Mega Visions Review – Mega Man: The Wily Wars for SEGA Genesis

Here’s a little something to celebrate both Mega Man’s 32nd anniversary, as well as the 25th anniversary of this particular release and it finally becoming available again on the SEGA Genesis Mini.

The following review was written by me for Mega Visions magazine prior to the announcement of the game becoming a part of the lineup for the SEGA Genesis Mini. For the sake of readability and flow, the review remains unchanged from its original publication in Issue #6, released for the months of April/May 2018.

Reprinted here with permission.

Mega Man All-Stars to the Rescue!

An all-star selection of games, but is it an all-star package?

Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Minakuchi Engineering
Platform: SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive
Release date: October 21st, 1994 (JP), December 31st, 1994 (NA, via SEGA Channel), April 3rd, 1995 (PAL)

As we wrap up our first year of Mega Visions, the time has also come to celebrate Mega Man‘s 30th anniversary. Fortunately, there is a title that is uniquely suited for such an occasion as covered in a publication which focuses on SEGA games and platforms.

Mega Man (Rockman in Japan) began his video game career on December 17th, 1987 as a Capcom title designed specifically for Nintendo’s Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment System platforms, rather than as another port of one of the company’s many arcade games. This led to it being subject to Nintendo’s draconian rules regarding publishing games for their platforms, including being exclusive for a certain period of time.

As SEGA began to offer more favorable licensing terms and stepped up as a threat to Nintendo’s dominance at the time, Capcom signed on to begin publishing titles for the Leader of the 16-bit Revolution — a deal effectively sealed publicly by a handshake between the companies’ two blue-hued mascots. However, it would soon be a version of Street Fighter II that led the company’s efforts in 1993, with the Blue Bomber arriving the following year under altogether more peculiar circumstances.

On paper, the idea was perfect: Introduce a new audience to one of Capcom’s top series of the time by following in Nintendo’s own footsteps, taking three of their hit NES titles and remaking them with 16-bit graphics and sound, all in one package. To sweeten the deal, there would be a fourth “game” included featuring content that no one had ever played before.

In short, they would make their own version of Super Mario All-Stars, but with Mega Man and on the SEGA Genesis. How could it possibly lose?

But then we have to get down to the brass tacks of the situation: While the release of Mega Man: The Wily Wars would go as per normal in Japan and later in Europe, North America never saw the game hit shelves. Instead, it was released as a SEGA Channel exclusive, and for all intents and purposes, a SEGA Channel exclusive it would remain, making it something of a legend among North American Mega Man fans who were a) not SEGA Genesis owners, or b) not in one of the cable markets which carried the SEGA Channel.

To date, with the possible exception of an earlier iteration of AtGames’ SEGA Genesis Ultimate Portable Game Player (as of this writing, I’ve yet to find confirmation of which version is included, and even then, improper emulation means that the full contents of the game aren’t accessible there anyway), the North American version of the game has been sealed away without any sort of proper release or re-release via a service such as Nintendo’s Virtual Console.

So your choices basically come down to either the PAL version, which is in English, but runs a sixth slower than your other option, the Japanese version, “Rockman Mega World.” That one runs at regular speed, but some of the text is in Japanese, so it’s hardly a detriment, particularly if you’re a veteran Mega Man player who’s playing this more for the novelty. For review purposes, I went with the full-speed Japanese version of the game (though I’ll be referring to it by its English name from here on for convenience).

As noted, Wily Wars consists of three main games: Mega Man, Mega Man 2, and Mega Man 3, and you can choose to play any of the three at any time. Each is updated from the NES originals to feature 16-bit visuals and sound, and while the new visuals provide a new coat of paint that breathes new life into familiar settings, the music tends to be hit-or-miss depending on the song; not that any are bad, but more in how they stack up to the 8-bit originals.

With Mega Man 2 and 3 often jockeying for position in many fans’ eyes as the best game of the Classic series, the original Mega Man is often seen as the black sheep, as Capcom was still getting an idea of what they were doing before refining the package in the sequel. As such, it experiences some of the greatest benefits of the 16-bit upgrade versus its younger siblings, and not simply for aesthetics. In addition to a save system, all three games in this package share the same physics system, and as those well-versed in the original game can tell you, that is definitely a good thing, as the Blue Bomber tended to feel heavier, fall faster, and was overall more slippery in his original outing. But here, he controls as tight as in the sequels, even with some unintended side effects bleeding through, such as the underwater high-jumps that were introduced until 2.

Oddly enough, for a platform which so proudly touted faster games via “Blast Processing,” Wily Wars suffers a lot of slowdown in places — stranger still when you consider that these games ran faster on the 8-bit NES. Sometimes this can work against you, but on the whole, I found it made battles such as the infamous Yellow Devil (which has no pause cheat in this version) and the traversal of rail platforms in Guts Man’s stages far more manageable than in the originals.

That isn’t to say the game is a cakewalk compared to the NES games, however. Besides the slowdown, Mega Man 2 lacks its “Normal” mode, and all three games managed to challenge me in ways I haven’t experienced since I first played the originals. It’s not exactly great if you want to show off how you can defeat a certain Robot Master while taking no damage, but I found the new challenge added to be invigorating, adding another level of freshness to games I could normally walk through in my sleep. It mixes things up in a way that any experienced fan of the series should still have be able to overcome, and I seriously enjoyed it for that.

The cherry atop this 16-bit sundae is the real treat, however, and is where most fans’ interest belongs. Upon completing the three main games, you’ll unlock Wily Tower. Whereas Super Mario All-Stars included a fourth game in Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, a Japan-exclusive sequel/remix of the original game, Wily Tower is a new set of three stages guarded by the Genesis Unit, a group of three exclusive Robot Masters based on Journey to the West characters, and the eponymous tower stages themselves.

The stages and bosses are all new, but the stages themselves are filled with familiar foes from throughout the three games you’ve completed. Better still, your completion of those games gives you access — for the first and only time ever — to your choice of eight weapons and three tools from across all three of those games. Like sharp things and want an arsenal with Rolling Cutters, Metal Blades, and Shadow Blades? Great, and you’ve got five more to go! Crash Bombs, Hyper Bombs, and Hard Knuckles? Go for it!

Beyond the novelty, the original material — from the graphics to the music to the designs — are all really quite good, showing what the folks at Minakuchi Engineering are capable of when developing their own material and not simply adapting Capcom’s previous work (something they’d already shown earlier that year with Mega Man V for the Super Game Boy), making it somewhat lamentable that they never got to develop a full Mega Man title for the Genesis from scratch after this.

As far as straight-up adaptations of the first three Mega Man games go, Wily Wars is far from perfect, and there’s a fair bit of give and take to be had. But on the whole, and with the inclusion of Wily Tower, the curiosity factor alone and experiencing some fresh takes on the classics means it’s definitely a worthwhile addition to any Blue Bomber collection, even if getting your hands on a copy may be a bit tricky.

Rating (out of 5): 4

Pros:

• Reimagined graphics provide a fresh take on classic games

• Some performance issues work to the player’s favor

• You can now save in the original Mega Man!

• Wily Tower is full of new stuff that any serious fan of Mega Man should check out for themselves

Cons:

• Same performance issues can also work against the player in other ways

• Lack of a proper North American release means you’ll have to choose between playing at normal speed with some Japanese text or in English with everything moving one-sixth slower

Summary: Graphics aside, these are not perfect ports of the original three Mega Man games for the NES, but at the same time, that’s precisely a part of what makes it all the more interesting to play for a longtime fan of those classics. Throw in the new content from Wily Tower, and this is a must-play for any Blue Bomber fan who wants something familiar yet different.

——-

Since this review was originally published, Mega Man: The Wily Wars has seen a bit of a resurgence. As noted above and previously on The Mega Man Network, it is one of the 42 titles which can be found on the SEGA Genesis Mini, a nice little recreation of the classic console (which I’ve reviewed elsewhere), and can now be found for $59.99 USD at some retailers. It would make a great gift for anyone who grew up with SEGA (or without, and is curious about what they missed), to say nothing of an affordable way to obtain a physical version of this game.

What’s more, it’s worth noting that this is the North American SEGA Channel version of the game, meaning you get the best of both worlds mentioned in the review above — English text and full speed!

In addition to that, Retro-Bit has made some rumblings earlier this year that they’ll be bringing it home to the original SEGA Genesis and Mega Drive consoles via a fancy collector’s edition reproduction cartridge. That said, there doesn’t seem to have been much news about this release since then. Nevertheless, if you’re curious how that might turn out, Derek Alexander of Stop Skeletons From Fighting recently looked at their Metal Storm Collector’s Edition, which you can find here.

For more from Mega Visions (including some further writings and reviews from me), you can visit the official website, or if you’re interested in the magazine (available in digital and physical formats), then take a gander at the Mega Visions magazine Patreon.

Finally, when I originally wrote this review, I took tons of screenshots that never got used, so I’m throwing whatever I didn’t put in the article into a little gallery here for your enjoyment.