Double-Joint

The megaman franchise has been one that I've had a love-hate relationship with for some time. I own both the X and regular collections for console, and consider the series to be an outstanding example of straightforward, challenging gaming, but the fact of the matter is that I've rarely gotten very far in the great majority of these games. I often would start a game, attempt every stage at least once, and when I couldn't beat a single stage without significant suffering and retrying, I would give up and move on to something else. I suppose that is one bad aspect of owning a collection where all the games are available to you.

When I first got a PSP, I was having quite a hard time finding good games to play on it, but one that I thought should be a great value was Megaman Powered Up, a remake of the first Megaman game with updated graphics and a cutesy style. The main draw the game had for me was the stage editor, which seemed like it could be thoroughly awesome.

As is almost always the case, my enthusiasm was much greater than my actual satisfaction. Again, playing the initial stages was very difficult, this not being helped by the fact that I was insisting on playing on at least the normal difficulty from the start. On top of that, I realized that you could unlock the boss enemies as playable characters if you beat them only using your standard shot and no special weapons. If you know anything about Megaman, you know that it's all about beating the stages in the correct order so that you have the necessary special weapon to be super-effective against the next boss. I was under the impression, though, that if you beat a boss using anything besides the mega buster, that you would lose the chance to play as that character, since usually in Megaman games, once you beat a boss, you can replay the stage, but when you get to the end of it, there is no longer a boss enemy and you just warp back to the stage select screen. Again, I was being a stickler for only going for the normal difficulty. Needless to say, I didn't get too far before I just quit playing and put the game down for months.

Just recently, however, I decided to give it a shot again. After realizing that I could beat a stage and still have the boss around, I quickly resorted to clearing all the stages on easy mode so that I could beat the bosses using just the mega buster without much trouble and not worry about missing a chance to get a playable character. Then, after acquiring the weapons on easy mode, I proceeded to beat the stages on normal difficulty. I actually had a good amount of fun, and it was satisfying to unlock the sliding power and then the charge shot after clearing all the easy and normal difficulty stages.

In addition to the standard game, Powered Up also has 100 challenge stages that push the player to the limit (i.e. survive for a 90 seconds with 1 health and no ability to fire in a pit full of jumping enemies). The addition of these stages is quite welcome, as even though I only cleared about a quarter of them, it still was fun to give each an initial attempt (some are very easy, and some require a dozen restarts). The stage creator is also fully functional, but definitely requires a more creative mind than my own to get much out of it. It may be fun to make stages for your friends and exchange, but making and then playing your own stages is not terribly satisfying. There is an online service where you can download user stages via your PSP, and I was pleased to find that this service was still up and running when I tried connecting. Granted, it's ungodly slow, but it's at least there. Finally, they also include an 'old style' mode, which recreates the original game nearly completely, with the exact same stage layouts and original NES music. Worth it just for the music.

My main complaint about Powered Up is the fact that whenever there are more than three enemies of any kind onscreen, there is massive slowdown. I really can't see why this would be, as I have seen plenty of PSP games handle far more onscreen objects, and it really detracts from the game at certain points. On the whole though, I was finally satisfied with my purchase.

After finishing with what I wanted to do in Powered Up, I wanted to play Meverick Hunter X to continue on my PSP Megaman tip. I borrowed the game from a friend and managed to beat nearly all of the stages in a single day, mostly not doing them in the correct order. I just would like to say a couple words about the differences between these two games.

The first thing that comes to mind is that has no slowdown. This confuses me even further since X came out on PSP before Powered Up did. Seems like they should have been able to just keep the same damn engine for Powered Up.

Another thing that quickly became apparent is that the focus of the X series is actually quite different from the standard series. I never really noticed this before, but perhaps as an indication of games changing as a whole, X is much less platforming based, and unlike in Powered Up I never found myself stuck on a stage because the jumps were slaughtering me. The addition of the wall sliding and dash really make X a different type of game from the original. Bosses are much more complicated than the original's, but you are also far more mobile. The elimination of 'maximum distance physically possible' jumps changes the platforming dynamic drastically.

Finally, I was rather disappointed with the lack of features in the PSP version of X. In Powered Up, you earn points for destroying enemies and clearing stages quickly, and your best time and score are recorded for each stage. While I am no time-trial nut, it is satisfying to see when you clear stages more quickly than previous attempts, and since X has the dash ability, it seems like you could do some way cool speed run methods; alas, times are not recorded. Also, the challenge mode stages were missed, but the overall number of stages and difficulties seems sufficient. It is super frustrating to see that my Powered Up file is still only around 8% complete because I have only played as Megaman for the most part (other characters are essentially Megaman but only able to use their single special weapon). The calculus they seem to make with the total number of stages is this:

13 stages x 3 difficulties x 9 characters = 351 stages

When the real calculus should be:

13 stages = 13 stages

Anyways, I've had enough Megaman to last me a while. Perhaps it is worth beating the last boss in X so I can play as Vile, but now I'm in the mood for something different. If you have a PSP, though, I really recommend Powered Up as a good used game to get.

- Steinkamp