3 Things I Love about Mega Man & Bass
Welcome to Mega Man Month! Every weekday in January I’ll be listing three things I love about the original Mega Man series. Let’s go!
This is a very good-looking game
I didn’t love Mega Man 8, but I really appreciated its art direction. Sure, I preferred 7’s look, but 8 still had a really nice look. So, when they released Mega Man & Bass for the Super Famicom 2 years later (for some reason) and it faithfully recreated the 32-bit Mega Man art style, it was a real joy to look at. Capcom was really good at squeezing power out of the SNES. They did manage to get Street Fighter Alpha 2 running on the darn thing, after all. But since I’m sticking with US releases for this series, let’s get back to the GBA game. As long as you’re playing on an SP (yay backlight!) this is a really nice-looking title, especially on the small screen. It’s colorful, very well-animated, and an overall joy to look at. Playing it on the other hand, less so. But it’s pretty!
The SNES version is better, but this ain’t bad
Through the magic of the internet and flash carts, I’ve played the Super Famicom version of this game and while it’s still a really weird little game, it’s a heck of a lot better on a big screen with the full intended aspect ratio available to play on. That said, after having played the SFC version, and having also played a handful of other SNES to GBA conversions, they did a pretty dang good job converting this one to the small screen. Good job, Capcom.
It’s got some pretty wild robot master designs
By this point, Mega Man’s art style had started to evolve, resulting in some more detailed robot master designs than the series was used to. This makes some of the characters in Mega Man 8 and MM&B clash pretty hard against the likes of Air Man and Skull Man, but even so, there’s really something to be said for these designs, especially here over 8. These guys just look awesome, and it’s a shame they’re relegated to what might be the least-played Mega Man game out there. Sure, there are only 6 of them (Astro Man and Tengu Man from MM8 were reused to fill the last two slots) but these guys rule. There really needs to be a Legacy Collection 3 that includes this gem.
And that about does it for Mega Man & Bass. Come back tomorrow as I start working my way through the Game Boy series beginning with Mega Man in Dr. Wily’s Revenge.
