Mega Man 5 has some really cool stuff going on. Gravity shifting. Mega Man being spun around on whirly platforms. A boss that is a train man. Well his name is Charge Man, but he might as well be called Train Man. Would you like to know more?





If you've read about Mega Man one, two, three, and four; you know how these games play. You start the game and are taken to a screen with eight robot faces and a space in the middle. You pick one of the robots, battle through their level with your little pew shooter, and then fight against the robot that you chose. Beating him gives you their power and its usually a weakness against another robot boss. Lots of little platform jumps, little robots to fight, and giant mini boss robots. That in a nutshell is Mega Man's basic gameplay. The robot dog, Rush, from the third game returns. A little robot called flip top eddy shows up to give you a power up. Occasionally its the E cans that you can use at any time to refill your health or just basic health power ups. Some of the best gameplay you'll find in video games is in the Mega Man series.





The only real new feature in Mega Man 5 is the addition of Beat. He's a little bird robot you can unlock. What he does is when you fall off a ledge into a bottomless pit, as you often do in Mega Man, he rushes down to pull you back up to safety. Other than him, I'd like to mention Gravity Man's stage and boss battle as being among my favorites from the series. You flip back and fourth between the top and bottom of the screen at different points in the level and in the boss battle. I love that. Wave Man's stage has a particularly cool moment where you jump across bubbles trying to avoid floating up into spikes. Another cool thing in the same stage that I had completely forgotten was a water motorcycle thing that you ride at one point and eventually have a battle with a giant robot octopus. Star Man's stage is set in outer space and much like water levels in other Mega Man games you jump higher than normal. Of course they put spikes on the top of the screen in clever places just in case you're feeling froggy enough to jump as high as you can. They also changed the look of the charge shot for the better. Its now a large round bullet. Also Mega Man glows red for a moment before flashing while charging his gun. I forgot how much fun Mega Man five was.





Once again they give Mega Man an awesome story that slide shows before the start of the game. The year 20XX AD... Then theres a scene of protoman in front of some shadowed robot masters of Mega Man 5. A vicious army of robots is destroying the world. After that it shows a scene of a vity being attacked with explosions. and behind this destruction is. A scene then plays where Protoman kidnaps the doctor that made Mega Man and his scarf falls into Mega Man's hand. PROTOMAN!?





I actually had a great time playing this one. I knew I liked Mega Man 5, but I couldn't really remember any of it. A few years ago when I first bought all the ones I hadn't played as a kid, four seemed like the best. Now I'm leaning towards five being the most rounded package. One minor complaint is that the charge shot is maybe too powerful this time around. Pretty much all the bosses go down rather quickly with it. A great and fun game. Available in Mega Man Anniversary collection, better to play on an actual nintendo, and so on.



As always a large screenshot gallery is just below for your viewing pleasures.