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 and was only available for download through Sega's "Sega Channel" service in the mid-to-late 1990s.

Story
Tired of having his plans failed 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.

(The storyline above comes from the game's instruction booklet and promotional materials. It is contradicted by brief in-game sequences which do not appear to contain any time travel.)

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 is able to do sidesteps.


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


 * All three games now have a "save game" feature. However, the "password" feature was 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 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, Normal 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 Mega Man's boss select screen simply showed the Robot Masters' in-game sprites as icons, the Wily Wars 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.
 * Another thing like this is that 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 are obtained in a stage (and not from enemy drops), they do not reappear if the player returns to the area where they were until all of their lives are gone. In the original, one could simply scroll off-screen and refill their energy this way. In the original game, however, 1-ups couldn't be re-obtained this way.


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


 * Some Robot Master AIs are slightly different.


 * In the original game, Mega Man can die from spikes even if he is invincible for a brief moment after getting hit. However, 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.


 * Quick Man is much slower in this version, though he no longer takes two 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."


 * Some Robot Master AIs are a bit different.


 * 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. Now it is possible to do so.

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, neither Proto Man nor Break Man have been resized 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 quicker than the original game, so do other traps.

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 eight out of the twenty-two weapons from Mega Man 1, 2, and 3, as well as three out of the seven transport items from those games. 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
 * Mega Water S
 * Hyper Storm H

Fortress bosses:
 * Fire Snakey
 * Iron Ball
 * Buster Rod G
 * 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 questioning whether the nightmare was "truly necessary", 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 at the front screen 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 emulation (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 "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.