So... last month, I was inspired by a post at
Protodude's Rockman Corner. I think it was about the on-going debate about whether or not
Rockman 2 was actually
worthy of all the praise, references, and references it gets. (In my opinion, it's really,
really not.) Anyway, that post inspired me to to play all of the in-house Capcom
Rockman games one after another, comparing the games, taking note of what's different, what's the same, improvements, stuff that needs improvement, and so-forth. It might be a little subjective, since I also give my input on stuff I like, dislike, and what weapons and items I found overpowered and underpowered.
Some of what I found was also pretty interesting, such as how the Rock Buster's charge time kept getting longer and longer with each game (minus
Rockman 5), or how they kept screwing with Rush. Hopefully, you'll find this as interesting to read as it was to compile!
For your convenience, I've chopped up each of the game sections with spoilers. Because of the extreme length, I've also had to chop this into two posts. Sorry about that!
Rockman[spoiler]
Gameplay Changes from the Last GameOther Notes- No previous game. It's the birth of a legend; Rockman's very first game!
Likes- The ability to revisit beaten levels is a good feature to help you perfect your game without having to start over. Not to mention, it's fun (and sometimes profitable) to revisit certain levels with certain boss weapons.
- The score system gives you incentive to challenge your friends or beat your own score records.
- The graphics are all very clean and distinct from one another. It's extremely hard to find a sprite that blends into a background in this game.
- The music is very catchy and the sound effects seem perfectly suited for where they're played.
- The Magnet Beam, unlike some later gizmos, is actually fairly useful in totally optional ways!
Neutral Points- Enemies respawn if you leave their spawn area. This can be annoying, but doesn't seem terribly hindering.
- Some of the weapons do an
absurd amount of damage to bosses. But these bosses can do absurd amounts of damage to
you (Elecman, Iceman...), so that's fairly balanced.
- Don't touch instant-kill tiles (spikes, lava) while you're blinking after being hit. You'll still die.
Dislikes- Lag seems to be rampant in several parts of the game, be it input lag or graphic overload lag.
- The scoring system is broken. Provided you don't lose all your lives, you can just perfect one stage and keep running through it, raising your score infinitely.
- Grabbing any energy item, regardless of if it recharges your energy bars, will completely kill your horizontal and vertical movement or, on rarer occasion, make you continue walking forward for a step. Either can be very irritating, but the latter can be rather fatal.
- Placed items in stages respawn if you walk off-screen. This includes 1ups. A notorious example is a fairly easy to reach 1up in Bombman's stage. (Amusingly, I found myself not complaining when I ran out of Magnet Beam energy in Wily Castle 1 and had to grab the infinitely respawning Small Weapon Energy capsules in the room right below where I needed to use the Magnet Beam.)
- I'm not sure why Rockman seems to lag when you jump into the water in Iceman's stage, since the "water" doesn't seem to do anything, but he does.
- Walking off an "active sprite" platform (Magnet Beam, Foot Holders, or the lifts in Gutsman's stage) will cause Rockman to fall at maximum velocity. This can be rather jarring and sometimes fatal.
- The aforementioned Magnet Beam is a "mandatory optional tool." Sure, you can skip it... but then you can't leave the right side of the tower in Elecman's stage nor ascend Wily Castle 1, thus can't continue your game. Period.
- On that same subject, nothing in-game indicates you can even
get the Magnet Beam, much less tells you
how you can get it. But I guess trial-and-error with the weapons works.
- The checkpoint in Elecman's stage is a little unforgiving, considering the mostly vertical nature of the level.
- Big Eyes -- the giant, one-eyed things with way too much health and
way too much speed. They're nearly impossible to avoid without the Magnet Beam or Ice Slasher and drain a little over 1/3 of your health on impact. And... they're almost always situated directly outside boss hallways which, if you don't get to the boss shutter, means you have to replay roughly half the level again. And in some cases (like the one above), that can be downright annoying.
- The boss hallways are frustrating when you're low on health -- particularly Elecman's vertical hallway with the broken conduits.
- There exists an oversight in the game where if you shoot a weapon that doesn't disappear after hitting an enemy and pause the using the Select button, then unpause after the hit graphic finishes flashing, it will score an extra hit. This can be done nigh-indefinitely, thus rendering even the strongest bosses extremely easy, to a player who's fact on the pause button.
- Two of the six weapons available can't be used effectively against most bosses, due to how they work. That doesn't make them useless in and of themselves, but does limit the amount of play time they'll see.
- There's an infinite number of continues... but no way to pick up where you left off if you turn off the game or hit the Reset button.
- Accessing the weapon screen pauses the game while on the menu, but the action resumes immediately once you exit. This wouldn't be of note, but Rockman does a feign warp when you do this. You can't control him during this animation. This can be annoying and fatal, particularly if hanging from a ladder.
- There's no reference you've gotten a boss weapon until you check your menu again. In the next stage.
Most Overpowered Weapon: Thunder Beam (Elecman's weapon)
1 energy unit (28 uses total) for 2 vertical and 1 horizontal shot that kills every small enemy it touches and keeps going? Granted, you can't use it if any of the beams are on-screen.
Most Useless Weapon: Super Arm (Gutsman's weapon)
The Super Arm is a gimmicky weapon in that you can only grab specific 2x2 blocks with it. The large blocks also split into 4 1x1 blocks if the big block hits either an enemy or any solid object. Sounds pretty great, right? Well unfortunately, due to how it works, you're only able to use it against bosses,
where you need it, in about four boss fights -- only two of which being bosses which are actually weak against thrown blocks. (Amusingly, Copy Rockman becomes completely defenseless if you use either this, or Magnet Beam. Unfortunately, so you do. And unfortunately, he can still do collision damage to you.)
Most Useless Utility: Magnet Beam
This "make a platform anywhere" item is extremely handy to have in Gutsman's and Iceman's stage or Wily Castle 4, if you're really bad at the lifts or in a hurry. It's also literally
mandatory for Wily Castle 1. Otherwise? It's pretty useless. (Aside from exploiting phasing-glitches, if you're into that sort of thing.)[/spoiler]
Rockman 2[spoiler]
Gameplay Changes from the Last Game- *USA Only* A difficulty selection has been added! "Difficult" mode is the same as the Japanese game in terms of damage tables, but "Normal" mode makes your weapons twice as effective and makes you take half damage.
- A "Password" mode has been added, making it possible to pick up right where you left off between gaming sessions! The Password screen continued to thrive in future titles.
- The score and score tally from the previous game has been completely removed. In exchange, you now get a "Weapon Get" screen, informing you you've earned a boss weapon.
- Underwater physics have been added! Rockman now jumps
much higher underwater as well as falling a bit slower. (At first, anyway.)
- Placed items in stages no longer respawn if you leave their spawn area. In fact, they don't come back
at all until you continue. (Enemies, on the other hand, will still respawn if they're dead when you scroll their spawn spot off-screen.)
- Rockman no longer randomly forfeits control while picking up energy power-ups. He does still stop walking on certain levels, however.
- The "pause" feature has been removed -- Select doesn't do anything now. Start still opens the weapons menu.
- Attempts to reduce graphical lag have been made. This results in a bit more "sprite flicker" throughout most stages.
- You can no longer revisit beaten stages.
- Rockman still feign warps after changing weapons, but the action doesn't resume until he's finished blinking.
- Deflected shots no longer simply disappear, but fly off screen. Deflected shots still count toward your "total on-screen shots" which can prevent you from shooting any more.
- You can now land on instant-kill tiles while invincible and continue to live.
Other Notes- The game gives you a bit of backstory before you hit the title screen.
- The Stage Select screen has been revamped, adding two more Robot Masters as well as a center panel (which is where the cursor starts now.)
- A wider variety of enemies, as well as mini-boss type enemies, have been added.
- Rockman now has access to more utility "weapons" as well as E-Tanks, which refill your health completely.
- Energy power-ups have been redesigned, for some reason. They still give 2 and 10 units for small and big power-up respectively, though.
- Wily also has a brand new UFO, a new castle, new bosses, and an actual castle
map!
- Boss hallways are now one screen and
never have enemies. Also, most major threats to Rockman are not found just outside of boss hallways.
- Speaking of bosses, the Robot Masters are now fought via teleportation hub in one of the final levels of the game, rather than spread throughout the final levels.
- The Yashiichi, one of Capcom's random logos, is no longer in the game. (In
Rockman 1, it completely refilled your Life and Weapons Energy.)
Likes- The music has gotten a bit more intense as of this game and makes much more frequent use of the Noise channel and Triangle channel (when not already occupied) for drum effects.
- Item-2. I know it's just a "jet sled" and all, but dang it, I love it. It gets me where I want to go
fast!
- There are considerably less "useless" weapons this time around. Every weapon can be used. Usefulness, however, still varies.
Neutral Points- I can't say that I'm fond of the fact there's no real "circle of weaknesses" in this game. But that could be a good thing, too. Many bosses are weak to many things, so that lets players explore possibilities.
- Your E-Tanks are removed if you hit the Continue screen. I think I know why they did it this way, but it can be very irritating to lose up to 4 E-Tanks because of one little mistake.
- Some of the weaknesses from this game onward are a little outside the realm of logic. For example, how does a "leaf shield" hurt Airman as badly as it does? Or why is Quickman so weak to Atomic Fire? And of course, Metalman being extremely vulnerable to Metal Blade, while extremely amusing, technically makes no sense. Unless, of course, you read the extended lore of the series. Which was completely unavailable when this game originally came out.
Dislikes- Once again, access to Wily Castle is only permitted via expert use of utility weapons -- in this case, Item-1. (Item-3 can also be used to scale the first part, but Item-1 is
necessary for one part in particular.)
- This game has not one, but
two bosses which
require specific weapons to kill them, being completely invincible to the Rock Buster and everything else. One boss has enemies you can grind for energy, but the other boss does not. If you don't have enough weapon energy, you're forced to suicide and continue... which can be very annoying if you have a stockpile of lives for some reason. (Or value your E-Tanks.)
Most Overpowered Weapon: Metal Blade (Metalman's weapon)
112 uses, 8 directions, 3 shots on-screen at a time, most enemies take damage from it, and it's particularly useful against at
least three bosses. Need I say more?
Most Useless Weapon: Bubble Lead (Bubbleman's weapon)
I sincerely hate to admit this, but Bubble Lead really is a craptastic weapon. Do you know how many enemies are actually vulnerable to Bubble Lead?
Six! Do you know how many different enemies there are in the game? Not counting invincible ones,
25! Three bosses are also weak to it, but it bounces right off everything else. It's less and weapon and more a utility, really, since it's great for checking for pass-through floors.
In one and only one level.Runner-Up Most Useless Weapon: Atomic Fire (Heatman's weapon)
It's not so much that this weapon is useless... as much as you get two huge shots before it petters out. There's also a noticeable delay before you can fire even "uncharged" shots. Basically, you may use this once or twice, or against bosses, then go back to the Rock Buster.[/spoiler]
Rockman 3[spoiler]
Gameplay Changes from the Last Game- The entire game seems a lot faster, thanks in-part to the new way slowdown is handled.
- Rockman moves a bit faster now. He climbs ladders as fast as his running speed.
Which has also been increased slightly.- Oddly enough, screen scrolls (going up/down ladders, entering boss doors, etc.) are slightly slower now.
- On that same note, Rockman now takes
nine frames (0.15 seconds) to turn the other way while running.
- The blue bomber no longer comes to a complete stop when picking up an energy power-up of any kind.
- Inversely, Rockman
does come to a complete stop when you release the left/right button while on the ground. (He slid slightly in the first two games.)
- The controls are now
much tighter and more responsive.
- Rockman can perform a "home run" slide now. This reduces his height to half and gives him a light speed boost for a short while.
- Rockman starts the game with a utility weapon. In this case, it's Rush Coil, which boosts him to great heights.
- The weapons menu has been redesigned to rise from the bottom of the screen.
- The action once again resumes before Rockman phases back into tangibility after poking around the weapons menu.
Other Notes- Gone is the introduction from the last game. However, this game is the first to have non-gameplay actual cutscenes!
- Both Rockman and boss characters explode in a slight different way now, using large, white, "poofy" explosion particles.
- In addition to a "Get Weapon" screen, you now see Rockman absorb weapons from defeated bosses
and watch the weapon appear on your menu.
- The maximum number of E-Tanks you can carry is 9. (Up from 4.) You also don't lose them when continuing now.
- The sound effects for 1ups and E-Tanks has been slowed slightly.
- Mini-bosses are now much more obvious, always having their own room.
- Yoku (Vanishing) Blocks now appear rhythmically instead of randomly -- they'll always appear in the same pattern no matter what.
- The game introduces the concept of extra stages between the eight bosses and before Wily Castle.
- Wily's UFO once again gets a redesign, though this one is a bit more subtle.
- The Robot Master re-fight teleporter hub stage has no boss. You just move on to the next stage after you defeat the last one!
Likes-
This. Entire. Game. It may not be the first one I've played, but it's damn sure my favorite game.
- Once again, music quality has improved dramatically.
- It's nice that, while they added a new moves (sliding and high-jump via Rush), they didn't beat you over the head with them. In a lot of cases, sliding or high-jumping is optional.
- Also, Doc Robots. Dokurobotos. Skullbots. Whatever you want to call them, they're just plain awesome.
Neutral Points- After fighting the first boss in Geminiman's revisited stage, there's a place where, if you somehow manage to get there with no Rush Coil or Rush Jet energy, you are forced to reset the game. However, I simply can't envision a scenario where that would possibly be, unless you were
trying to get there with no Rush energy. Still, if you did that by accident, you'd have to... um... enter a password to get back there. ... yeaaah, minor inconvenience at worst.
- Not game-breaking, but given that this game came out about a year after the second one, you'd think they could have made the Doc Robot battles a little more... authentic... to the
Rockman 2 Robot Masters. Some were slowed down, some were strengthened, others weakened... And poor Doc Robot Crashman's Crash Bombs were just sad, hollow shells of their former selves.
Dislikes- ... I've got nothing. Absolutely, positively nothing. I genuinely cannot find one thing wrong with this game that would happen to the average person. And believe me, I am trying.- Okay, ACE Spark reminded me of something I failed to mention. Somehow. The new weapons menu? It's absolute crap. If you have gaps in your weapon inventory, you will more than likely miss the weapon you're going for, or even worse, end up using an E-Tank by mistake. This also caused the infamous "Phantom Rush Marine/Jet" glitch which let you get Rush Marine/Jet before you were supposed to. Which is pretty hilarious.
Most Overpowered Weapon: Top Spin (Topman's weapon) or Shadow Blade (Shadowman's weapon)
Yep. Two overpowered weapons. I couldn't decide which was more deserving of the title.
- As far as the first goes, I know what you're thinking. "You're full of crap!" and/or "You're biased." Well... I admit I'm a bit biased on this, but I'm most certainly not full of crap. Think about this for a minute. Top Spin destroys anything it can -- which is pretty much any small enemy in the game (and one or two larger ones) -- in
one hit for
one weapon energy unit. Now stop to consider that most enemies will drop a small Weapon Energy power-up when destroyed. Tell me that's not overpowered. Ah, but it
does have a little kick-back... not to mention you have to run into enemies with it in use...
- As for Shadow Blade? What Top Spin can't destroy, Shadow Blade seems to
excel at destroying. Hammer Joes, Giant Snakeys and Petit Snakeys... And it makes this awesome buzz saw sound while it does it, too! Unfortunately, it has only 1/4 the range of Metal Blade from the last game as well as the inability to shoot in any downward direction. You also only get 48 of them instead of 112, which is what's stopping me from dubbing this the single-most overpowered weapon in the game.
Most Useless Weapon: Spark Shock (Sparkman's weapon)
While it's very useful to be able to lock an enemy in place no matter where they are or what they're doing, Spark Shock nullifies this usefulness with the fact that you can't switch weapons while an enemy is shocked. You either have to wait for the shock to wear off, scroll the enemy off-screen, or avoid it entirely. Speaking from personal experience, the only real use this weapon gets is as a boss weakness.
Most Useless Utility: Rush Marine
I'm not sure this was intentional, but anywhere you can use Rush Marine, you can use Rush
Jet. The biggest difference between the two is where the bullets come from, really. (Rush Marine fires from the mouth while Rockman fires while riding Rush Jet.)[/spoiler]
Rockman 4[spoiler]
Gameplay Changes from the Last Game- As stated in the intro, Rockman is now equipped with the New Rock Buster, an upgraded default weapon which allows his charge energy into his shots. These charged shots do three times the damage of a normal shot. (Fun fact: Rockman takes takes 97 frames (1.62~ seconds) to charge his weapon.)
- The weapons menu has been vastly redesigned again, now being on its own separate screen. It's also a lot easier to navigate!
- You can now open the weapons menu while a weapon is still on-screen. (With the exception of Flash Stopper. Doing so with other weapons will delete any projectiles you've fired.)
- The turn-around-while-moving delay is back to its normal 3-frames (0.05 seconds) from the second game. However, this delay still causes a lot of misdirected charged shots in more dexterous gamers.
- Rockman no longer feign-warps after selecting a weapon, but he'll still let go of ladders when you get back to the gameplay.
- Screen scroll transitions are
much slower now, as is the speed which boss energy meters fill before boss fights
and the invincibility time on bosses after they've been injured.
- Returning from the first game is the ability to play through the levels of bosses you've defeated! The bosses themselves will not reappear, however.
- Rush Coil now uses 2 Weapon Energy units instead of 3.
- Rush Jet has been crippled somewhat. Instead of being a "fly anywhere" item, it now works similar to a slow-moving version of Item-2 from
Rockman 2, except you can move up or down slightly while moving forward.
Other Notes- The introduction scenes return! This persists through all future titles.
- This is the first game with a villain other than Dr. Wily taking the lead. (Sort of.) This concept is used again in all but two of the remaining titles in the series.
- In dire need of a power-up part-way through a stage? Fear not! Eddie, Dr. Light's robotic suitcase with legs, will meet you once per-stage and toss you a Weapon Energy Capsule! I mean Weapon Energy Capsule. No, I mean Weapon Energy -- dang it, Eddie!
- You no longer see your newly acquired weapon appear on your weapons menu after beating a boss.
- Unlike the last two games, there is a definite weapon weakness pattern to Robot Masters again. (But as with the last two games, they're not always obvious.)
- If you're clever, you can find optional weapons hidden away in certain levels!
- This game takes the "extra stages" idea from the last game and turns it into a "first castle;" a linear series of stages between the Robot Masters and the final stages.
- Yoku Blocks now take a bit longer to disappear, giving players more time to react.
- Yoku Blocks have also been demoted to being a final levels-only stage gimmick.
- Dr. Wily went back to his
Rockman 2 Wily UFO design.
- First appearance of the Wily Capsule!
Likes- I like the fact that, even though you now have a triple-damaging shot, the game doesn't have but one enemy that
requires you to use a charged shot to kill it.
Neutral Points- I miss the old Rush Jet...
Dislikes- I don't like the fact the charging noise overrides the music. That's why I generally don't use charged shots during the level, in fact. (That, and normal shots are just as effective against small fry enemies.)
- The mini-bosses in Ringman's stage. Why are there four of them? And why are two of them back-to-back? They're not terribly hard, but they
are annoying.
- If you're like me and love to play with the underwater physics, you'll probably run smack into that
instant death spike that's just before a screen transition in Diveman's stage. Just like I have. Repeatedly.
- Toadman's combat AI. If you shoot at him, he leaps. If you don't, he starts dancing. If you shoot him while he's dancing, he stops dancing. You can wait until he starts dancing again and shoot him again over and over and over again until he's dead. Seriously!
- Overall, it doesn't seem like they did much at all to improve the game engine. Kind of like going from
Rockman 1 to
2.
- Capcom also seemed to both learn from their mistaken with
Rockman 2 and repeat them here... The Wily Capsule is
completely immune to the Rock Buster. Thankfully, the one weapon that does any real damage to him is Pharaoh Shot, but if you used it all up beforehand, you're going to have to die and kill Iworms for Weapon Energy...
Most Overpowered Weapons: Pharoah Shot (Pharaohman's weapon) or Ring Boomerang (Ringman's weapon) and Dust Crusher (Dustman's weapon)
Yes, that's right. There's three weapons in this game that totally clean house when it comes to usefulness.
- According to the energy meter, Pharaoh Shot has 14 uses, but really, it's more like nigh-infinite. It's a bit like Atomic Fire done right, but simultaneously gone horribly wrong. What it does is when you charge it, it creates a giant ball of fire over your head which will defeat pretty much any unarmored enemy in one hit. If an enemy touches the ball after it's fully charged, the ball will remain over your head. In addition, if an enemy
does make that ball disappear, you can still throw a fully charged shot for 2 energy units in one of six directions (not straight up or straight down)!
- On the other hand, Ring Boomerang and Dust Crusher do a lot of
little damage over a short period of time. Ring Boomerang pierces enemy armor and does fairly rapid damage and has 28 uses, plus a number of bosses are weak against it. Dust Crusher explodes into fragments which can kill most enemies in two hits, if not substantially weaken them. It also has 28 uses.
None of these weapons can be thrown rapidly, but you really shouldn't
need to, given the damage output of any of them.
Most Useless Weapon: Drill Bomb (Drillman's weapon)
Despite the fact it explodes on-contact (or on remote detonation), the explosive does little more damage than a Rock Buster shot on most enemies. Sure, it can crack open those breakable walls in the castle stages, but its damage output is just pitiful. Plus, it can't go through regular walls. Ultimately, it's only good for getting rid of bosses, walls, and Jumbigs.
Most Useless Utilities: Rush Marine or Balloon Adapter and Wire Adapter
There were a lot of useless items in this game...
- As mentioned in
Rockman 3, anywhere Rush Marine can go, Rush Jet can go... except that it's extremely counter-productive to do so, since you now need to summon it from dry land
and it moves along at its own pace. On top of that, it's really not worth it to bother with Rush Marine in the two levels where it would be useful. Since it's so much wider than Rockman, there's a greater chance of running into the cleverly-placed spikes in both underwater levels.
- It's no coincidence the optional utility weapons suck. Balloon works exactly like Item-1 from
Rockman 2 did, but is easily overshadowed by either Rush Coil or Rush Jet. Wire works like a grappling hook that only shoots straight up, but can only be fired from the ground while holding Up. Again, easily replaced by Rush Coil.[/spoiler]