Partially inspired by watching Game Center CX's Arino's fight against Rockman 3, I decided to playthrough all of the Gameboy Megamans. Eventually (maybe in 3 paragraphs) I'll talk about Final Fantasy Adventure too.
Each of the GB Megaman's are a mix between two NES games. As a result I probably like II the best, it being a mix of Megaman 2 and 3. It was also the one I started with, because I'd played I a lot when I was younger. In II, Metal Blade still kills everything. III would of also won my heart more if it didn't have a baffling spot in Dust Man (that might actually be in the 4 but I can't remember.) It's a screen entirely composed of spikes that you need to cross and you don't have Rush Jet yet. The solution which I looked up online, was to use Rush Coil. That was a bit :\
That did make III stand out a bit more from IV, but then again IV uses the stages and bosses from 4 (awesome!) and 5 (sucktacular!) 5 had forgettable repeating stages and IV does too. II through IV blend together. I ends up differentiating itself by having 1 bosses in a every MM after it environment. That means you can't die after the boss does. Hell maybe I had Metal Blade. This is the problem with these games.
While I had heard tale that V might be one of the best MM games, I gotta disagree. It is the only game to feature original robot masters, none of them are particularly fun to fight. It does have a weird swing soundtrack, which was just about the only thing that stood out after 4 other games of MegaMan. A lot of the weapons are useless. Most of the robot masters and bosses (and this was true for IV and III) can be/have to be beaten with the Mega Arm (as oppose to the Mega Buster). Oh there's a short asteroid dodging shooter level. Oh and there's a gauntlet of all of the main adversary from I-IV before you fight Wily in V. That was kind of neat, but only really because I had played all of them back to back. So it felt like a nice closer.
So what did I learn? That a Megaman game is a Megaman game. Nothing in these 5 games stood out enough for me recommend them over 2, 3, or 4. Though I haven't played 4 in a long time. I might have to go back to that one too. The thing that separated all of them from the NES counterparts were the unique cutscene animations before Wily's Castle/Battleship/Fortress/Death Star, and that Wily's stage is continuous. It doesn't have the break to show the path you'll take between each part. You still continue from the last section if you die/lose all your lives, but it feels suitably more epic to have fought 3 small bosses and the robot masters without a break.
You'll see I give no shit when choosing between Mega Man, Megaman, and MegaMan. Also italicizing all those numbers would be painful.
How about that Final Fantasy Adventure or the first mana game? It's Zelda, but the enemies don't recognize you exist and are content to stand on top of you until you are murdered and kicked back to the title screen where you load your last save. Zelda with no friction and RPG tropes that didn't really need to be there. Oh and items with limited uses. It sucks.
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