Mega Man Powered Up

Overview

This new Mega Man game is an enhanced remake of the original Mega Man that debuted on the NES back in the late 80s. This version of the game has many new updates including newly updated graphics to accommodate the fresh new look for the game. They made the characters super deformed which in turn makes them look super cute. In an interview with Keiji Inafune, he stated that the way the characters look in the game were originally ment to look this way when the original title debuted on the NES. The remake features many new features, which are listed below.

The main "New Style" mode is essentially the same as the original, but with a few changes. First, it's widescreen, as to take advantage of the PSP's features more. Robot Masters have their own voices and text. Unlike the original, weapons were weakened to be fair, like the player has a limit of 15 Thunder Beams and the move is not that strong. Lastly, all of the sound is new: sound effects and music both. However, in old style, the music is from the original.

Plot

The story is a little different: "Rock" is now "Mega" to keep the consistency with the name. There is an intro stage, which features Mega (or whatever Robot Master was chosen for the time) and better establishes the story. Dr. Wily is seen thieving all of Dr. Light's Robots except Roll and whichever Robot Master the player had chosen already. When playing as Mega, Dr. Light is saddened that his work was taken, so Dr. Light is asked by Mega to reprogram him into a fighting robot. Dr. Light makes the preparations and Mega becomes Mega Man, who can use his new Mega Buster to copy enemy abilities and also fire out bullets. Dr. Light hopes for peace and for Mega Man to get the Robots again.

Gameplay

The formula is the same as all of the other games. Mega Man has an arm cannon which is called the Mega Buster and shoots plasma beams at his enemies, though as he beats new levels and defeats new bosses, he inherits their abilities which becomes part of his arsenal. This can become very useful as there are weaknesses with all of the bosses, for example Ice Man. His weakness would be fire, so if you got the Fire projectile, you can beat Ice Man alot quicker than just using the buster beam. However, this game has a consequence for being ruthlessly cruel using the weaknesses: the player cannot play as that boss. If players beat the boss using only the Mega Buster weapon, they can play as the Robot Master they defeated in the stage. The game has an Old Style mode, which gets rid of widescreen modes and attempts, to the best of its ability, an emulation of the original title. This game has all the same weapon stats and also has the Magnet Beam, which was removed from New Style mode due to how easy it would be to get specials. All of the glitches were removed and some stage layouts were altered due to technical problems, like Wily 2 has Elec Man and Cut Man as bosses that are behind doors instead of just falling down into a pit and having them fight the player; the same goes for Wily 4 which has the other four Robot Masters there. The game also has slowdown from too many objects being on the screen. All of the music was taken out of the original.

Modes

There is a Construction Mode where there's a stage level editor and you can create levels, but players have to collect enemies and location packs throughout each level they play in the main story. After players collect them all, they can create a variety of stages and upload them to the Mega Man Web. They also can download user created levels from the internet. Capcom has updated their service and made new levels and add-on characters outfits. As of 2-22-07, they made the last update for the game, which was Proto Man, who is usually available by getting through all Challenges. There's also a Hall of Famers tab in which people who created the best of the best stages were inducted into the Hall of Fame. Each country has a different server, splitting into three: America, Japan, and Europe. Players can interchangeably look at the other servers, but cannot upload to them. For example, an American player can see the European server but cannot upload to that.

There's also a Challenge Mode where you have to pull off a certain task to defeat the challenge. There are ten challenges for every character in the game. When players finish the main story, they unlock ten more challenges that are completely new. Beating all the challenges lets the player use Proto Man, but as of February 22, 2007, Proto Man is normally available online, making this method worthless now. Players may download him opposed to this way.