Mega Man 6 was the Blue Bomber's last hurrah on Nintendo's 8-bit powerhouse.  When this game released in 1993, the 16-bit Super Nintendo was already on store shelves.  Capcom, owing a huge amount of their success to the NES, insisted on giving their Mega Man franchise a glorious swan song.

In most regards, Mega Man 6 is just more of Mega Man 5.  The visuals, while no different stylistically than the previous five games, are bright and colorful throughout with some fantastic boss sprites.  The music is superb, keeping up the series's unbroken record of awesome soundtracks.  The controls and platforming feel tight, response, and polished nearly to perfection.  There's one thing that sets it above Mega Man 5 for me, however, and that's the Rush Adapters.  Mega Man basically fuses with his dog to get a couple of different armors that give some cool new abilities like a jet pack or an extra strong punch.​

There was almost a second addition that set Mega Man 6 above Mega Man 5, but unfortunately, poor execution ruins it for me.  They implemented some alternating paths in a few levels, but not only to the paths feel rather pointless - they branch out in the middle before coming together at the end rather than having alternate level endings like Mario 3 - but they feel like a bit of an afterthought with their implementation.  Only two of the robot masters' levels have alternate paths whereas something like half of the castle's levels do.  It's not that they're bad, per se, but they feel like a last minute addition that could have been so much better if a little more time and thought had been put into them.

Mega Man 6 is an example of what an 8-bit action platformer should be, and as far as I'm concerned, it's right up there tied with Mega Man 5 for "Best 8-bit Mega Man Game."  Overall, it's more of the same from Mega Man 5 with a couple of things that make it better and a couple of things that are slight detriments.  Still, though, if you had to choose one of the six NES Mega Man games to play for the rest of your life, I'd definitely suggestion going with Mega Man 6.

Also available on Xbox One and Windows

Just Cause 2 was an amazing slaughterfest, but it suffered from the hardware limitations of the PlayStation 3.  Just Cause 3 took everything great about Just Cause 2, expanded it, and then used the extra horsepower of the PlayStation 4 to fix the performance drops.  I've still got my gripes here and there with it, but hot damn, it's a world of improvement of its predecessor.

Like the previous game, you play as Rico Rodriguez, a "dictator removal specialist" as the game calls him.  Rico makes his return to his home island of Medici - a bizarre mix of Italian and Spanish influence as far as I can tell - which has been under the grip of a tyrannical dictator since a coup usurped power from the legitimate president.  From there, you help the rebellion in their revolutionary war against the despot, murdering and exploding your way across the island from town to town and military base to military base.

Honestly, the missions don't take up that much time; you could blow through the main story missions in 12 hours, probably.  What kept me occupied for a week was the obsessive compulsion to liberate every town and conquer every military base, and that will keep you busy for 50+ hours, I reckon.  It's so satisfying, though, to steal a bomber and just carpet bomb an enemy base, laughing in malicious glee as the destruction notifications pop up all over the screen.

Truthfully, I only have three big complaints with the game, and they're all fairly minor, all things considered.  First, the steering sucks on two wheeled vehicles.  Cars, tanks, jeeps, etc?  They're totally fine.  Motorcycles?  It's like riding a wild bull that's been violated with a cactus.  Second, the controls when piloting an airplane are REALLY finicky and tough to work proficiently.  Helicopters are fine, and I eventually got a passable ability to pilot planes, but it never felt comfortable.  I understand that controls in a 3D space can be difficult to make both adequately responsive and simple to pick up, but it felt like more of an obstacle than it needed to be.  My third and final gripe with the game is just how relatively few of the buildings were destructible.  In a game that uses "blow shit up" as its major selling point, I can't help but feel like I should be able to level entire cities if I wanted to and had enough explosives.  Instead, only certain guard towers and metal structures can be destroyed.  Everything else is bizarrely indestructible no matter what obscene amount of ordinance you throw at it.

Just Cause 3 is, in a lot of ways, like Grand Theft Auto...except with more explosions, fewer hookers, more government toppling and nation building, and less gang warfare.  If you enjoy murdering brutal autocrats and leaving a wake of corpses and wreckage behind you, this is absolutely the game for you.  If you enjoy stories about political machinations, then this may well be the game for you.  If you enjoy games about friendship, building up peaceful towns, and improving a settlement, this is definitely not the game for you.

​Also available on PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Gamecube, Xbox, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Wii, 3DS, Wii U, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, Android, and Windows

Mega Man 5 keeps the smooth controls and solid gameplay of Mega Man 3 and Mega Man 4, but it also, thankfully, addresses the rather boring selection of robot masters that left me a little disappointed ​with Mega Man 4.  Mega Man 5's cast of boss robots, while not especially crazy or outlandishly creative in their designs (with a couple of exceptions), are interesting and well done enough to keep me entertained and keep boredom and monotony at bay.

The latter five of the 8-bit Mega Man games didn't stray too far from the core concept established in the original game, but little bits here and there were added to keep things interesting, and Mega Man 5 is no exception.  The level designs are generally the among the best that the series has to offer although there are some bland spots here and there.  The robot masters are all really well designed, but there are two specifically stand out to me as especially fantastic and, in my opinion, stand out as the best robot masters of the series to this point - Napalm Man and Crystal Man.  Their character sprites and level designs are both absolutely fantastic, and the weapons they drop after you beat them are among my favorite of the series.  Those two bosses and their levels show how much creative talent Capcom had and how much potential the NES color pallet had when properly utilized.

One of the most immediately noticeable changes in Mega Man 5 that most fans might take issue with but that I, personally, loved was that the difficulty level in Mega Man 5 was markedly lower than previous games.  As one who sucks at video games despite loving them, this was a welcome change for me.  The music also really stands out here even in the context of the 8-bit Mega Man games.  There's not a single bad track in the game's soundtrack, and if you've got some good speakers connected to your TV, you're in for a great time.

Mega Man 5 takes the series to new heights and fixes all of my complaints with the somewhat bland robot masters in Mega Man 4.  The visuals are bright and colorful, and the sprites seem to pop off the screen.  The music is top notch, and the difficulty curve make this an especially approachable Mega Man game.  I still have a few gripes - a couple of the bosses were a little TOO easy in my opinion (looking at you, Star Man), but that's a very minor gripe in an otherwise fabulous game.

Dr. Discord's Conquest is a My Little Pony themed fan hack of Mega Man 3 which I reviewed yesterday.  Truthfully, there's really nothing of interest here to anyone other than retro gaming bronies - a niche market if there ever were one - but for those of us who DO happen to be both a brony and a retro gamer, this is a pretty neat hack.  It's far from perfect, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't thoroughly enjoy going through Mega Man levels as Twilight Sparkle blasting things with my unicorn magic.

As far as gameplay goes, the game is exactly what you would expect from a Mega Man 3 hack; you run and jump your way through a platforming level while blasting every enemy in your path until you reach a boss you have to destroy.  Then you get a special power that can help you defeat other bosses.  The end boss, obviously, is Discord, but the stage bosses (standing in for the robot masters) are Celestia, Fluttershy, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Trixie, Rarity, and Luna; and the character portraits for each on the level select screen are actually really well done.  The music includes some decent 8-bit renditions of MLP songs, but it's not quite as impressive as the MLP music in Pony Quest.

 Being a hack of Mega Man 3, the game obviously plays amazingly, but the real star of the show as far as I'm concerned is the attention to detail that went into this hack.  The visuals, both enemy sprites and environments, have been totally redone to reflect the My Little Pony theme.  It's a bit weird seeing Twilight walk exclusively on her hind legs, yeah, but the sprite itself looks good.  Even Derpy makes an appearance as a bubble-chucking enemy even despite not being one of the boss ponies.  While just a random fan project, it's obvious that this hack was a labor of love with the amount of care that was put into it.

Dr. Discord's Conquest may be "just" a Mega Man 3 hack, but it's a hell of a Mega Man 3 hack that had a lot of effort put into it.  From the presentation to the quality of the sprites to the music to the level design, nothing was half-assed in this hack.  It's a little awkward to see Twilight spend the whole game on her back legs, but that's more than made up for by the fact that you spend an entire game blasting enemies in hours of gameplay reminiscent of the changeling swarm scene during the season two finale.  There's really not much point in playing this if you're not a fan of My Little Pony or a FERVENT Mega Man fanatic who plays every halfway decent ROM hack, but if you are a fan of MLP and classic Mega Man, then I absolutely recommend checking out this hack.  It's fantastic.

I spent a good ten minutes trying to think of some halfway decent intro for this review, but after reviewing four Mega Man games in a row (excluding the MLP fan hack of Mega Man 3 that I'll be reviewing soon...or five if you count that one), I got nothing.  The NES games all play so similarly that an intro seems rather pointless.  Continuing my admittedly excessive critique of the box art, though, this is the best looking Mega Man of the four.  He still looks like an evil ventriloquist's dummy, but it's the most normal looking Mega Man we've gotten so far.  The gameplay maintains the high standards set by Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3, but as for overall game design...it leaves some to be desired.

In terms of game mechanics and control, Mega Man 4 is fantastic.  In terms of visuals and music, Mega Man 4 is great.  In terms of enemy and robot master design, Mega Man 4 is a bizarre step down in quality from its predecessors.  To the game's credit, Capcom did give each level an obstacle that's unique to that level, but when the boss at the end of that level feels lackluster and rather uninspired, it doesn't really break even.  It feels a lot like some of the Pokemon in Black/White or X/Y like friggin' "Roggenrolla" or literally an ice cream cone.  Like the inspiration just wasn't there this go around.

Mega Man 4 also replaces Dr. Wily (at least initially) as the antagonist and replaces him with some lame Soviet Ruskie named Dr. Cossack who just happens to build robots that are just uninspired rip-offs of Dr. Wily's minions.  That's not to say that Cossack ruins the game or anything, but it does seem like an unusual shift.  The slide returns from Mega Man 3 along with the addition of a charged shot that does additional damage.  That's balanced, however, with what feels like dramatically increased enemy  health.  That might be all in my head, but it felt like the enemies were a lot tougher, at times in excess of the added damage of the charge shot.

Mega Man 4 is definitely a step down in terms of overall design from the high standards of 2 and 3, but that's certainly not to say that it's a bad game by any stretch of the imagination.  The robot masters may feel a little uninspired this go around, but the game design and mechanics overall are still rock solid, the visuals are still fantastic, the music still phenomenal, and the platforming is still superb.  It's not as satisfying overall as Mega Man 2 or Mega Man 3 in my opinion, but it's still a damn good Mega Man experience.

Practice makes perfect, and by 1990, Capcom had released their third Mega Man game, and following true with the old adage, it builds upon the foundation of the two previous games and surpasses both.  The North American box part is similarly the best of the first three games; it looks weird, but at least this time it looks like an evil ventriloquist doll Mega Man rather than a middle age super hero well past his prime running around with a laser pistol. 

Mega Man 3, in my opinion, is the pinnacle of the 8-bit Mega Man games.  As Mega Man 2 did with the original game, Mega Man 3 capitalizes on what made the second game exceptional and made it better.  Levels are exceptionally well designed, the boss weaknesses and resistances are excellently balanced, levels are generally tough but fair, and the inclusion of the slide and Rush (best doggo roboi) make Mega Man 3 a truly spectacular game that stands out not only among Mega Man games but among NES games in general.

In terms of performance, the 8-bit Mega Man games generally have a bit of an issue with slowdown, and while Mega Man 3 is not exception, it seemed less severe and less of an impact on gameplay in this game than in the previous two.  Couple that with the fact that the visuals are bright and detailed - especially with the robot masters - and it's clear that Capcom's team had really gotten comfortable with the NES and how to program for it by this point.  As is usually the case with the Mega Man series, the music is exceptional and maintains the high musical standards set by the previous two entries in the series.

If you played Mega Man 2 and were impressed (and let's be honest, if you weren't, there's something wrong with you), then you'll be blown away by Mega Man 3.  As Mega Man 2 did with Mega Man, Mega Man 3 takes everything that was great about Mega Man 2 and makes it even better.  This definitely does stand out as one of the premier action platformers on the Nintendo Entertainment System and highlights just why Capcom was a juggernaut of game design back before the post-Resident Evil 4 days when they abruptly forgot how to make games.  As was the case with Mega Man and Mega Man 2, this game is readily available on just about every console under the sun in one collection or another, so there's no excuse to miss out on this game.  It's not perfect - the slowdown does still get annoying, and it's not totally devoid of the occasional difficulty spike and cheap kill - but it's truly fantastic in spite of those occasional flaws.

​Also available on Genesis, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Gamecube, Xbox, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Wii, 3DS, Wii U, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, Android, and Windows

A year after the release of the first Mega Man (two years for North America), Capcom saw fit to bring the Blue Bomber back for another platforming pew-pew party on the NES.  The box art for the North American release still looks more like a Chinese knock-off Power Ranger than Mega Man, but at least it's not as ugly and downright creepy as the cover of the first game was.

Everything about Mega Man 2 is an improvement over its predecessor.  The robot masters feel generally better designed, and there's more of an open ended weakness system with them.  Whereas in the first game, each robot master had one specific weakness, your options are a bit more varied in the second game.  The basic mega blaster will usually take care of them easily enough in a pinch, but they usually have a couple of weaknesses rather than just one, and they have specific resistances this time, too.  In one instance, a certain boss is actually healed by a specific weapon, and in another, a boss is weak against his own weapon.  It's clear that more time and energy went into the weaknesses and strategy in the sequel which makes sense given that the first game actually didn't perform particularly well commercially.

Another area in which Mega Man 2 excels over its predecessor (in part because of the aforementioned attention given to the boss weaknesses and strategy) is the difficulty.  In the original Japanese release, your only option was "balls hard," but when it got brought over to North American and Europe, they added in a "hard but not emasculating" difficulty alongside the "balls hard" difficulty of the Japanese release.  You can also get three special items - creatively called Item-1, Item-2, and Item-3 - in addition to the robot masters' weapons that can make traversing levels MUUUUUCH easier (and I'm pretty sure are required in a few areas) which add to the problem solving that the game requires.  The difficulty still doesn't feel as finely tuned to me as some of the later games, but it's an astronomical improvement over the original.

Mega Man 2 is an entirely different breed of game from the original.  I seem to be in the minority in that most folks seem to think that Mega Man 2 is the best of the six NES games, but even if I don't necessarily think it's THE best, it's definitely in the top three of the six.  The difficulty is much more approachable, the robot masters have some legitimate strategy elements to them with regards to weaknesses, the platforming takes a bit more thought and planning, and the overall game mechanics just feel more refined and polished.  This is basically everything that a sequel should be; fix what's wrong with the previous game and expand what was right.

Also available on Genesis, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Gamecube, Xbox, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Wii, 3DS, Wii U, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, Android, and Windows

Mega Man is for Capcom what Mario is for Nintendo, what Sonic is for Sega, and what a blinking red ring is for Microsoft.  He's their most recognizable and iconic image, and while that image is more than a little disturbing on the box art for the series' first release on NES in North America, the game itself holds up surprisingly well today.  It's not without its bullshit to be sure, but it's still a good time for those who enjoy action platformers.

Mega Man is, at its core, an action platformer.  This first game in the series is an extremely unbalanced action platformer, but the gameplay itself is simple - make your way across a level, shoot the bad guys, avoid the traps, and then beat the boss.  Each boss has a special weapon that it drops upon being defeated, and each boss has a specific boss weapon to which it's weak.  The levels can be played in any order (except for the last area), but given that the bosses are WAY easier if you exploit those weaknesses, there is a "best" order in which to play the game's levels.

The biggest issue I had with Mega Man was the balance.  Some levels would seem brutally difficult only to be capped with a total pushover boss.  Other levels would be a breeze but end with a boss that left me wanting to snap my controller.  There would be abrupt difficulty spikes in the levels followed by a return to a more normal difficulty.  Maybe I just need to git gud (I definitely do), but it seemed like the balance and enemy placements could have used just a little more tweaking.  From what I've read and heard from other fans, though, it seems like the first game is pretty widely known for being rough around the edges with regards to balance, a mistake that later entries don't make.

Mega Man definitely isn't a perfect game, but it definitely is a good game, and the series that it spawned is truly fantastic (for the most part).  The difficulty balance could use a bit of work as parts of the game are down right inhumane, but all in all, it's a solid action platformer.  The original NES cartridge is somewhat valuable (though not nearly as much so as the latter releases), but it's readily available on just about every system under the sun in one form or another given how many collections it's been included with, and I absolutely recommend playing this one however you can.

Also available on X1, PC-8801, PC-9801, FM-7, MSX2, X68000, Master System, TurboGrafx-CD, Saturn, PlayStation 2, DS, PlayStation Portable, iOS, Android, AppleIIGS, MS-DOS, and Windows

Over the past couple years, I've fairly rapidly become something of a major fan of the Ys series.  With my transition to Everdrives for my old cartridge consoles and the addition of a RetroPie to my HD set-up, I've decided that I'm going to play through every different version of the original Ys game (and probably Ys II and III).  Joining the Master System and TurboGrafx-CD ports on my "Versions of Ys Beaten" list now comes the port to the Famicom which, thankfully, got a fan translation.

Given that my previous experiences with the original Ys was on the TurboGrafx-16 (the greatest of all 16-bit consoles) and the Master System, a 8-bit system with superior specs to the NES, I went into this playthrough with tempered expectations.  I knew it was unlikely to be as visually impressive as the Master System version, and given that I played the Master System version with the FM Sound enabled, I knew this Famicom port wouldn't hold a candle to the Master System version.  I was pleasantly surprised, though.  I mean, it definitely met my expectations in general, but it wasn't as severe a step down as I had feared.

Visually, the game looks a lot like Hydlide.  It looks like an older NES game with less detailed sprites, but the only area where I felt that was at all to the game's detriment was enemy sprites.  The sprites aren't bad, but they leave some....interesting interpretations.  There are blue gummy bears, self-immolating porcupines, random amorphous grey blobs that look suspiciously like the eggs in a high school cafeteria, etc.  The music is honestly the biggest let down.  I'm certain that part of my disappointment is because I was spoiled first by FM sound on the Master System and then the CD quality audio on the TurboGrafx, but the music in this game just felt mediocre.  It was definitely a solid 8-bit rendition of the music from other versions of Ys, but it felt like playing a classical flute solo on a recorder.  I mean, yeah, it works, I guess, but it's...just disappointing.

The combat - the core of the experience - is thankfully 100% Ys.  It's the bump combat we all know and love (and if you don't love it, you're wrong).  The same strategy still applies; his them from the side, back, or the edge if you have to hit them head on, and you're fine, but if you hit them dead on, you're going to end up taking a ton of damage.  It's a fairly unconventional system for those who haven't played a version of Ys before, but I absolutely love it, and it's iconic Ys.  By no means do all Ys games use this system (I'm not even sure that most do although I've not played past IV, so I can't speak to that), but from my experience, when you mention Ys, what first comes to mind for most people who've played it is the bump combat, and in that respect, the NES port of Ys I is true to form.

Ys I for NES is definitely not the best version of the game to play, but if all you've got is a Famicom, there are definitely worse ways to experience Adol's first adventure.  The music is a far cry from Master System's FM Sound or the TurboGrafx-CD's perfect everything, but it serves the purpose.  Likewise, the visuals aren't quite as nice as the other two version I've played, but they're totally decent.  It's like playing Call of Duty 4 on Wii as opposed to PS3 or 360.  It doesn't play as smoothly, and it definitely doesn't look nearly as good, but judged on its own merits, it's still a perfectly competent and enjoyable game.  I wouldn't recommend this version if other options are available to you, but if you don't have any other options, it's totally worth a playthrough.

Army Men 3D was the third game in the Army Men series following the Windows releases of Army Men and Army Men II and marked the series' debut on home consoles.  Army Men 3D, taking advantage of the hype around 3D game worlds in the mid to late 90s, is essentially a slimmed down remake of the original Army Men but as a 3D third person shooter.  As is par for the course with the Army Men series, it's not a breathtaking game that will make anyone's Top 10 PS1 games list, but it's a fun enough little game especially for fans of the series.

Being a remake of the original game, Army Men 3D follows the same basic story as Army Men albeit abridged.  The short version is that the Green Nation has been invaded by the Tan Nation, and Green intelligence reports that the Tan are assembling a mysterious super-weapon that's being transported in three pieces.  Playing as Sarge, you have to fight your way through Tan forces to secure the three pieces of the key so that you can not only keep the weapon out of Tan hands but discover just what it's supposed to do.  This PlayStation remake cuts out probably a quarter of the game which, given the move from PC to PlayStation, makes sense, but fortunately, what's cut out is largely filler missions that aren't central to the story.  The shorter level list ends up working out well too given the somewhat awkward controls that result in what I felt was a more difficult game than the Windows game.  Overall, I'd say they're roughly comparable in length with Army Men 3D coming in maybe a little shorter.

Visually, the game is about as "okay" as it gets for PlayStation games.  It certainly doesn't look bad for the hardware or the era, but it doesn't look especially good, either.  This is especially true of the cutscenes.  It doesn't preserve all of the cutscenes from the PC original, but it does have the iconic opening and closing cutscenes.  The problem is that these scene are extraordinarily low resolution and noticeably choppy.  To some extent, that's an unfortunate reality of video on mid-90s CD technology, but it's a shame that the presentation took such a hit because of it.  It's admirable that 3DO tried to include those two most dramatic scenes, but given the hit the presentation took, I almost think it would have been better to try to remake the scenes in a style the PS1 could more comfortably handle.

The audio is probably the part of the game with which I have the most issues.  The voiced dialogue is extremely minimal which, truthfully, is more a blessing than anything else given the quality of the cutscenes and the soundtrack.  The music is...truly awful.  It's not even that the music itself is what's bad; it uses the same actual song from the PC original.  What makes the music in Army Men 3D so bad is not what music is uses but how it uses it.  Instead of using the whole song for what I assume are disc space reasons, it uses a two or three measure clip.  And it loops it.  Endlessly.  For the entire game.  I got through about a level and a half before I muted the TV and just turned on Sirius.

Army Men 3D is as competent a first entry into the home console space as a game in that particular series can be expected to have.  It's not bad.  Excluding the music, it's really  not.  I'd even go as far as to say it's a fun time if you're into the premise of Army Men.  Unfortunately, if you're NOT into the premise of Army Men, it's...okay.  The biggest problem is that the whole thing just feels unpolished.  If you're a fan of the series, absolutely play it.  If you're just a PlayStation enthusiast, then I'd still recommend giving it a play as it's a solid even if forgettable title.  Overall, though, it doesn't stand out much from the other "hella 1990s" games on the system.