Mega Man 64

Once upon a time, it seemed the Megaman licence was an integral part of any good Nintendo system. The NES and the original Game Boy, all those many years ago, had the blue bloke at their disposal. But in later years, he seemed to have stepped away from the limelight, and we started to wonder whether he had given up crime-fighting for good! For those of you who have ever pondered this, ponder no more, as Megaman is back, and looking better than ever!

As some of you may know, this Megaman title is based on (or rather, a port of) the PlayStation version. It has similar controls but, as it turns out, these have been improved upon and made ideal for the N64 analogue stick. These improvements mean that the overall feel of the game is tighter, smoother and easier to use. So there's a plus point to start with!

As with most makeover operations, the outcome should be something far prettier than before, and it looks like Megaman 64 will certainly be a sight for sore eyes when it emerges next year! As you can see from these choice screenshots, Megaman 64 looks fab with its crisp, colourful graphics and its groovy, almost cartoon-ish appearance!

Another benefit of releasing a version that's been out on another system, is that Capcom has been given the chance to look at all the flaws of the PlayStation Megaman and get rid of them for the N64 version! This means that there shouldn't be any examples of bits of the environment disappearing or polygons 'popping off'. The downside to this is that, to make sure the above doesn't happen, the game has been redesigned and made smaller. Whether this means that Megaman 64 will be too 'economical' in places, remains to be seen. Finally, with the N64 Megaman, you can now use a Rumble Pak so that every blast and explosion can ripple through your sweaty fingertips! Sounds good? Feels good too!

If any of you are still worried about the quality of converted titles, then take these few games as examples: Spiderman 64, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (flip forward a few pages to see take a look at that hot cookie!) and Resident Evil 2 are all great games that have managed to use what the N64 had to offer and settled in comfortably with Mario and Co. Although the PlayStation version of the game came out in 1998, the wait for the conversion should have been well worth it. And if this version of Megaman is anything to go by, Capcom should be pulling its fingers out to get a game ready for the GameCube. Now that would be something to get excited about – maybe just as much as a Metroid game would be!

The game itself could be virtually flawless, with all of the elements you'd expect from a Megaman title. We can expect a ton of impressive weapons that could blast a hole through a planet, and power-ups that will create all kinds of interesting developments!

The plot is, again, not too dissimilar from the PlayStation game, Megaman Legends. In an effort to solve all of the energy problems of the world (we imagine that in an apocalyptic future, things like coal, oil and exercise videos are in short supply), Megaman must search for something called the 'Hidden Legacy' treasure, which sounds very important, doesn't it? However, on this search, Megaman has to look into his own past and beat all kinds of monsters and robots in the process. Well, it would be a really dull game if it was just Megaman walking around the countryside with a map, pondering life in general, wouldn't it?

So how is it looking for us British Megaman fans? At the moment, not too bad! A rough version of the game was shown at E3 earlier this year, and in Spaceworld in Japan an even later copy was paraded for all to see! Both, even at these reasonably early stages, looked damn fine, but because of the noise and the fact that no-one could hear themselves think, it wasn't really the right environment to give a valid judgement. Happily, all this could change because a finished version of Megaman should have been released in the US by the time you read this. This means a review should be coming your way in the not too distant future. However, with the current trend of games on the N64 only available for rental purposes, it may mean another great game is out of everyone's reach once again!

Presumably ‘Embarrassingly Below Average Man’ wouldn’t fit on the box... Considering Mega Man’s been taking care of business on pretty much every console going for fourteen years, it comes as no surprise that, with this incarnation of our blue hero, Nintendo has changed the format to keep things interesting. However, since we were all brought up on rusks, Cow & Gate and 2D Mega Man, we were a bit surprised at this decision, 'cos we all loved the older, flatter versions of the game. Have a look at these shots and see what you think.

First things first – Mega Man is a bona fide, certified Nintendo institution. Alongside Mario, Donkey Kong and Samus, the metallic hardcase from Metroid, our diminutive blue friend is one of the most distinctive characters in videogaming, and, for many gamers, will always symbolise Nintendo platform shoot-’em-up action at its best. Of course, Mega Man has appeared on loads of other platforms (pardon the pun), but Nintendo is where he started life, and thus many people see him as a Nintendo icon.

The reason for the Mega Man franchise’s continued success is simple: all the previous incarnations of the licence have been damn good games. Having made his first appearance for the big N way, way back in 1987, it was arguably Mega Man’s appearance on the SNES that confirmed the little lad’s legendary status. It has taken absolutely ages for Capcom to get around to producing an N64 version of Mega Man, and we at 64 MAGAZINE couldn’t wait to play it. Roy in particular got rather over-excited at the prospect of a 64-bit outing for the little blue bloke, and had to have a lie down in a darkened room for a bit when the cart finally arrived.

Blue Meanie

One of the things which set the original versions of Mega Man apart from the rest of the SNES platforming herd was the frenetic gameplay. The games bombed along at a fearful pace, with loads of power-ups, traps and no-good meanies that needed teaching a stem lesson with laser-fire. In other words, Mega Man succeeded because – apart from Metroid – it was arguably the most manic platform shooter ever to grace the venerable old Super Nintendo.

We reasoned, then, that the 64-bit version of this classic title would be a fast-paced, challenging platform shoot-’em-up with massive bosses, fantastic level design, sackfuls of brilliant power-ups and much-improved graphics and sound. How wrong we were...

As it turns out, Mega Man 64 has a few surprises up its sleeve. For a start, this game is totally different to what you would expect from a Mega Man title. In short, it’s a fully-3D, third-person RPG! Yes, cancel that hastily-arranged trip to Vision Express, you read that right the first time. It seems that Capcom had a high-level meeting, where some bright spark in a power suit said "Why don’t we dispense with every single element of Mega Man that makes the games any good, and try to fix something that’s not broken?" The meeting would have gone silent for a few seconds, and then heads would have started to nod in approval. Maybe then someone would have stood up and shouted "Yeah! Let’s ruin Mega Man!" It seems unbelievable that a company that crafted a genre-leading series of games over 14 years can suddenly change the formula, and replace it with this: a badly designed RPG that looks several years out of date. It’s a big mistake. Not as big as buying an Atari Jaguar on launch day for £250, but pretty damn close.

Blue Language

Mega Man 64 throws you straight into the action, as your ship (a sort of hovercraft/tractor hybrid-type thing) crash-lands outside the gates to a city full of extremely panicked residents. Having briefly hobnobbed with the Chief of Police, you’re granted access to the city. This is where things start to get just a little strange. As you’ll see from the ‘Mega Man At C & A’ boxout, our hero has to wander around a shopping mall, asking residents for advice and tasks to complete so that he can find spare parts for his ship. This is where the whole idea of Mega Man taking part in a mundane RPG really starts to grate. Ordinarily, you’d expect the game to be non-stop platform-hopping, baddie-blasting action, complete with fast-paced gameplay and massive bosses. But no – in Mega Man 64, the first thing you’ve got to do is pop along to the gentleman’s outfitters and talk to the irritating salesmen. Oh Mega Man! It doesn’t suit you Sir!

Thankfully, all of this window-shopping doesn’t last too long (although the fact that it’s there at all is annoying enough), and pretty soon Mega Man finds himself in a much less pleasant location. No, not the front row at a Steps gig (I’ve told you before: lay off Steps! – Roy), but close – the town sewer system! Mmm… lovely! Here (at last) it seems hordes of massive robots are, er, lurking menacingly and up to no good, so Mega Man must stop them.

Unfortunately, in the first few levels, Mega Man’s arm-mounted laser cannon – normally a hugely-powerful tool for large-scale face-rearranging and destruction in the old SNES classic – is about as powerful and offensive as a lawn sprinkler during a hosepipe ban. This means that taking out even the lesser enemies is a bit of a chore, but since their attack patterns are so comically predictable, only someone who’s a worse shot than Stan Collymore will have any trouble dealing with them. However, once you start squaring up to 20-foot-tall, fireball-spewing enemies, things start getting that little bit tougher.

Blue Isn’t The Colour

It has to be said, that despite the supremely annoying side to Mega Man 64 (and if you think it sounds bad so far, we’ve not even started yet) there are sizeable portions of the game which are quite a good laugh. Thanks to the masses of cut-scenes, Capcom has managed to make the player feel part of the wider gaming environment. It is actually possible to interact with the vast majority of characters that you meet on your travels, and it’s worth going around talking to every single person you find, as this often leads to vital clues as to what the hell you should be doing. The flipside to using this approach is that it rapidly becomes quite dull, and if you don’t find the right character to interact with at the right time, you can end up stuck, wandering like some sort of confused tourist in need of directions around the same area for absolutely ages. To begin with, this facet of the game can be ignored, because there are enemies to tangle with, and new places to see. However, once you’ve got rid of all the baddies around, and done a decent impression of an Avon lady, knocking on doors until Mega Man’s knuckles bleed, and you still don’t know what to do, then the game becomes homicidally annoying.

Mega Flop

As you can probably tell from this review, we feel particularly aggrieved by this version of the once-classic licence that has belatedly staggered onto the N64. Hopefully, a Mega Man game on the GameCube (if there is such a beast) will be a vast improvement on this sorry shambles – it’s hard to see how it could get much worse. It seems a bit strange that Capcom – a company with a record for producing games of the highest quality on all platforms – has bothered to release this game on the N64 at all. Why didn’t the company just can it and wait for the GameCube to take off, instead of spending all that time and money converting a game which ends up being a gigantic let-down to all concerned? Mega Man 64 will not be released in this country, but it is being inflicted upon unfortunate Japanese videogamers as we speak. In Japan, where the Mega Man franchise is even more popular than it is over here, Mega Man 64 will doubtless sell like hot cakes. Ill-conceived, blocky hot cakes with no long-term appeal, but hot cakes nonetheless.

What this game basically boils down to is a massive missed opportunity. The N64 faithful would have greedily bought copies of Mega Man 64 from the shelves of videogame stores across the land, and ran home in mobs chanting "We love Mega Man 64!" had their console’s installment of the saga been even slightly impressive. Unfortunately for those diehards, the Mega Man that we’re presented with is a flat, sorry imposter compared to the rampaging, platform-hopping little geezer that we all know and love. What Capcom has managed to do is to totally ignore Mega Man’s heritage, and try to make more of the lead character than in previous games, but he just doesn’t cut it. Had the game been properly programmed, Mega Man 64 could – even should – have been similar in design to Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast or Mario 64. Regrettably, this game resembles the handiwork of an untrained family of West African baboons, who thanks to their short attention spans and a lack of useable thumbs, turned out a title with so many flaws, so many annoying little shortcomings, that it physically saps the will to live of anyone who plays it. Mind you, it’s still better than Power Rangers: Lightspeed Rescue, so that’s something in its favour at least.

Take It Away, Please!

The chief reason why Capcom’s attempt to turn its little blue fella into a sort of 'Mario-Italian friend' to his own devices failed, is because he has no charm! In Mario 64, still by far the best example of the type of game that Capcom were aiming for, Mario comes across as a personable little guy, because he reacts superbly with his environment, and has loads of little quirks to keep the gamer interested, even if you leave our fat Italian friend to his own devices.

Mega Man, on the other hand, has none of these heart-warming qualities, and more often than not just looks like a little bloke in a blue suit, running around not knowing what to do. It’s a desperately sorry state of affairs, and we never thought we’d come to this conclusion, but unfortunately, Mega Man 64 is just pants.

At this point in a review, we might be tempted to say something about how, if you were a confirmed Mega Man devotee, you might just find enough in this game to warrant buying it. But we’re not going to lie to you. If you’re a true Mega Man freak, you’ll be shocked and saddened to see this game in action. Our only advice for anyone who was waiting for this game is sorry, but you should avoid this game as you would a man-sized pile of cow dung, and thank the Lord above that you’re not Japanese, because they have to look at it in the shops. You have been warned.