It’s time for a Mega Man marathon thanks to the Nintendo Switch Online. These game boy titles may appear at first glance to be straight remakes of the original games but that isn’t the case. Instead they are merged hybrids of sorts with a new villain thrown into the mix. It’s a pretty good time although the games do feel a bit compact so you will be done with them quickly. The sheer difficulty in some of these is so intense that I wonder how people pulled this off back in the day.

The game starts with Wily up to his old tricks so Dr. Light is forced to call in the legendary Mega Man to take down the evil robot masters. Mega Man is one of the strongest robots out there but beating up on his fellow robots isn’t exactly the guy’s idea of a good time. Still, he will do what he has too, because that is the role of a true hero. Mega Man is not one to shirk his responsibilities after all and will do whatever he can in order to achieve victory.

The gameplay is your classic 2D shooter style. You have your mega buster and you jump past obstacles and enemies. In most cases it’s best to beat the minions as they come along because otherwise they will really make you feel the pain. Trust me, they definitely don’t hold back. One wrong hit and you’ll find yourself falling off the platform and being defeated. That or you’ll just lose because you are out of health points. To be honest, either outcome is definitely a real possibility here.

I died numerous times while playing this one. It has to be one of the hardest Mega Man games that I’ve played. You have to be near frame perfect to get past some of these obstacles. I had to use the rewind feature quite a lot because they were just too tricky. The bosses are also really difficult particularly since they don’t always move the same way. For example, lets say I lose to a low attack that I needed to jump over. When I rewind and jump, the boss goes for an aerial attack instead. It’s definitely something that makes this title even harder.

To all of the players who actually pulled this off back in the day though, more power to you. That’s definitely not an easy feat by any stretch of the imagination. It is still a fun game though. You really get to test your reaction times and fundamental skills. You may not always come out on top but that’s okay. I do have a pet peeve as far as the gameplay is concerned though. The bosses appear to be immune to all of the special weapons except their specific weakness. That feels like a shame because it removes the point of having them to a large extent. Even if they only do as much damage as a mega buster, all weapons should work.

This is something that I’m glad they changed for future games. I always liked switching up the weapons but figuring out which one would work ended up being too tedious at times so what I would just do is use the mega buster for everyone. It’s a really well balanced weapon so either way I would say that it worked pretty well. I just would have liked to have had more of a choice.

The soundtrack is not bad. Not really any boppers that you’ll be looking up on Youtube though. They tend to blend together and will be forgotten rather quickly. The graphics also don’t get a chance to show out since the whole thing is covered in green. So it doesn’t age nearly as well as it should have otherwise. Turning any game into a single color is usually going to be a recipe for disaster.

In the end, this may be a short game but the sheer difficulty will help to extend the replay time. The boss battles are all extremely difficult and the same goes for the stages. When you complete this game you will really feel like a champion. While it’s on the Switch Online you should give it a shot and see just how far the series has come. We desperately need more Mega Man games in the present but for some reason Capcom has been fumbling the bag on that for a very long time.

Overall 6/10