Mega Man Powered Up

Mega Man Powered Up, known as Rockman Rockman (ロックマン ロックマン) in Japan, is a remake of the first Mega Man game. It was released worldwide for the PlayStation Portable in March 2006.

It was released in a bundle alongside Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X (also for the PSP) and was slated for release on the PSP's PlayStation Network. It was released for the PlayStation Network service in Japan, but a US release did not occur due to technical difficulties. The game uses a chibi-style that was intended for the original game but was not possible at the time.

The designers intended to keep this design faithful to the way the characters worked and looked in the original. While it received generally positive reviews, the game sold poorly, and plans for a remake of Mega Man 2 titled Mega Man Powered Up 2 fell through.

Differences from Mega Man

 * The game features a graphical overhaul with 3D character models in a chibi-style and updated environments, as well as voice-acting.


 * Two new Robot Masters, Time Man and Oil Man, have been added to the game, bringing the total number of Robot Masters up to the traditional eight instead of six.


 * To fit the two new Robot Masters into the cycle, the entire weakness order has been redone and no longer follows the original game. For example, Elec Man is weak to the Oil Slider instead of the Rolling Cutter. Fire Man and Cut Man are the only Robot Masters to keep their original weaknesses.


 * A difficulty selection is available, with the options being Easy, Normal, and Hard. The setting changes the player's health and damage, the amount of checkpoints, and enemy patterns. Easy mode also makes certain platforming sections easier by adding extra blocks.


 * The player can play as all eight Robot Masters from the game, as well as Mega Man (plus his three alternate forms), Roll (downloadable), and Proto Man (unlockable and downloadable), bringing a total of eleven playable characters. The Robot Masters are unlocked by defeating them with the Mega Buster, although if the player has beaten the game at least once on Normal difficulty but hasn't unlocked all of the Robot Masters, then it is inadvisable to use charged shots against the yet-to-be-unlocked Robot Masters as hitting one of these Robot Masters with just a single charged shot will prevent the player from unlocking them unless they play the stage again. They can also be used to complete certain character-specific Challenges and levels in Story Mode. When the player uses a Robot Master to play a level that the Robot Master originally resided in, they will fight "Mega Man?" instead.


 * There are two modes that are available to play: New Style and Old Style. New Style gives the player the chance to play as all of the eight Robot Masters and features level design changes (in order to utilize the PlayStation Portable's wide-screen display) as well as music remixes. Old Style is nearly identical to the original Mega Man, and Time Man and Oil Man are not available to fight against.
 * Additionally, the music remixes from the New Style are actually the lower pitches of the original music.


 * Unlike the original Mega Man, weapon projectiles cannot pass through walls.


 * There are 100 new challenges, ten for each of the nine playable characters (Roll and Proto Man do not have their own challenges) and ten boss rush challenges, which involve beating some or all of the bosses in one run. They are mostly very short, but most of them are brutally challenging. Completing all 100 will unlock Proto Man as a playable character in Story Mode.


 * A construction mode is available for players to build their own Mega Man stages.


 * An online mode is also available for players to upload and download custom-built levels from the "Mega Man Web" (Rockman Rockman Web in Japan). The player also has the choice to download both Roll and Proto Man from the online mode.


 * Some enemies are borrowed from other games in the series. For example, Hotheads and Tellies (known as Bobbles in-game) come over from Mega Man 2, and Shield Attackers come over from Mega Man 4.


 * The WARNING siren that was first introduced in the Mega Man X series (specifically Mega Man X4) appears for the first time in the classic series. Fittingly for the nature of the game and, in comparison to the Mega Man X series and beyond, the classic series overall, it was depicted as bells ringing with slight blips and red flashing before the warning appears in a comparatively childish font while colored red and having yellow borders and a high-pitched voice yelling the word before vanishing in a flash of light.


 * Much like Mega Man 7 and 8, each boss has an elaborated entrance. For example, Elec Man comes from a lightning bolt that shoots from the sky, and Ice Man appears from a large chunk of ice that is suddenly created out of thin air.


 * In another reference to Mega Man 7 and 8, each boss has a special attack, which they only use when their health falls below half of the maximum. In this state, they are temporarily invincible whilst they unleash their attack. They only use this attack when the difficulty is set to Normal or Hard, however.
 * An exception to this is Time Man, who uses his Time Slow on all three difficulty levels.

Castle Wily Bosses

 * Stage 1: Yellow Devil
 * Stage 2: CWU-01P
 * Stage 3: The 8 Robot Masters (or 7 plus Mega Man?, see below) and Copy Robot (a copy of the player's character)
 * Stage 4: Wily Machine Number 1

Others

 * Proto Eye: Boss from the Opening Stage in New Style.
 * Mega Man?: When playing as one of the eight Robot Masters, Mega Man? replaces him in his stage and boss rematches.

Trivia

 * A demo version of this game is playable in Mega Man Maverick Hunter X.


 * Mega Man Powered Up received generally positive reviews, with aggregate scores of 83% on GameRankings and 82 out of 100 on Metacritic as of May 2010. However, the remake sold poorly at retail stores in America, as noted by Electronic Gaming Monthly.
 * Along with low sales, the game has been on Electronic Gaming Monthly's "Japan Issue" on a top 10 list of where Japan went wrong, with Oil Man as a "racist stereotype" type of character.
 * Mega Man Powered Up is like Mega Man 8, considering when using a special weapon, it shows how many uses are left, and Mega Man and the other Robot Masters can talk.


 * Strangely, Proto Man states that he has an unstable nuclear core. In the first few games, he had an unstable solar core, and Doctor Wily doesn't seem to be aware of Proto Man's existence, while he took Proto Man in, again, within the first few games, making this game have quite a few plotholes. However, Proto Man's story is non-canon and is more of a bonus "what-if" scenario.


 * Mega Man's bio in the instruction booklet mentions that he likes animals, especially dogs. This is a possible nod to Rush.


 * Knight Roll is a reference to Ghosts'n Goblins.


 * In the credits roll, Keiji Inafune is credited as "Inafuking" instead of "Inafking".