Super Adventure Rockman

Super Adventure Rockman
Mega Man jumps on the FMV game bandwagon...except he came very late to the party.
Protagonist(s): Mega Man Genre(s): Interactive movie Platform(s): PlayStation Sega Saturn Release Date: PlayStation June 25, 1998 Sega Saturn September 23, 1998 Developer(s): Kouyousha Publisher(s): Capcom Country: Japan Series: Mega Man

Super Adventure Rockman (also informally known as Super Adventure Mega Man) is a full-motion-video game developed by Kouyousha and released by Capcom exclusively in Japan in 1998 for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. It is a spin-off to the Mega Man series. The game alternates between animated cutscenes, and fighting in first person.

Plot

Dr. Wily has uncovered an ancient alien supercomputer "Ra Moon" hidden in the ruins of the Amazon, which he uses to revive his various Robot Masters from Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3. The ruins are somehow capable of ceasing almost all the machinery and electricity in the world, also causing deleterious effects on robots by means of a crude and invasive microwave jamming frequency that suddenly spread after Ra Moon's activation. Roll is quickly affected, so Dr. Light immunizes Mega Man and his brothers (Proto Man and the Mega Man 1 Robot Masters), and sends them to stop Dr. Wily before it's too late.

Why It's Not a Super Adventure

1. To address the elephant in the room, this has one of the worst title names of all time. First of all, what the hell is "Super Adventure Rockman"? And second of all, who in their right mind would any video game have "Super Adventure (titular character)" as their title name?!
2. Like with many FMV titles, this barely has any gameplay, as about 80% of the game is just the anime cutscenes.
   • Speaking of them, FMV titles were pretty much dead by the time this title was released.
3. The story / plot of the game is unusually dark, jarring, and almost predictable. This would have worked for the Mega Man X subseries, but not so much in the main series.
4. Because of the game's dark and predictable plot, Roll ALMOST DIES IN THIS GAME.
5. The cutscenes cannot be skipped at all, and can get quite boring with their lack of music or anything exciting.
6. The animation is a lot cheaper and more simplistic looking compared to Mega Man 8 or Mega Man X4's cutscenes. It can range from looking like it uses Flash as an animation program to just plain ugly.
7. The gameplay itself is just a first person rail shooter that involves a lot of button mashing, which can hurt the thumbs of the player playing the game quite easily.
8. The game is brutally difficult without a guide, as even if you know Japanese, sometimes when given a decision between a route, it'll take you to a much harder battle sequence than the other options would, with there seemingly being no rhyme or reason as to why one choice was wrong. Mega Man games are known for their difficulty, but this is extremely artificial.
9. A few situations lead to an instant game over with no continues. These range from losing certain battles to simply picking the wrong dialogue option. While there are chances to save to a Memory Card, the game overs themselves are brutally frustrating enough even without the fact that you can get hit with one out of completely left field.
10. Some of the characters that were in the Mega Man series were either missing or just written out of the game. Bass, Treble, Auto, Break Man, Duo, Kalinka, Dr. Cossack, Eddie, Reggae, the Mega Man Killers (excluding Quint), and the Mega Man 4, Mega Man 5, and Mega Man 6 Robot Masters were notable examples.
11. Bland and forgettable soundtrack at best.
    • On top of that, there is only ONE boss music in the first-person segments throughout the whole game. Hell, Mega Man 8 came out two years ago on PS1 and Sega Saturn, and that game had 6 boss themes! One for the mini-bosses, one for the Robot Master boss themes, one for Duo's boss theme, one for Bass' boss theme, and two for the Wily Machine and Wily Capsule themes!

Redeeming Qualities

1. "ELECTRICAL COMMUNICATION" and "BRAND NEW WAY", the opening and ending themes to the Japanese version of Mega Man 8, appear in this game as the main themes to this game, respectively.
2. The Japanese voice cast of Mega Man 8 reprise their roles in this game
3. Despite the animation looking cheap, it is decent and it would be like if Mega Man had an anime.
4. This is one of the few titles in the series where Dr. Wily is not the final boss.
5. While the more serious tone of the story(ala the Mega Man X franchise) could be considered jarring, it was an interesting take on the world of Mega Man and led to the plot of further titles taking on more a serious light with themes of war and violence. If anything, the writing is pretty gutsy.
6. Along with Mega Man & Bass, this is the first time in the series the Robot Masters were given some personality and expanded character development. Quick Man is portrayed as an anti-hero, while Shadow Man is portrayed as the most dangerous of the Robot Masters, for instance. Some of them even have a couple comedic moments, like Heat Man.
7. On top of that, many of the characters, including the robot masters are still likable.
8. The plot of the game was given its own arc in the Archie comic book series, which was well-received.
9. The Japanese voice acting is okay (At least better than the English voice acting in Mega Man 8).

Trivia

• Keiji Inafune hated Super Adventure Rockman due to its darker tone of the normally lighthearted Classic Mega Man series, and apologized for it in the Official Complete Works.
• The Sega Saturn port of this game was the final Mega Man game to be released for a Sega console, as Sega left the console business and became a third party developer and publisher in 2001 following the discontinuation of the Dreamcast.

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