Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chōsensha

Rockman & Forte: Mirai kara no Chōsensha (ロックマン&フォルテ 未来からの挑戦者), translated as Rockman & Forte: Challenger from the Future in English, is a pesudo-sequel to Mega Man & Bass developed by Bandai in cooperation and under license by Capcom, released in 1999 for the Bandai WonderSwan. The game was one of the last games released in the classic series before Mega Man 9 in 2008.

Overview
Like in Mega Man & Bass, the player can choose to play as Mega Man or Bass. Once again Mega Man can charge his shots and slide while Bass can fire in 7 directions (straight up, straight forward, or any diagonal) with a rapid-fire arm cannon, do a double jump, and dash. This time, however, Mega Man and Bass each get different Special Weapons from the Robot Masters they defeat. Auto's shop returns with some of the items from Mega Man &amp; Bass, but now Reggae and Tango are available for Bass and Mega Man respectively.

Rockman & Forte: Mirai kara no Chōsensha only has 8 stages. After finishing the opening stage, five stages are selectable initially, including the opening stage. The first four selectable bosses are (from top to bottom) Dangan Man, Konro Man, Aircon Man and Komuso Man. Defeating all the bosses will unlock the Clock Men, and after defeating them, Compass Man and then finally Rockman Shadow.

Story
From the game's opening scene: ''The year is 200X. A group of robots calling themselves the Dimensions attacked Symphony City, a city where people and robots lived in peace. Though without any witnesses, the one leading the Dimensions with overwhelming power was a robot like Rockman. He was said to be a dark and wicked person completely obsessed with destruction. Rockman, who heard this news at Right's laboratory, took off to the scene despite being under maintenance. At the same time, Wily saw the dark Rockman, and to ascertain the mystery he sends Forte to the city. Just who is this dark Rockman really?!''


 * Rockman Shadow: "My name is Rockman Shadow! I am a robot with great power. I won't forgive those who don't obey me!"
 * Rockman: "Stop your harming of everyone! Who the heck are you? How can it be you look just like me?"
 * Forte: "I've come to end the life of Rockman who I hate to this day, but somehow this situation is different than usual."
 * Rockman: "Forte, I don't have time to be concerned with that now. I must hold back those robots!"
 * Forte: "Ch! It can't be helped, Wily's laboratory is near this city. I won't carry out our war of attrition here!"

For the time being, the two had to set aside their differences and face the new threat of the Dimensions. After defeating all of them, they face their leader, Rockman Shadow, and he reveals that he came after the time period that Dr. Wily visited with the Time Skimmer in Mega Man II. In that time, Wily "kidnapped" Rockman and reprogrammed him, turning him into a robot named Quint. Rockman Shadow, however, was created prior to Quint, and is the result of creating a robot like Rockman but ultimately discarding it in favor of turning Rockman into Quint.

Note: The year is given in the game as 200X, but this is often considered either a typographical error or a canonical mistake as the game was, at the time, chronologically the last game in the classic Mega Man/Rockman series, and recent games took place in the more ambiguous 20XX time period.

Bosses
Intro Stage Boss: Grey Devil

Robot Masters:

Final Boss:
 * Rockman Shadow

Item shop
Dr. Light and Roll run a shop and create items in exchange of Screws that can be found throughout the stages. All the items are available to purchase from the beginning. Dr. Light is the shopkeeper in Mega Man's story, and Roll in Bass' story.

Except for the Super Buster, Hyper Buster, Energy Balancer, Energy Saver, Super Recover and Super Armor, all items can be used only once, needing to be purchased again after usage.

Trivia

 * Mega Man ZX Advent references some bosses of this game as comic book characters. If the player can collect a certain Secret Disk, Konro Man appears in the cover of a digital comic book and is described as a walking stove hero. The Hunter Ray says he wants to create a comic book about a robot that fights with a folding fan in each hand (Aircon Man), and the item "Comic (Orange)" that can be obtained in Sharon's request is an action comic about two talking wrist watches (Clock Men).


 * This is notably one of the few Mega Man games where Dr. Wily was not the mastermind behind the events or even a boss.


 * This is the only Mega Man game to feature mini-bosses in all the Robot Masters stages.


 * The Robot Masters in this game do not have an invincibility period after being hit, allowing the player to continuously attack them if possible, though bosses have points in their attack patterns in which they are invincible.


 * The Special Weapons in this game do a set damage against all bosses so every boss in the game takes the same amount of damage from a weapon, such as Barrier Wind/Forte Cyclone dealing 5 units of damage to every boss. Rapid hitting weapons deal less damage but easily drain the boss' HP.


 * The player does not recover weapon energy between stages in this game.


 * The game uses remixed soundtracks from Mega Man & Bass, but degraded in quality to meet the limitations of the WonderSwan.
 * After defeating a Robot Master in the game, the portrait of the Robot Master on the stage select screen alters to reflect this.


 * This is the only Rockman licensed game to be mentioned in the book R20 Rockman & Rockman X Official Complete Works.


 * The player can have only a maximum of eight lives in this game as opposed to the traditional nine.
 * Enemies in this game resemble enemies from the X series as many are insects, as well as Batton Bones being common place throughout stages. It is possible that the enemies fought are early production Mechnoloids.