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 later released in a bundle alongside Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X 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 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.


 * 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. Completing all 100 will unlock Proto Man as a playable character in Story Mode if the player has not already done so through online 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) are from Mega Man 2, and Shield Attackers are from Mega Man 4.


 * The “WARNING” siren that was first introduced in the Mega Man X series from Mega Man X4 on appears for the first time in the classic series.
 * Robot Masters have an opening sequence before the fight starts like they do in Mega Man 7 and 8. They also have a special attack they perform when their health falls below half when the game is played on Normal or Hard.
 * An exception to this is Time Man, who uses his Time Slow on all three difficulty levels.


 * Also similar to 8, special weapons display how many uses they have left.

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.


 * Proto Man states that he has an unstable nuclear core. In the original canon, he has an unstable solar core. Dr. Wily also isn’t aware of Proto Man's existence, while he took Proto Man in the original timeline.


 * 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".