you and is one of the best utility weapons in the series. The issue is even if you do get the extra life at the start which requires you to use it, it doesn’t really convey how useful it can be.
My favorite part of Mega Man World II is when Quint said "It's Quint'n Time" and then Quinted all over those guys.
I recommend everyone watches Simply Simon's playthrough series of the World series, to catch all the nuance that J really skimmed over here.
There is a lot here in design that surpasses the NES games in quality and it's shame he missed the point so to speak.
MM2GB was my first Classiv Mega Man game. Miiiight have been my first overall. I have such a soft spot for that game. Glad there are patches now to correct the music pitch, because the compositions are pretty great!
Looking forward to the next episode
Using MM7 as the template for the MMV remake was confusing to me at first, but when you think about it, MM7 is much closer to the GB games in terms of sprite sizes and number of enemies on screen at once compared to the NES games, so it actually makes a lot of sense. I'm so pumped for the remake 😎
In 1998 I found MM 1 in Germany as "Dr. Willy's Rache". Knowing Mega Man only from the TV series and stories in the Playground I was... underwhelmed. I learned to appreciate the series more and became a collector in 2000.
So fun fact about the mm2 music, the soundchip was REALLY glitched which caused the music to be so high pitched. But imo if you hear the way that the music was meant to sound, its one of my favorite soundtracks in the series (and the remixes are phenomenal, i mean megaman 8-bit deathmatch manages to make QUINT'S theme into an absolute threatening banger
13:05 "Pound Hammer Joe before he hammers you." is one of the most hilarious lines I have ever read on a game case.
Love how J got progressively more enthusiastic talking about these games as they went on
IT’S QUINT’N TIME
I love when Quint started Quinting all over the pl- and he's dead
Megaman 2 on Gameboy surely is one of the Megaman games of all time
Good to see you covering these games!
24:38
My Sailor Moon brain hearing planet names goes brrrrrr
Megaman has not actually played in a baseball game, but he has been in a soccer game and a kart racer.
There was also the Megaman Legends golf game on Japanese flip phones
Along with the Tennis one where you get to face off against X
I love MegaMan Megamix and Gigamix’s takes on the stardroids
Those actually were my first exposure to Megaman at all, because among the friends I had as a kid, not a lot had of them had an SNES. But basically all of them had a gameboy. And thus, I came across some of those games through my friends. I actually didn't know they had SNES originals until like 15 years later X3
If you pay attention, you'll notice that in Mega Man V a lot of the enemies are based on classic Mega Man enemies but they look different because they're supposed to be alien robots. Then, in the later Wily stages, after you find out that the Stardroids are actually Wily robots and not aliens, you'll see weird versions of some of the enemies where they're halfway between the classic versions and the alien versions which hits home the idea that Wily was just modifying his old creations to look alien for his Stardroid ruse.
27:42 Literally me
Mega Man 3 for Gameboy was my first handheld Megaman and it did not disappoint
Me too. And Dust Man was was too hard sehen i was 6
8:03 I thought this was a joke, but unless this is an elaborate image edit than I am *shocked.* Did the developers of Mega Man II have the Time Skimmer and used it to see into the future and saw the _Its morbin time_ meme, to which they thought "Yeah let's do a little trolling."
Absolutely love your look back at the older Mega Man stuff that I grew up with. I was mostly big on the first three NES titles but I did spend a fair bit of time playing borrowed copies of the Gameboy titles as well, really remember loving 4 a lot.
I spent two years tracking down these fucking games back when I was 12. I biked all over my city, mowing lawns, cleaning gutters and eavestroughs, raking leaves, shoveling snow, you name it.
I went bloody everywhere on my bike. Toys R Us, Woolco, everywhere you can imagine to find these goddamn games.
1 - 3 were easy enough to find, they were available everywhere. I never saw 4 at retail anywhere, and only got it because a buddy in grade 5 traded me a bunch of gameboy games for some of my toys and he happened to have a copy.
5, though, was an amazing stroke of luck. After exhausting every avenue I could think of, I ended up at an enthusiast gaming shop, and gave them some money as a kind of bounty on Megaman 5, with the arrangement being that in the unlikely event it got traded in, they'd call me and I'd bike across town and buy it, and if not, I'd at least have store credit.
Anyway, not too long after, someone traded it in, they called me up, and I biked on down and grabbed it.
To this day, I've never seen a boxed CIB copy of Megaman V. I doubt there are any left.
6:10
J when he realizes he has Carry:
22:13 You dodge this attack by shooting, the head gets pushed back by each bullet until it's out of juice.
Mega Man 5 on the Game Boy was my first MM game. It was so unique. StarDroids instead of Robot Masters, and Sunstar as the final boss. 5's story made its way into the GigaMix manga. Like the game, Dr Wily activates the StarDroids and Sunstar without realizing how unstoppable they are.
Thank you for reviewing these games - I have fond memories of them all. I have three areas to comment on in response to your review.
One thing you probably didn't notice in the first three Game Boy Mega Man games, is that, at least when using arm cannon, some of the robot battle difficulties were actually reversed. You noticed how easy Elec Man and Snake Man were, and then just defeated the rest with weapons they're weak to, but that meant you didn't see how easy or difficult the other robots were with the arm cannon. But whereas in NES Mega Man 1, Cut Man was relatively easy and Elec Man was hard, in Dr. Wily's Revenge, Elec Man was easy and Cut Man was hard. Similarly, I remembered NES Mega Man 2's Crash Man being hard, but his Game Boy version was the easiest of the early four. And NES Mega Man 3's Shadow Man was virtually impossible to beat first, but his Game Boy version is easy with the Mega Buster, whereas the other three of the first four felt harder. This comparison seems to go away in Game Boy Mega Man IV, where there didn't seem to be any difficulty inversion at all.
There's one thing you may not have been aware of that actually made the first four Game Boy Mega Man games relatively harder: The Game Boy Classic passive-matrix LCD screen with all its non-backlit motion blur. Don't get me wrong - I loved that old screen and its vaguely greenish color palette and I even have a nostalgic spot for the motion blur. But it certainly made it a bit more of a challenge to see action clearly on the screen - and that's *if* you were playing the already non-backlit screen in good light to begin with. Mega Man V was for Super Game Boy so could be played without motion blur that time, along with all the previous Game Boy Mega Man games, and I even later completed V on Game Boy Classic, too, for fair comparison.
Then there's the music in Game Boy Mega Man II. That game doesn't reuse any music verbatim, or even remixes, but instead has a lot of "sound-alike" versions of NES themes that are otherwise original compositions on Game Boy. And you'll notice that the first four robot level themes follow this rule. But the music for the Magnet Man, Hard Man, Top Man and Needle Man stages had all the sound-alikes mismatched. The Game Boy Magnet Man stage's music is a sound-alike of NES Hard Man music stage and vice versa, and the same swap happened with Top Man and Needle Man's themes and sound-alikes. And it's been observed that if you take *any* of Game Boy Mega Man II's music and lower it an octave, it sounds like more normal game music. Bioxz's problem with that game wasn't just that they didn't have any passion for Mega Man that Minakuchi Engineering had - Bioxz also cut a lot of corners, and certain aspects of the game, *like* its music, sound like Bioxz didn't really bother with testing or debugging it, and as a result, of all the Game Boy Mega Man games, II feels the most like hastily-developed shovelware. Indeed, II was actually released only five months after Dr. Wily's Revenge in Japan, and the two releases were only *two* months apart in North America.
Dr. Wily; Mwahaha! I have a brilliant idea! Instead of making a whole new set of robot masters to defeat Mega Man, I'll simply rebuild some of the ones he's already destroyed!
Metool: Brilliant? Sounds more like lazy to me.
Wily: You *dare* to question your creator?!
Metool: What're you gonna do about it? I'm invincible.
-Five Minute Theatre
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Definitely a series that got better with each new iteration. I hated Dust Man's level too, especially because you have to beat it to get the Rush Jet which would have helped a ton to get through it. I remember thinking that that game's final Wily stage was the 'oil platform' he'd taken control of and modified with his usual skull motif and traps since it rises out of the sea as you travel towards it, but apparently that part was entirely made up for the US version.
When I was a kid I only had a few games for the Gameboy for a few years. Pokemon Red, gold and MegaMan one and two. Those were the first two mega man games I ever beat and I played the hell out of them.
I legit cheered as a kid when they FINALLY brought the boss rush to the Game Boy with IV. And the gauntlet in V was such a beautiful experience.
0:16 since the GBA is compatible all the way back to the original Game boy, you're better off sticking with that. But if you wanted to go back any further, your best bet is the Game boy color, also because of the backwards compatibility. You can even pick a black and white color skin, similar to the Game boy Pocket.
There's also a shades-of-green palette like the original GameBoy.
I personally really like the original GB. It fits well in my hands, and I just like how it looks. I grant the screen smears pretty bad, but... eh.
22:13 You have to shoot at it mutiple times to push it back
I really like all the GB Mega Man games except for the second one. IV and V in particular are my favorite Classic Mega Man games.
Eddie was named Flip-Top in the original localization for Mega Man 3 on the NES, and they kept that name for a while. I think it wasn't until around 6 or 7 that they finally changed it to Eddie.
I still have all 5 of the GB carts so the MM World is near and dear to me. This might be your best Mega Man related video, J!
26:42 ALASKAN BULL WORM: BIG, HAIRY, AND PINK
so is patrick's belly button
22:13 you dodge the charge attack by shooting it. But beware the 3 shot on screen maximum, so as he's far away, you have to space out your shots until he gets closer, when you can just spam it until he stops charging
Mega Man 3 GB isn't just my favorite GB Mega Man game, it's simply my favorite classic Mega Man of all time. It was truly brilliant from start to finish, and my personal measuring stick for every MM game before or since. My only nitpick on it was that Dust Man's stage in it is exceptionally long and brutal. It's basically the first Wily stage.
I have played many Mega Man games but not those Game Boy ones. I appreciate you showing those games. Good & interesting videoa ,👌
there was at least 3 MEGAMAN LCD games... prior to gameboy, they were making LCD games through tiger. that'd be fun to talk about.
I only know of two Tiger games, Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3.
22:13 You need to keep shooting at the head of that boss!
Thta's how you avoid its hit!
Mega Man World 4 is my favourite GameBoy game in the franchise and one of my personal best ones overall. It may not be as original as its direct successor, but I find it to be the most fun and well-balanced game out of the World series, with a great mix of new and old music and great visual presentation. It's nice to know a new perspective on it though, so thank you for the time. Also, about World 5, I feel like you didn't do it justice. I know there's not much time you can dedicate to each entry, but I didn't like how you skipped even some of the major gameplay events. Anywho,
19:57 - How did you not get hit by that?!
I still remember my shock when the Mega Man _Hunters_ all came back in _MMV_ . My immediate thought after the end of the game was "That's it. That's *Game Boy* 's swan song. They won't put another Mega Man on this system."
....and I would have been right, had Mega Man Xtreme not gone 'halvses' on GBC!
Fun fact - the Mega Man Killers all returned as DLC Time Trial stages in Mega Man 10, very fun challenge
Thank you for reviewing the Game Boy Mega Man games! It was interesting to see how they compared to the NES ones.
14:21
The reason for Mega Man World 2s high pitched music was because of an accidental error that made the music play a pitch higher than intended
In Mega Man World 4, you stop that final boss charge attack by shooting it repeatedly with the Buster as it rushes towards you. That will push it back a little with each shot and, if you hit it enough, stop it from reaching you.
It's nice having the gameboy games on switch.
Now hurry up and give me a Legends Collection. I've made my peace with never getting MML 3 but they ought to put MML 1/2 and TMoTB in a collection.
I honestly would say that Megaman World 5 is one of my favorite games from the original Megaman series. I just love the original levels, the story, the Stardroids and the final boss Sunstar so much and im really looking forward to the fanmade remake.
I should also point out Mega Man V has a rom hack that make it Game Boy Color compatible. That's how I played it and it really brings the game to life. Makes you think it's a lost NES game.
The "pod things" in Gemini Man's stage are eggs. They're modeled after frog eggs, which is why they hatch robo tadpoles when you shoot them.
22:13 you’re supposed to equip the regular mega buster and rapid fire uncharged shots that bounce off but also push the boss backwards. If you time it right you can avoid damage altogether.
I grew up owning MM 2,3,5 and 6 on the nes but only owned MM4 on gameboy and honestly I'm glad I did. Such a fun game. I really like MM2, 4 and 5 on gameboy. The first and third are good too but those three are my favorite to replay.
The GameBoy Mega Man games are severely underrated. Even the earlier 'bad' ones are basicaly on-par technologically with the first Mega Man which hasn't aged well (though it gets a pass for being the first). But Mega Man 5 on the GameBoy is amazing. They knew they were done with the GameBoy so they made their own original game with original robots.
And the fact that the last one has a boss rush of all the GameBoy-exclusive bosses (Enker, Quint, Punk, and Ballade) before you finish the game. And people sleep on the fact Wily literally built a Death Star and activated an ancient extinct alien race's doomsday device just to kill Mega Man. Kinda weird that he isn't treated as the insidious and evil lunatic he is until you get a handful of entries into the X series.
AND LOOK HOW MUCH THESE GAMES GAVE TO US! Seriously, the first one gave us a boss rush of 4 different robot masters than the 4 stages, which evolved into the second game giving us 4 stages, then 4 different stages, something that would be done again later in Mega Man 7. Mega Man IV gave us the Part system, something used again in Mega Man V, Mega Man 8, Mega Man & Bass, and X5, 6, 7, 8, the Zero series, the ZX series, and Legends.
Also in regards to the "high-pitched" music of Mega Man II - apparently that's a rendering glitch. Yeah, they just shipped it with a glitch.
The original GB only ended production in 2003! A lot of the parts for it were even incirporated into the GBA and by extension the DS (such as the GBA containing the Gameboy's sound hardware)
My intro to Megaman was through II on Game Boy. And I have been a fan ever since.
You forgot to mention Mega Man World II having completely original soundtrack.
Speaking of MMWII, I recommend a fangame called Quint's Revenge.
I think the Wily Iron Golem (Final boss of Mega Man World IV) Charge Attack you must shoot at the chin.
World 4 is my favorite gameboy game. 4 and 5 together are practically the bardock special of megaman games considering how often sunstar and the wily golem show up or are referenced in fan works.
The classical Mega Man is welcoming and pretty good, I remember playing Mega Man 4 as well but it wasn't a BIG fave but still welcoming and witty.
Those surprise spike pits in MMW1’s Wily Castle can be beaten with the carry item. Just mash the button as soon as you transition to the next screen.
Would you look at that, a Mega Man fan that doesn't completely shit on Mega Man World 2. That's a nice change of pace.
Never seen the problem with it.
@@gjergjaurelius9798 The main problems people had were the instrumentation being extremely messed-up (headache-inducing in a franchise renowned for awesome music) and the graphics being weaker than the rest of this series, as well as being very easy for a MM game.
@@WhiteFangofWar It does have some objective bugs, but I have seen and heard the bugged versions and they are entirely fine.
I always call him Flip Top. They must've called him that in Mega Man 4 because it's all I remember from when that game came out
The character WAS called "Flip-Top" in the first bunch of American games, before eventually changing it to the Japanese name "Eddie" several games in.
Fans are working to make the GB anniversary collection a reality with GBC enhanced versions of all 5 games. 1, 2, 3, and 5 are done, and when 4 is finished they're going to put them all together as a GBA game package.
They really help these games, as a lot of the slow down is removed, and the details of the later ones really pop with colour.
I'm still shock the WHOLE Mega Man GB series line up was released all together on the Switch... Never forget you, Mega Man Mania on the GBA ....
Am just waiting for mega man world 4 DX to be available before replaying all 5 games in full color in DX form.
It took some getting used to the floaty physics and movement in the game, but other than that I actually enjoyed V on the gameboy. I love the idea of the Stardroids, and reviewing the previous ones helped recognize how V fleshed things out from its predecessors. I can’t wait for the MM7 style remake!
You should check Mega Man & Bass for the WonderSwan next
(DrWR) The music! So much rememberrys.
Life was hard in those days
Quick question J
Will you ever take a detour and cover a game such as Darkwing Duck (NES)?
It's basically a Mega Man game with a Darkwing reskin, it was even made by Capcom themselfs.
(Great video by the way)
I own the Mega Man II on the game boy, my brother got it for me for christmas one year. Never played the NES Mega Man 2, so the game boy version holds a spot in my heart. when i first got it i was a stupid kid and couldnt beat it but its easier now that im a 30ish year old dude.
III was my first MM GB game. It was good but brutal. Never finished it back in 2005 thanks to Punk.
Then in the mid 2010s, got back to the entire series and finished the GB games thanks to sailing the seven seas.
My personal favorite is IV thanks to it being then best classic experience in handheld and amazing OSTs.
V may technically the best and original ideas, but I still prefer IV thanks to its innovation and enjoyability.
I own Japanese carts of all these games, and for a big Mega Man fan all are worth experiencing, but only V is really worth holding on to or replaying. I feel bad saying that because III (minus Dust Man's stage) and IV are quite good, but the differences between them and the NES originals aren't impactful enough, especially with the NES games available portably as well.
GB mega man 4 and 5 are honestly really solid entries in the franchise and I don’t see nearly enough people talking about them. I honestly prefer these versions to their NES counterparts.
i never played the gameboy games as a kid and knew eddie as flip-top as well. i wouldnt have found that surprising.
27:12 To my recollection, that only started to happen in the second half of Mega Man World 5, because at this point in the story, Rock is off-planet.
2:23 That weird grin MegaMan is making is super sus.
4 likes in 1 minute, bro fell off (jokes, really excited for this video)
The Gameboy MegaMan games did get better with each release. MegaMan V was the best because of the Stardroids. I would love to see something inventive like that in more fan games, since Capcom refuses to make more MegaMan games.
If you're gonna get a GB, get a GBA-SP with a back-lit screen. Nothing else is worth your time.
Also, Tango isn't exclusive to World 5. He also appears in Proto Man's campaign of Mega Man 10. He's the cat that appears in the shop.
But a GBA SP Mk2 isn't an original GameBoy, which is what he was talking about.
Personally, I always found the two SP models(both frontlit and backlit) to be very uncomfortable in the hand. I prefer the regular GBA.
@CptJistuce I know. I'm saying that the GBA-SP is the better option because of the back-lit screen and backwards compatability. However, if he's going for the most authentic approach, the original GameBoy is the best option.
@@zemchia It sounded like he already owns a GBA SP(though probably a front-lit model), though?
@@CptJistuce Does he? Never knew.
I have all these games. Some I bought brand new. I wish I had kept them factory sealed.
MM World 4 was really fun, probably my favorite of the bunch. In the Wily 3 fight, you can spam uncharged shots to keep Wily from dashing into Mega Man. In general, I enjoyed all 5 to some degree. Not as good as the console games, but some fun stuff I ended up liking it more than Mario Land 1. I like Quint's/MM World 2's main theme. Though it is a bit pitchy.
The first Mega Man game for the gameboy i used to play that one nonstop like almost everyday.
really cool video dude