Rockman & Forte
Format: GameBoy Advance (import)
Published by: Capcom
Based on: A hero's fall from glory
Genre: 2D Platformer
Media: 32 Mbit cartridge
Date: 9 August 2002
Retire, Megaman! For everlasting dignity!
Deep within the corporate bowels of Capcom live a race of tiny gnomes. These gnomes are vitally important to the company's future, yet ask for little more than stale rice crackers and tiny plastic baubles as recompense for their efforts. That's because the real reward of their work is the task itself; these gnomes derive immense satisfaction from crawling into people's brains and reading the thoughts imprinted there. I know this for a fact because it's my brain they're invading, my thoughts they're reporting back to their cruel masters at Capcom. I can feel them, up there, climbing around and poking through the coiled lobes of my mind. When it's quiet, I can hear their little chattering voices, squeaking away as they lay bare my innermost thoughts and transmit their tiny little reports on their tiny little faxes.
I've tried the usual remedies for this sort of thing - wearing earplugs, donning a tinfoil hat, sucking down wasabi milkshake after wasabi milkshake (they're allergic to milk and horseradish, you know). But it's still not working, because Capcom is still cranking out games specifically tailored to my preferences. It's flattering that the company regards me as such an important customer that they mold their entire product line around my tastes, but it's rather disquieting to think some foreign corporation is privy to my most private thoughts. It interferes with my social life, too - every time I have a meaningful conversation with my girlfriend, she uses hypnosis to make me forget everything we talked about so that her privacy will be preserved.
Besides that, it's not as though I like all these games they're building from my mental template, either. They're designed based on my preferences, yes, but that works both ways - at least half the time Capcom's games are specifically crafted to be the exact opposite of what I want to play. I guess somewhere along the way they noticed that the games I can't stand are the ones that sell best, so they've taken to using their gnomes to determine what I dislike about games and thus what is most likely to be lucrative. While I certainly appreciate the Tron Bonnes and Toki Toris and Battle Networks that come my way, any satisfaction I glean from their existence is negated by the deep, burning shame I feel for having been responsible for the Resident Evils and Onimushas and Marvel vs. Capcoms. I feel a little like Robert Oppenheimer upon the detonation of the first nuclear bomb, except with less mass murder likely to ensue. Also, I display a marked lack of his canny command of Baghadvah-gita references.
I admit that sometimes I wonder if there really are little gnomes in my brain, if perhaps I'm simply delusional, and if maybe the polar extremes I feel regarding Capcom's catalog are merely coincidences. But then came Rockman & Forte for GameBoy Advance, which proves irrefutably that my skull is infested. Never before has any single game pushed so many buttons for me - Rockman & Forte rubs me the wrong way on more levels than I care to consider. Far more than can be attributed to something so haphazard as "coincidence."
For those who have, over the past three years, somehow managed to miss the dozen or so other references on this site to the various incarnations of this game, Rockman & Forte is the most recent chapter in the original Megaman series, based largely on Megaman 8 for PlayStation and Saturn. It first appeared on Super Famicom in 1998, several years after its equivalent (the SNES) was officially dead and gone in the US - meaning it never came to the US. As with so many other untranslated chapters of famous series, its absence in the west has netted the game a reputation for being the bestest thing ever, and has perpetuated a notion that we were, like, totally gypped by not getting the game, man. This notion wasn't true with the SFC version, and it's even less true in regard to the GameBoy Advance version. As a Megaman game, R&F falls well short of the mark of excellence previous chapters have established.
However, as an exercise in "things that tick me off," it's a stunning success.
For one thing, the glut of straight conversions of SNES games to the GameBoy Advance is one the greatest shortcomings of the little system. Yes, it's all great and wonderful to play near-perfect versions of 16-bit masterpieces on the go, but in just a year they've saturated the market. Between rehashes and kiddie licenses, it's becoming hard to find truly worthwhile original content for GBA. Capcom isn't too bad about this - yes, they gave us the lacking Final Fight One and the dreary Breath of Fire I & II (fairly uninteresting RPGs in their time; downright archaic in 2002), but they've also created numerous original games for the system. Considering that four out of five GBA Megaman games were designed from the ground-up for the format, the company's not doing badly at all.
But that doesn't make the lame-duck nature of R&F any more palatable - it's a direct port with no bonuses, no added incentives, nothing whatsoever to entice gamers who have played the original to buy it. The only real changes are an automatic quick-save feature, and the GBA's usual downgraded music. It's a shame - Capcom did a great job with the completely original Battle Network games; even Rockman Zero - despite its glaring flaws and shortcomings - plays very well on Nintendo's tiny powerhouse. It's a shame they decided to cut corners on R&F. Which is a compound embarrassment, since the Super Famicom version was itself an exercise in corner-cutting - it not only recycled all sorts of sprites and animation from Megaman 8 but even reused two of that game's bosses.
Oh, and there's also the small fact that R&F, like all SNES-to-GBA conversions, is far from being a perfect translation. Developers are forced to make numerous compromises when they port their 16-bit titles to the 32-bit handheld; R&F is no different. The interface was trimmed down from 6 buttons to 4... not as much an issue here as in, say, Super Mario World, but nevertheless irritating. And even if you can overlook that, there's the not-so-minor issue of the tremendous visual cropping necessary to fit a Super NES game into a resolution 2/3 of its original size (see lengthy jeremiad below). Rockman & Forte on Super Famicom was already a somewhat compromised game, as it used large, PlayStation-sized sprites in small, SNES-sized stages. Take off a third of that play area and you'll instinctively duck whenever you play for fear of bumping your head against the cramped ceiling. And when you begin taking damage from enemies shooting from out-of-sight, or leaping into pits because you misjudged a blind leap, or failing to evade a gimmick or trap because you can't immediately see where you're expected to go, you'll instinctively hurl your GBA across the room and utter fiery words which would definitely be frowned upon by your minister and/or homeroom teacher.
And all of this might not be so bad if it were attached to a better game. But frankly, Megaman just hasn't been a lot of fun since he went 16-bit. There was Megaman X, sure, and it did a fine job of adding new mechanics to the series before its sequels degenerated into a dull formula suffocated by poorly-implemented "innovations" and trite angst. It had slower-paced action, but that was offset by added gameplay depth and excellent level design on display. Alas, when classic Megaman was given a 16-bit upgrade, it retained none of X's depth but unfortunately adopted a number of its successor's less appealing aesthetics. What once was a series rife with rapid action and pixel-precise dodging became something much less compelling. Tense platform-hopping became lost amidst all the soft, rounded edges which suddenly made it difficult to gauge trucky jumps. Collision detection too became less a science and more a matter of haphazard chance. The NES games' blistering pace was ratcheted down so that everything could be given lots of animation to match its cuddly appearance. It's clever how Capcom managed to convert Megaman's "two arms lifted, one knee raised" jumping stance into a more defined character sprite, but in adding all those frames of movement from "dead stop" to "peak of jump," they drained away the snappy responsiveness that made the original games so enticing despite their difficulty. With the early Megaman games, you could be fairly certain that every time you died, it was because you sucked. When you lose in the later games, you're frequently left with the impression that you're not too shabby a player, but that stupid blue robot kid needs some serious help. And R&F does nothing to change this.
Despite these misgivings - all of which I experienced up-front - I vowed to give the game a fair shake. Sometimes a little change of format is all you need to appreciate a game's inner quality. Sometimes middling games grow on you with repeated play. And hey - maybe the gnomes decided to work in my favor this time.
And to be honest, when I first started the game, I was impressed. The big, clunky sprites at least look great on the GBA screen. The pastel colors need a little more contrast to work for those without Afterburners, but in decent light everything on the screen is fairly easy to see. Wow, I thought, it's a great-looking portable classic Megaman game! I guess I was wrong about this one after all.
Then I finished the prologue stage and was confronted with the choice of battling Bulky Ice-Themed Man, a Hard Man knock-off, and Megaman 8's most irritating boss, Astro Man. And I remembered a little more with each stage why I didn't particularly like R&F the first time I played it. It's like a more boring Megaman 8 - a concept which would seem to defy physical law, but there you have it. It's also rather challenging, though from what I can tell this has little to do with savvy game construction and is more a matter of bad enemy placement, cheap collision detection and the fact that the rare enemies which give life-restoring power-ups generally have some gimmick that makes said power-ups nearly impossible to acquire. New in the GBA version are important enemies/obstacles/platforms/ladders which have been cropped off-screen to scream "Gotcha!" when you least expect it. You'll notice these when you're suddenly confronted with a giant indestructible screen-filling worm in Ground Man's stage and your only means of evasion is a ladder which is too high on the screen to be initially visible. Or when you're trying to climb those stupid vanishing platforms in Astro Man's stage and have to rely primarily on random guesses to time your efforts since you're no longer able to see as many at once. In other words, R&F relies more on guesswork, blind luck and advance memorization than any other classic MM game that comes to mind. It's pretty sad to see that the series has lowered itself to Battletoads-level cruelty.
Right now I have several more stages open, and the opportunity to battle robots who, apparently, are working hard to conquer Planet Earth by standing in an empty room. And also by out-fruiting one another (see: Pirate Man, Dynamo Man, and the cringe-inducing Magic Man. Why they don't just give us "Rainbow Man" or "Pink Triangle Man" and drop the pretense once and for all is beyond me). Unfortunately, I simply can't work up enough enthusiasm to bother dealing with all the stupid little themed worlds and rubbery rounded robots and nefarious (yet goofy) bosses and that clever Dr. Wily's oh-so-tricky ruse to take over the world by pretending to have someone else take it over for him. I've already slogged through this nonsense once and didn't enjoy it. Now, I could be playing something vastly more fun, like Klonoa G2 or Super Mario World or even Megaman V for GameBoy, which at least had the decency to be a completely original game. So why bother?
To be fair, the game tries. The graphics are indeed easy on the eye, if rather rough on the gameplay. There's a story of sorts here, too (Oh! Could Dr. Wily at last not be involved somehow in the overall plot? Right.), although playing 2D Megaman platformers for the story is about as goofy as playing Castlevania games for the story - it's like eating a $50 steak for the delicious bits of gristle. Although the meat of the experience - the gameplay - is for this particular cut of steak less like "aged Porterhouse" and more along the lines of "chicken-fried." And there's the ability to play as Forte, although that's ultimately pretty worthless. Megaman X's Zero at least offers a significantly different play dynamic, being a short-range sword-fighter capable of more limber aerial feats than his blue counterpart. Forte, on the other hand, is pretty much the same as Megaman, except slower and clunkier... with attitude! Considering 16-bit Megaman is already pretty slow and clunky compared to his NES self, playing as Forte is about as much fun as wading through setting plaster. It's sluggish and toilsome, and you'll probably end up with horrible burns on your legs.
Other than that, if you've played Megaman 7 or 8, you've more or less played this game. Except that you weren't dealing with the same sort of compromised gameplay and minimized screen dimensions. So if frustration and ill-placed challenge make for your idea of a good time, this game's for you!
I'm sad to say it, but Megaman has become to gaming what "homeland security" is to American civil liberties: a convenient shibboleth in whose name the public is endlessly victimized. Just as the US government invokes the phrase "to fight terrorism" whenever they need to excuse the systematic erosion of the Bill of Rights ("Yes, we know freedom of the press is important to a healthy democracy, but outlawing all newspapers not produced by the Ministry of Information is essential to fight terrorism!"), Capcom drags out the Megaman name whenever it wants to earn high margins from low-effort swill ("Sure this game sucks, but it's Megaman! You know you love it!"). Which is a shame, because the Megaman brand actually meant "guaranteed quality," once, long ago. It still does, in some quarters. Just not in the Rockman & Forte quarter.
Strip away the name Megaman from Megaman Battle Network, and what do you have? An excellent portable RPG series. Turn "Megaman Legends" into simply "Legends," and you have a well-designed 3D action-adventure with great characters - in fact, Legends might come off better if it weren't weighed down by a superficial connection to a series with which it really has nothing to do. But take away the Megaman façade here and you have... a plodding, clumsy, unimaginative platformer poorly suited to its format. No one but an over-enthusiastic Megaman fan could like this game, because it relies wholly on its name and the more competent games that came before it (rather than, say, quality or enjoyability) to insinuate itself into your heart. And on the off-chance you are one of those exceptionally passionate fans who is convinced this game is the best thing since bread came sliced, I won't try to dissuade you. But remember that for the price of this game, you can buy 50 pounds of 9-grain bread - approximately 1000 slices - which is both high in fiber and tastes excellent toasted with a little raspberry jam or Nutella. Rockman & Forte, on the other hand, just makes a stinky mess inside a toaster. And it's not even big enough to use as a doorstop, which means it once again fails to hold up to the Super Famicom version.
If Capcom has any decency at all, either they'll work hard to make Megaman 9 much better than this game, or else they'll retire the "Blue Bomber" before the series' reputation sinks even lower. Note to brain: now would be a very good time for the gnomes to get it right. While we're at it, how about Bionic Commando 2, huh? Do you hear me in there?
Megaman Vs. Shrinkage
(Or, "Shut down all garbage mashers on the detention level!")
Sometimes it seems as if the world is getting smaller. If you live in, say, Hoboken or Mexico City, it's simply a perception - you're living amidst population density that would make an ant nest proud. But if you're Megaman - or any of a vast array of 16-bit heroes moving into the handheld world of GameBoy Advance - it's because the world really is getting smaller, thanks to the tiny GBA LCD screen. And it's not merely smaller in terms of size, but also in regard to how much information it can actually display.
Some people shrug this off as irrelevant. After all, what's a few pixels here and there, right? Alas, it's hard to be so cavalier when you're looking at graphics designed for the PlayStation's standard resolution on a screen with significantly fewer pixels than the PSX. As in the infamous garbage compactor scene in Star Wars, you begin feeling this horrible suffocating sensation as the walls come pressing inward, breaking your flimsy plastic pole and sending all that floating styrofoam "trash" creeping upward. Below is a pixel-accurate comparison of Megaman 8 for PSX's resolution versus the screen sizes for the two versions of Rockman & Forte which came after it. The only thing missing here to complete that ominous sense of doom is a mysterious cycloptic monster lashing its slimy tentacle around your neck.
Meanwhile, here's what the discrepancy looks like in terms of real graphics. Notice a difference here? The same Megaman sprite stars in Megaman 8 for PlayStation (320x240 pixels), Rockman & Forte for Super Famicom (256x224 pixels) and Rockman & Forte for GameBoy Advance (240x160 pixels). The top screenshot actually looks like something designed to be, you know, played; the others resemble some sort of horrifying devolution into one of those Tiger Electronics LCD games. It brings to mind those unfortunate Cinemascope films which were cropped horizontally to fit television in the '60s, then cropped again, vertically, to mimic a letterbox effect. The GBA version offers only about half the number of actual pixels of the PSX source - that's only half the information required to do trivial little things like "seeing where you're going" and "dodging enemies attacks." Yeah, call me an elitist snob, but I actually think those are fairly important considerations in an action-packed video game.
When find yourself playing Rockman & Forte for GBA and you just can't stop thinking, "Gee, why isn't this fun?", part of the answer lies right here. Proportionately, Megaman has been growing in relation to his world ever since his first tentative steps off the NES. It's natural for a young lad to get bigger as he gets older, but there needs to be a little grace involved. Like a puppy, Megaman is growing into his massive, oversized feet; but unlike a puppy he only gets clumsier as he gets larger. Occasionally you will hear people refer to Rockman & Forte as "old-school Megaman goodness." This is because they are under the influence of drugs. If you or anyone you know mistakes R&FGBA for something to rival, say, "Megaman 2," contact your local substance abuse prevent hotline. It's truly for the best.
If this trend continues, Megaman will eventually be as large on the screen as the average mech in any given Gundam fighting game - a fate to which no respectable series should ever be allowed to degenerate. And unfortunately, this whiny little hero has no prissy golden android to pull his bacon out of the compactor - only Capcom, whose modus operandi is "quick, cheap cash-ins." It's as though the Dark Side has already won.