Mega Man: The Wily Wars

Mega Man: The Wily Wars, known as Rockman Mega World (ロックマンメガワールド) in Japan, is a remake of Mega Man, Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3, released for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. The game never saw a cartridge release in North America (although a release was planned ) and was only available for download through Sega's "Sega Channel" service in the mid-to-late 1990s. This game is featured as a built-in game in the Sega Genesis: Ultimate Portable Game Player by ATGames, but that version cannot access Wily Tower, as it cannot save.

Story
Tired of having his plans foiled every time by Mega Man, Dr. Wily decided to build himself a time machine. Transporting himself into the past, Dr. Wily restored his defeated robots and started causing chaos. At this rate, even the peaceful past was about to be tainted by Dr. Wily's ambitions! In order to stop Dr. Wily, Mega Man was sent into the past in a time machine hastily crafted by Dr. Light to relive his earlier adventures.

Version Differences
It should be noted that there are some differences between the original NES versions of Mega Man, Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3 besides enhanced graphics and sound quality. These changes can affect gameplay.

General

 * In all games, shots are limited to one shot every few frames of animation. In the originals, players could fire weaponry on every other frame.


 * The controls in these versions of the games seem a little tighter than the originals, though Mega Man himself seems to have a slight delay before moving because he can sidestep.


 * A number of weapons now have a noticeable "can't move" delay after firing, such as the Items from Mega Man 2 and the Shadow Blade from Mega Man 3.


 * All three games now have a "save game" feature; the "password" feature was even removed from Mega Man 2 and 3.


 * At several points, the game suffers from very excessive lag. However, for less-skilled gamers, this can be a positive effect; because the Yellow Devil's stages in Mega Man and 3 suffer from it the most, as does the battle with the Wily Machine 1 in Mega Man, this makes those boss battles much easier.
 * However, running the game on a system (or emulator) with an overclocked M68000 chip will run the game at full speed regardless of how much is going on at any given time. This would normally make a Genesis game very unstable, but has no negative effects on The Wily Wars due to how it was programmed.


 * The European version is slowed down because of the PAL conversion, which makes the game play at 50Hz, instead of the regular 60Hz.


 * In general, despite their names, the games are based more closely on the Rockman versions than on the Mega Man versions; most notably, Easy Mode is absent from Mega Man 2.


 * The title screens are also based on their Japanese versions, but with "Rockman" changed to "MegaMan".

Mega Man

 * While the original's boss select screen simply showed the Robot Masters' in-game sprites as icons, the remake uses new mugshots to match Mega Man 2 and 3, and for Dr. Wily, his in-game sprite for an icon is replaced by the Dr. W logo.


 * Cut Man is much tougher in the remake than he was in the original game, mostly due to the fact that his flinch is much less intense and the Mega Buster deals a third of the damage that it would normally do.
 * Similarly, in the original game, if you get near Bomb Man, he will normally jump away, but in the Wily Wars, he actually tries to get close to you, therefore making this harder than the original battle.


 * Once an item like health/energy pick-ups is obtained in a stage (and not from enemy drops), it does not reappear if the player returns to the area where it was until all of their lives are gone. In the original, one could simply scroll off-screen and refill their energy this way (with the exception of 1-ups).


 * The famous "Pause-Unpause" glitch from the NES version has been fixed.


 * Some Robot Master AIs are slightly different.


 * In the original, Mega Man can die from spikes even if he is invincible for a brief moment after getting hit. In the remake, when Mega Man gets hit, he can now stand safely on spikes as long as he is flashing, which is the same mercy invincibility he has in all subsequent games.


 * Because there was no title screen music in the original version, this version uses the Mega Man 3 title music for the title screen.

Mega Man 2

 * Mega Man 2 does not have two different difficulty modes. It should be noted that the original Japanese release, Rockman 2: The Mystery of Dr. Wily, also didn't have a difficulty selection. Gameplay is the same as Difficult mode.


 * Quick Man is much slower in this version, though he no longer takes two points damage from Mega Buster shots as he did in the "Difficult" mode or the Japanese version of Mega Man 2.
 * Flash Man also takes one damage from the Mega Buster instead of two, like he did in "Difficult Mode."
 * Wood Man is considerably taller in this game, making dodging his Leaf Shield much harder. The Leaf Shield is the same size as the one Doc Robot uses in Mega Man 3.


 * Some Robot Master AIs are a bit different.


 * There's some music differences as well: Bubble Man's stage music's bass is much different here than it is in the NES version, and Wood Man's stage music's drum intro has four bars here instead of the six that the NES version had. Bubble Man's music also loops to the start rather than the main part of the song.


 * When the player loses all of their lives, they no longer lose all their E-tanks. In the original, continuing meant forfeiting any and all E-tanks remaining in the inventory, preventing players from farming the start of Metal Man's stage.


 * The Bubble Lead fires slightly upward before falling to the ground, similar to Search Snakes.


 * The Leaf Shield only uses two bars of weapon energy when thrown instead of three, giving the player fourteen uses from a full energy bar instead of nine.


 * The Crash Bomber has a slightly larger blast radius.

Mega Man 3

 * The grey tones on Proto Man's sprites have been changed to white.


 * Proto Man's "shadow" sprites from the ending are found in the game data, but for some reason, Capcom decided to just use a "shadowy" palette on the original sprites instead of those.


 * While not a difference, Proto Man's sprite (both as himself and as Break Man) have updated sprites like Mega Man and the Robot Masters have. They don't have any additional frames of animation, either.


 * The Wily Castle map screen music has been shortened from its original tune. (Incidentally, the extended theme wasn't accessible in-game, anyway.)


 * Like the first two games, some Robot Master AIs are a bit different.


 * Magnet Missiles have odd behavior; sometimes, they do not "home" (right turn up or down) correctly. Hard Man and the Doc Robot Metal Man are much more difficult due to this fact.


 * On the Weapon Select Menu, Rush is now blue instead of red. (This also happens in Wily Tower.)


 * The crocodile-like traps in Hard Man's stage activate more quickly than in the original game, as do other traps.
 * The clouds in Snake Man's stage no longer have gravity issues.
 * All three Holograph Mega Men now have the teleport effect, making it harder to find the true Copy robot.

Wily Tower
Wily Tower is an optional bonus game unlocked after clearing all three Mega Man games on the same save file. In Wily Tower, Dr. Wily has created three new robots specifically designed to destroy Mega Man to act as guardians of the tower. These robots are known as the Genesis Unit, since the game was released for the Sega Genesis, and are patterned on characters from the Chinese novel, Journey to the West.

Players are given the option to pick up to eight out of the twenty-two weapons from Mega Man 1, 2, and 3, as well as up to three out of the seven transport items from those games. (It is possible to begin a stage without selecting any weapons/transport items, but obviously not recommended unless you are looking for a self-imposed challenge.) Wily Tower stages feature nearly all of the enemies from the first three games, with notable exceptions being the Air Tikki from Mega Man 2.

Wily Tower bosses
Genesis Unit:
 * Buster Rod G (Rod)
 * Mega Water S
 * Hyper Storm H

Fortress bosses:
 * Fire Snakey
 * Iron Ball
 * Buster Rod G (Buster)
 * Wily Machine

Development
Artist Keiji Inafune claimed that the development of the game was outsourced and rather slow going. He described the debugging procedure as "an absolute nightmare", even helping out in process himself as he felt bad for the person in charge. "It was so bad," he recalled, "I found myself saying, 'I can't believe we've made it out of there alive.'" The team later questioned whether the nightmare was "truly necessary", which led to changes in procedure to try and avoid similar situations in the future.

With the theme of the game being the novel Journey to the West, Inafune stated that while drawing the three new boss characters he "tried to take the flavor of the theme and give it that Mega Man twist." Other than these characters, Inafune's only other illustrative contribution to the game was the depiction of Mega Man and Rush on the cover art. The soundtrack of The Wily Wars, composed by Kinuyo Yamashita, consists of 16-bit versions of the original Mega Man musical scores, as well as new songs for the Wily Tower portion of the game.

Lockout Bypass
The cartridge version of the game is incompatible with North American Genesis consoles because of the regional lockout. However, if the player has a Galoob Game Genie cheat device, they can enter codes that bypass the lockout and allow the cart to play on the Genesis.

The codes must be entered as follows:

V2AT-BMEJ

EAAT-BL1T

REBT-A6XL

Wily Tower
Using the code, ATNA-CAFG, will allow players to go directly to the Wily Tower, which is inaccessible through older emulators (unless a patch has been applied).

Trivia

 * The version of Mega Man 3 featured in this collection has some game-breaking glitches, though a player is not likely to run into them accidentally.
 * For example, lots of blue Proto Men will appear in Gamma's stage after killing him.


 * When the game was announced, a promotional piece of artwork was made featuring Mega Man shaking hands with Sonic the Hedgehog. The two characters eventually crossed paths in the 12 issue comic book storyline Worlds Collide. The Genesis Unit was also featured repeatedly during the event.


 * The "All Stage Clear" theme from Mega Man 3 isn't featured in the Sound Test option.


 * Interestingly, this game was rated MA-13 (similar to the ESRB's "T-rating") by the Videogame Rating Council (VRC), which is unusual for a Mega Man game.
 * The Australian version of Mega Man: The Wily Wars is rated G and was released by OziSoft. It uses the same cover as the European release but has an OziSoft sticker covering the barcode, with a new barcode printed on the sticker. Oddly, it does not use OziSoft cartridge shells, unlike most Master System and Mega Drive games released in Australia.
 * While the AtGames Genesis cannot save or access the Wily Tower mode, it is accessible with the European AtGames Mega Drive using an original Wily Wars cartridge. However, when playing on this console, the music is out of tune and some sound effects are garbled (notably Wily's UFO).