Rockboard: Wily and Right That's Paradise

Here's an obscure one. This game was a Japanese only release and apparently was held back from the US. I'm not entirely sure why, but since it's not all that great, it could be as simple as poor sales. It is the biggest departure from the norm of Mega Man games so far. It's really just a strange board game with Mega Man characters slapped on it. I have no idea if Rockboard was a different game in development by Capcom that got Mega Man stuck on it to sell copies (like Super Mario Brothers 2) or if it was always going to be a Mega Man game from the start.

Since it wasn't released in the United States, many Americans have never even heard of this game, and it hasn't come out in any other form of a re-release since it was made either. Plus if you can't read Japanese, you might as well not play anyway because this game does require some reading. Luckily, however, some Mega Man fans decided to release a patch for the game that will translate it, rather poorly, but what do you want for free? Rockboard: Wily and Right That's Paradise is the directly translated name, and if it came out in the US, it'd probably be called something like Mega Man Board Game: Wily and Light's Paradise or something. Anyway, because of this patch, we now can play this game and judge it as it was meant to be judged. And what's the verdict you ask? Eh...

Story
Non existent. I guess it would have to take place after Mega Man 4 because of the appearance of Dr. Cossack and Kalinka, and the certain robot masters from Mega Man 4 that are there, but nothing that happens in this game can be considered canon to the series. This is kind of like the Mega Man version of Mario Party, before there was Mario Party.

You choose one of 5 characters, Dr. Wily, Dr. Light, Dr. Cossack, Roll or Kalinka, and try to build an empire of labs, property, and zenny (cash), on a map of a given continent. Then you choose a map to play on, Green Continent (South America), Continent of Sand (Africa), Megaopolis (Continental United States), and Cold Island (Antarctica). If it were translated now it'd probably be Netopia for the US and Netfrica for Africa. I don't think Antarctica and South America have been named yet in battle network, but now I'm getting really off topic.

The game gives you set goals that you must complete for the game to end. You must obtain so much cash, have so much property, and so many labs. From there on out it's a matter of buying and spending to make your way to the top.

Aesthetics
The bird's eye view on the game makes the sprites look strange and squished, and this draws some confusion for me, as you would think Capcom would have a ready resource library for these sprites to start with. Guts Man looks so weird, his abdomen is shrunk into him. The rest of the game is adequate, but nothing special. The Megaopolis map is kind of an uninteresting shit brown color but the other maps are ok.

Sound
Not bad, there are some remixes here of various Mega Man themes blended and remixed together. It can get repetitive after a while though, because most sessions take a few hours to complete. Luckily if it drives you crazy, you can turn it off.

Design
These types of games aren't my cup of tea. I mean, I love playing Monopoly and Risk and all that, but I think they translate very poorly to video games. This one is no exception.

It seems that playing against other players might bring out some more fun in this game, as the AI is relatively conservative with what it does. It's very picky about buying properties, and I've never seen a single trade happen, either with myself and the AI, or the AI and itself. I'll admit I'm no master strategist of these things, but a lot of the time I wonder if the AI knows what it's doing any more than I do.

If this game were more like Monopoly, I think it'd be easier for me, but unlike Monopoly, if you have enough Zenny you can take over someone else's property by landing on it. You can also build labs on other people's owned property. Strangely enough the benefit of owning both the buildings and the property seems negligible, and you'll rarely see the NPC's go out of there way to obtain both.

Once the majority of the property is bought the game gets real boring, as you mostly just roll the dice until the game is over. There is some randomness brought in with drawing cards, occasionally landing on the boss transformation space, and the met races where you bet on which met will win a race. These instances rarely change the scope of the game however, and usually turning into a boss can hamper your strategy if you need to act during that lap you make.

That said, the game can get your interests as you start chaining properties together, and I suppose if you put enough effort into it, developing your strategy. I, on the other hand, am just too impatient for that stuff, and I don't think the game is particularly exciting enough for most people to get into it either.

Playability
It's a turn based menu system, so the room for bugs popping up is really low, and I don't know any glitches to exploit.

There is no need to get skilled in this game with reaction time, like the other staples of Mega Man games, so it's all about strategy. The learning curve isn't too high, but mastering a strategy to come into the game with is difficult. I don't understand how the AI is coming up with it's own strategies either.

Extras

• This is the first game to feature Zenny, the standard Mega Man currency.
• This is also the first game to feature Reggae, the evil version of Beat. He's the black bird in the last screenshot.
• The biggest danger in this game is Guts Man. He'll wreck your shit.

I don't hate this game, but I don't think we missed out on anything by not getting it here in the US. 1993 is a good year for Mega Man, and this is the year he'll reinvent himself. So we were all distracted when this came out anyway.

Playthroughs
N/A
The English Patch for Rockboard