Super Adventure Rockman

Chances are you've never heard of this one. This is an experimental game by Capcom playing more similar to games like Dragon's Lair than your typical Mega Man adventure. It was only released in Japan in a special 3 disk set, and is a fully animated interactive movie. It features Mega Man and all his friends and enemies in the more traditional art style of the series, and it's pretty well done on that front. This game is a collectors item no doubt, how does it play though?

Story
It's all in Japanese so I'm going off a translation here. During the ancient times, a giant super-computer named Ra Moon crash landed on the Earth around the amazon, and imparted the primitive humans there with knowledge that caused them to turn violent and start wars and shit. The ancients worshiped Ra Moon, but he got sick of them and buried himself underground until the sometime around 20xx.

Ra Moon resurfaces and causes an electromagnetic field that screws up electronics. Dr. Wily, seeking to clear his name some time after the events of Mega Man 4, asks Dr. Light to investigate, and since Dr. Light is a moron, he lets him go. Dr. Wily finds Ra Moon who resurrects Wily's robots from Mega Man 2 and 3. So Dr. Wily says "Fuck it," and decides to take over the world. The electromagnetic field increases and begins affecting robots around the world, the first of which is Roll, Mega Mans sister. She is infected first because, I shit you not, she is a female. I guess her spark plugs are missing Y chromosomes?

Anyway, Dr. Light fixes up Mega Man to make him immune to the field, and sends him in to investigate. From here we control the Blue Bomber in a series of quick time events and shooter segments as Mega Man makes his way to the ancient ruins. There, Dr. Wily is betrayed by Ra Moon, who plans to destroy the world. He summons out the Yellow Devil (who is now black) to finish off Mega Man, but Mega Man powers up BOTH his Mega Busters, and wipes out Ra Moon. Dr. Wily escapes and Mega Man stands atop the rubble with all of Dr. Light's robots, laughing at a job well done.

The story is better if you don't read the translation, trust me.

Aesthetics
Very good as you would imagine for an FMV game. Every scene looks great and is animated pretty well. There are problems however, as the interface makes most of the scenes smaller than they need to be, and there are a lot of recycled animations.

The point of this game is the visuals though, and they are enjoyable.

Sound
Likewise the voice acting is pretty good as well... Well I think it is, I mean, I don't speak Japanese, so I couldn't tell you if I understand the actors implying the proper timing in their voices, but it sounds alright to me. The other sound effects are decent as well, and the music choices are recycled from Rockman 8 with songs like Electrical Communication and A Brand New Way. You wouldn't recognize these from Mega Man 8, as they changed them in localization, since J-pop over here isn't exactly mainstream.

The only problems are the shooting segments. They're loud and only have a few sound effects. They can be extremely grating in the longer ones, but you'll be too busy focusing on the battle to worry about them.

Design
The majority of the game consists of watching a cutscene, making a decision, pressing a quick-time event, and then going into the boss fighting sections, with a first person view while you fire at the enemy in a Time Crisis fashion.

Most of the decisions are pretty arbitrary, such as "keep going, or Game Over," but a few of them will net you some items, like E-tanks and enemy database cards. The cards tell you the weaknesses of the enemies you are fighting, but if you can't read Japanese a fat lot of good that will do you.

The quick time events are pretty easy, and rarely hit you when you aren't expecting it. Sometimes they don't respond though, which is annoying. Usually if you screw one up, you take a small amount of damage before being thrown into a fight, but some of them actually change the story a little bit, adding some replay value if you want to view every single scene.

The actual fighting segments are pretty fun, but can get extremely repetitive if you do a lot in a row. Disk 3 is really bad about breaking up the monotony of it. You do get new weapons from the enemies, but they mostly function exactly the same as your buster, with the exception of stunning the robot master affected by that weakness. You can charge your buster too, but this is suicide, since you should be shooting something at all times, from projectiles to the enemies. Don't even bother charging up.

Still it's fun if you don't go all into it at once.

Playability
Controlling the cross hairs with the D-pad or analog can be frustrating, as they don't move as fast as something like a Light-Gun or mouse would, but you'll be able to deal with it as this game isn't particularly challenging. Sometimes the Quick Time Events are unresponsive as well, but not usually.

Extras

• I can't recall where it is exactly, but try to get the Proto Shield. When you use that, all damage you take will be reduced to 1%. It makes the boss fights easier.
• Save your E-tanks for the last stretch of gameplay. Most bosses you can lose to, and retry with full health.

This is a collectors item more than a game. You won't miss anything by not playing it, but it is worth watching if you're a Mega Man fan. Luckily, Oyster from the Something Awful Let's Play forum went to the trouble of translating and subtitling it for everyone. It's a hard game to find as it is, but at least you can now watch it and understand it.

Playthroughs
If Shenmue were searching for Wily: Super Adventure Rockman by Oyster

Update 1/31/2010
In the Mega Man Complete Works art book, Inafune actually makes an apology for this game to the fans. There is a scene very early in the game where some UN Helicopters are destroyed, with the pilots very likely having been killed in the explosion. Inafune feels this particular scene is a bit too violent for the classic series. Personally, I hardly even thought about it, but maybe when I see Wily survive giant mushroom cloud explosions again and again, I tend to assume explosions are perfectly survivable in the Mega Man universe.