From the Memory Bank: My History with Video Games

Mega Man 4 - The Crossroads
The series' third installment set a ridiculously high standard, so what did Capcom do to follow it up?

After I'd waited for it for what felt like an endlessly long period of time, Mega Man 3, a game upon which I'd placed near-unreasonable expectations, came into my life in thunderous fashion and somehow managed to deliver to me everything I was looking for and so much more. It exceeded my expectations to such an amazing degree, in fact, that I was left feeling overindulged and thus as thoroughly sated as one could be; it had given me everything I wanted--everything I'd dreamed of--and there was nothing more I could think to desire.

"This is the last Mega Man game I'll ever need," I told myself. "If it turns out to be the series' final entry, I won't be sad because it's enough to last me the rest of my life."

As far as I was concerned, the Mega Man series had reached its apex, and there was no logical reason for it to continue. Yes sir--the Blue Bomber had climbed his way to the highest peak, and he was now in the perfect position to call it a day and retire in glory.

In short: I had absolutely no interest in seeing or hearing about a third Mega Man sequel.

Yet there I was, not five months after Mega Man 3 arrived, seeing the name "Mega Man 4" in print. It had appeared (and would continue to appear) in Nintendo Power's Pak Watch section, on the "NES Planner" list. And that's all there was to it. There was just the name and nothing else.

And I have to say: I was caught completely off guard by the sight of it. I simply couldn't believe that the follow-up to one of the biggest games ever was being announced so abruptly and in such a low-key way. "That's all it gets?!" I said with a perplexed look on my face.

Seeing just the name, typed in the tiniest print, left me feeling so underwhelmed and so apathetic that I didn't have it in me to even feign a positive emotion.

Now, mind you, I did actually have some mild interest in the announcement--not because I cared about another Mega Man sequel, no, but because I was curious about what it was going to be; about where Capcom could possibly take the series from here.

So about three months later, Mega Man 4 was formally unveiled in Nintendo Power Volume 31, in a preview that dropped the following details: There was a new villain in town named Dr. Cossack, and for unknown reasons, he wanted to destroy Mega Man. There were new Robot Masters like "Dive Man," "Drill Man" and "Pharoa [sic] Man." The slide maneuver and Rush adapters were returning. And, to the previewer's great excitement, Mega Man could jump onto mechanical grasshoppers and ride them across spiky surfaces.

"That's it?" I immediately thought to myself after I finished reading the mere-seven-sentence preview. "No changes or updates have been made to the formula? "There are no new ideas to set it apart? No surprise returns? There's just a purple hippo on a giant platter?!"

Now, not for a single second did I buy the idea that this Dr. Cossack fellow would actually be the game's main villain. After all: Any mega-villain who came from out of nowhere and behaved exactly like the previous mega-villain was usually a puppet or a dupe (the Ninja Gaiden series in particular made that very clear). This sentiment was shared by the Nintendo Power's writers who produced Volume 32's giant Mega Man 4 feature. They agreed that the game's plot was completely transparent, and they decided that they weren't going to embarrass themselves by trying to play along and give it any credence; so they thought nothing of just casually spoiling the "twist" that Cossack was being manipulated by Dr. Wily.

This game was coming off as so much of an unambitious rehash that I couldn't even motivate myself to read the entire piece. Rather, I skimmed through it and only glanced at the most-interesting-looking sidebar material. But even then I was able to detect that something else was off: Mega Man 4, it seemed, had less content than Mega Man 3! "How does that happen?!" I wondered, feeling baffled. "Do you really think that you can top one of the best games ever by creating a sequel that's both shorter and more-formulaic?!"

It just all seemed so lazy to me.

Still, though, I couldn't deny that a feeling of compulsion was stirring within me. For as annoyed as I was about what I was reading, I couldn't lie to myself and pretend that Capcom didn't have me deeply under a spell and that I was probably going to run out and buy Mega Man 4 day one regardless of all of the misgivings I had.

I spent the rest of the year agonizing over the decision of whether or not to buy. The process entailed my desperately trying to figure out why I was feeling compelled to purchase a game in which I had little interest. "Just what is the nature of the spell?" I continued to contemplate. And I couldn't come up with any answers. All I knew was that the urge was hard to resist.

So once I began leaning toward "buy," I knew that it was only a matter of time before I'd fully convinced myself that purchasing Mega Man 4 was the right thing to do. Oh, I did what I could to convince myself that there were other options, sure, but then, almost as if I was subconsciously rigging the process, I kept settling upon criteria that only pointed me in one direction. I'd keep narrowing it down to a couple of very specific questions: (1) "So if we're nearing 1992, and the NES' upcoming-releases list is rapidly drying up thanks largely to impending arrival of the SNES, then gee--what else will there be for me to play on my beloved NES? (2) "What kind of game can deliver the type of fast-paced action I've always enjoyed?" And (3) "Now that I'm mostly spending my own money on games, which of the remaining major developers can I rely upon to provide me a game that justifies a $50 price tag (Capcom, I have to note, was just about the only one left)?"

So yeah--there was no way the answer wasn't going to be "Mega Man 4."

Of course, having since acquired 23 years' worth of wisdom, I'm able to clearly identify what it was that induced me to buy Mega Man 4: It was the power of video-game marketing, which had a way of making kids feel as though they would be missing out on essential gaming experiences if they chose not to buy each successive installment in their favorite video-game series.

And guess what? It worked like a charm.

So on the very day it was released, I went over to the Toys 'R' Us in Caesar's Bay Bazaar and picked myself up a copy of Mega Man 4.

Perhaps because a hint of buyer's remorse had crept its way in, I suddenly wasn't feeling very good about my purchase. I mean, I'd just handed over more than $50 of my own money for a game about which I wasn't all that excited. All I could think was, "How in the world am I going to justify purchasing this game when I'm feeling so unenthused about even so much as the idea of popping it into the NES?"

I felt kinda icky, honestly.

But then I did what I always did after buying a new game: I hurried home and subsequently engaged in my usual ritual. I carried out the obligatory reading of the manual (which by then, early 1992, no longer felt like an essential part of the experience--no longer worked to generate that magical-feeling moment-of-important-research atmosphere or fill me with anticipatory excitement--because companies had stopped putting great effort into manual-creation) and then went upstairs, to my room, and fully unboxed the game. Then I proceeded to insert Mega Man 4's cartridge into the NES and do so in the most tepid way possible.

"I don't know if I'm in the mood to play this right now," I thought to myself as I pressed the Power button.

Though, as I watched the game's intro, I perked up a bit. This happened because the story it was telling was surprisingly gripping. The minutes-long scene spoke of and summarized the events that occurred in the previous three games, and then, most interestingly, it explained Mega Man's origin--who he was previously and how he became the Blue Bomber. It was all done in such a somber and emotive way, and thus it was able to effectively speak of all of the pain and anguish the characters suffered as a result of the wars and the destruction they wreaked.

The back-to-the-present-day transition that followed was accompanied by one of the most inspirational, most galvanizing pieces of music I'd ever heard in a game. The rockin' tune perfectly captured the spirit of the animation that was being show: a determined-looking, helmetless Mega Man standing atop a moving train and heading to confront the latest threat to world peace.

It was an excellent intro that worked to provide me a big jolt of energy.

Now, suddenly, I was pumped to start the action.

Sadly, though, the high didn't last very long. Before I could even defeat a third Robot Master, I'd once again fallen into a state of apathy. This shift occurred because it had quickly become apparent to me that Mega Man 4 was very much content to stick closely to the standard formula and thus offer none in the way of cool twists or surprises. I couldn't deny that it had all the makings of a solid action game, no, but because everything about it seemed so familiar--so very safe--it just wasn't grabbing me, and I had to constantly force myself to refocus my attention because the feeling of apathy kept causing my mind to wander.

"Why am I not able to focus on and enjoy this game?" I'd wonder whenever there was a break in the action (mainly during the interstitial get-equipped scenes, which, admittedly, were pretty cool-looking).

It was a unique type of disinterest for which I couldn't find a term (and I wouldn't find it for another eight years). It wasn't something so simple as "indifference" or "boredom," no; those were words that described the effect without identifying the cause. Rather, I'm now able to see, I was having my first experience with "sequel fatigue," which you start to feel when a game's mode of gameplay is indistinguishable from its predecessors'. When it kicks in, you grow detached from the action--from what feels exactly like something you've experienced 100 times before--and start to go into autopilot. And soon you're emotionally disengaged and merely going through the motions. Because, really, nothing the game is doing is challenging you to think in a new way.

That's what was happening to me.

I admit, though, that my inability to form a connection with Mega Man 4 was partly my fault. I just didn't give it a enough of an opportunity to sell itself. I was so intent on rushing forward and doing so as part of desperate search to find a game element that was truly novel. I was in such a hurry, in fact, that I wound up finishing the entire game within a couple of hours--at around 6 p.m., right before my mother called me down for dinner. All I knew was that I felt really bad about doing it, and subsequently I became angry with myself for my having given in to such a compulsion.

The truth is that I hadn't yet learned how to make games last--how to maximize first play-throughs. At a point in my life when there weren't many in the way of time constraints, it was customary for me to buy a game and then finish it that day, even if my mind was telling me not to--telling me that doing such a thing would only serve to devalue the purchase. "You know that this isn't a wise use of your time or your money," it would say with an admonishing tone.

Still, I just couldn't help myself.

I put the rest of the blame on Mega Man 4. And I had a lot of reasons to be mad at it.

For one, I was angry that it was such a short game and that it ended so abruptly. "That it?!" I thought to myself after taking down Wily. "There are just four Skull Castle stages, the final two of which barely qualify as 'stages'?! That means that this game only has 16 stages in total!"

Compared to Mega Man 3, which contained 18 stages (some of which, I grant you, can't really be called "stages," either, though my younger self certainly wasn't going to admit as much on that particular day) and plenty of cool surprises therein, Mega Man 4 felt abbreviated, mundane and just flat-out regressive. It was so bereft of evolutionary, inspired-feeling content, in fact, that I started to think that it might not have been made by the same people who developed Mega Man 3, which in contrast was dripping with ambition.

Also, I wasn't at all amused by the game's ending, which saw Dr. Wily effortlessly escape via a revolving wall while Mega Man just stood there like a dolt.

"So if Wily can escape every time using the simplest of tricks," I immediately questioned, "then how could Mega Man ever catch him?"

Wily's "OK, bye!" elusion encapsulated the pointlessness of the game, and I was angered by it because of the message it was sending. It provided me insight into how Capcom could potentially use contrived Wily escapes as a means to produce an endless amount of Mega Man sequels. All the developers had to do was have Wily fall through a secret hatch or jump into a giant suction tube, and bam--instant excuse for a sequel.

"If you can't find the inspiration necessary to create a game that eclipses Mega Man 3, then fine," I said. "But you could at least throw me a bone and provide me some sense of closure."

Another thing that bothered me: I didn't like how they tried to cover for the game's banality by creating a link between it and the beloved Mega Man 2. I'm talkin' about how they attempted to draw energy from and capitalize off of players' fondness for Mega Man 2 by reusing its iconic Robot Master-selection and stage-ending jingles plus its credits theme--and a much-inferior version at that (and they screwed up further by leaving out the tune's awesome second half!). It was a cheap move, I felt, and it struck me as the developers trying to find a way to distract from the fact that theirs was a soulless retread.

Mega Man 4, as far I was concerned, didn't deserve to be associated with Mega Man 2 in any way.

Such camouflage was in abundance in Mega Man 4. The new helper character Flip Top, for instance, was merely a remodeled mystery tank. The Wire and Balloon items were basically cosmetically altered versions of Mega Man 2's Item-1 and Item-3 transport items, and even then they were rendered completely superfluous by the Rush adapters, which performed the same functions but did so in much-superior ways (though, their inclusion did add a somewhat interesting exploration element to the game). Also, as I said earlier, they even rehashed the previous game's plot; the only difference was that this time there was a false antagonist (the blackmailed Dr. Cossack). And still everyone immediately saw through it.

"You can't pull off the same swerve two times in a row!" I said in protest. "I mean, how lazy do you have to be to even consider that course?"

That's what all of it was about: using slight alterations and the inclusion of unnecessary accessories as the means to create the illusion of change.

And do you know why they of course didn't explain Proto Man's motivation for betraying Wily? It's because they wanted his actions to remain as ambiguous as possible so that you'd have to buy the next game in order to find out where his allegiance lied. Because selling the next game is obviously the most important thing.

Then there were the enduring issues that were not addressed and remedied but instead ignored and thus allowed to persist. They brought back Rush Marine but failed to include a single water section in which its use could provide a clear benefit (this was a regression, too, because Mega Man 3 had at least one such section). Dive Man's stage--the only one filled with water--could be just as easily traversed using standard run-and-gun tactics; and it didn't make sense to use Rush Jet in Skull Castle Stage 1's lone water section because its larger hitbox only made you more susceptible to death in a place whose surfaces were extremely narrow and lined with spikes.

Also, it continued to be the case that the game was doling out way too many energy tanks. And because you could once again store up to 9 of them, you were almost always in a position in which you could basically trivialize boss battles; you could simply tank these battles--fight them in a reckless manner and win by attrition.

"How can they continue to claim that Mega Man games are about the 'challenge' when they keep doing stuff that only serves to eliminate the challenge?" I asked while shaking my head.

To be fair, Mega Man 4 did make one significant addition: the Mega Buster (around which most of the advertising was based; it was the game's "big draw"). It allowed Mega Man to charge up his arm cannon and fire off a larger, more-destructive shot.

It was a cool idea and, yes, a perfectly logical way to evolve Mega Man's shooting ability, but unfortunately there were aspects of it that were poorly considered. It made sense that you could use charge shots to absolutely crush minor enemies, sure, since the majority of them were merely cannon fodder, but the problem was that the charge shot was so overpowered that it could also inflict a considerable amount of damage on bosses, which were supposed to (a) be highly resistant to Mega Man's default weapon and (b) provide major challenges to Mega Man in instances in which he decided to fight them without use of the weapons to which they were vulnerable. When used on a boss, a charged shot would inflict three bars' worth of damage, which was near-equivalent to the standard four bars of damage the weakness-exploiting weapon would inflict.

And because the charge shot delivered that type of damage to bosses and did so in such a fast and efficient way, it wound up rendering just about all of the other weapons either less useful or totally redundant. (The only time I felt compelled to exploit a weakness was when I was fighting Pharaoh Man, who I perceived to be a beast; he was so fast and hit so hard that it seemed necessary use the Flash Stopper against him. The Flash Stopper, by the way, was yet another lazily recycled element; it was just a slightly altered version of Flash Man's Time Stopper!)

"Where's the fun in figuring out the weakness chain if the Mega Buster works just as well or better than the Robot Masters' weapons?" I couldn't help but wonder.

Now, it should have been that only one Robot Master--the "starter"--was vulnerable to the charge shot while the rest took no more than one bar of damage from it. That way, it wouldn't have appeared to be such an overpowered weapon. It was an easy problem to fix.Inexplicably, though, Capcom didn't recognize it as a problem, and so you got sequel after sequel in which the Mega Buster was as effective against bosses as the Robot Master weapons were.

Oh, I wasn't denying that the Mega Buster was a cool weapon, no. In truth, it was a lot of fun to use. I loved how the charge shot looked, sounded and operated, and I always felt extreme satisfaction when I was able to take out a whole group of enemies with a single blast. It was always fun, also, to enter boss doors at specific points during the dynamically animated charging process and watch on as Mega Man turned green or neon blue during screen transitions. It made him look ridiculous, and that's why it was funny!

So I liked the charge shot, yeah. It's just that I needed for Capcom to show some restraint and not program it to where the weapon was all-too-viable against bosses.

Needless to say, though, I wasn't happy with the overall product. I found Mega Man 4 to be very much inferior to Mega Man 3 (and also to the two games that preceded it). I felt that way because (a) it had less content (and a good portion of the content it had was recycled), (b) its music wasn't as good, and (c) and its endeavoring to be purely formulaic left it completely lacking for ambitious or adventurous spirit. It just felt like a lesser product and thus an unnecessary addition to the series.

So after that first play-through concluded, I immediately popped the game's cartridge out of the NES and placed it in one of my game racks. And in that moment, I wasn't sure that I was ever going to return to it.

Of course, I did wind up returning to it. A week or two later, I popped it back in, but I did so only because I was looking to justify having spent $50 on it; I was determined to wring some kind of value out of it, even if such an act equated to merely "spending an hour or two with the game." And you know what? While I was playing through the game, I found that I was actually having a good time with it! Maybe it was because recently I'd played some clunkers, and Mega Man 4 looked great in comparison to them; or it might have been that I'd entered a dry period, and even a "middling" Mega Man game was a fine option at a time when I didn't have enough money to buy a new game. I couldn't say for sure. All I knew was that suddenly, for whatever reason, I was having fun with Mega Man 4! And now that I'd since calmed down and was no longer angry at the game, I was able to look at the game clearheadedly and objectively and recognize that I'd judged it way too harshly--that, yes, it had its positive aspects.

That became a trend, and over time, I was finding more and more appreciation for Mega Man 4 and a lot of the things that it was doing. The more I'd play it, the more I'd like it. And after a couple of months had passed, I was prepared to say that Mega Man 4 was indeed a worthy Mega Man game.

But let me make something clear: For as much as I liked Mega Man 4, at no point did I ever entertain the idea that it was anywhere in the league of the amazingly awesome Mega Man 3, which resided in a whole other stratosphere and certainly one that was out of the reach of Mega Man 4 and, for that matter, most other games.

Still, though, I saw Mega Man 4 as a high-tier video game. It had a whole lot going for it. It contained a lot of fun, interesting ideas. There were the current-type laser platforms in Ring Man's stage. The sinking sands in Pharaoh Man's stage, whose inhabitants included Mummiras--revolving-wall mummies who tossed their heads at you (the revolving wall was a cool effect, and, now that I think of it, its animation might've been hinting at Wily's mode of escape). The rising and lowering in water in Dive Man's stage. The crushing ceiling in Dust Man's stage. And the ways in which whole segments of Drill Man's stage would suddenly, and very impressively, materialize whenever Mega Man would flip switches.

Though I had a tendency to unfavorably compare villains' castles to those found in Mega Man and Mega Man 2--whose castle stages were so finely and so lovingly constructed that I regarded them as incomparable--I actually came to hold a high opinion of the level design found in the Russian Dr. Cossack's Saint Basil's Cathedral-inspired fortress. They were all nicely designed stages and certainly much better than any those traversed in Mega Man 3's Skull Castle.

I liked, in particular, the opening segment of Cossack Castle Stage 1, which was set in the castle's icy, hazardous outskirts. The segment entailed your trudging through a chest-high layer of snow and trying to reach solid ground as patrolled by mechanical Slinkies (which, according to the Wikis, are called "Tom Boys"). More than anything, I was fond of the remote-feeling atmosphere this segment created with its harsh, snowy conditions and its alluring background visual: the tall, shadowy evergreens that seemed to be conspiring to surround and entrap you. It all amounted to a very memorable scene and one that set such a wonderfully distinct tone. No other castle opening felt like it--felt as uninviting or as mysterious (big credit goes to the stage's coldly harsh, cheerless musical theme, which did so much to help it establish this character).

The fortress' third stage, too, did a lot to capture my imagination. It stood out to me not so much for of its auto-scrolling attribute and the stressful platforming challenges it produced, no, but because of how it took me on a trip above the fortress' heights and to a place from which I could view its grand, awe-inspiring exterior portions--mainly its gigantic onion-shaped tower domes. The scenes they created were incredibly indelible, and I'd eagerly look forward to seeing them every time I'd play Mega Man 4.

Also, I had to give Mega Man 4 props for how its castle stages' layouts actually matched up to line-paths that were being drawn on the castle map during the intermission scenes. This was something that Mega Man 3's designers couldn't be bothered to do ("Wait--how does an L-shaped stage heading eastward correspond to a line-path that goes straight upward?" I'd always wonder when I played it).

And I had to admit: Cossack Castle's four bosses, despite their not being as well-regarded as the previous games' standouts (the Yellow Devil, the Mecha Dragon, the Guts Dozer and such), were very much worthy of such recognition. They were pretty damn inventive.

Cossack Castle's Stage 2 boss was especially notable. I couldn't guess as to the type of graphical wizardry the designers used to pull of the creation of a three-sectioned boss (which looked like a mobile control center, I thought) whose separate parts zipped across the screen, at up to three different speeds, in opposing directions before coming together and forming into a whole--an enclosure into which Mega Man had to preemptively sneak--no, but I could tell you that it resulted in one of the most visually impressive bosses ever seen in an 8-bit game. And, more importantly, it was a fun boss to fight. The battle did well to keep you highly engaged; its speedy pace required you to focus tightly, put your reflexes to work, and execute some deft dodging maneuvers and timely jumps. Those are the qualities that make for a great boss battle.

Also, there was the giant moth boss ("Mothraya," as it's called), which could ram its spiky abdomen into the ground and thus destroy part of it (and bosses that could create death gaps in the floor were always fearsome). The wall-walking twins (the unfortunately named "Cockroach Twins"). And Dr. Cossack's machine (the "Cossack Catcher"), whose underside was fitted with a giant extending crane; the machine's design made for a battle that essentially turned the tables on anyone who had ever played a crane game (you know--that game in which you fruitlessly attempt to ensnare prizes using a crane that can never seem to hold on to the objects it picks up).

The existence of these bosses showed me that yes--there was still some creative juice left in Capcom's tank.

Unfortunately, though, there wasn't as much ambition on display in Skull Castle, whose stages featured level design and imagery that were comparatively bland. And the stages just didn't have much atmosphere to them; there was nothing about their musical or visual themes that made me think, "Man--what distinct-feeling environments! I've never traversed stages that look or feel this like these!" No--theirs was the epitome of generic design. In fact, had you placed images of Mega Man 4's Skull Castle stages alongside images of Skull Castle stages from other post-Mega Man 2 series entries, I would have had a hard time telling you which image was from which game.

I will say, though: I did think it was neat how each stage's boss was a giant-sized version of the stage's most-recurring enemy. This design choice didn't speak of originality, no, but it was at least interesting, and it made for a cute little thematic element. So even the uninspired-feeling Skull Castle stages were able to score some small victories.

So in the end, Mega Man 4 had done well to convince me that it was a solid Mega Man game and definitely worth my time. I felt comfortable in saying that it was one of the NES' most fun, enjoyable action games.

Still, I could never bring myself to love Mega Man 4 or think of it as a top-tier Mega Man game. I could never see it as anything but a game that completely disregarded what its ambitious predecessors were building toward and insofar willingly chose to be both regressive and formulaic (and because it did this, I would forever refer to it as the series' first "formula game"). In the years that followed, I continued to be baffled by Capcom's decision to take Mega Man 4 in this direction--by its decision to follow up an inspired, wonderfully innovative series entry with one that took zero risks and came off as barely iterative.

Had I been able to speak with the game's developers, I would have had only one question for them: "How can you expect your sequel to feel special when it simply repeats what the previous game did but does so while offering less of everything?"

That, to me, would always be Mega Man 4's legacy: It could have been the game that evolved the series further and thus took it to the next level, yes, but instead it came to have the distinction of being the one that started the series' move toward unabashed formula-embracement. And each successive game would rigidly follow its blueprint: You face eight Robot Masters, you traverse a false villain's castle, and then you head to Skull Castle to do battle with Wily, who was "secretly behind it all." That was about it. You'd get nothing more and occasionally a lot less.

That's what Mega Man 4 meant the series.

A decade or so later, I would come to understand why Mega Man 4 feels so pedestrian. It's because it represents the start of Capcom's "annualization" of the series--the type of behavior I find to be so very disappointing because Capcom, during that era, was known for being one of the most ambitious, forward-thinking companies around. I don't know what made it change--what made it suddenly adopt the policy of playing it safe and milking its franchises for all they were worth. Though, our knowledge of Capcom's having taken this path gives us great insight into why Mega Man 4 turned out the way it did. And that's why we can see that, really, the game never had a chance at being something special.

That's fine, though. I can accept the situation for what it is. I can accept it because at the end of the day, I'm glad that Mega Man 4 exists. It doesn't match my vision of what a Mega Man 3 sequel should be, no, yet it still manages to be a quality Mega Man game. It is, like I said, a solid 8-bit action game, and, like those of its ilk tend to do, it does well to remind us of what was so great about action games from the 8-bit era.

And that's enough for me.

Had I known that one day I'd come to deeply miss this style of game--that soon it would disappear from my life due to consumers' growing disinterest in simple 2D games--I might have felt inclined to embrace Mega Man 4 from the start. I certainly do now. Now that we live in a world in which developers no longer want to make old-school action games, I'm able to see its true value. That's to say that Mega Man 4 is a game that gives me exactly what I desire--the kind of thing that today's games simply can't provide me: a fun, satisfying 8-bit action game that can be completed in an ideal of amount of time (no more than an hour). That's why I return to it regularly. It's why I make sure to play it whenever I'm on one of my week-long Mega Man binges.

So yeah--Mega Man 4 is a fine little Mega Man game. I like it a lot.

And if that proves anything, it's that yes--sometimes you can find happiness in accepting games for what they are.