Mega Man: The Wily Wars (1994)

Platform:

Genesis version.

Graphics/Sound:

This is exactly how I would want a 16bit upgrade of the first 3 Mega Man games to look. The style of the characters hasn't been altered, it's just with more colours, backgrounds and slightly smoother animations. Also the Genesis sound chip works well with the aggressive Mega Man soundtrack. Five stars in the presentation section.

It's the first 3 Mega Man games on one cartridge, plus there is a short fourth episode named Wiley Tower, which features 3 new robot masters plus a few final stages. In the last episode you can choose from all the weapons of all 3 Mega Man games, which sounds pretty awesome. Problem is just that you need some specific weapons in the stages, which you can find out either the hard way, by retrying over and over, or you just look it up on the net.

Difficulty:

I heard that the Pal version of this is slower than the US/Japanese. But other than that it's more or less a perfect port of the NES games, so it's exactly as hard. It has a few less slowdowns than the original, especially with large enemies on screen, which for some reason doesn't make it harder, more the opposite is the case. It still has some slowdowns, most notably when using Gemini Laser.

Conclusion:

The first 3 Mega Man episodes are classics in the series, and I love all of them, especially the third, so that alone makes this compilation gold. The fourth mini episode is a nice addition and the quality holds up until the end. If it wasn't for some of the more tedious elements of Mega Man in general, I would deem this perfect. Still highly recommended, and imo better than the NES versions.