It's new to me: Mega Man II

No, no, not Mega Man 2. A different (and nowhere near as enjoyable) Mega Man the second.

This column is “It’s new to me,” in which I’ll play a game I’ve never played before — of which there are still many despite my habits — and then write up my thoughts on the title, hopefully while doing existing fans justice. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

The original Mega Man wasn’t an initial massive success, but once the series picked up critical and commercial traction, Capcom went all-in. By 1991, four years after the original Mega Man released on the NES, Capcom had two concurrent Mega Man series going:—the NES one, which would release Mega Man 4 that year, and another on the Game Boy, which debuted with Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge—as well as a PC port. It’s probably no surprise that this is also right around the time that the quality of original recipe Mega Man games started to dip.

It doesn’t help that the Game Boy entries were essentially recycled versions of their NES cousins, only with new sets of problems like overly large sprites and a massive hit box for Mega Man, a lack of new robot masters to face off against, weaker level design, and also just simply less game to play. There was a value to doing this — the recycling part, anyway, not the sprites or the ho-hum levels — since not everyone with a Game Boy necessarily had an NES or was ever going to buy one, and this was a way for Capcom to sell a popular series of theirs to existing fans who wanted Mega Man on the go and newer ones who hadn’t had a chance at these titles yet. But, like was said about Wily’s Revenge, it’s decades later now, and we’ve got a lot more Mega Man to choose from, with the majority of it playable in your living room or on the go. We’ve outgrown the need for most (though not all!) of the Game Boy Mega Man titles at this point.

Dr. Wily’s Revenge wasn’t a bad game, but it felt like the only people who should bother with it nowadays are Mega Man completionists. Mega Man II, its sequel, feels pretty much the same. Thinking Rabbit was the developer this time, rather than Minakuchi Engineering, the studio that created Dr. Wily’s Revenge and then came back for Mega Man III, IV, and V, as well as Mega Man X3 on the SNES. To say Keiji Inafune, original artist and eventual producer for Mega Man games, was unhappy with the job Thinking Rabbit did is putting it lightly: according to Mega Man: Official Complete Works, it’s not only Inafune’s least-favorite Mega Man game, but he pointed out that the studio’s lack of familiarity with Mega Man games resulted in lackluster design.

Image credit: LaunchBox Games Database

That’s probably a little harsh — Jeremy Parish could think of far worse Mega Man games a few years ago when a series ranking was published — but I’m also not disagreeing with the sentiment that it feels like the game was made by someone who didn’t fully understand how to make Mega Man level design work. There are nine levels this time around instead of five, as the second wave of four robot masters each has their own stage within Wily’s Castle instead of just being single-room fights to the death, and then there’s a Wily’s space station level before the final confrontation. Everything before Wily’s Castle just kind of… is. They’re all short and uncomplicated stages. The bosses, if you use the appropriate powers to take them out, are a joke. And not in the “Mega Man bosses are easier when you use the ability they’re weak to” way, but in the “Air Man dies after you shoot him just twice with the Leaf Shield” way. I entered a couple of these battles with lower health and thought I might be in for at least a little bit of a struggle, but not even a little resistance was put up by those bosses. I’m alright at Mega Man games, but I’m not that good at them, you know?

Mega Man can slide at any time here, which is (sometimes) useful for dodging enemies, and for getting through tight passages. This power was introduced in Mega Man 3, and became standard as Capcom kept trying to differentiate newer Mega Man games from older ones. You also have Rush, Mega Man’s robot dog buddy introduced in Mega Man 3, along for the ride. He has three of his powers here: Rush Coil for high jumps, Rush Marine for underwater travel, and Rush Jet for flying over longer distances. Outside of Rush Jet, there’s little use in the game for the other two. There are some opportunities for Rush Coil, at least, if you’re feeling too lazy to figure out a path with just Mega Man, but you won’t spend much time switching among the three to navigate stages until you’re in Wily’s space station, right at the end. All three powers are acquired from defeating robot masters, in addition to whichever of their powers are granted to you upon defeat.

Those eight robot masters come from Mega Man 2 and 3, and they are once again in their themed stages. The four in Wily’s Castle do have superior stages with improved level design that feels like it wants to challenge you in more ways than “sorry this enemy sprite is huge and hard to avoid” and “hope you don’t guess wrong about which hole to fall down,” which was a welcome change. You’ll also fight Quint, a new robot introduced here, who is apparently a Mega Man from an alternate, peaceful timeline that Wily convinced to fight against Mega Man. And by “convinced” I mean “Wily modified him into doing his bidding.” Also, Quint’s weapon is a combination jackhammer/pogo stick. He’s… it’s kind of embarrassing how easy he is to defeat, actually, because you just slide under the pogo jump and then the jackhammer portion anchors him to the ground long enough for you to lay into him from afar. Rinse, repeat. Maybe next time grab a Mega Man from a war-torn timeline, Wily, that might help your cause.

At least the Wily fight brings something to the table, as it’s a multi-stage final battle that might even make you crack open an extra energy tank to heal. You should have plenty of those at this point, because you probably didn’t need to use them earlier than this.

Things would have been less confusing stateside if the Game Boy series had been named “Mega Man World” like Japan’s Rockman World, but no. We got a Roman numeral instead of an Arabic one the second time around. Image credit: LaunchBox Games Database

Quint fight aside, if the initial four stages and boss battles had been more like those found in Wily’s Castle and space station, Mega Man II actually would have been pretty good! Especially for a game on the accelerated five-month development timeline this one had. As is, though, it's not much of a step in the right direction for this portable series. Or it is, but it's also at least one step back, and like with Wily's Revenge, it’s all much more noticeable now with so many other quality Mega Man games and subseries out there to play instead. At least the rate of health and power refill drops was increased here, to counter the issues with the huge sprites in a cramped space. It does make Mega Man II a little too easy, sure, but it also makes it less frustrating: challenge is fun when it comes from quality game design, not so much when it’s because there’s something wrong with the game.

Oh, and there is something pretty wrong with Mega Man II even outside of the level design and ease. The music is just not very good. The songs themselves are good, but heard through the Game Boy’s speakers? Less so. It’s not actually the Game Boy’s fault here, but instead, the problem is the pitch: whether due to a programming error, tonal overcorrection, or just a grave error in taste, the entire soundtrack is played at too high of a pitch, and it becomes grating in a hurry. You can tell there’s a good song in there, but your ears are being subjected to something else. Here’s the Air Man stage theme, one of the worst offenders:

It’s maybe not that bad at first, but about 30 seconds in, you’ll be convinced there’s a problem if you weren’t already. Another way to put this is that there are multiple fan projects correcting the pitch of the soundtrack. That’s… not something you hear about happening all that often. Arrangements and remixes? Sure. But pitch corrections? The need for that kind of thing is typically caught before a game goes live. Here’s one such correction, though, again for Air Man’s stage, just so you can compare the two:

At 2:45, you get the true test of the pitch changes: it’s still a high pitch, but now it at least feels like it’s within a tolerance it’s supposed to be in for human ears, instead of a clear mistake in either composition or programming. That pitch correction came by way of MrCaerbannog on YouTube, who used Game Boy hardware emulation to get the job done, i.e., it’s done in a way that the Game Boy could have done when Mega Man II released, not simply dressed up with modern tech.

Mega Man II, like its predecessor, isn’t a bad game. If the second half hadn’t salvaged it, then yes, it would have been terrible, and easily one of the worst Mega Man titles out there. What it rises to with those improved stages and fights, however, is a game that only Mega Man completionists and the most curious among us should bother with. There’s so much more Mega Man now than there was in 1992, and most people should play some of that instead.

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