What am I doing with my life? More Mega Man? I simply can't help myself.
Now I can finally say I've beaten all of the main series Mega Man games, and am finally free to branch out to some other series in the Mega Man universe. Hooray!
I played Mega Man & Bass in its only American release, on the Game Boy Advance. Originally developed for the Super Nintendo, bizarrely after the release of the underrated Mega Man 8 on the Playstation, the game is another conventional ride through the Mega Man formula, with a few small tweaks. In this game you can play as Bass, first introduced in Mega Man 7, in addition to the lovable Blue Bomber. The game also introduces a unique branching level path, in which you can complete levels split into three trees, rather than being able to pick from all of the levels from the beginning.
Graphically, Mega Man & Bass is a technical marvel, and I don't say that lightly. What the Super Nintendo was capable of is still astounding to me. Basically, the graphical look of the game is based off of the animations from Mega Man 8, which is amazing. Unlike Mega Man X3, which was developed primarily for the Super Nintendo with a few changes made for the Playstation version, this is built on the achitecture of a 32 bit game, and adapted extremely well to fit the hardware. The sprites are big and far better than anything seen in Mega Man 7, and the levels are well done, although the backgrounds are definitely not to the level of Mega Man 8.
The graphics become even more remarkable when you consider that this is a 16 bit handheld port of an essentially 32 bit game, and it really works! There are a few understandable hitches here and there, and these are definitely annoying. The biggest problems with the graphical style definitely interferes with the gameplay at points due to the fact that the displayable amount of screen is much lower on the GBA than it would be on the SNES. There are parts of the game in which you'll unwittingly jump up into spikes that can't be seen, or drop down onto them, and one boss in particular is made far more challenging due to the fact that you can't even see the top of him, making reacting to his attacks much more difficult. But the gains here are bigger than the costs, and if you play it you'll see why.
The controls were actually significantly tighter in this game than in Mega Man 8, which is pretty remarkable. Mega Man generally does what you want him to, and you won't die due to controls very often.
The gameplay and level design here are good, but not great. It feels like the game was primarily designed for Bass to finish levels, rather than Mega Man, and playing through the game as the Blue Bomber can be a chore. I liked the increased difficulty, though, and found that this forced me to use my secondary weapons a bit more than I otherwise would in a Mega Man game. The game keeps up with some of the innovations of Mega Man 8, but rather than leaning into the idea of making the secondary weapons more broadly useful as done in the 8th game, and perfected in the 9th, there are just a few useful ones in this game, such as a pillar of ice that can be pushed and then ridden on across spikes or to clear big gaps. Some of the boss fights, however, were among the most creative in the series, including one in which you must push the enemy into spikes to win, and another in which you have to destroy anchoring pieces that heal the boss before killing him.
The soundtrack had some high points, but was mostly average. Definitely not a high note for the Mega Man franchise, but neither is it Mega Man X 3.
Mega Man & Bass was a solid entry into the franchise, but not quite up to the handheld wonder of its superior cousins in the early days of the Mega Man Zero series. It's a good game, and definitely worth checking out for its technical accomplishments alone. I'll give it an 8.0/10.
Next up on handheld will be me scratching an itch I've had for a few weeks now, and should be a longer playthrough, so check back in a few weeks or so!
-TRO
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