Why I was fascinated with the way in which Mega Man and his chief rival, Bass, sought to upset the natural order of things.
Ah, the Internet of the late 90s and early 2000s. There was no place like it.
Back then, things were very different: There was no unifying structure, people weren't as connected, information wasn't as readily available, the most fantastical of rumors could easily gain credibility and come to possess a mythical allure to those who were invested in pursuing them, and you always had a sense that undiscovered knowledge was potentially hiding within any dusty, unexplored corner of the web.
It truly was the Wild West.
And because the landscape was so sprawled and often clouded, it was often difficult to determine what was real and what wasn't.
That's how it was for me during the summer of 2001, when I was brimming with excited inquisitiveness as I sought to discover the truth behind Rockman & Forte's existence.
My search for answers began a few months earlier, at the start of the spring season.
By that point, it had been roughly four months since I'd played through and completed Mega Man 8, Mega Man X4 and Mega Man X5. My feelings toward them hadn't yet changed, and I still regarded them as thoroughly underwhelming Mega Man games, but I was happy to admit that there was a silver lining to my experiences with them: Playing them helped me to reconnect with the franchise after four long years, and it put me back in the spirit.
In the weeks that followed, I started reengaging with the Mega Man scene, and consequently I became filled with ravenous energy, and I developed a greatly renewed interest in the franchise, which I had abandoned back in 1996 after Mega Man 7 and the two SNES Mega Man X sequels disappointed me.
I was once again obsessed with Mega Man!
Like in the old days, I was playing Mega Man games on a daily basis. I was hitting up all of the big Mega Man forums and chatting about the franchise with my fellow Mega Man fans. I was eagerly reading about the franchise's history and studying up on all of the games to which I'd somehow remained oblivious (those like Mega Man Battle & Chase, the two arcade fighters, and the quirky Japan-only spinoff games). And because I was currently in the habit of creating websites dedicated to my favorite video-game series, I felt that it was the perfect time for me to build a comprehensive Mega Man fan site!
So I spent a few months doing what was necessary to construct a worthy Mega Man shrine: I ripped a while bunch of sprites. I used massive amounts of text to supply grand framing to the respective series' honestly simple stories. I provided detailed descriptions of the games' characters, weapons and stages. I painstakingly reproduced the games' manuals using matching fonts and images (because, I guess, scanning them would have been too easy). And I continued working to accumulate as much knowledge as I could.
And by the time the site had reached its maturation point, I'd grown confident in thinking that I was now an all-knowing Mega Man fan!
But then something strange happened: One particular week, as I was actively browsing both Mega Man and general-enthusiast message boards, certain forum-goers started claiming that they'd either heard about or played a Japan-only original-series Mega Man sequel titled "Mega Man 9."
I was very intrigued by this claim, yet at the same time, I was highly skeptical of it. Because, really, this news was seemingly coming from out of nowhere! None of the big enthusiast sites were reporting on such a game. None of my closest associates had heard or read anything about it. And none of my repeated Yahoo! searches were turning up anything of note.
"So can there really be credence to this claim if no one can supply context for the game's existence or display even a simple screenshot?" I wondered. "Because if such a game has existed for any length of time, then there's no way that I wouldn't have come across it as I was doing my research!"
But the more I investigated the matter, the more obvious it became to me that there was indeed substances to the forum-goers' claims. There were simply too many people corroborating the news for it not to be real!
Now feeling somewhat shocked by the news, I was left to wonder about when and how this "Mega Man 9" came to be and how it was that information about its existence had eluded me for so long. So I continued to look for answers.
The wackiest-sounding information to emerge was that Mega Man 9 had apparently been released on the Super Famicom (the Japanese equivalent of the SNES). "That part of it can't be true," I argued while feeling confounded by the very thought of such a development. "I mean, that's not how the video-game industry works! Technology is always supposed to be moving forward! You can't make a direct sequel to a current-generation game for a previous-generation machine! Right?"
It sounded too crazy to be true.
I mean, there was precedent for sequels being made for technologically inferior portable devices, sure, but we understood that the Game Boy and its ilk comprised a completely separate line of video-game technology. They weren't in direct competition with their consoles cousins, no; rather, they were designed to offer complementary experiences. So it wasn't out of the ordinary when, say, Nintendo announced that the direct sequel to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, an SNES game, would be coming to comparatively limited Game Boy.
That was the natural order.
But an SNES sequel to a next-generation PlayStation game? That was complete madness!
To me, it was one of the most fascinating developments in video-game history. I was enthralled just by the idea of it: a sequel to a 32-bit game on a technologically obsolete 16-bit console that had been all but abandoned as it entered its eight year on the market.
"What is this strangely wonderful alternate reality in which I've awaken?" I excitedly wondered.
Now of course, there was still no real proof that the game in question was actually "Mega Man 9" and not some largely unrelated spinoff game, but still, trusted voices were assuring as that its style of action was so familiar that it was undoubtedly a canonical series entry and definitely an extension of what we saw in Mega Man 8 (to what degree, though, they were unclear).
However, I decided that I wasn't going to be fully convinced until I saw this "Mega Man 9" for myself. So I scoured the Internet in search of the ROM (as you did back in those days), and ultimately I came across a game called "Rockman & Forte," whose logical translation was "Mega Man & Bass" and certainly not "Mega Man 9."
What was strange, also, was that the ROM's file name was "megaman9.smc," but on the game's title screen, there was no trace of the number 9 anywhere. That didn't necessarily mean that the game wasn't "Mega Man 9," though, because as history had shown me, there was precedent for sequels dropping the numbering convention. Super Metroid did so eight years earlier.
But at the same time, Super Metroid at least flashed "Metroid 3" in its intro and made sure to communicate to players that it was indeed the next in a line of numbered games. Rockman & Forte flashed no such text.
"So if this is the ninth entry in the original Mega Man series," I questioned, "then why do its opening screens fail to communicate that fact in any way?"
But once I saw the game in motion, it all started to make sense to me. This wasn't some unrelated spinoff, no. It was a genuine original-series entry. And even more surprisingly, it was, according to what I saw over the next hour a so, a direct sequel to Mega Man 8!
What astonished me most was how stunningly similar it looked to Mega Man 8. At first, I wondered if my eyes were deceiving me when I observed that it was faithfully reproducing a great many of the latter game's assets--everything from its character and object sprites to its stage-design features and to even two of its bosses (Tengu Man and Astro Man). But they weren't! The game really was recycling assets from its 32-bit antecedent and perfectly replicating them!
"How is it possible for a 16-bit game to even do such a thing?" I wondered in fascination.
And as I progressed through Rockman & Forte and continued examining its visuals, I couldn't believe just how closely some of its stages, environments, and level design resembled Mega Man 8's. Magic Man's stage, I observed, was basically Clown Man's stage remixed! Ground Man's stage was clearly borrowing platforming elements from Sword Man's stage! And Pirate Man's habitat bore a remarkable resemblance to Aqua Man's!
"This is wild!" I kept thinking to myself as I made these observations.
I mean, here I was playing a game that looked nearly identical to the 32-bit Mega Man 8 right there on the ol' SNES! It was kinda surreal.
What also added to Rockman & Forte's allure was its "lost" nature. I was blown away by how well it did to replicate the look of the PlayStation game, yeah, but at the same time, I was also overcome with the sense that this moment was special because I'd gained access to another one of those "forbidden games," which was what Japan-only releases felt like to me. My eyes weren't meant to see them.
But here I was looking at and playing a Japan-only Mega Man game and feeling the thrill of doing what only a very few Westerners had ever done. It was the Dracula X: Rondo of Blood situation all over again.
That was my state of mind as I was working my way through the game's early portion with Bass, who I selected because it felt appropriate to be adventurous at a time when I was exploring a lost title. And he was turning out to be an awesome addition to the game with his multi-directional firing ability and incredible agility. Usually I downplayed alternate characters and looked for reasons to instantly dismiss them because I preferred to focus my attention on the main character, who the game was supposed to be about, but in this case, I couldn't find reason to do so. I couldn't deny that it was really fun to play as Bass and that he brought some excitingly new things to the action.
"What is this game?" I continued to wonder with a fascinated energy. Quite often, my attention to onscreen happenings would lapse because I couldn't help but turn inward and entertain thoughts about the surreality of Rockman & Forte--about what it was and what it represented. Really, I never could have imagined that I'd get the chance to do this again. I never thought that there'd be a day when I was able to play a "new" Mega Man game on my beloved SNES (an emulated version of it, of course).
What a time.
Because I don't remember a whole lot about the chronology of my early experiences with Rockman & Forte, I'm going to talk about the game in more general terms. (Had I known that I'd come to cherish my memories of the games that I discovered during the era in question, I might have compelled to make more mental notes.)
To start, I absolutely loved everything about the intro stage, which was a "museum" in more than one sense. It was, in fact, a grand tribute to the games of yore.
Its every screen contained a respectful nod to a previous series entry: In the lobby, the drill-like Moles endlessly tunneled their way into and out from the floor and ceiling, just like they did in Metal Man's stage. The fiery corridor, whose hazards included discharged flame pillars and trios of Tackle Fires that emerged from the pools of flame and proceeded to descend down in formation, looked as though it was ripped directly from Fire Man's stage. The oscillating ship was clearly a reference to the one seen in Blizzard Man's stage. The stormy exterior area had me fighting against the elements in exactly the same way that I did in Toad Man's stage. And the Green Devil's appearance struck two separate chords: It crystallized the game's unfathomable visual connection to Mega Man 8 and provided acknowledgement to the iconic shapeshifters from Mega Mans past.
I felt right at home as I played through this stage.
And I especially loved the stage's musical theme. It was terrific opening tune: It was spirited and enthusiastic in tone, but it had an underlying wistful quality that worked very effectively to imbue every stage section and every moment of the action with a nostalgic resonance. As I played through the stage, the piece's remindful tones continuously inspired me to reflect on my long history with the series; they never ceased in evoking vivid, bliss-inducing memories of all of the great times that I had with earlier Mega Man games.
It was an instantly memorable piece.
In time, I came to regard it as one of the series' best works. I considered it such because it was wonderfully invigorating tune and because it had the power to evoke great memories of the time that I spent discovering and exploring the fascinating Rockman & Forte.
That, I'd say, is the profile of a truly classic video-game tune.
At first, I was, admittedly, a bit troubled by the fact that Rockman & Forte borrowed Mega Man 8's art style in lieu of doing something more natural, like, say, adopting Mega Man 7's art style, which was actually associated with the SNES.
It wasn't that I hated how Mega Man 8 looked, no. I actually warmed up to its art style over time. It was more that Mega Man 8's visuals (or those that resembled them) tended to arouse bad memories. They reminded me of all of the horror that I endured during those "JUMP! JUMP! SLIDE! SLIDE!" segments.
But I got over it pretty quickly when I heard the museum stage's musical theme, whose soothing, evocative tones were able to sweep away all of my ill feelings. It made such an amazing first impression that it caused me forget all about how its 32-bit sibling's nightmarish snowboarding segments drove me to the brink of insanity.
So I had no inhibition about admitting that Rockman & Forte looked damn good. In fact, I found it to be more visually pleasing than Mega Man 8!
I knew that it wasn't a match for Mega Man 8 in a technical sense, certainly. It had a lower resolution, fewer frames of animations, and less color depth, and it couldn't display anywhere near as many onscreen objects as the latter. But what it was able to do was exhibit the types of qualities that I was looking for in my original-series Mega Man games: classic screen dimensions (256x224 pixel display); solid colors (rather than gradients); boldly colored textures; sharply outlined objects; and visuals that had an unmistakable Mega Man-style crispness to them.
Those, I felt, were the qualities that a Mega Man game was supposed to exhibit.
Also, I was delighted to see the return of sliver-based health and weapon-energy meters, which were far superior to the generic-looking meters that were on display in Mega Man 8!
To me, Rockman & Forte was more than just a sequel. It was, also, a game that helped the series gloriously return to form!
I'd be remiss if I didn't emphasize how great a role Rockman & Forte's soundtrack played in defining its world.
Its music was tonally similar to Mega Man 8's, which is to say that it was chill- and relaxed-sounding in nature, but still it had a wonderfully distinct quality to it: a highly evocative, remindful energy. That quality resulted from the tunes' stirring, soul-touching instrumentation, which had the power to imbue stage environments with a strong nostalgic ambiance. And it did so to great effect in the museum stage and pretty much every other stage in the game.
I don't mean to overuse the word nostalgic, but, really, I can find no other way to describe the character of Rockman & Forte's tunes. They do so well to inspire feelings of longing and evoke memories of happier days. They speak of the game's purpose and in doing so provide fascinating commentary on the special era in which it was given life. And they manage to capture the essence of the 16-bit machines' twilight years and provide appropriate accompaniment to the farewell videos that play in our hearts.
So yeah--I thought very highly of the game's music. I loved everything that it did.
Going in, my biggest concern was that I wouldn't be able to fully enjoy all of the dialogue exchanges and story sequences because the game, according to what I'd read, didn't have an English-text option. Fortunately, though, the ROM had, by that point, been available long enough to where someone had already created an English-language patch for it.
At the time, honestly, I had no idea what a "patch" was, but I didn't let that concern me. I simply downloaded it and stuck it in the "games" subfolder, as I was instructed to do. "If that's what gets it to work," I thought, "then whatever."
More than anything, I was happy that I'd now be able to discover the true nature of the game's collectible CDs. I'd be able to find out what, exactly, they were saying about the iconic Robot Masters and the rest of the game's supporting cast and potentially learn some new facts!
More on this in a bit.
I was very welcoming of the CD-finding element because, as I observed, it encouraged the level designers to be more creative. It inspired them to craft expansive stages and fill them with hidden rooms and alternate paths, all of which helped to provide the game a real sense of exploration--the type that Mega Man 8 was seriously lacking.
I found the CD-finding element to be an important part of the experience. I had great fun searching for all of the secret areas and figuring out the processes for procuring CDs, some of which were deviously positioned. In particular, there was a nastily placed CD in Ground Man's stage that I wasn't able to secure until about nine years later. In my earliest play-throughs, I almost lost my mind trying to obtain it. I couldn't even come close to doing so when I used save-states!
You know the one I'm talking about.
But otherwise, I felt that the CDs were a cool addition to the game, and I hoped that future series entries would bring them back and expand upon what they did.
It quickly became apparent to me that choosing to play as Mega Man was the equivalent of selecting "Challenge Mode." Clearly the game was designed with the more-versatile Bass in mind, and the first sign of such was the placement of the Dodonpa Cannons on the museum's oscillating ship. Mega Man, who could only fire horizontally, had no way of landing shots on the cannons, which were positioned one level below his. So there was almost no way of escaping that stage section without taking damage.
"They're not hiding the fact that this is really a 'Bass' game," I said to myself.
Once I accepted that reality, I decided to go all-in on Bass. Mega Man would have to wait.
I felt as though I should have been angry that Mega Man had basically been relegated to a secondary role in a game from his own series, but honestly, I couldn't muster that type of emotion because, like I said earlier, I was having so much fun playing as Bass! He was such a great character: He could rapidly fire shots in seven directions (all but straight down), as if he were a hero in a Contra game, and he had a repertoire of awesome maneuvers like the double-jump, the dash, and the dash-jump. His abilities actually put him more in line with Mega Man X protagonists X and Zero, which I thought was really cool.
To me, his was a very appealing amalgamation of styles. It brought some exciting variety to the game.
But there were some obvious trade-offs: He could overwhelm enemies by spraying them with endless cannon fire, but his individual shots were weak, which became apparent when he was in situations in which he was forced to use his buster sparingly. He could attack from many angles, but he couldn't charge up his buster or fire through walls. He could speed along the ground with his dash ability, but he couldn't move while shooting. And he could quickly and adeptly traverse his way through stages, but he had trouble taking down bosses, whose invincibility frames would nullify the effect of his rapid fire and essentially depower him (which was a big issue if you were determined to complete a buster-only run).
The designers' limiting him in these ways was their way of attempting to create balance between him and Mega Man, but they clearly didn't succeed in doing so. Bass was still the superior character by a large margin. And on top of that, there were shop items that helped to remedy almost all of these issues!
You knew that Mega Man was getting the short end of the stick when he couldn't land a single shot on the main antagonist without using the specially installed moving platform (a "pity platform," as it's known) that appeared in the boss room only during his campaign.
Maybe that's why Capcom refrained from titling the game "Mega Man 9." I mean, is it really a proper series entry when the eponymous hero needs a stool to access the kitchen counter?
In truth, Rockman & Forte was considerably challenging no matter which character I was using. Bass had plenty of innate advantages, sure, but not a single one of them could help me to reliably defeat the terror known as Dynamo Man, who could, at any time, hop into his recharge station and begin replenishing his health faster than I could destroy the generators on the machine's left and right sides. And all of the double-jumps and diagonal fire-sprays in the world weren't going to make the King battles any easier--especially the one against the King Tank, which was largely unassailable and had a stupidly tedious attack-cycle that would make the battle drag on forever no matter how you approached it (this fight would regularly infuriate me).
The second fortress stage, in which King dwelled, was one of the most torturous hellscapes in gaming history. It was ridiculously long (about three-times the size of a normal Mega Man stage), and it contained four of the game's toughest boss fights. And if you Game Overed during any point in the stage, you were sent all the way back to its starting point!
It was a nightmare stage (in my early experiences with it, at least).
And the final Wily battle, man: It was a near carbon copy of Mega Man 8's, but it was even nastier, and its level of cruelty served to further highlight the game's lack of practical health-replenishing items. (There were no energy tanks or Rush-recharge items, and if you wanted to replenish health during boss fights, you had to buy the Eddie Call item and summon Eddie during a fight and hope that he dropped an energy pellet.)
Rockman & Forte was, basically, Lost Levels to Mega Man 8's Super Mario Bros. It was by far the original series' most difficult game.
But still I liked it a lot. It was often frustrating, yeah, but it had so many appealing qualities that I couldn't tear myself away from it. I felt that it looked and sounded great, that it had a ton of great content, and that it was fun to play. But more so, I enjoyed just being being around it. I enjoyed listening to and absorbing it.
Because it also had, like I said, an alluring nostalgic vibe and a strong fascination factor, both of which I considered to be important parts of the experience. I kept returning to it not just because it was a great action game but also because I derived enjoyment from simply feeling it and being in awe of it.
I couldn't deny that Rockman & Forte wasn't exactly shattering the mold, which I expected (probably unfairly) all new Mega Man games to do, but I could respect the fact that it was actually trying new things. It made a lot of small-but-impactful innovations: It had a uniquely functioning Robot Master selection screen on which progression was handled via the traversal of a tree's branching paths. It had creative boss fights like those against Burner Man, Atetemino Proto (a repurposed Mega Man 8 castle boss), and others who you aimed to defeat by exploiting the surrounding environment. It had level design that encouraged and even demanded skillful application of Robot Master weapons like the Ice Wall, whose use was paramount to fully exploring stages and procuring CDs. And its shop was filled with a lot of cool, extremely useful ability-enhancing items.
Also, it had the welcome addition of a capsule-based obstacle-course stage in which you had to figure out how to correctly utilize your weapons if you hoped to earn the valuable giant-sized bolts that were contained within each capsule. I found its challenges to be so fun and interesting that it became my hope that every future Mega Man game would have a stage just like it.
Rockman & Forte didn't represent a major evolution to series formula, no, but it was, in my opinion, a fine half-step. It introduced some interesting new ideas, and that's all that it had to do to make me feel excited about it.
Had Mega Man 7 exhibited the same type of inventive spirit, I would have been much happier with it.
And thankfully the limitations of 16-bit hardware kept Inafune and his crew in check. They forced his team to focus its energy on things that mattered most to the player, and consequently, there were no unnecessary anime cut-scenes, there was no comical voice acting, there were no uninteresting intergalactic plot elements, and, to my great relief, there were no "Jump! Jump! Slide! Slide!" segments.
Rockman & Forte's was pure Mega Man action, baby, and that was cause for me to rejoice.
The way that I see it, the series jumping back to a previous-generation machine was one of the best things to ever happen to it. Its doing so allowed it to find itself and remember what fans loved most about it. And Inafune was obviously cognizant of that fact, which was why he subsequently decided to go back even farther and really get back to basics.
And honestly, I wouldn't mind if the next retro-style Mega Man game adopted Rockman & Forte's art direction and style of action. I think that it would make a fine starting point for the next phase.
And I can't talk about what Rockman & Forte means to me without mentioning its Database mode, which is one of my favorite Mega Man features of all time.
How the mode is presented is so perfectly on point. First there's its musical theme, which is soaked with powerfully wistful vibes. More so than any other of the game's tunes, it's able to evoke strong feelings of remembrance and fill your head with images of the days when the best thing in life was playing some Mega Man with your friends on a warm summer day.
It's one of those tunes that I like to stop and listen to for several minutes and in that time allow it to provide the most appropriate of ambiance to my periods of reflection. It's one of my favorite 16-bit tunes, and I can't think of any other that does more to make me long for the era that it represents.
Also, I've always been blown away by the exhaustive nature of the Database's content. I mean, it goes out of its way to include everything! It provides profiles for the Game Boy games' Mega Man Killers, the Stardroids from Mega Man V, and even Mega Man: The Wily Wars' three exclusive bosses!
It's an amazingly reverent character list!
And the Mega Man 8 Robot Masters, which I considered to be "advanced 32-bit enemies," appearing on the list, too--in this, a mere 16-bit game--gives its presence a splash of surreality. It never fails to remind me of what a fascinating breaking of the norms Rockman & Forte is.
"Characters from a PlayStation game appearing in an SNES game?!" I always think when I see one of their profiles. "That's just crazy!"
I can't offer enough commendation to Rockman & Forte's creators for the effort that they put into crafting the Database. It's a wonderful treat for Mega Man fans.
To me, it's a beautiful celebration of the original series and at the same a fantastic final farewell to the 16-bit era. I see it as the creators' way of saying, "Remember all of the good times we had during this era? Well, here's a second chance for us to savor the SNES' special aura before we unreservedly head forward, into the future."
And I appreciate them for giving me that opportunity.
And all of this amounts to one of the most memorable, most emotionally impactful Mega Man games I've ever played. Even if I never played it again and forgot about all of its content, it wouldn't change how I felt about it. I'd still fondly remember it for how much it endlessly fascinated me and positively affected my life.
I personally consider it to be a top-5 original-series game, but still I'd hesitate to guarantee that all Mega Man fans, or even a majority of them, will see the same type of value in it or agree that it's worth treasuring for the reasons that I've listed here. I suspect that a lot of fans will be too turned off by its high difficulty to care about all of its other aspects.
But even then, I'd maintain that Rockman & Forte is worth playing because it's such an incredibly interesting game, and it's a lot of fun once you know how to handle its challenges. Also, it's bursting with soul, and its every visual and aural quality has the power to fill your head with the most wonderfully remindful images.
Much more so than the other 16- and 32-bit Mega Man games, Rockman & Forte feels close in spirit to the NES entries, and that's also part of the reason why I have such strong feelings for it. For certain, I like it more than Mega Man 8, which at times feels like it desires to be something else--something distant from the old games. Rockman & Forte never seeks to do that; rather, it happily and determinedly stays true to itself and proudly exhibits its classic values.
That's what helps it to capture the NES games' essence and feel like a more-natural extension of them.
After seeing what Inafune did with Rockman & Forte, I'm inclined to believe that he was very much cognizant of how he and his team overreached with Mega Man 8 and how their ambition to expand the series' universe and include intergalactic themes only worked to detract from what made Mega Man games so accessible and minimize the importance of the games' long-serving veteran cast. So he wanted to correct that error and return the series to its roots and do so in a place in which such an endeavor made the most sense: on a previous-generation console.
His says that he "did it for the kids who wanted to experience Mega Man but weren't yet ready to move on to next-generation consoles," but that explanation feels like a cover. More likely, he did it for all of us: for series fans who were hungry for more Mega Man action but lacked the financial means to afford a next-generation console; for those who were seeking one last chance to experience Mega Man action its most recognizable, most purely concentrated form; and for himself--for a man who felt as though his best bet for understanding how the series' core had been corrupted was to re-immerse himself in the type of development environment that originally gave life to the Blue Bomber and thus call upon the disinfecting magic of the old machines.
His was a gesture that said, "Let us all take the opportunity to remember how we got here."
And I'm so glad that I'm able to stand among those who were able to seize that opportunity at that particular point in time.
Back then, at a moment when I was drifting away from Mega Man because of how needlessly complex it was becoming and how much its quality was diminishing, Rockman & Forte was just the game that I needed in my life. It reminded me why I loved Mega Man games and helped me to rekindle my love for the franchise.
That's why I'm so thankful for it.
Rockman & Forte is one of the poster children for an era for which I've since developed what I call "new nostalgia," which is a term that I use to describe my fondness for all of the fascinating-in-origin, endlessly alluring games that I discovered at the start of my second phase of life and specifically during my college and early-Internet years. It stands high atop the mountain alongside games like Dracula X: Rondo of Blood, Adventure Island IV, Fire 'n Ice, the MSX Eggerland games, and others whose mere existence blew my mind. And it represents everything that I loved about that era of discovery--about the time when there was still so much mystery in the world.
I'm sad that those days are long gone, but I'm encouraged by the news that there are many more like Rockman & Forte--many more that have the power to keep that era's spirit alive and further fuel my new nostalgia.
And I plan on discovering all of them!
So whenever I think about Rockman & Forte, I'll remember how enthralled I was as I tried to comprehend the surreality and inconceivable nature of its existence. I'll remember how much joy and excitement I derived from my earliest experiences with it. And I'll remember how I spent hours eagerly hunting down CDs so that I could read and re-read the Database's character descriptions and do so while soaking in the mode's reflective, wistful musical theme, which so brilliantly produced the type of remindful atmosphere that I desired to be enveloped in when I was reading about the history of a game series that had been with me for almost all of my life.
If ever there was a hidden gem that really shouldn't be, it would be Rockman & Forte. It continues to be an obscure game, and that's sad because it's simply too damn good to go undiscovered and unplayed by gaming enthusiasts. It absolutely deserves to come to modern digital marketplaces and have the opportunity to find a large audience.
I'd love to see it make an appearance on Nintendo's online service, and the Switch's lack of region locking gives me hope that such a thing could happen (because I never learn). The compromised GBA port won't cut it. I want the real thing. And I feel that the time is ripe for it to finally make its existence known.
Considering the way that things have gone for the franchise in the past few years, I'm sure that Mega Man fans would appreciate a re-released Rockman & Forte now more than ever.
So make that happen, Nintendo and Capcom!
So in the end, Rockman & Forte didn't turn out to be "Mega Man 9." It was good enough to be. It probably should have been. But it simply wasn't. It was something else.
But really, who could say for certain what Inafune and his team meant for the game to be? It could have been the case that they wanted to experiment within the original-series universe and expand upon it by introducing new ideas (like multiple playable characters and a branching-path style Robot Master-selection system) and mitigate the risk of fan backlash by treating the resulting product as though it was a spin-off. Perhaps their previous work, Mega Man 8, didn't sell enough copies to cover for its budget, so they looked to recoup the losses by recycling a large portion of its content and using it to create a comparatively inexpensive 16-bit game for an audience that was more welcoming of Mega Man games. Or maybe they really did just do it "for the kids."
Honestly, I don't really care why they decided to make Rockman & Forte. I'm just happy that they did! I love it. It's one of my favorite SNES games and one of my favorite original-series games.
And as it is now, the only thing that would be unfathomable to me would be imagining a history in which I never discovered the incredibly fascinating Rockman & Forte.
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