From 2010 to 2014 Richard Cobbett wrote Crapshoot, a column about rolling the dice to bring random obscure games back into the light. This week, it’s time to welcome a special guest from a very different platform to see what happens when console game ports go very wrong indeed.
Wait, I hear you cry. Mega Man? Are you actually from Mars? In what universe does the little blue bomber originally known as Rockman count as obscure? He’s had roughly 20 million games and counting. A TV series. A bad throat condition in Captain N, even! Mega Man 2 still stands as one of the most successful gaming passion projects of all time, with its developers following up on the world’s ‘meh’ response to the first game by working their asses off in their spare time and creating a platforming legend, even though Quick Man’s stage can suck it through a sewer pipe.
And yes, that’s true on the NES. But we’re not looking at the NES games. No. This Mega Man (along with a sequel, Mega Man 3) was created just for…