Mega Man 4

From an artistic standpoint, I am of the belief that a franchise shouldn’t surpass the number of entries fitting for a trilogy. Brevity is not only the soul of wit, but also a necessity to retain the magic and integrity of a series of an entertainment property. However, my passionate sentiments would cause serious humiliation at the Capcom offices, as they would laugh like hyenas as I ran out of the room in a crying frenzy like a girl who just bombed her school’s talent show. As thankful as I am for Capcom and all of the other video game conglomerates, their ultimate goal at the end of the day is to turn a profit with their creative properties. Since Capcom now found a winning formula with their Mega Man franchise, they milked that udder dry until it shriveled up and could only produce dust. I suppose Mega Man 4 was the first entry that overstayed Mega Man’s welcome on the NES considering it surpasses the number of titles that make up a solid trilogy of games, so we can attribute this game to commencing Mega Man’s downfall further into the future. However, the strange revelation that I’ve come to is that Mega Man 4 might arguably be the best game in the original series. Come to think of it, Mega Man 3 would’ve been an askew note to leave the series on, what with its unreached ambitions that fell apart in execution. Maybe a proper (and hypothetical) series send off should signal a true return to form, and that’s certainly what Mega Man 4 offers.

Alert the presses everyone, for Capcom decided to place another mad scientist on the pedestal of Mega Man bad guys that isn’t Dr. Wily! Approximately a year after the events of the last game, a Russian scientist named Dr. Cossack constructs eight new Robot Masters with the intention of seizing total sovereignty. I’m surprised it took Capcom this long to create a Russian villain at the helm of a megalomaniacal power surge, considering the franchise debuted in the 80s when their association with scum and villainy was at its peak. I suppose Capcom thought it would be wise to wait until the Soviet Union crumbled to feature one of their citizens in an antagonistic role so as to not sour the foreign affairs between them and Japan. Their country is only a submarine ride over from the pacific coast of Russia, afterall. Nevertheless, the fact that Capcom retired their standard bald, mustachioed bad guy here makes me beam with pride. Cossack may be committing a copycat crime here, but the slight deviation his presence represents makes a world of difference. NES franchises have been known to acquiesce to feelings of separation anxiety regarding their main villains, so I realize how hard it was for Capcom to let Wily go.

By this point in the early 90s, developers had honed the rudimentary 8-bit aesthetic into an art form. After the humble, fuzzy entry point in the first Mega Man title, Mega Man 2 made strides in elevating the visual capabilities of the NES console, just to have Mega Man 3 vomit on its contributions. One vital aspect of Mega Man 4’s return to form is that pixelated splendor displayed throughout, starting from the opening sequence. Somehow, Capcom felt that an introduction detailing the genesis point of Mega Man’s creation needed to surpass all other 8-bit cutscenes on the system by illustrating an origin story for Mega Man. A tranquil cityscape is shown from the cycle of day to dusk, with chaotic blasts of malevolent fire disrupting the peaceful atmosphere and calling Mega Man to action out of a valiant sense of justice. We also learn that his Japanese moniker “Rock” is merely the robot’s birth name and that Mega Man is his crime fighting pseudonym. We also learn from this introduction that Mega Man’s hair was intended to be blue, thus making the initial reveal under his helmet in Mega Man 2 to be a graphical blip. As one could probably infer from the outstanding presentation here, all of the erroneous smudges in the pixels have been wiped out. The cityscape scene is gorgeous, and the following sequence where Mega Man is riding on top of a moving vehicle is spellbinding to watch.

Of course, the effort of high graphical fidelity extends to what is present during the gameplay. A pleasing color pallet was needed in the Mega Man series after Mega Man 3’s muted, flat textures that made the game look depleted. Mega Man 4’s return to form also saw the revival of the visual vibrancy seen in Mega Man 2, and thank the lords for this. Every level in Mega Man 4 looks uniquely dazzling, meeting the standard established in Mega Man 2. Ring Man’s stage has candy neon evaporating platforms juxtaposed with some crystalline chrome architecture. Pharoah Man’s tomb is built with a tan colored brick that looks appropriately weathered enough for an ancient construction, and the flow of the sinking sand is borderline hypnotizing. The showering rain effect in Toad Man’s stage is only distracting on a mechanical level, and Dive Man’s teal foreground compliments the water splendidly. The lavender color of Skull Man’s stage probably doesn’t make sense from a thematic standpoint, but I can’t deny that its contrast with the bleached skeletal platforms is striking.

I suppose what is more important about the new crop of levels is their level design. Mega Man 4 doesn’t do too much to deviate from the series' tried and true 2D platforming from point A to B where the Robot Master’s domain lies except for one true stride in ingenuity. Just because Mega Man’s trajectory is fairly straightforward doesn’t mean that each level should offer nothing but a straight line with enemies to halt progression. For the first time in series history, the levels will offer alternate paths for the player to take, usually signified by both ascending and descending ladders. Once Mega Man climbs one of these ladders in either direction on the Y-axis, surviving enemy fire and the various pratfalls will eventually lead Mega Man to the same result as the standard pathway. Sometimes, these alternate passages lead Mega Man to dead ends, and the extra challenges before he hits a brick wall often lead to goodies like E-Tanks and health upgrades, rewarding the players for their troubles. God only knows we can’t rely on Dr. Light’s new, little support bot Eddie to supply Mega Man with what he needs because the little guy seems to have difficulties discerning whether or not Mega Man’s health or energy is low. He’s too adorably pathetic to chastise, really. Speaking of difficulties, Mega Man 4 still retains that classic NES challenge that was absent in Mega Man 2 compared to the two games that border it in the main series timeline. The game presents a smattering of dangerous sections like riding on robot enemies over pits of spikes like the bouncy grasshoppers in Bright Man’s stage and the floating platforms in Pharaoh Man’s stage. It’s best to shoot first between a chasm because a cap enemy will fly upward and knock Mega Man out of his airborne velocity to his untimely demise. The midway miniboss robots resembling animals often proved to be formidable obstacles to my goal, such as the hulking whales in Dive Man’s stage and the hippos in Ring Man’s stage that spit missiles comfortably from their high perches. Because of all of these impediments proving to cause a small amount of grief to the player, Mega Man 2’s one big criticism of being too easy cannot be applied here.

Good luck trying to find the correct order to defeat Mega Man 4’s Robot Masters, for this lineup is when the lineup started becoming abstract. Like Mega Man 3, all of these Robot Masters were submitted by Japanese children via a contest and the best of the bunch were granted life by the developers. I don’t know how some kid living in Japan in the early 90s knew what a Pharaoh was, but maybe that's how advanced their education system is. Drill Man is an inspired ground-type Robot Master in the same vein as Gutsman and Hard Man, and his drill bomb weapon is like a more manageable version of the Crash Bomb. Skull Man is the coolest one here from a design standpoint, but I’m not enthused by his weapon being a recycled version of Wood Man’s leaf shield. What makes the weapon worse is that it’s Dive Man’s weakness, and his apt dive maneuver makes sure that plenty of contact damage will occur while fighting him. Bright Man copies Flash Man’s time freeze move, and Dust Man’s mound of vacuumed trash is an effective cluster bomb. God bless Toad Man, for the developers inadvertently made him into a spongy whelp of a Robot Master AND his acid rain weapon clears the screen. Guess which Robot Master I recommend tackling first? Overall, I can’t find too much fault with Cossack’s coalition of Robot Masters. They all have interesting designs and none of their weapons fall under the category of useless junk (points directly at Top Man from Mega Man 3).

Fortunately, if the player isn’t content with using any of these weapons, maybe because they feel the Robot Master weapons peaked with the Metal Blade as I do, Mega Man 4 provides a suitable alternative. This game’s innovative stride in updating Mega Man’s battle prowess is the new addition of the charge shot. By holding down the shoot button on the controller, the collective energy needed for a regular shot of Mega Man’s base beam builds up inside his being and radiates all over him. Releasing Mega Man’s edged shot will unleash a single burst of energy much bigger and much more lethal than the piddly lemon drops it normally sputters out. I probably use the standard blaster more often than most people who have played a Mega Man game, so this addition is a godsend. I’ve always appreciated the variety in store with Mega Man sucking up his enemies abilities, but I have to admit that pausing the game to cycle through the options can be a tad irksome. Revving up the blaster to blow through enemies that have stronger defenses is incredibly convenient and satisfying, and is just as crucial to Mega Man’s evolution as the slide move (which also returns from Mega Man 3). If it could shoot in the same number of directions as the Metal Blade, I’d never use any of the alternate weapons.

Whether or not using the enhanced blaster or figuring out a Robot Masters specific weakness works for you, it still culminates in climbing the castle of a wicked scientific genius. This time, it’s the blonde, bearded Cossack instead of Wily’s wild eyebrows. When storming through Cossack’s castle, each level seems more deceptively easier than the last. The castle offers some substantial sections involving Rush’s mechanical aid, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief that the Yellow Devil doesn’t make his return to pummel me to oblivion. Still, roaming through the fortress of a madman as the climax of a video game on the NES. My suspicions unraveled with the appalling revelation that Cossack is a red-herring and that Dr. Wily has been using him as a scapegoat the entire time. Naturally, it’s when Wily reveals himself that the apropos difficulty curve reveals itself too, as Wily’s final fight in Mega Man 4 is the most irritating one so far. The weak spot on Wily’s new death machine is high enough where Mega Man must strain himself trying to reach it, and finding Wily in complete darkness while being confined to using Pharaoh Man’s weapon conjures up unpleasant memories having to use Crash Man’s weapon in the conclusive fight in Mega Man 2, showing that the developers didn’t learn from their mistake.

God dammit. So much for subversion. The old saying that old dogs never learn new tricks is just as applicable with video game franchises, which is why they tend to struggle with innovation past the third entry. Yet, Mega Man 4 seemed like it could’ve at least gone against the grain with the opportunity to do the bare minimum of putting another antagonist in the front seat. Alas, it seems like Dr. Wily will always be the nagging force of oppression like his NES contemporaries Bowser and Ganondorf. Up until this point, I was enjoying Mega Man 4 vastly more than Mega Man 3. Mega Man 4’s back to basics after Mega Man 3 shot to the moon and missed by a mile made for the most balanced of Mega Man titles so far. It’s as smooth as Mega Man 2 was without the few discrepancies that sullied its near-perfect status. If reusing the same villain in a bait and switch routine is the only sniggle the game has in a series filled with unfair, broken bullshit, Capcom has more than legitimized Mega Man 4’s existence. Quit while you're ahead, guys.

Como um todo, a experiência de Mega Man 4 é positiva pois carrega a mesma base sólida dos dois jogos anteriores (não conto o 1, nesse caso, já que foi praticamente um protótipo da série). No entanto, o nível de criatividade aqui cai consideravelmente, seja nos cenários, bosses e level design.

Tem a adição do mega buster, que é bastante relevante e melhora o leque de habilidades disponíveis ao jogador, mas não é tão "game-changer" quanto a deslizada e o Rush, adicionados no 3.

Para resumir em uma frase, Mega Man 4 seria ótimo se eu lembrasse alguma coisa dele a essa altura.

Honestly I'm really starting to doubt that I'm playing the same series as everyone else if they get supposedly easier as they go along because goddamn, this one kicked my ass. As is the be expected by a classic Mega Man game, MM4 is another game very much set in tradition for the most part, same basic formula, same gameplay loop, just a lot of similarity all across the board. What changes there are feel rather small and don't provide any major shakeup but are still welcome additions, and this also did admittedly fix a few painfully glaring issues that Mega Man 3 introduced, but even with these additions and alterations, Mega Man 4 still ends up feeling pretty lifeless in a lot of respects.

I feel a big reason I feel this way can be seen in the level design, both mechanically and visually. While this feels like yet another step up in terms of graphical fidelity, there's something missing from the art direction, with very few levels really bringing forth any memorable setpieces or ideas and instead feeling more like a mishmash of different concepts from the first 3 games, all without doing anything to distinguish themselves. The settings more than ever feel closer to being populated by ideas solely to benefit gameplay rather than having the much smoother mix from previous entries, where even though there were many times in which you'd see "standard game blocks or platforms" floating in the air, additional steps still were taken to have them feel that touch more nicely integrated into things in order to further elevate the sheer creativity of some of the settings shown to the player. The lack of this appeal ends up resulting in most stages losing that excitement and intrigue that makes them somewhat bearable to potentially have to go through again if you game over or have the wrong weapons with you, and ends up killing a key part of the replayability angle that these games go for.

Uninspired is really the word I'd personally use for quite a few other aspects of this game, especially in terms of boss weapons being almost universally underwhelming to use, with their use cases feeling largely interchangeable and not even really doing something unique with them. Even those that are a bit more useful tend to lack a certain punchiness in their feedback to feel truly satisfying to use either, meaning that it often feels more worth it to just keep your buster out until a particularly nasty situation arises and then you just use your screen nuke ability and go on your way. The boss fights continue this trend of not really doing anything too special and also have the weakest designs for the most part. While you've got some exceptions, like the truly badass Pharaoh Man, these designs feel as if they don't take full advantage of their concepts and end up feeling more simplistic and bland than some from even Mega Man 2, to the point where there are never even any interesting arena gimmicks to add some more depth.

While I'm glad that this game did stuff like remove the atrocious Doc Robot stages and the borderline unplayable amount of lag from MM3, Mega Man 4 still feels like the most bland of the games in the classic series so far, feeling as if they replaced almost any semblance of charm with some painfully generic platforming challenges littered with just enough unfair nonsense to make it feel somewhat frustrating. While this is definitely far less involved than what I've had to say about any other Mega Man game, I find it hard to say anything more when I basically played all of this entirely stone-faced because there was so little that stood out to me in any way.

After hitting the heights of Mega Man 3, one would assume Mega Man 4 would spin its wheels. This was an NES Mega Man game after the release of the SNES in Japan, although I don't know what to make of that. Did the developers want to take the Mega Man engine and see if they could push it further? Or did they feel the need to phone it in?

Mega Man 4 sticks to the formula quite a bit although it still brings a lot of fundamentals. The levels are pretty fun. I remember liking the gimmick of Frog Man's stage with the wind affecting the speed of your jumps. The weapons are pretty decent. The music's decent too. The bosses are strangely hard, though. You'd need to be a skilled player to beat someone like Ring Man with only your Mega Buster.

I don't like the idea of getting utility tools that don't involve Rush. I want Rush to be involved in Mega Man's abilities as much as possible, and getting the Wire and the Balloon items deemphasized the robot dog. At least you get nice artwork in this game, including seeing Rush's snoot up close in the one weapon obtain screen.

Playing through the series for the first time this year, I can't understand why the common consensus is that this is where the series started to go downhill. For me, Mega Man 4 is a leap in quality and when the series finally becomes truly great.

One of the best aspects of this sequel is the charge shot, which is one of the most iconic abilities on all of videogames (maybe Metroid did it first?) It changes everything about the pacing and strategy of the series and rejuvenates it in noticeable ways, especially with some of the best boss fights yet. Combat feels much more methodical and deliberate, making for memorable encounters. The rough patches that plagued the first three entries are gone, while the levels are packed full of great ideas, challenges and boss fights. Even the soundtrack is a step-up after the mixed bag of Mega Man 3.

At this point in the series, it comes down to comparing the levels and bosses themselves so I'll be more specific with this review. So many of these levels are devious but fun. Make no mistake: This is the most challenging entry of the series and it doesn't even depend on the cheap platforming of past entries. There is hard platforming here but it's excellent like in Ring Man's stage that requires some expert timing and precision jumps. One of my favorites is Dive Man's stage that changes the gravity to present some real nasty jumps around spikes that made me grip my controller extra tight. Sometimes the stages just have a cool idea like Bright Man that has enemies you want to avoid killing since they light up your path. Or, Toad Man whose stage uses water to push the player around in unexpected ways, making for some wild platforming sections. Every level is full of creative and varied ideas that make the game exciting to work through.

From beginning to end, Mega Man 4 is excellent in the way Mega Man 2's best areas were while making vast improvements to the controls. Even the bosses are much better here, as exploiting their weakness doesn't make them trivial. Maybe people just didn't like the challenge here but this is one of the series' best entries for me.