The Blue Bomber Goes Back Again

It is interesting to see the different ways that Capcom handles fan games in comparison to Nintendo and some other companies. Nintendo frequently shuts down fan games, especially those that intrude on franchises Nintendo is actively developing for. Nintendo has gone after fan hacks (like Pokemon Uranium) and fan games (like AM2R) simply because the company was going to develop their own kind of title around the same time, and they didn’t care if they pissed off the fans by shutting down a title that wasn’t, in any real way, competition with Nintendo’s own works.

I do understand that these properties are Nintendo’s, and they can do as they want with their IPs, but when you look at a game like AM2R, for example, which plays like a classic Metroid game, and then you compare it to Nintendo’s official Metroid II: The Return of Samus remake, Metroid: Samus Returns, they each have very different ideas, and a different scope, for their action that makes them not feel like competitors. Anyone that loves Metroid II: The Return of Samus was going to pick up Metroid: Samus Returns no matter what, but having the game include new ideas and new areas meant it was a must buy, even if a fangame was out there intruding on the same basic story.

But then we can go over and look at Capcom, and that company seems absolutely fine with the fans playing in their pool. While the company is more protective of their current games, they are perfectly fine with fans messing around with classic characters to make throwback games. Hell, they even officialized one such title, Street Fighter X Mega Man, as Mega ManIn 1987, Capcom released Mega Man on the NES, a game featuring a blue robot that fought other robots and took their powers (so that he could then fight other robots with those powers, and on, and on). The series went on to release over 50 games in 30 years and become one of the most famous gaming franchises in the world.’s 25th anniversary celebratory title. You wouldn't see Nintendo do anything like that for their franchise. Similarly, they wouldn’t allow a game like Mega Man Again, which is available for free on itch.io, to exist for very long, either. A fan remake of a classic title? Perish the thought!

Mega Man Again is, well, the original Mega Man but again. At its core it is an expanded remake of the original NES title with some graphical flourishes, while also implementing some features included in Mega Man: Powered Up. In the game, Dr. Light has turned to his old friend Dr. Wily for assistance in ushering humanity into a new technological age. Dr. Light has dreamed up powerful helper robots that could lead humanity towards utopia, he just needs an extra set of hands with technical know-how to help make this dream a reality. Together they craft eight such robots – Bomb Man, Cut Man, Ice Man, Fire Man, Elec Man, Guts Man, Time Man, and Oil Man – so they can be placed at specific facilities and oversee important work.

Except Wily doesn’t want to usher humanity into a new golden age, not if he’s not on top, ruling the world. So Wily turns the robots against humanity, and begins to use them to implement a reign of terror. Dr. Light was unsure of what to do until one of his first helper robots, Rock, volunteers to be converted into a powerful fighting robot that can take on these other foes. Light agrees, and transforms Rock into Mega Man, humanity’s last line of defense, and the only hope for taking out these suddenly evil robots and the man behind it all, Dr. Wily.

Although the original version of Mega Man was light on plot, games like Mega Man: Powered Up, as well as later entries in the franchise, fleshed out their backstory for this first game and helped to color Light and Wily’s motivations. Outside the story, the basics should seem familiar to most fans. You play as the Blue Bomber, and you have your choice of stages to explore. Fighting through a stage will bring you to the boss at the end, and defeating that boss will give you their weapon which you can take into other stages (with limited ammo) to aid in your fight. All the usual, bog standard Mega Man mechanics.

This remake, though, throws in a few curveballs from later in the series to keep things light and fresh. The first thing you’ll notice, when booting into the game, is that the graphics and sound have been improved over the original title. Everything has a 16-bit level of luster to it, from recolored and retuned sprites for Mega and the various bosses, to more detailed background featuring parallax scrolling. The music has been rearranged as well, with more instruments and expanded bridge sections that make the game feel more full. It’s a remaster on par with The Wily Wars version of Mega Man, except it also plays better as well.

The gameplay has been expanded as well. Mega comes into the game with a full complement of abilities gleaned from later entries in the series. Not only can he walk, jump, and shoot, he can also slide in this game and power up his Mega Buster. This can even apply to the boss weapons (without the need to go find a Dr. Light canister, unlike in later Mega Man X titles), making some of these weapons far more useful. Being able to power up Guts Man’s weapon so you can summon a block out of thin air makes the weapon actually usable and not a complete dud.

Oh, and you can collect bolts and use Auto’s shop if you need to. It’s nice to have various power-ups available for sale here, and considering this game still features the hard difficulty of the original games, being able to get any kind of leg up you could use is good. Putting in bolts instead of little score pods is a big improvement as well, since those score droplets were entirely useless and no one really cared if they got a high score in the original game or not.

Fans that only played the original Mega Man and not the Mega Man: Powered Up remake from later, will be surprised by the inclusion of two extra bosses, Oil Man and Time Man. As the story goes, these bosses were meant to be included in the original NES game but were cut for time, so they were worked back into the PSP remake later. Mega Man Again includes them, and their stages, to make for a complete, 16-bit style remake with all the ideas from the series that were worth including. Plus, if you dig around enough you’ll even find a special, hidden boss from one of the Game Boy games that you can fight as well. These are nice inclusions and I do think it helps to make the game feel far more complete.

But I think the biggest feature, which comes from Mega Man Powered Up but is even better implemented here, is the fact that you can play as the Robot Master bosses after you defeat them. There are plenty of unlockable characters to find (Protoman also makes an appearance, among others), but having the bosses to tinker with is really cool. Each come pre-equipped with their primary weapon – Elec Man shoots out bolts, Bomb Man tosses bombs, Guts Man can grab blocks, make blocks if he charges up, and he can stomp around can cause little shock waves with his jumps, among the various characters you can use – and they can also use any of the other Robot Master weapons unlocked by playing through the stages. This leads to a lot of fun mixing and matching for bosses, stages, and needs that elevates the whole experience.

The game does change some things up, putting in little twists into the stages, hiding some collectables in various areas, and changing up the boss fights to include crisis abilities and charged up powers. It creates a different experience that still feels like a proper Mega Man experience. While you could probably quibble about some of the details – maybe some enemies could use a little more color and shading, maybe some of the music tracks could have used a little more reworking to sound really great – overall this is a fantastic effort to remix and remake the original Mega Man into the kind of game any fan would want to play. The fact that it’s the effort of fans, and that it’s free, makes it even better.

This is the kind of fangame any true fan of the Mega Man series should play. And the fact is that Capcom lets these kinds of projects happen, which gives them massive points in my book. This is a great game that does what Capcom isn’t doing right now – experimenting with the Mega Man series – and I really hope we see more from the creative team behind this title soon.