The first 1,000 people to use the link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare: skl.sh/gottabefrank01231 Hey! Hope you enjoyed today's video! If you have played The Wily Wars, let me know! Also check out the new streaming channel. I'll be playing many games, including ones starring the blue bomber. www.youtube.com/@gottabefranklive
The best thing about this game is the Wily Tower mode. I love that it gives you the option to choose each weapon and special items from the 3 games to use in between stages. The bosses were fun to fight as well!
This actually introduced me into the series. Some of my friends sent me a bootleg cart of the american Mega Man the wily wars and said it was good, I played it and it was really good, I love the remastered OST.
I thought I was going crazy bro 🤣 because I remembered seeing them around when I was a kid. I never played them because I had a SNES. But my local video rental store had one copy. He used to say, "you can't find this no where else." I thought it was just rare when I was a kid. The cover was looking real & everything. But I was a kid (6-8). I'm in my 30's now 😅 but I remembered want to play it so bad when I was a kid. But I didn't have that kinda console.
Great Video! Wily Wars has 2 notable gameplay difference from the originals: In the original Mega Man 1 the room right before the place that forces the use of magnet beam has a weapon energy capsule, going back and forth makes the capsule respawn so you don’t need to get a game over if you don’t have enough Magnet Beam. That capsule doesn’t respawn in Wily Wars. Getting a game over in the original Mega Man 2 removes all of E-Tanks you collected. That is a big problem during the Wily Machine fight because the second phase is weak to Crash Bombs and the previous level had the Boobeam Trap fight that forces to use all of yours crash bombs. So, you ether fight Wily with the Buster and E-tanks or you a get a game over and fight him with his weakness but with no E-tanks. Wily Wars fix this problem by letting you keep the E-tanks after a game over just like Mega Man 3 onwards. Also, Mega Man is taller in Wily Wars so that’s probably why you had trouble with that jump in Mega Man 2 Wily fortress 1. The funny thing is that they kept proto man with the same height as the original mega man 3 and he looks so small compared to Mega man.
There's a few other major changes. There's some delay between you buster shots making it impossible to mash stuff down like you can in the nes versions. Some of the damage tables have also been altered. Some bosses no longer take more than one damage from the buster. This makes some bosses like Cut Man and Quick Man significantly harder to take down buster only.
Mega Man in Wily Wars can use his taller sprite as an advantage to use an Item 2 on the floor and get through the one block high wall while also get the 1-up in Heat Man's level.
I'm pretty sure a few bosses were recreated from scratch, too. Spark Man doesn't jump to fixed points in the level and moves a fixed distance, Elec Man feels so much more aggressive than the original, and Copy Robot seems to be all too willing to jump into your Fire Storm. Also Yellow Devil's boss door doesn't close and you can just stand to the left side and fight him with little difficulty
I'd imagine it was easier to recreate the SFII music on the Genesis because both the Genesis and the arcade version had music that was created with FM synthesis (though with less channels and less impressive sample playback) whereas the NES had a PSG that could produce square and triangle waves as well as noise. The Genesis did have the PSG from the master system in it, but it lacked triangle waves.
I feel like there's something missing from the remakes, but not enough to feel horrible. It reminds me of Super Mario All-Stars, where the games feel different, but still good enough.
My biggest issue with Wily Wars is you CANNOT stack your shots by shooting in quick succession. In the NES version, you could stack the normal shots up to 3 on screen at a time. This made it easier to kill enemies. Also if you try to use Turbo Buttons for the shot on Wily Wars, it won't work because you can't shoot 3 times in a row really fast.
Something to mention is that they nerfed the hell out of the mega buster in wily wars it can only shoot three pellets but in the originals the buster was faster and could fire indefinetely
@@GottaBeFrank You can run at the same speed as the buster shots in wily level 1-3 with the flowing water, so they won't even leave the screen. That threw me off a bit.
I love how this is a Remake AND a sequel; the Gameplay was ported and the Graphics remade and the story tells how Dr. Wily sends Mega Man back into the past to refight all his past machines and also builds a Wily Tower filled with these contraptions again aswell. Amazing ❤️
it's so funny that this game and Castlevania Bloodlines are available in more systems than the original Sega Genesis (or the Sega Channel in the case of the US release of Wily Wars) 20+ years later. I'm really mixed on Wily Wars really liked the graphic makeover the games received BUT MAN the OST is just really weird but at least Wily Tower has it better being original compositions (also yeah SF2 sounds really good on Genesis). Other of my gripes is that the game runs a bit slower and the fact that you shoot 2 pallets instead of 3. Also why i'm not surprised that the At Games version just breaks everything without question. Still is a decent collection and at least Wily Tower is a great final challenge and the references to Journey to the West were amazing and yes i went through the torture of finishing the trilogy (still don't like those tracks) to just play that mode Good video Frank!
The Wily Wars on the genesis mini was actually my first introduction to playing the Megaman games, and I’d say while there are some flaws to it in comparison to the original, I do like it more than the original versions of the first 3 games. I really enjoy coming back to wily tower, that’s definitely the highlight of it for me. The whole remake idea itself with this extra mode is something I would’ve loved to see them also do for 4-6.
Someone already mentioned it, but the Sequel Wars is going to be that Mega Man 4-6 remake. I covered it in the SAGE 2022 video and it's coming along nicely. It even has a fun mini game.
There's also a fan rom hack of this named "The Sequel Wars" currently in development, which is going to cover 4, 5 and 6 Currently only 4 is out but 5 is set to release soon
The fact that there's that delay in the jumping and seems like the shooting is slower too. This just ruins the whole game for me. That part in the first stage of Wileys castle where you have to jump on the items, I could never even get past it. On the original NES I could do it like butter.
omg one Sunday i picked up my genesis mini and played through all three (while using save states) and it has become my preferred way to play through the first three. it got me on my mega man brain rot, so it's nice to see some coverage of this port. I still like NES 4-6 but i'm a big sucker for the 16 bit era, so i prefer the wily wars/All stars over their NES counterparts... but god damn is that slow down an eye sore. never experienced outside of the mini or NSO but it can really lessen the enjoyment if you experince it that way.
@@GottaBeFrank I really want to, but a week or two ago one of my joycons broke. I'll definitely play it as soon as I get new ones and after I finish X Legacy Collection 2. Also, is there no rapid fire button on NSO?
I'm a little surprised with how many people I've seen complain about the music being "so bad." Some of it I think actually came out better in this version than the NES, some of it not, and other songs just different. There's a lot of really good things I hear in its music, but it seems that some people just hear the twang & can't hear anything beyond that. I thought they did good overall despite it being on the Genesis. Some of the instruments in the NES versions' songs sound a bit pitchy to me (many in MM2, some in MM1, not really in MM3). I think Electric Guitar is typically much noisier & lacking good clarity (how it's usually used, not that it has to be), yet never see mention of that anywhere.
I’m a seasoned Mega Man Player. Wily Wars Mega Man actually has less onscreen Mega Pellets (3) than he does NES Mega Man, meaning he can’t DPS with his main weapon as well if you’re looking to just run Mega Buster. While I agree it’s a fantastic looking remake, it’s definitely harder than the NES Games. It’s not a port, it’s truly another animal built from the ground up from original code.
I actually disagree on the music, believe it or not. I DO concede that it doesn't take full advantage of the hardware like other games. But I actually strongly dislike Quick Man's theme on the NES. Whereas in Wily Wars, I actually LOVE IT! And another point for the performance: the game was coded in C, if I'm not mistaken. C is an interpreted language much like BASIC. So programs run slower as the hardware reads the line before execution. On modern hardware, it's practically a negligible impact. But back then, it was slower than Assembly was.
You mentioned slowdown differences between the jp and us releases. So, retro-bit actually did some programming work on their release to reduce some of the slowdown. I imagine this is what you saw.
to be fair, the sega channel version had that slow down, i too owe that slow down for helping me learn yellow devil, now that you got that down you should be able to tackle him legit in mm1 on the nes as it is the same pattern.
This is what got me into megaman when I was younger cause the nes games were to hard for me then but I like the nes versions more although I still see this as a great remake collection
12:03 "It's done really well." Not if you download an emulated version. For 15 years people have been trying to figure this out, but on emulated versions, after beating a game, instead of saying "all clear" the game will show a blank save for that specific game, showing all 6/8 bosses alive.
Wily Wars' music wasn't that great outside of the wily tower, but I really, really like the password screen music for Mega Man 2. There isn't really a password system or anything though, so it only plays on the continue screen. One of the few songs I like more than the original.
There is an 8-bit demake of Wily Towers with playable Proto Man and Bass and a rebalanced weapons mod (also secret unlockable Mega Man hunters stages and boss fights). It is really good and if you are interested in Wily Towers but don't like the issues the original Wily Wars has, it is the version I recommend. Heck, if I remember correctly, you can even use the weapons of Oil Man and Time Man.
Bud, I'm a huge sucker for the soundtrack, I loved the songs so much. TopMan and HeatMan I understand, but QuickMan? Wily Wars was what made me start loving Quick's theme, and FlashMan is perfect. Don't even get me STARTED with Wily Tower Stage 4!
Cool to see you cover these as well! I played Wily Wars back in the dark times, between the original release and the later re-releases via emulation of a romhack of what I think was the JP version that had a lot of unofficial bugfixes, replaced the JP graphics and text with the PAL ones, and got rid of a lot of the slowdowns (but not Yellow Devil, I clearly remember that crawl of a fight LOL). I enjoyed it back in the day, but like you, I always go back to the originals to replay these. I'm with you in that the music was butchered; it's even more obvious how much better it should have been with how many Genesis remixes there are on YT alone of these songs. But hearing that it had such a troubled development, that makes sense; I can see the soundtrack being one of the last things they worked on since it would have just been recomposing the existing songs for the most part. Interesting and cool to see that Minakuchi Engineering made the remakes, though. Yeah, I only know their game from the World games, but hearing that clicks a lot of things together for Wily Wars because, in a sense, it's a lot of more of the same concep as World 1-4, except they had to stick more true to the OG games.
It's totally worth playing today, so long as you mind the cooldown and slow speed of shots, the unexplained lag from the C+ programming, and the sometimes odd music. Luckily, ROM hacks (like mine) help with these issues and more! Doesn't help the Virtual Console or Mini Drive versions, but eh. 🤷♀️
It's a decent remake of the first three games IMO, but he weirdness with jumping and shooting are hard to overlook. It never felt right on any version of it, but overall, I always wondered what it would've been like if they sent with the SNES instead.
I played Wily war on the Nintendo Switch online and i though it was fun and also enjoyed the musics cause i love Mega Drive/Genesis sounding music also sens it was the second Classic Megaman that i had played i would say it's a fun remake of 1 through 3 (now let's see the fan-game that goes from 4 to 6)
heres a funny detail you'd only pick up on after beating the gameboy games... but the final wily robot is a sidescrolling adaptation of the final boss from the 4th gb game albeit the 2nd phase of the fight is completely original, though they did reuse the capsule fight and attacks from that game so there is a bit of connective tissue
Wily Wars is my favorite title in the Mega Man Classic Series by a long shot, and my 2nd favorite game in the franchise as a whole (X8 dethroned it after it had a very long running). Mega Man 2 was previously my favorite game in the series, and I feel the Wily Wars edition easily ties its position. Then there's Mega Man 1 & 3, the two games on the NES I consider to be extremely rough around the edges. The improvements made to them in Wily Wars render the NES versions completely obsolete. Mega Man 1 controls significantly better and has 10 pounds less jank, and Mega Man 3 has lots of little changes that make it a lot more satisfying to play. Particularly with the changes made to the Top Spin; it went from being completely useless in the NES version to being insanely useful for plowing through stage enemies, a lot like the Charge Kick from Mega Man 5 but applied to the jump instead of the slide. Wily Tower is great too, but I don't have much to say about it beyond "yep that sure is a fun Mega Man experience".
100%. If you think Super Mario All stars is worth it, this game is that with some extra content. Technically, lost levels was added content in the west, but still, same principles must apply.
Honnestly, even though the Sega Genesis could do way better, I love the cheap/saturated/metallic sound of Megaman The Wily Wars. It makes me think of an old school new wave or heavy metal band
For me this always was the best way to introduce yourself into the Megaman games with it's improved graphics, save feature and extra content, the worst thing for me was that it appeared too late, if it appeared earlier perhaps we also could have had a second part with the remaining NES games.
The problem with the rearranged music in the Megadrive/Genesis version is the exact same problem with the rearranged music in Super Mario All-Stars's renditions of the various stages in Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, USA, & 3/1, Lost Levels, 2, & 3 on Super Famicom/Super Nintendo: as much as I love me some good bass, THERE'S ENTIRELY TOO MUCH OF IT HERE!! It's just not the same with all that in there. The original tunes were perfect for a reason. Granted, some franchises that started on the older consoles would get better music over time - just look at how the main theme of Final Fantasy 1 evolved over its ports and remakes, nevermind that main theme itself across ALL FF games - but that doesn't mean that's applicable to everything. 😒😒😒 Also, the screen resolution is a bit different for the larger real estate; just like in the All-Stars versions of Super Mario 1, USA (I think you can see that I refuse to call the game we originally got in the US as the second Mario game "Super Mario Bros. 2"), & 3, the Wily Wars versions of Megaman 2&3 have some jumps that are pretty easy to only slightly challenging on the original version...but need to be relearned because they're a bit tougher here than they should be. (There's a fanmade project called Megaman: The Sequel Wars that'll do the same treatment for Megaman 4-6; only Megaman 4 is available so far, aaaaaand I do NOT look forward to Brightman's stage.)
All genesis/megadrive games regardless of region were 4:3. Pretty much all TV's of the era were, worldwide. If your emulator isn't scaling to 4:3, then it's misconfigured. Unfortunately this is a common misconfiguration as non-square pixels really confuse the crap out of some people, even emulator devs. Even game devs on those systems back in the day got it messed up from time to time. Lot's of stretched moons in those days. 😂
9:25, Capcom didn’t have a big output on Sega consoles until the Saturn, those designers may not be as familiar with the hardware as you’re thinking, despite it’s similarities to the SNES. I would double check before making that assumption. Let me do that for you real quick. Okay, it was outsourced to another company that only had experience making the GB mega man games and some (like 40 games total, maybe. ALL uncredited) other obscure arcade stuff. So yeah, probably mostly a young team with little experience.
Mostly, I only really experienced slow down when there were a lot of sprites on screen (e.g., when the torpedo enemies from Mega Man 1 exploded). Not sure why the programmers didn't limit the sprites, as it can be pretty noticeable. Mostly, it didn't seem to run (much) slower than the NES versions.
I grew up playing A LOT of mega man. I still play mega man games to this day. I like the wily wars collection but to me, the controls feel...off. A little. I cant explain it. I struggle a bit playing this version. The wily tower, however, makes it all worthwhile. Being able to pick and choose your weapons and items is such a neat gimmick. Edit: i play on the switch.
I honestly thought the wily wars would be another horrible megaman spinoff, but it isn't too bad actually... The music can do some work, the lag has its ups and downs, but the texture and assets are even more better than the og. It's a good experience overall 8.5/10.
My main issue with this game is that the movement/input works ever so sliiiiightly different than on the NES versions that introduces an ever so slight input lag (if my memory serves there is a delay when you are turning around to move a different direction) and if you have played the NES versions a lot it feels really weird. If you've never played the NES versions you might actually not even realize there is an issue (and maybe it isn't an issue, it is just different).
The example given of the Street Fighter II Championship edition actually sounds a bit twangier to me in some ways, not less, & I hear more of that classic "Genesis sound" in it. In some ways better & worse I suppose.
This remake was the 1st Megaman game i ever played actually and it was the japanese version Rockman Megaworld and that version apear in Latam more then North America then is kinda suprising then some games on the japanese version was released on Argentina too.
I like the music in it's own way, but it's definitely not the rock the original soundtrack is known for. What I don't really get about the music is why they went with almost sonic like soundfont. It's not like the genesis can't do rock, just look at streets of rage. But I guess they thought that type of sound was too much?
sega channel wasn't really high priced, i had one to experience this game in the 90s and it was like 15 bucks a month. my mom still talks about what a great deal that was considering that a single new game on the genesis back in the day was 50-60 bucks and the sega channel gave you access to so many games.
It's a pitty that the enemy logic is not exactly the same as in the originals. Plush I think the music on NES is better. Why can't there be a mix of both - or has there been some kind of remastered versions of the first games?!?
I played the Genesis Mini version until my console broke down (Sadly, I kept leaving it on like the idiot I was, so it wouldn't turn on, and the light wouldn't turn off properly), and I really liked it. It was hard, but I didn't find the controls too intrusive(apart from the fact that you can't spam the Buster as fast as you could like in the NES version), but this was during my GB Mega man phase. And while the music is inferior to the originals (No remix can top it), it's still pretty good. I'd say it's worth a shot. Here's how far I got in (almost) all the games: Mega man 1: Wily Stage 1 Mega man 2: Purple hell (Wily stage 4) Mega man 3: Shadow man"s stage (regular)
you should feel bad about downloading a game that was never physically released in your locality. the only physically release after all is a reproduction, which would use a rom itself.
If you got a Genesis mini than, ya it's worth trying out, but it's not a huge miss out. I've played and beat it on there, thought it was alright, but idk it just felt off the whole time, could just be too used to the famicom versions. An aside is that 4 and 5 are still the games I'm more likely to play anyways, which aren't part of the wily wars.
I played Mega Man 2 and 3 a lot, with 3 being the first game I learned to beat deathless. Playing these versions feel off. And weird things that don’t feel right (like you can use Rush Coil to bypass the jumping block part in Magnet Man’s stage, which was not possible on the NES version).
This comment will probably never be seen but a a few things to add: 1. The sound is ass for a couple reasons, the first is they couldn't just port it over from the nes as the Ricoh 2A03 is a 6502 assembly processor which is a bit different then all 3 variations on the genesis sound chip(its technically all assembly, but different versions of it). The slowdown/whine give away what sound chip sega gave them specs for; the genesis 3, which did not have a stand alone sound chip and just ran shit through the processor(hence the slowdown, also no optimizing). Had the games sound been run though say the Gen1-2 YH sound synthesizer it wouldn't have had the issues it does. Sadly it was built for gen 3, which is known to be pure , unmitigated ear aids. 2.The game was actually cancelled for a physical release in the US, then back on and then shitcanned again(there was an article in Gamepro, Tips-and-tricks and brief commentary in EGM) The dev time on the game was absolutely brutal and almost all of the game had to be done from scratch with fuck all help from Capcom. There was even a story/rumor that the original director almost ended himself over the project and the stress, though I haven't found significant evidence of this other then some scant message boards that are long gone(RIP Yahoo geocities) 3.Don't be ashamed to emulate it. The Sega channel had limited access by region, was expensive AF at the time where it was located(being 100$ a month for the service as well as the 13 sub) and was notorious for both game corruption and general hardware failure. Also if you cancelled, goodbye to ALL your games. I had exactly 1 friend with it and ...lets just say "play a game" was much more" start the download and go play SNES" because it would take HOURS to finish in most instances. As for the Elec man my only advice is Git Gud :p
Actually, the Retro-Bit version is the optimized version, with less slowdown. But I haven't tried the Genesis Mini version so I'll be back when I see it in action.
Genesis Mini has a tiny bit of slowdown. I noticed it in the Ice Man battle in Mega Man 1. I've been looking for footage of the game, using a real Retro-Bit cart, and it looks like there is a bit more, but nowhere near the original.
are their additional scenes in the Wily Wars versions of these games, or in that Wily Tower additional part of the game, with more text based dialog moments or other aspects of characters speaking or text based narration? I ask because our first video on our channel was adding voice acting to the dialog and narration scenes in the first 3 Megaman games. (with the current video being worked on right now for Megaman 4). I am wanting to see if there is cause to do voice acting for the Wily Wars at some point as well, or if there are any additional scenes in that version of the game for our voice acting team to work on. Also, as a Megaman fan, if you would like the opportunity to do some voice acting in any of our future Megaman videos for any of the characters from classic, to X, to Battle Network, let us know.
@@GottaBeFrank Thank you. Tells me a bit more. We probably will do the Wily Wars at some point. maybe as like some remastered version of our first video down the road. But does't seem it needs to be a very high priority in doing voice acting for the full Megaman pantheon of games.
I understand it is the best way to do that, but without my method, I would have no idea that there was a change to Mega Man's height. I guess it's a blessing in disguise when I'm looking for significant differences that could affect gameplay.
It controls just differently enough to be a problem since I'm so used to the NES controls. And the music did not play up to the Genesis' strengths like it could've. And Mega Man's soundtrack is perfect for the Genisis synthesizer.
"The European version is expensive and suffers from slowdowns; The Japanese version is also expensive and has region locking." (Source: The Gaming Historian- Mega Man on Sega)
I had a rom of wily wars back in the day. I have a soft spot for it (even the music haha) but I hated the slowdown. The switch online version is the way to go since a lot of the lag has been cut down like you said. It’s worth a go, not as polished as super Mario all stars, but a fun experience for any mega man fan. There actually are some improvements to the game, in addition to saving your game, it’s easier to land on ledges. There are a few spots in NES Megaman 3 (Gemini and doc robot) where you can soft lock if you don’t have rush coil. You can just barely make those jumps now.
Wiley Wars on the Genesis will always be the superior go to port of the classic. Genesis just does what nintendont even the modern ports of these games are butter cheeks. Coulda been really a super game even more had Capcom done better optimization to remove the slowtendo original's choppiness and limitations of 8 bit dookie.
The Genesis version is not without its own slowdown, plus the games are significantly harder because the maximum rate of fire is so slow, and many of the bosses take twice as many hits to kill.
Honestly I think I like Wily Wars’s version of Hard Man’s theme more than I like the original NES version, but other than that I don’t find myself listening to much of the other Wily Wars themes (except for Mega Water S, he’s my favorite)
To me, I turned away as I want to OWN the game and play it via cheaply. The subscription for it on Switch is why I have no interest in playing any digital games on the console. Virtual console was much better.
Me personally I don't think Wily Wars improves on much at all with the originals. Graphically I find a lot of stuff either got lost in translation or the detail added is incredibly arbitrary and kinda ugly, like they HAD to fill some sort of color quota but just used it on slapping deep shadows on everything. On paper 8-bit games should be cake to improve on but not only are the games visually very top tier for NES as is, they also have strong art direction to boot that Wily Wars doesn't seem to take into much account, admittedly with some exceptions. Mega Man having the only redone set of sprites too is pretty awkward when he's put up against recolored robot master sprites that are half his size. The music as mentioned leaves a lot to be desired which is disappointing because Mega Man on the Genesis on paper should sound fucking awesome. The Genesis has this electric kick that should have been a total shoe-in for Mega Man's style of music but I guess a tiny dev window will do that. The slowdown on the Genesis especially is absolutely inexcusable (I'm not gonna count a fix made 30 years after the fact though kudos to whoever did fix it for the re-release) and I noticed the game does a lot of little stuff that bugs me to no end, like the aforementioned tiptoe before a sprint, the fact Mega Man has this big cooldown on his lemons, some of the bosses who used to be weak to the buster only take one hit of damage, etc. I generally feel just how rushed this was and Wily Tower, while a neat bonus, doesn't save the whole package for me. Worth a run through for curiosity's sake but it certainly isn't a replacement imo
Not a fan of the change from the black (to me atmospheric) backgrounds. Take the dragon fight as an example. I have the same issue with the Mario remakes/remasters on SNES.
The genesis version of cutman music is my favourite, more so than the NES version. I will agree that elec man stage music does sound better on the NES though
11:13 - this is interesting. I seem to recall recall that the retrobit release was supposed to have been patched/fixed by the retrobit team before release. It was even a listed feature. I don’t remember sega saying there were any changes at all to the Sega Chanel version on the Mini. Heh, I didn’t even give it a chance- just went straight for the retrobit release. Thanks for pointing out the truth! The sprite art really is great on this. Feels like a more serious version of 7, ya know, like if 7 weren’t made to make megaman look like an anime 😅. Great video!
Looking at the thumbnail, I do not understand why it was so hard for box artists to get Mega Man right. If not body, they had no issues ruining his face
