Mega Man II (1991)
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 Protip: When an outsourced developer makes a surprisingly good handheld version of your game, maybe stick with them for the next one?
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Mega Man II (also known as Rockman World 2; ロックマンワールド2 in Japan), is the second of the Game Boy Mega Man/Rockman World games, released in late 1991 in Japan and 1992 everywhere else. It was co-developed by Capcom and Biox, the latter of which is a different company from Minakuchi Engineering, the developer of the first and latter 3 Mega Man games for the Game Boy. It was later released on the 3DS eShop in 2014. The game borrows Robot Masters from Mega Man 2 as well as Mega Man 3.
According to Keiji Inafune, Biox didn't know anything about Mega Man. This made working with them a disaster and the game suffered as a result. Also, Inafune considers this his least favorite title in the series due to this.
It is considered by many as the worst game in the classic series due to its poor design and screeching soundtrack.
Plot
Dr. Wily steals a time machine and travels 37 years into the future to steal Mega Man, who by that point is no longer a fighting robot, and reprograms him into an evil robot named Quint. It's up to present day Mega Man to defeat the revived robot masters, his future evil double Quint, and put an end to Dr. Wily's scheme.
Bad Qualities
- The controls aren't as good as the previous games since they feel a little stiff.
- Many enemies and bosses are not properly programmed with the Game Boy's limitations in mind. They are very slow compared to the enemies on the NES titles and other Game Boy Mega Man games.
- While the music's composition is great and features original melodies instead of remixed songs from NES Mega Man games, it is held back by screeching instrumentation.
- To fight Needle Man, Top Man, Hard Man, and Magnet Man, the player does not use a standard stage select screen. Rather, they go to Dr. Wily's base and enter capsules that don't offer hints as to which capsule leads to which Robot Master, unless you either (A) Google it, (B) have someone else tell you, or (C) find them out yourself via trial-and-error. If you choose C, draw a map of the hatches.
- While the idea of Mega Man fighting his future self is intriguing, Quint is one of the easiest Robot Masters because he fights a lot like Toad Man from Mega Man 4. All he does is hop to your position and create rocks next to him. The rocks deflect your shots, so Quint's battle is just a matter of sliding, jumping, shooting and repeating.
- Quint also looks pathetic, as he's just a lazy edit of Mega Man with Proto Man's shades slaped onto him. TheQuarterGuy mocked it twice. The first time saying he just looks like a green Mega Man with Kamina's glasses, and the second time calling him a bad Mega Man OC, with the sarcastic remark, "Original Man! Do not steal!"
- Quint's weapon, Sakurgarne, is one of the worst weapons in the franchise because it forces you to take damage from enemies that don't instantly die to it. This also makes fighting Dr. Wily more frustrating than it needs to be, since the Sakugarne is the only weapon aside from the default Mega Buster that can damage Wily at all, much less cause more than one damage point per hit.
- Dr. Wily's plan to reprogram Mega Man from the future and make him destroy his past self is poorly executed. Rather than giving Quint an interesting set of attacks, such as his own Buster, a proper counterpart to Rush or Robot Master weapons, he only equips Quint with a useless jackhammer and a basic AI. Even Bass from Mega Man 7 onwards is better.
- The level design is inferior to the NES Mega Man games because of several glitches and lack of unique gimmicks like the other MMGB games.
- In Air Man's stage, there is a part where enemies sit on cloud platforms that move in a circular platform. If a cloud platform goes off screen, it disappears and never comes back, which forces you to kill yourself since there is no way to get to the next platform except if you have Rush Jet. The problem with this is that you can't use Rush Jet if you don't beat Air Man.
- In Crash Man's stage, there's a section where a Telly generator is supposed to be, but it doesn't spawn until the player walks to the right a bit and comes back. This makes the stage easier if you don't do that.
- Big chunks of Wood Man's and Top Man's stages can be bypassed with ease if the player has the Rush Marine.
- The already notoriously broken Metal Blades from the NES Mega Man 2 are even more broken here, and capable of damaging (if not instantly killing) virtually every enemy in the game, including ones that were immune to it.
- Needle Cannon and Top Spin can also obliterate enemies.
- Quint is red, black and white on the American/European box art instead of green in the Japanese release, which makes him look a lot like Quick Man.
Good Qualities
- Despite the soundtrack's screeching instrumentation, it still has good compositions like Air Man's stage, Magnet Man's stage, Metal Man's stage, and Wood Man's stage. Speaking of the soundtrack, the user RushJet1 made remixes of this game's entire soundtrack with amazing results. It is also possible to use this soundtrack while playing Quint's Revenge (a great fangame by the way). Check out the songs here.
- The game's graphics, while not as good as the other Game Boy Mega Man games, are pretty decent, despite a few enemies and bosses being shrunk down.
- The game's introduction of the sliding move, Rush and energy tanks make it a lot more accessible than the punishingly difficult first Game Boy game, even if it goes a little too far in the opposite direction.
- Actual levels for the second set of Robot Masters, unlike the first Game Boy game, which just had you confronting the Mega Man 2 Robot Masters in a teleporter room in Wily's fortress.
- Crash Man (called "Clash Man" because it is his Japanese name) is more of a challenge in this game than he was on the NES, since one can't rely on the Air Shooter glitching out and killing him with one shot, but at the same time isn't unreasonably difficult.
- The plot, while flawed, is interesting.
Trivia
- It is the only title in the Game Boy series to have Rush Marine.
- While Quint is not a very good Robot Master, the fans treat him better in their fan games. In Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch, he is a secret boss whose five phases are much harder than the official battle. He is also the protagonist of Quint's Revenge, a reimagining of the game where he is given a dash, crouch, and his own Special Weapons.
Videos
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