Mega Man Handheld, the Classic Series

If you're like me, you over look a lot of hand held games. I don't fault them for quality or anything like that, some of the best games out there are the portable games, I just hate looking at a small screen, and I have a hard time getting comfortable to wrapping my gigantic ape sized hands around these systems, and cocking my head at them.

A lot of times games that get made to the portable consoles do suffer in quality because they're seen as sort of the "b series" to whatever game series they follow. And indeed, the Mega Man games start out like that, but eventually they actually start branching out a bit, and creating stuff that is just as good, if not better, than some of the main series.

There are tons of Mega Man games for portable systems and we'll be covering all of them when we get to their respective series, but the original series is the only one I feel necessary to break up into a smaller subset category. While each one takes place between the main games, they're rarely even mentioned by Capcom, which is a damn shame considering their quality.

If you're following the Mega Man canon time-line (god help you), you'll see the portable games fit into the time-line, but at the same time follow their own a bit. Take Mega Man 9 for instance, at the end of the game, Mega Man shows Dr. Wily the past 8 times he's already defeated him, but that's not how many times he actually had defeated him prior if you count the 5 game boy games, Mega Man and Bass and Super Adventure Rockman. The reason is Capcom sees those games as the "B series" to the numbered games "A series". Luckily for us, the B series is really damn good overall.

Here are the games:

• Mega Man: Revenge of Dr. Wily
• Mega Man II
• Mega Man III
• Mega Man IV
• Mega Man V
• Mega Man (Game Gear)
  
• Mega Man and Bass (it was on the Game Boy Advanced for the US Release)
• Mega Man and Bass: Challenger from the Future ( a release for the Japan only Wonderswan)
• Mega Man: Powered Up!

If you skipped out on these, the one I'd say is a must play is Mega Man V. It's a completely original game in the series, and introduces a lot of elements that would be used in later games. It is the very last Mega Man game until Mega Man 9 to hold onto that classic game play and Mega Man look. It is a lot of people's favorite Mega Man game for those lucky enough to play it, and shows just how much the series could utilize it's potential before moving on to newer systems, newer graphics, and newer game changes. I can't wait to play it again.