Mega Man Unlimited, fan game 5 years in the making

[Gunstar Green]

So I just found out Mega Man Unlimited had come out last July after being in development for five years. Now Mega Man fan games tend to be a dime-a-dozen with a lot of them being pretty terrible but this one showed promise, even more so than the "official" fan game Street Fighter X Mega Man.

Here's a link to the Destructoid review: http://www.destructoid.com/review-mega-man-unlimited-258027.phtml

I have to say, he's not really embellishing much. It's a professionally made game that may even surpass Capcom's own efforts with 9 and 10. I'm not saying this lightly as I'm usually not one for fan games. It certainly makes SFxMM look amateur by comparison.

Lots of original enemies and level gimmicks. Great graphics that mesh perfectly with the Mega Man universe, amazing music work and interesting bosses. I couldn't really ask for more (other than for Capcom to get off their asses and make a true modern iteration of the series).

Who else has given this game a go? Be warned though, if you're not a Mega Man veteran (or even if you are) this game is tough.

[noiseredux]

this looks cool. I'll have to check it out.

Sadly I was never able to get SFxMM to work. For some reason it would run like molasses on my PC.

[Dylan]

Lots of original enemies and level gimmicks. Great graphics that mesh perfectly with the Mega Man universe, amazing music work and interesting bosses. I couldn't really ask for more (other than for Capcom to get off their asses and make a true modern iteration of the series).

Who else has given this game a go? Be warned though, if you're not a Mega Man veteran (or even if you are) this game is tough.

I played through the game a few days after it was released and I mostly agree with the praise. In particular the level designs and theming are really really awesome and the special weapons are well designed and useful. It's so awesome to get a game that manages to be on par with Mega Man 9 in these regards. I can't praise the level mechanics enough for how awesome they are, whether it's something conventional like low gravity in Comet Woman's stage or something new like the sticky floors in Glue Man's stage. There was a lot of love and understanding of what makes Mega Man good that went into this game.

The one big criticism I have of the game though is that levels can be way too long sometimes. I'm all for a challenging game, but Mega Man Unlimited just feels like an absolute slog at certain points. It's exhausting to have to go through stages at the difficulty level of the hardest Mega Man game, but with nearly 3 times the length. Fortunately the shop helps alleviate this by letting you stock up lives or other goodies (spike guards, Beat calls, etc) to help give you an advantage.

Overall Mega Man Unlimited is a really cool game with a lot of great stuff to offer. A little bit the difficulty is tiring but any Mega Man fan owes it to themselves to give it a shot.

[nightrnr]

Sadly I was never able to get SFxMM to work. For some reason it would run like molasses on my PC.

Yeah, same with mine (even w/ a dedicated video card).
But then, my PC is getting pretty old (bought in 2005). I'll give SFxMM a go when I finally get a decent upgrade.

MMU appears to have much lower requirements though .

[Gunstar Green]

The one big criticism I have of the game though is that levels can be way too long sometimes. I'm all for a challenging game, but Mega Man Unlimited just feels like an absolute slog at certain points. It's exhausting to have to go through stages at the difficulty level of the hardest Mega Man game, but with nearly 3 times the length. Fortunately the shop helps alleviate this by letting you stock up lives or other goodies (spike guards, Beat calls, etc) to help give you an advantage.

Overall Mega Man Unlimited is a really cool game with a lot of great stuff to offer. A little bit the difficulty is tiring but any Mega Man fan owes it to themselves to give it a shot.

The level lengths are definitely my biggest issue. Their reasoning was that since the development was so long they didn't want it to be a game that most people would just finish in one sitting.

But it's still an issue that adds frustration. If they were going to make the levels that long it would've helped if they had put an extra checkpoint in maybe. That's really my only gripe though.

It does feel great when you finally conquer a level though.

[kamiboy]

Making faux 8-bit PC games are a waste of potential in my opinion. If you are serious about throwback game design then make your game for the older hardware.

[Dylan]

The level lengths are definitely my biggest issue. Their reasoning was that since the development was so long they didn't want it to be a game that most people would just finish in one sitting.

But it's still an issue that adds frustration. If they were going to make the levels that long it would've helped if they had put an extra checkpoint in maybe. That's really my only gripe though.

What's weird to me is that some of the levels actually are a good length. If I remember correctly Comet Woman's and Nail Man's levels are pretty reasonable. On the other hand Glue Man's stage is like a 20k marathon.

Making faux 8-bit PC games are a waste of potential in my opinion. If you are serious about throwback game design then make your game for the older hardware.

The cost benefit of that just doesn't work out unfortunately. In particular having to program in assembler would be nightmarish compared to modern languages. Besides that, if most people would just have access to the game through emulation the game experience would be the same in spite of the added development difficulty.

[nightrnr]

Besides that, if most people would just have access to the game through emulation the game experience would be the same in spite of the added development difficulty.

I disagree, emulation is available on so many devices now, that the experience would be tailored to whatever a person preferred to game on. I still regret that MM9/10 was never available on PSP. Would have been nice to play it on a portable.

But I get the "inconvenient to program" issue. If it's PC or nothing, let there be an EXE.

[Gunstar Green]

Making faux 8-bit PC games are a waste of potential in my opinion. If you are serious about throwback game design then make your game for the older hardware.

Making games for old hardware is not necessarily an easy thing to do or even always a worthwhile thing to do and also results in having to make concessions in game design. Some people criticized them for going over the NES color palette among other things but they ignored that because their goal wasn't to make a good NES game but rather a good NES-style Mega Man game.

Sure it may look and play like an 8-bit game but there are a lot of things going on that the NES could never handle and being on PC allows for other features that the NES can't accommodate.

I don't really see the need to limit their design by the constraints of an old console just so you can play it on the old console. New NES games are cool and all but it's a free fan game that already has a lot of effort put into it. While it doesn't seem like you're asking for a lot you actually are.

The level lengths are definitely my biggest issue. Their reasoning was that since the development was so long they didn't want it to be a game that most people would just finish in one sitting.

But it's still an issue that adds frustration. If they were going to make the levels that long it would've helped if they had put an extra checkpoint in maybe. That's really my only gripe though.

What's weird to me is that some of the levels actually are a good length. If I remember correctly Comet Woman's and Nail Man's levels are pretty reasonable. On the other hand Glue Man's stage is like a 20k marathon.

Definitely. Nail Man and Comet Woman are pretty good starter stages as a result. They both have pretty easy manage boss patterns as well.

I think tackling Comet Woman first will save people a lot of heartache later since her special weapon's utility takes the sting out of some of the ridiculous jumps.

[Hobie-wan]

Making faux 8-bit PC games are a waste of potential in my opinion. If you are serious about throwback game design then make your game for the older hardware.

That would have also required more time working on the art and would have resulted in a different aesthetic. It likely would have looked 'like a flash game' if they'd not gone for an 8 bit style.