REVISITING THE PSP REMAKES OF MEGA MAN

WAI KWAN WU - 3rd Year, Molecular Cell Biology

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At one point in the early 2000s, the Mega Man franchise was absolutely pumping out different titles left and right, across all sorts of different platforms. At that point, it was even dipping its toes into entirely different genres, from card games to whatever Mega Man Legends was. Amidst all of this, it’s interesting that the franchise still found the time to release two remakes of its original platformers for the PSP: Mega Man Powered-Up for the very first game in the franchise and Mega Man Maverick Hunter X for the Mega Man X series. Ultimately, these remakes didn’t sell very well and didn’t see any further continuations, which is unfortunate as these remakes bring interesting twists to their mother series.

Mega Man Powered-Up is essentially the platonic ideal for a remake, at least visually. It features a bright and vibrant art direction that elevates the charm of the original, and the character designer’s new interpretations capture the same striking motifs and strong silhouetting of the original Robot Masters’ designs. However, the main detriment to the game, compared to the original, would likely come from the level design: viewed in a vacuum, Powered-Up comes with much more simplified levels compared to the original, which may be attributed to the fact that the PSP screen simply isn’t big enough. Compared to the original Mega Man, which featured vast rooms and floors that were meant to be played on a TV screen, the smaller dimensions of the handled PSP screens meant that levels tended to be more compact and straightforward.

That being said, Powered-Up does have its unique offering: the ability to play as any one of the Robot Masters in addition to Mega Man, as well as a couple of DLC characters. This is something that no other game in the franchise can boast, and it’s quite a testament to the thought that went into this feature that each and every playable character has something different for the gameplay, whether it be Ice Man who can freeze enemies and jump on top of them for addition platforming possibilities, or Oil Man who has the ability to zip through levels on a skateboard. This is simply amazing for the game in terms of replayability, and even if not trying to 100 percent the game with every single character, it is quite fun to just mess around with each character for their different abilities. The game is aware of this, as outside of the main story, each character has unique challenge levels to complete, which are various obstacle courses that are fine-tuned based on the abilities of each character, providing a unique flavor of gameplay. While it is likely that the overall level design of the game suffered in order to have levels that are standardized for any character to complete them, it cannot be denied that Powered-Up simply excels at understanding the core appeal of its characters and how to bring the most out of them despite limitations. For the care that it puts into each playable character, Powered-Up is definitely a worthwhile and charming experience.

The Mega Man X franchise has a bit of a different spin to the original franchise. While the core gameplay remains the same, Mega Man X adds on a layer of RPG self progression through character upgrades that are scattered across levels, such as items that raise the HP bar or body armor that reduces damage received. Generally, X is expected to start off rather weak and become stronger as he progresses. However, this can also end up presenting a conundrum in the game’s difficulty curve, which is particularly apparent in the remake, Maverick Hunter X In the opening level of the game, X is extremely frail and can fall simply from taking contact damage twice. In this state, X is thrown into the main levels of the game, and it can be quite a struggle. However, within beating the first couple of bosses, upgrades for X start rolling in extremely easily, and X is left with unlimited resources to simply steamroll through the rest of this game. Quite frankly, under the intended gameplay curve, the first two levels are probably the hardest out of the entire experience.

That being said, Maverick Hunter still boasts a lot of charm in its visuals, mainly trading Powered Up’s cartoony flair for a more detail-oriented approach that ended up producing some genuinely gorgeous looking levels, such as the electrical plant level. Also, while it doesn’t quite have the full suite that Powered Up has, Maverick Hunter does have an extra playable option in the villain character Vile, which builds on the game’s progression model in an interesting way. Vile comes with three different weapon slots, and as the game progresses, he unlocks new weapons to fill those slots, which provides an added layer of customizability with allowing the player to swap through the different weapons while considering their costs. There is quite a variety of weapons that Vile gains access to, from grenades to torpedoes to flamethrowers, so determining which weapons works best for the player’s own style of gameplay is one of the most engaging aspects that Maverick Hunter has to offer.

Ultimately, while some of the gameplay can be left a little wanting, both Mega Man remakes on the PSP bring something unique to the table. Even at the very least, these remakes serve as a charming revisit of the originals and are entries well-worth experiencing.