Rockman.exe WS (WonderSwan)

Near the very end of the Wonderswan's life, Bandai decided to take another whack at the Mega Man series by capitalizing on the success of the Rockman.Exe anime (Mega Man NT Warrior in the US) and games. Bandai was already making toys for them and you may recall the last Mega Man game by them, Rockman and Forte Challenger from the Future, I said wasn't too bad. It wasn't great, but there have been much worse licensed games, and Capcom seems to trust them well enough with the license as they were starting to get more careful with it at the time.

Like most wonderswan games, this never made it to the states and to my knowledge there is no english translation anywhere. Not to worry though for those of you who don't speak Japanese (myself included), this is an action game! Even though the characters won't shut the hell up, it shouldn't affect your ability to play and defeat this game.

Story

It's apparently supposed to be a retelling of the first two seasons of Mega Man NT Warrior. World Three is going around causing trouble or something I guess and Lan sends MegaMan.exe off onto the net to stop them.

Your guess is as good as mine about the individual dialog, but I know there's a reference to the Survival Seven episode of the show. If I had to guess, at some point Roll gets kidnapped, Chaud and Lan go off to stop World 3 but Chaud wants Lan to stay out of it and then Protoman and MegaMan fight it out to see who will take down WWW's giant Life Virus monster.

During a second playthrough of the game you also fight Gospel (called Grave beast in the US show), and the credits roll. Wish I knew more, but take solice in the fact that the Battle Network series isn't that well written anyway.

Aesthetics

Not bad. Bandai went ahead and made new sprites for this game instead of just copying Battle Network or something, and the sprites themselves more closely resemble the cartoon than the games. A nice touch is that the opening shot of the game is a direct remake of the sequence from the Japanese opening.

The stages and backgrounds are pretty simple but not bad. The boss and enemy sprites look alright, although some are a bit squished looking. I don't know the power of the Wonderswan and haven't played enough games for it, but this would be a passable entry in the Game Boy Advanced library I think.

Sound

The game opens up with it's own midi rendition of the Japanese opening theme "Kaze wo Tsukinukete" which I think translates to something like "Break through the wind" but don't quote me on that. It's a nice touch, but the rest of the game isn't very memorable otherwise in the sound department.

Design

There's quite a few interesting platforming challenges here, and a few really nasty bullshit ones. I'm talking precision jumping that would make romhackers cry, although I'm not sure if this was intentional as the game doesn't give a lot of control over jumping height. The game plays like a standard Mega Man game. Mega Man can charge, jump, shoot and slide. You would think this would be an easy game to make since Mega Man stands on the backs of so many sequels as it is... but the game merely musters up a "meh" in this regard. It's just not very good compared to other 2d mega man platformers.

This game tries to be different though by bringing in Battle Chips and style changes. The majority of chips are pretty useless and using them is awkward as it is thanks to poor mapping of the controls. You just don't have enough time between reacting to the bosses movements and getting in your own attacks to make use of them. The style changes aren't all that useful your first run through as they either take too much damage or don't deal enough, making normal style the style of choice. That said, on repeat playthroughs you keep your styles gained so you can make use of the bosses weaknesses for them.

There area apparently some program advances in here as well, but I never found all the chips needed to use them all. The few chips I did use were mostly heals, invisible and the swords for some real cheap damage.

During the game Lan will pop in to give you helpful hints... I think... he might be giving you cooking recipes for all I know actually. Certain areas of the stages though Lan will have difficulty maintaining a connection with MegaMan. when that happens you won't be able to use your battle chips. This never happens for the boss fights though, so it is really a minor inconvenience.

Most of the levels break up into two paths, one leading to one boss, the other leading to a different boss. Depending on which boss you face, you get a different style, different chips, different challenges, etc, so there is some incentive for replay value.

Playability

Aside from a few bullshit jumps and the aforementioned chip usage troubles, the game plays well enough, if a bit slow for a Mega Man game.

Extras:

• A good way to deal with the more troublesome bosses is to equip yourself a sword and lay waste with it. You can swing it multiple times in succession and doing this to a boss will take them down pretty quick. It won't always work, but it just destroys bosses that stand still.
• After you beat Gospel, you can unlock a boss rush mode.
• As far as I know this is the only Battle Network game to not have Bass in it at some point. CORRECTION, I stumbled upon this by coincidence today and Bass is indeed in the game. No idea how to fight him though.

Not much to say here. It's ok, but not great. Your money could be spent worse on Mega Man games, such as X7. If you want a state side release that plays pretty much just like this game, check out my next review of Mega Man Network Transmissions.

Playthroughs
N/a