Times are tough for Mega Man and his many fans. While Capcom seems determined to bury the gaming icon and the franchise by canceling all of his upcoming games and denying him a spot in not one, but two versions of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 -- despite the fact that Mega Man X was and is the top fan-requested character to appear in the game -- fans have had to sit uncomfortably by and watch as one of their favorite characters is murdered by his parent company.
Which is why it's hard to know whether or not the release of Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge on the 3DS' eShop should be taken as a blessing (Capcom still acknowledges that Mega Man exists!) or a curse (Mega Man is dead, but at least Capcom will keep salting the wounds by milking his classics). Whatever the case, I feel the best way for fans to show Capcom how pissed off they are about the company's current treatment of Mega Man is to speak with their wallets and show Capcom that people are still willing to spend money on the Blue Bomber's games, old and (hopefully, someday) new.
But even as classics go, Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge is pretty... well, old. It was released in 1991, fairly early on in the original Game Boy's long lifespan, so there's a good chance that even some hardcore fans, especially younger ones, never got a chance to play it. So the question then becomes, how well does it hold up 20 years later, and is it worth the $4 asking price? That's what I'm here to tell you.
Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge borrows characters and elements from Mega Man 1 and Mega Man 2 for the NES, establishing the Game Boy series' trend of reusing and remixing assets from the NES Mega Man games (except for Mega Man V, the last Game Boy title, which is a completely original game). To carry out his titular revenge, Dr. Wily has resurrected eight Robot Masters in the hopes that one of them will be able to defeat Mega Man the second time around. Four of these bosses -- Cut Man, Ice Man, Fire Man, and Elec Man, from Mega Man 1 -- get their own stages, which can be tackled in any order. However, the other four revived bosses -- Flash Man, Quick Man, Bubble Man, and Heat Man, from Mega Man 2 -- don't get their own stages, and are instead fought one after another near the end of the game.
That's not to say all the content in Dr. Wily's Revenge is recycled, however. Despite the fact that most of the bosses are returning ones, their stages are completely different and unique to this game, as are the Dr. Wily fortress stages near the end of the game. Dr. Wily's Revenge also introduces an original boss character in Enker, the first in a series of bosses that would eventually come to be known as the "Mega Man Killers" -- especially dangerous robots who, as you might expect, were designed by Dr. Wily specifically to destroy the Blue Bomber. Mega Man also gets a completely new special weapon upon defeating Enker that never appeared in any of the NES games. In fact, the Mega Man Killers and the special weapons won from them remained totally exclusive to the Game Boy Mega Man games for 19 years, not reappearing until last year's Mega Man 10, and even then only as downloadable content.
Back in 1991, Dr. Wily's Revenge looked and sounded better than most Game Boy games did at the time, and that attention to the game's graphics and music, dated as they are in 2011, remains apparent. Mega Man, the Robot Masters, and the various iconic minor enemies all enjoy big, detailed sprites, especially for an early Game Boy title. In fact, in some ways the characters are too big and detailed for the small gameworld, which presents some problems difficulty-wise (which I'll get into in a bit). But this was and is a great-looking early Game Boy game, even if the large, detailed sprites look a little uneven next to the comparatively plain, small-feeling (but not short) levels. The music is a combination of remixed tunes from the NES' Mega Man 1 and original music put together for this game, and all of it is memorable, especially the epic, endlessly hummable end-game Dr. Wily fortress themes. And as far as the borrowed music goes, it's pretty interesting to hear how Capcom's sound engineers worked with and remixed the songs they borrowed from the NES to work within the tight confines of early Game Boy development. Frankly, the music is great through and through, and definitely warrants playing the game with headphones even today.
As you might expect, the fact that there are only four Robot Master stages makes this one of the shortest games in the series, even by Mega Man standards. In fact, Dr. Wily's Revenge only spans six stages total: the aforementioned four Robot Master stages, and two end-game Dr. Wily castle stages. However, counteracting the game's brevity is just how difficult the whole game is. Most Mega Man veterans, especially those who have played Dr. Wily's Revenge before, will blast through the game in an hour or two, but for everyone else, it's very likely that you'll spend quite a bit of time with this game trying (and, many times, failing) to conquer the stages and their bosses. Dr. Wily's Revenge is definitely one of the most difficult classic Mega Man games out there; many enemies do ridiculous amounts of damage to Mega Man (especially bosses), and because the character sprites are still quite large despite the Game Boy's smaller screen size, it's very difficult to dodge much of anything, so be prepared to take quite a few hits. Add to this the myriad pits and spike-lined floors and the fact that neither Mega Man's default Plasma Cannon (it hadn't become the Mega Buster yet!) nor the various special weapons are particularly powerful here, and you've got a game that, at times, seems to want you to fail repeatedly... which makes your eventual triumph that much sweeter. Still, be warned that the going can be rough.
So to recap the last paragraph, we've got a short game that's made longer by the high difficulty. However, this factor is countered yet again when you consider that the 3DS' Virtual Console allows you to make use of a save state, meaning you can take a snapshot of the game at any point in time -- say, before a boss or especially difficult part of a stage -- and reload that game state if you mess up, removing any of the punishment or backtracking associated with losing your last life. This effectively removes most of the difficulty inherent in Dr. Wily's Revenge, so that if you're persistent and willing to save and reload enough, you can make it through the game without ever seeing the Game Over screen. At the very least, you can certainly take your time learning the various stage hazards and bosses' patterns without worrying about running out of lives. On one hand, this makes the game a lot more accessible and less frustrating, as having to backtrack through a stage after losing your last life in a game this hard can be incredibly frustrating (and it was, in 1991). But that's also part of the series' charm: serious difficulty (until you get good at the games, anyway) that expects you to correct your mistakes and learn patterns to succeed -- no hand-holding allowed. So while the 3DS' save state feature won't affect my review score, I feit it worth mentioning as it does undercut most of the game's difficulty and can make the game a lot shorter than it would have been back in 1991.
To close, if there was one word I could use to pretty much sum up Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge in a nutshell, it would be "rough." It's not a bad game by any means, and is in fact quite good, but it is rough around the edges. It represents Capcom's first shot at translating Mega Man from the NES to the Game Boy, and as such things just feel a little "off"; there doesn't seem to be much (if any) difficulty balancing to speak of, the controls are a bit slippery (nearly unheard of in Mega Man games), it's very short at a mere six stages (hard as they can be), and the graphics are detailed for their time but the sprites are far too large for the small game world in which they reside, at least in a game that's already this difficult. But the music is uniformly great and the game itself is still quite fun, offering that specific kind of satisfaction that only classic Mega Man games can provide. As long as you're willing to put up with the high diffculty level, this is a trip down memory lane that's worth taking, especially for a paltry $4. It's not as good as most other classic Mega Man games, but you could do far worse with the eShop's current offerings and Game Boy platformers in general.
PROS:
+ Great music
+ Large, detailed sprites that are worthy of their NES counterparts
+ Bosses (except one) are recycled, but stages aren't
+ Difficult, but not impossibly so; rewarding for those who tough it out
CONS:
- Large, detailed sprites that are too big for the Game Boy's small screen size, making dodging enemies and shots harder
- Stages are fairly plain-looking compared to sprites
- Very short at six stages, even if they are hard
- Fairly slippery controls (for Mega Man, at least)
Grade: B-
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