Mega Man: The Wily Wars

The Good
The overall look of the game is not a straight up splash of paint, but carefully reworked graphics that improve the presentation of the screens and menus, adds mugshots of the first six robot masters and adds parallax scrolling backgrounds to the levels. Pairing with the new look are stunning recomposed music tracks and new exclusive tracks, both very faithful to the mood of the game.

The gameplay is more forgiving than the NES original thanks to 50hz slowdown (which also boosts music quality). The controls are comfortable to use and can be configured. It's nice to be able to open the weapon selection window with the press of one of the three buttons instead of the Start button. And speaking of configuration, you can also use the options menu as your own personal Mega Man jukebox. The ability to save the game after completing a level is a plus compared to writing down and entering passwords.

The great reward for finishing all three Mega Man games is the Wily Tower (which could be coined as Mega Man 3.5). Since you can choose any combination of eight weapons and two utilities, this means there are multiple methods and paths to take for that glorious replay value.

The Bad
The game is so overwhelmingly good, it's very hard to criticise for any existing flaws. One minor complaint is that text font for the titles are in Japanese Rockman style and not the classic US pyramid-shaped logos. If you were expecting more from this remake like additional story text and scenes, that's only being picky.

The more moderate complaints are that this remake doesn't completely copy every element from the NES version. Mega Man fires three buster shots at a time instead of four. When it comes to moving left or right, Mega Man has a slight delay to the player pressing the directional pad. Then there's the small foreground layer glitches when there's too much activity going on at once. Worse still is how pixel perfect you have to be to make successful jumps across some pits and platforms, making for some unfair deaths.

The Bottom Line
Certain audiences would call this game part a trend that follows the compilations Ninja Gaiden Trilogy and Super Mario All-Stars, but that's just being blunt. At the same time, Mega Man had to start somewhere, so calling the NES originals outdated is uncalled for. Everything Wily Wars has to offer has shown the Sega Megadrive's best side of gaming experience. If Capcom or some big fans would remake the rest of the series to match Sega 16-bit standards, that would be something to look forward to. Growing up with this game or the original trilogy maybe the best thing that ever happened to players.