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Allow me to set the scene. The year is
1993. The date is January 21st. In the Official UK Chart
Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ is seven weeks into
an impressive ten week uninterrupted run at Number One. Other acts in
the Top 10 this week include Take That, Faith No More, Michael
Jackson and a bunch of people you’ve probably never heard of. At
the UK Box Office, military courtroom drama A Few Good Men continues
to reign supreme for the third consecutive week, although it is
destined to be overtaken by a Laurence Fishburne thriller called Deep
Cover which, again, I’m guessing few people will have heard of. In
the world of sport, Manchester United are well on their way to
winning the inaugural FA Premier League, while over in Formula One
British motor racing legend Nigel Mansell has shockingly been dropped
from Team Williams despite winning the World Championship for them
the previous year. He subsequently announces his retirement from the
sport and moves to the United States to compete in (and later win)
the IndyCar World Series. Perhaps most important, however (because
this is a video game blog after all), January 21st 1993
marks the release of Mega Man 4 for the Nintendo Entertainment
System.
Now before you all bring up the
painfully obvious elephant in the room, allow me to do it myself. I
am well aware that the game actually came out in January 1992,
however, that was only in North America. I happen to live in Europe,
more specifically England (as has been well documented here on the
internet). During the 1990s England always received commodities from
across the pond nearly a full year after they were first released in
America, and video games were no exception, so while over there the
NES was little more than 18 months away from being placed into
deserving retirement while its more powerful offspring the Super
Nintendo blew the collective minds of gamers the world over, over
here in Britland the new console had been out for less than a full
year and so its antiquated forebear was still selling pretty well.
For the sake of adding some of my own personal experience and flair
into the mix I will be concerning myself solely with the English
release dates. Now that we have that pesky pachyderm dealt with and
herded back into the proverbial zoo where it belongs, we can proceed.
Being the fourth instalment of the
franchise (as its title implies), Mega Man 4 is not big on
originality, but in fairness it doesn’t really need to be. The
game’s premise is similar to the previous two: an evil scientist
has unleashed 8 evil robots into the world to cause all manner of
untold mayhem and we manoeuvre the plucky cybernetic hero Mega Man
through several enemy-packed levels interceded with some tricky
platforming elements to navigate. The only difference here is the
nature of our adversary: while in the past the part of the mad
scientist was played by Dr. Albert Wilberforce Wily III Esq. PhD,
here the role instead is filled by a Russian newcomer to the series
named Dr. Mikhail Sergeyevich Cossack (and yes, that is officially
his full name, I didn’t make that up). Had this game been released
five years earlier I’d have had the perfect excuse to make a Soviet
Russia joke, but thankfully it wasn’t, so I won’t.
Before we can foil the Red Menace (Damn
you me from the previous paragraph, what did I just say?) we should
take a moment to familiarise ourselves with our octet of antagonists,
for as Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach once wrote, the oldest and
strongest kind of fear is that of the unknown. In no particular order
then, we have Toad Man, whose only form of defence seems to be
gyrating in a ridiculous fashion. Bright Man, who has the misfortune
to have a light bulb stuck to the top of his head and is therefore
the subjects of many jibes from his fellow Robot Masters but is
nonetheless dangerous due to his ability to stop time for everyone
but himself. Pharaoh Man, a construct from another age who has
delusions of being a god, a fallacy we shall soon lay to rest. Ring
Man, a robotic assassin who possesses speed and agility and throws
his patented Ring Boomerangs with deadly accuracy. Dust Man, who
looks like a humanoid vacuum cleaner but is anything but rubbish when
it comes to combat. Skull Man, a cunning rogue clad only in metal and
bone who hides behind the safety of a shield. Dive Man, who strongly
resembles a submarine and can fire homing missiles. And last (but by
no means least) Drill Man, a road-working implement given life and
determined to dig you an early grave… and then put you in it. Every
member of this rogue’s gallery is a worthy opponent (with the
exception of Toad Man, who really isn’t) and all will require a
combination of guile, bravery and tactical thinking to overcome. Upon
being vanquished each of your foes will award you with a copy of
their weapon for you to use. Much like before the order in which you
face off with the Evil Eight is entirely up to you, but clever use of
strategy in picking your order of poisons will prove fortuitous in
the later battles. The locations in which you hunt down and put a
stop to these miscreants are varied, ranging from a dimly lit factory
to a close approximation of ancient Egypt to beneath the waves to a
castle somehow suspended on the sky itself.
The gameplay is similar to the Blue
Bomber’s previous outings, but there are one or two very notable
additions. Chief amongst these is the new ability to charge up the
Mega Buster. Yes people, it took a while but finally we can smite
some of our more powerful enemies in one hit without resorting to
weapons acquired from defeated bosses. The bone you just threw in our
general direction is much appreciated Capcom (unless it originally
emanated from Skull Man’s stage, in which case there’s a good
chance it may kill us). There are also two other new items which are
hidden well deep inside two of the game’s levels, or at least, they
would be if this was 1993 & Sir Tim Berners Lee hadn’t gotten
around to giving the internet to the world yet, but it isn’t, it’s
2014 and so just about everyone knows the location of these two
tools. The Wire Adapter acts like a glorified grappling hook and can
be found in Dive Man’s stage, precariously placed at the bottom of
a long vertical underwater shaft littered with spikes that seems like
certain doom but is actually relatively safe, while the Balloon
Adapter is cunning stashed away in Pharaoh Man’s desert behind a
seemingly impossible jump and creates inflatable platform that enable
Mega Man to reach new heights. The collection of these items is not
actually required to beat the game but will certainly make that task
easier.
As the Beatles famously sung about back
in 1967, we get by with a little help from our friends, and Mega Man
is no exception. To this end we can call upon the help of several
allies to assist in our quest. Rush the robotic dog makes a return
from Mega Man 3 and can once again be used to make the tougher
sections of the game a little easier to traverse as well as to reach
power-ups and other items which would otherwise be inaccessible. Mega
Man’s creator Dr. Light is back to impart on us more sage words of
wisdom and inform us on how to operate the weapons and items we
acquire throughout the journey despite it being blatantly obvious to
anyone with half a brain cell. There is also a new character called
Eddie. Eddie is a walking item holder/suitcase/general dogsbody who
can be encountered during some stages and will dispense his wares
whenever we meet up with him. And then there’s Mega Man’s sister
Roll, who appears in this game for all of five seconds and is
therefore not worthy of further consideration.
Returning to the action, once the eight
Robot Masters have been destroyed the door to Dr. Cossack’s lair is
opened. The rabid Russian’s toughest lines of defence lie in wait
inside. Spiked platforms that leave you only a handful of seconds to
disembark before they attempt to skewer you. A maze of ladders and
spinning tops. Ice physics (ugh). The seventh circle of hell that is
auto-scrolling sections in platform games. And to cap things off,
three mammoth mechanical monstrosities hell-bent on finishing you.
But even they cannot deny us, and before long we find ourselves
face-to-cockpit with Cossack himself. He attempts to pluck us from
the ground as if we were the star prize in some demented Claw Game,
but we are far too agile for him. The battle is long and arduous, but
finally Cossack falls. Victory is ours…
…until it is cruelly snatched away
from us in the form of the mysterious Proto Man and a little Russian
girl called Kalinka who totally isn’t a palette swap of Roll. They
inform us that Cossack is not the real enemy, that he was merely
being manipulated by another, much-more sinister individual who we
know only too well: Dr. Wily. We have truly been tricked. The
dastardly Wily escapes to his newly-built Skull Castle but we are in
hot pursuit, determined to exact revenge for his treachery. Inside we
find retreads of challenges we have already overcome once before, as
well as echoes of our past. There are new dangers present too: a
Giant Metool arrives to block our path but he is quickly dispatched,
followed by a nondescript fire-spewing machine that receives the same
treatment. The insane doctor’s final means of delaying the
inevitable is to rebuild his Robot Master and send them forth to
engage us in a series of rematches, but at this point our expanded
arsenal of weaponry proves too much for them to handle. Presently we
are transported directly to the heart of the lion’s den, where Dr
Wily emerges in his latest contraption, one which matches the
exterior of the domain we find ourselves trapped within. After
sustaining severe damage the front of his machine falls off but he’s
still standing, still trying to kill us with hot balls of plasma. Now
his protection seems impregnable, capable of resisting any and all
forms of assault, but look a little closer. There’s a weak spot on
the front. Strike that enough times and down he goes in flames for a
second time.
Yet we have underestimated the
persistence of our Moriarty. He uses what remains of his infernal
machine to elude our grasp one more time and make his hasty retreat.
We do not have far to follow: he has fled only as far as a small room
with a windy metallic passage to lead up to it. This final showdown
is long overdue, but Moriarty has one final trick up his sleeve. The
room is nothing but darkness. We can barely see ourselves in it, let
alone the Wily Capsule, and is such it is extremely difficult to hit
him. Worse still, all our previous battles have taken its toll, and
supplies of weapon energy are running dangerously low. Slowly but
surely he whittles down our energy, forces us to use up Energy Tank
after Energy Tank until none remain. We can see him for only a second
at a time, mocking us, laughing at our inadequacies. He knows that
his ultimate victory is at hand, that there’s nothing we can do to
stop him…
…But Wily has forgotten one important
thing in his arrogance; we still have one last tool at our
fingertips, the light harvested from the carcass of the false god.
Pharaoh Man may have been artificial but his light is just real
enough to cut through this darkness and strike down our enemy for the
last time. Before long he has no direction to travel but straight
down to earth. He has no course of action left but to beg for
forgiveness at our feet. Wily has fallen. We have won. The end
credits can roll…
And that’s Mega Man 4 is an
elaborate, overly dramatic nutshell. Is it more of the same?
Honestly, yes. But as the old saying goes, if it isn’t broke, don’t
fix it. Mega Man 3 remains one of my favourite video games of all
time. How could I not have similar levels of affection for its
successor?
Our journey has come to an end. There
are still two titles to cover. Alas, I cannot be your conductor for
the last two legs of this odyssey. I must hand that mantle over to
two others. Who these individuals are, I cannot say. All I can do is
to wish them good luck…
…They’re going to need it…
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