Mega Man: Revenge of the Fallen

Mega Man: Revenge of the Fallen, a mega man fangame, created by DarkFlameWolf and Jman, is a true testament to the legacy of the mega man franchise! Why is this? Well, read on and find out for yourself:

Gameplay - On it's basic level, the mega man franchise originated as a platformer where you jump and shoot. People fell in love with that formula, and while fangames try to captivate their audience with new robot masters, stages and gimmicks, sometimes some well placed platforming, a few tweaks to the original formula, and a few new additions can go a long way.

This game runs just like an official title for the franchise, with tight controls and a familiar control scheme that just oozes nostalgia. And yet, it adds the functionality to switch between weapons via a button (Added in Mega Man 9) and a new button for Rush weapons, which allows you to continue firing without accidentally making rush appear. Brilliant!

We can't ignore the title of the game though, RotF references the usage of a whole host of old Robot Masters, all handpicked from five different games in the series. What this does, is give a freedom to improve upon those Robot Masters and their stages, to make them, dare I say it, better than their incarnations from the original series. They have new patterns and tricks to confuse the player, and it's not just the bosses that get an upgrade! The stage enemies are all revamped in one way or another to hound the player, and even the Mega Man Killers from the GB games make an appearance (Albeit without Quint), each having minor upgrades as well.

The weapons Mega Man receives have also become much more useful. The Power Stone is now a nice quick shield that can open up various hidden paths, while the Star Crash can really help you in those tricky platforming sections where enemies hound your every step. Heck, even the Rain Flush got an upgrade. The only weapons that felt lacklustre was the Pharaoh Shot, as it really only functioned well in battle, and had no practical uses of it's own, in my experience.

Scattered throughout the Robot Master stages were power-ups, which when gained, would help Mega Man out in a variety of ways, such as the Power Slide, which increases slide speed, and the Spike Guard, which lets you hit death spikes once without dying. These items are well hidden, and require Robot Master weapons to get to almost all of the time, but they really are worth the wait. They make the Wily Stages much more bearable.


Sound Design -
We get all of the same tracks we're used to, only remixed to sound a lot better! While I don't know the details of where the tracks came from, I do know that they are easy on the ears and provide the same nostalgic feel you're used to. Although I wish the 8-Bit tracks were included somewhere, I still feel right at home with these newer, fresher tracks.

Graphical Design -
A great many of the pallettes actually come from the original MM games themselves, so there's no doubt they look good. Animations are smooth, flickering is a thing of the past and Capcom wished they could upkeep these graphics this way!

Difficulty -

Okay, here we go! This game, when it was in development, was compared to Mega Man and Bass, in terms of difficulty... Do I believe it's that hard? No, actually, but it's not far from it.

For me, Mega Man and Bass was around an 8 in terms of difficulty, while RotF seems more like a 7.8. The hard sections generally came when looking for hidden power-ups, as was the case in some of the trickier platforming areas. It seems that this game was considered difficult because of the abundance of spikes, but in reality, it's very manageable.

Some of the hard parts, for me, involved the platforming segments in Tornado Man's Stage, as the constant weather effects and the varied platforming styles made it tough to reach the first mid-point; the power-ups from Magma Man's Stage, as their paths were littered with instant death areas that would send you right back to the mid-point. It was a pain. Lastly, Yamato Man's Stage in general was a pretty long and "Draggy" sort of stage, with some tricky platforming that I preferred to pass using the Rush Jet. The worst stage though, by far, was Star Man's stage. The low gravity, plus the death spikes in almost every screen... It is hell. However, the weapon is worth it... Oh so worth it...

Conclusion - Overall, I had a blast playing this game. It gave me the challenge that Mega Man: Rockforce could not give me and it was a little more lenient than unlimited, what with this game's E Tank/W Tank/M Tank system (Collect 4 mini tanks for an E Tank and 3 mini W or M tanks for a large W Tank and M Tank respectively).

Final Thoughts - I followed this game for a while. And it was worth the wait. It was fun, challenging, tough, rewarding, and my name's in the credits which made me smile. I'd recommend this game to anybody looking for a true mega man experience, although I'd warn the fairly casual gamer to watch out.

~Billybo10000