Game:

Mega Man & Bass (1998)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 3:54:36

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Game: Rockman & Forte / Mega Man & Bass
Platform: Super Famicom / SNES
Completed: June 6, 2021
Rules: Beat the game as Mega Man
Part: 1 of 2

After finishing the original Mega Man I decided to play through the entire classic series, which goes up to Mega Man 11 as of the time of this recording. Does this count as a game in the classic series? I'm not sure but I wanted to play it since it was created for the Super Famicom for those who could not play Mega Man 8 on the Sony PlayStation or Sega Saturn. That made it sort of a cousin to Mega Man 8, but for the Super Famicom all the way in 1998. It shares quite a bit of the graphical style and even some characters from Mega Man 8. It never got a release outside of Japan until a Game Boy Advance port in 2003 or something. In Japan, the name was "Rockman & Forte", but I am using a translation patch from AGTP that converts all of the text to English and changes the character names to the names that are used in the worldwide releases, Mega Man and Bass.

This was my first time playing this game and all I knew going into it was that it was notorious for being way too difficult and is generally not regarded as a good game. I agree that the game is a step up in difficulty from the previous entries, but after playing through the first 8 games in a row I was actually happy for the challenge. I didn't find the game to be totally unfair as many people say and actually really enjoyed it. It looks great, controls great, doesn't hold your hand, has a lot of creative sections, has two totally different playable characters, and even has 100 optional collectable CDs to find that require both characters and give you cool little bonuses. Sadly, even though it took a lot of inspiration from Mega Man 8, it wasn't able to bring the amazing voice acting with it. Here are some highlights:

30 Seconds - There is some great foreshadowing here, as even the two demos show both Mega Man and Bass dying. And they will. Many times.

5 minutes - I thought I could be smart and grind for lives here, but it appears that they thought of that and don't allow these repeat enemies from Mega Man 2 to drop any.

10 minutes, 10 seconds - They put some toe jumps in the tutorial area and added wind? Brutal.

10 minutes, 45 seconds - A Monty Python reference in a Japanese game? I wonder if this was added by the translators or if this is how it was in Japan. And why doesn't King just kill Mega Man right here? Such a common villain trope. "I'd kill you in like 2 seconds but I don't have time right now..."

13 minutes - I really picked a bad boss order. One reason why I did that was because the map screen is kind of confusing and didn't make it clear that I could go on to more levels than I thought. I thought I had to beat the first three before being allowed to move on to the next levels, which was false. I also hate how they chose not to display the boss name on the map screen. Why leave it out? Because Mega Man 8 also made the same dumb decision? If Mega Man 8 jumped off of a bridge...

58 minutes - I found this hidden CD totally by mistake. How would you ever know this was there?

1 hour, 42 minutes - There are spiked balls that cause instant death that are right outside your view that feel pretty cheap, along with some crappy blind jumps.

1 hour, 55 minutes, 30 seconds - Really nice death here.

2 hours, 48 minutes, 35 seconds - Sneaky enemy placement here. Also Burner Man is interesting because his weakness does poor damage unless you hit him at the right time with it. I like that twist.

"Mega Man & Bass (Mega Man Playthrough) 061221"

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