Mega Man: The Wily Wars
From Sega Retro
| Mega Man: The Wily Wars | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| System(s): Sega Mega Drive | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Publisher: Capcom | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Developer: Capcom (Minakuchi Engineering?) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sound driver: SMPS Z80 (banked) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Genre: Action | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Number of players: 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Mega Man: The Wily Wars, known as Rockman Mega World (ロックマンメガワールド) in Japan, is a compilation released in 1994 by Capcom for the Sega Mega Drive.
It contains updated versions of the first three Mega Man (Rockman) games, Mega Man, Mega Man II and Mega Man III, originally released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987, 1988 and 1990, respectively. Also included is a set of Mega Drive-exclusive bonus stages, collectively called "Wily Tower," unlocked after finishing all three games.
In the United States, it was released as a Sega Channel exclusive, although the box art of a proposed cartridge release has since been found. Said box curiously features an unusual (for the Mega Man series) MA-13 rating, although it's likely this was an error as the Sega Channel release was rated GA instead. Reportedly the game was put on indefinite hold in the US due to graphical issues[3].
Contents
Gameplay
In these games the objective is to pick a stage, navigate it defeating enemies along the way with the buster, and beat the robot master at the end of the stage. Once the player defeats the robot master you gain it's weapon to use on a different robot master. In layman's terms it's like a game of rock-paper-scissors. Once you have defeated all the robot masters the player goes to the Wily stages where the final set of levels awaits. Occasionally the player will get extra power ups to assist you in your game play such as the Magnet Beam, Dr. Light Items, and Rush. 
opens the menu to choose a weapon, 
fires the weapon, and 
jumps. In Mega Man 3 and the Wily Tower (see below), 
+ slides. Some weapons, such as Mega Man 2's Metal Blade, can be shot in a particular direction by holding the D-pad while pressing .
After beating the three main games the player unlocks the short game Wily Tower. Wily Tower only has three robot masters, which the player does not gain a weapon from, and then four Wily stages. At the beginning of each robot master and the Wily tower the player chooses weapons and items to take with them from the three original games giving the player an interesting twist on having weapons from different games.
The robot masters in Wily Tower actually share a similar origin to things in the Chinese epic Journey to the West. Buster Rod.G is based off Sun Wukong (called Son Goku in Japanese), Hyper Storm.H is based off Zhu Bajie (called Cho Hakkai in Japanese), and Mega Water.S is based off Sha Wujing (called Sa Gojou in Japanese).
Some experienced players of the original NES games may notice that the game speed is slightly slower thus making the game in some cases easier, but other parts may become more difficult due to different timings.
Levels
- The player is able to choose from any of robot masters to start from. This is just a general list of the levels.
- No weapons are gained from the Wily Stages.
Mega Man 1
- Guts Man – Super Arm (G) is obtained after beating him.
- Cut Man – Rolling Cutter (C) is obtained after beating him.
- Elec Man – Thunder Beam (E) is obtained after beating him. Magnet Beam is found in this stage as well which is necessary for later levels.
- Ice Man – Ice Slasher (I) is obtained after beating him.
- Bomb Man - Hyper Bomb (B) is obtained after beating him.
- Fire Man – Fire Storm (F) is obtained after beating him.
- Wily Stage 1 – At the end of the level the player fights the Yellow Devil which involves memorizing a pattern to defeat.
- Wily Stage 2 – The player will once again fight Cut Man and Elec Man in this stage. Copy Robot clones Mega Man and uses the weapon the player is using to make things difficult.
- Wily Stage 3 – Straightforward stage that leads the player to CWU-01P. This bosses pattern just increases in speed after each part is destroyed.
- Wily Stage 4 – The player will fight the other four robot masters in this stage one after another and then will fight Dr. Wily in a 2-form final battle.
Mega Man 2
- Metal Man - Metal Blade (M) is obtained after beating him.
- Air Man - Air Shooter (A) is obtained after beating him. Player also obtains Item-2 which also allows you to ride a horizontal flying platform.
- Crash Man - Crash Bombs (C) is obtained after beating him.
- Bubble Man - Bubble Lead (B) is obtained after beating him.
- Heat Man - Atomic Fire (F) is obtained after beating him. Player also obtains Item-1 which allows you to make rising platforms.
- Wood Man - Leaf Shield (W)is obtained after beating him.
- Flash Man - Time Stopper (F) is obtained after beating him. Player also obtains Item-3 which creates a platform that climbs walls.
- Quick Man - Quick Boomerang (Q)is obtained after beating him.
- Wily Stage 1 – Stage contains a scrolling section where Mecha Dragon appears and chases the player to three platforms from which you fight.
- Wily Stage 2 – Boss is made up of little enemies that appear out of the wall attacking the player. Defeat all the enemies to win.
- Wily Stage 3 – Fight the massive Guts Tank to win this stage.
- Wily Stage 4 – There are several Buebeam Traps in the room and they all need to be destroyed. Player has to be conservative about their weapon energy to win this.
- Wily Stage 5 – Player fights all eight robot masters and then goes through a ninth portal to fight Dr. Wily's two forms.
- Wily Stage 6 – Wily reveals himself to be an alien and fights the player.
Mega Man 3
- Top Man - Top Spin is obtained after defeating him.
- Shadow Man - Shadow Blade is obtained after defeating him. Player also obtains Rush Marine which behaves the same as Rush Jet, but only works in water. Can jump out of water, but won't move.
- Spark Man - Spark Shock is obtained after defeating him.
- Magnet Man – Part way through the stage the player will encounter a fight with Protoman. Magnet Missiles is obtained after defeating him.
- Hard Man - Part way through the stage the player will encounter a fight with Protoman. Hard Knuckle is obtained after defeating him.
- Snake Man - Search Snake is obtained after defeating him.
- Gemini Man - Gemini Laser is obtained after defeating him.
- Needle Man - Needle Cannon is obtained after defeating him. Player also obtains Rush Jet which allows you to call rush to turn into a platform that can fly in all directions.
- Doc Robot K-176 – This boss then appears in Needle Man's, Gemini Man's, Shadow Man's, and Spark Man's stages taking on the powers of robot masters from Mega Man 2. Defeat Doc Robot in these four stages to continue on.
- Break Man – This stage is just a battle against Break Man.
- Wily Stage 1 – At the end of the level you fight the Kamegoro Maker. The Kamegoro Maker is actually invincible, but if you destroy enough turtles you win.
- Wily Stage 2 – At the end of this stage the player fights a new form of the Yellow Devil.
- Wily Stage 3 – At the end of this stage you fight the Holographic Clones. Only one is real, and it's up to you to find that one.
- Wily Stage 4 – This stage is basically just like the teleporter system from Mega Man 2.
- Wily Stage 5 – Fight two forms of Dr. Wily? here.
- Wily Stage 6 – The true final battle against Gamma and Dr. Wily.
Wily Tower
NOTE: No weapons are gained from any of the Wily Tower levels. The player chooses eight weapons and three items from the original three games prior to starting.
- Buster Rod G
- Mega Water S
- Hyper Storm H
- Wily Tower Stage 1 (Fire Snakey)
- Wily Tower Stage 2 (Iron Ball)
- Wily Tower Stage 3 (2nd battle w/ Buster Rod G)
- Wily Tower Stage 4 (Wily Machine)
Versions
General
- In all games, shots are limited to one shot every few frames of animation. In the originals, players could fire weaponry on every other frame.
- The controls in these versions of the games seem a little tighter than the originals, though Mega Man himself seems to have a slight delay before moving because he is able to do sidesteps.
- A number of weapons now have a noticeable "can't move" delay after firing, such as the Items from Mega Man 2 or the Shadow Blade from Mega Man 3.
- All three games now have a "save game" feature. However, the "password" feature was removed from Mega Man 2 and 3.
- At several points, the game suffers from very bad slowdown. However, for less-skilled gamers, this can be a positive effect; because the Yellow Devil's stages in Mega Man and 3 suffer from it the most, as does the battle with the Wily Machine in Mega Man. This makes those boss battles much easier.
- However, running the game on a system (or emulator) with an overclocked M68000 chip will run the game at full speed regardless of how much is going on at any given time. This would normally make a Mega Drive game very unstable, but has no negative effects on The Wily Wars due to how it was programmed.
- The European version has slowed down music due to it running on 50 fps instead of 60 fps like the Japanese version.
- In general, despite their names, the games are based more closely on the Rockman versions than on the Mega Man versions; most notably, Normal Mode is absent from Mega Man 2.
- The Title Screens are also based on their Japanese versions, but with "Rockman" changed to "Megaman".
Mega Man
- While the original Mega Man's boss select screen simply showed the Robot Masters' in-game sprites as icons, the Wily Wars remake uses new mugshots to match Mega Man 2 and 3, and for Dr. Wily, his in-game sprite for an icon is replaced by the Dr. W logo.
- Cut Man is much tougher in the remake than he was in the original game. Mostly due to the fact that his flinch is much less intense and the Mega Buster deals a third of the damage that it would normally do.
- Bomb Man is similarly more difficult. If you got near him in the original, he would normally jump away, but in Wily Wars, he instead opts to get close to you.
- Power-ups do not reappear when leaving the screen and coming back.
- The Pause/Unpause glitch has been fixed.
- Some Robot Master AIs have been slightly modified.
- Normally during invincibility frames you can still die from spikes. This is fixed in this version to be like all other Mega Man games.
- The gravity bug when falling off the Magnet Beam and the platforms in Guts Man's stage and Wily Fortress 4 has been fixed.
Mega Man 2
- Mega Man 2, similar to its original Japanese release, Rockman 2: The Mystery of Dr. Wily, does not have a difficulty selection. Instead, it only plays on "Difficult".
- Quick Man is much slower in this version, though he no longer takes two damage from Mega Buster shots as he did in the "Difficult" mode or the Japanese version of Mega Man 2.
- Flash Man also takes one damage from the Mega Buster instead of two, like he did in "Difficult Mode."
- Some Robot Master AIs are slightly modified.
- Robots and robot masters have invincibility frames where they can not be damaged. This is not true for robots that die in one hit.
- When the player loses all of their lives, they no longer lose all their E-tanks. In the original, continuing meant forfeiting any and all E-tanks remaining in the inventory, preventing players from farming the start of Metal Man's stage. Now it is possible to do so.
Mega Man 3
- The grey tones on Proto Man's sprites have been changed to white.
- Proto Man's "shadow" sprites from the ending are found in the game data, however, Capcom decided to just use a "shadowy" palette on the original sprites instead of those.
- While not a difference, neither Proto Man nor Break Man have been resized like Mega Man and the Robot Masters have. They don't have any additional frames of animation, either.
- On the Weapon Select Menu, Rush is now blue instead of red. (This also happens in Wily Tower.)
- The Wily Castle map screen music has been shortened from its original tune. (Incidentally, the extended theme wasn't accessible in-game anyway.)
- Like the first two games, some Robot Master AIs are modified.
- Robots and robot masters have invincibility frames where they can not be damaged. This is not true for robots that die in one hit.
- Magnet Missile's have odd behavior; sometimes they do not "home" (right turn up or down) correctly. Hard Man and the Doc Robot Metal Man are much more difficult due to this fact.
- The crocodile-like traps in Hard Man's stage activate quicker than the original game, so do other traps.
- Controller 2 cheats from the NES game have been removed.
- Early Rush adapter glitch removed.
History
Development
Artist Keiji Inafune claimed that the development of the game was outsourced and rather slow going. He described the debugging procedure as "an absolute nightmare", even helping out in process himself as he felt bad for the person in charge. "It was so bad," he recalled, "I found myself saying, 'I can't believe we've made it out of there alive.'" The team later questioning whether the nightmare was "truly necessary", led to changes in procedure to try and avoid similar situations in the future.
With the theme of the game being the novel Journey to the West, Inafune stated that while drawing the three new boss characters he "tried to take the flavor of the theme and give it that Mega Man twist." Other than these characters, Inafune's only other illustrative contribution to the game was the depiction of Mega Man and Rush on the cover art. The soundtrack of The Wily Wars, composed by Kinuyo Yamashita, consists of 16-bit versions of the original Mega Man musical scores, as well as new songs for the Wily Tower portion of the game.
Credits (or lack thereof)
The original three games have their credits screens still in place, but after beating Wily Tower there is actually no credits listed; just a cutscene and a list of all the Robot Masters. There is also no list of credits in the manual either.
The only source of credits available comes from the worklist of freelancer Kouji Murata[4], who handled all the sound aspects (sound driving, sound porting, composition and arrangement and sound effects) for Mega Man III and IV (Rockman World 3 and 4 in Japan). He credits himself for Sound Effects in The Wily Wars and refers to a "Yamashita-san" when crediting the music.
Because he worked through Minakuchi Engineering from 1990 to 1992 (during which Mega Man III was created) and continued to work on the Rockman World series up until late 1994 as a freelancer, he is most likely referring to Kinuyo Yamashita of Castlevania fame, as she was associated with Minakuchi Engineering around that time. This is because Yamashita was contracted through the company circa 1995 to compose the music for [the SNES version of] Mega Man X3 (Rockman X3 in Japan). Additionally, the two had previously worked together on Famicon Disk System title Arumana's Miracle.
Sound Effects: Kouji Murata
BGM Arrangement & Original Music Composition & Arrangement: Kinuyo Yamashita
Artwork
North American prototype cover
Promotional material
also published in:
- Top Consoles (FR) #4: "Julliet/Août 1995" (1995-0x-xx)[5]
Physical scans
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70 |
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  Cart  Manual |
Technical information
ROM dump status
| System | Hash | Size | Build Date | Source | Comments | |||||||||
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2MB | 1995-03 | Cartridge (EU) | ||||||||||
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2MB | 1994-09 | Cartridge (JP) | ||||||||||
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2MB | 1994-09 | Cartridge (JP) | Minor differences in code. |
References
- ↑ File:EGM2_Feb_1995.png, page 32
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 File:NewReleasesCatalogueApril-May1995AU.pdf, page 9
- ↑ File:GamePlayers US 0710.pdf, page 18
- ↑ http://www.100v.jp/~yagiyama/works/index.html
- ↑ Top Consoles, "Julliet/Août 1995" (FR; 1995-0x-xx), page 163
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 File:MegaFun DE 1995-04.pdf, page 71 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name ":File:MegaFun DE 1995-04.pdf_p71" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ 7.0 7.1 File:MeanMachinesSega29UK.pdf, page 62 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name ":File:MeanMachinesSega29UK.pdf_p62" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ 1700 igr dlya Sega, "" (RU; 2001-xx-xx), page 178
- ↑ Beep! MegaDrive, "October 1994" (JP; 1994-09-08), page 20
- ↑ Consoles +, "Juillet/Août 1995" (FR; 1995-0x-xx), page 132
- ↑ Computer + Video Giochi, "Dicembre 1994" (IT; 1994-xx-xx), page 126
- ↑ Digitiser (UK) (1995-07-21)
- ↑ Famitsu, "1994-10-28" (JP; 1994-10-14), page 40
- ↑ MAN!AC, "05/95" (DE; 1995-04-12), page 44
- ↑ Player One, "Juillet/Août 1995" (FR; 1995-0x-xx), page 106
- ↑ Play Time, "5/95" (DE; 1995-04-05), page 104
- ↑ Saturn Fan, "1995 January" (JP; 1994-12-xx), page 63
- ↑ Sega Magazin, "September 1995" (DE; 1995-08-16), page 20
- ↑ Sega Pro, "Easter 1995" (UK; 1995-03-23), page 55
- ↑ Sega Saturn Magazine, "September 1995" (JP; 1995-08-08), page 87
- ↑ Top Consoles, "Julliet/Août 1995" (FR; 1995-0x-xx), page 94
- ↑ Tricks 16 bit, "Tricks Sega Gold 800 igr" (RU; 1998-03-20), page 113
- ↑ Video Games, "8/95" (DE; 1995-07-26), page 79
| Mega Man games for Sega systems | |
|---|---|
|
Mega Man: The Wily Wars (1994) |
 |
Mega Man (1995) |
 |
Mega Man X3 (1996) | Mega Man 8 (1997) | Mega Man X4 (1997) | Super Adventure Rockman (1998) |
| Unlicensed Mega Man games for Sega systems | |
|
Rockman X3 (1995) |
| Mega Man related media | |
 |
Rockman 8: Metal Heroes Hisshou Kouryaku Hou (1997) |
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