It's new to me: Mega Man IV

This column is “It’s new to me,” in which I’ll play a game I’ve never played before — of which there are still many despite my habits — and then write up my thoughts on the title, hopefully while doing existing fans justice. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge isn’t a bad game, necessarily, but it’s not a good one, either. The Game Boy debut for the Blue Bomber inessential, something that only Mega Man completionists need to bother with in the present. Mega Man II took a couple of steps forward but at least as many backward, resulting in the same situation. Mega Man III took the better ideas from both titles to make something that, while still inessential, at least felt like Capcom was doing more than cashing in on the Mega Man name as quickly and inexpensively as possible: the game still has its problems with cheap, frequent deaths, but otherwise it plays as if someone actually took their time trying to make Mega Man work for the Game Boy.

Mega Man IV, though? That’s a good video game. The level design is a step up from anything in the previous three titles in this portable series, the cheap deaths are at a minimum because of it, and the only thing that feels overtly recycled is the fights with the robot masters, which here are pulled from the NES games Mega Man 4 and Mega Man 5. There’s frequent slowdown, but it always feels like it’s because the game is pushing the hardware and trying to do something that makes it worth the dip in performance. And there is enough here that stands out and is different — there’s an item shop! — that Mega Man IV feels like its own thing instead of just a way to reuse some existing bosses in a handheld game. Like Capcom wanted to actually build something here, and not just go “here’s some Mega Man you love Mega Man buy this new Mega Man, it’s new sort of.”

This is also the only time where the Game Boy recreation was anywhere close to the NES games that it pulled from. Granted, Mega Man 4 and Mega Man 5 aren’t exactly the most beloved entries in the series, but the fact it’s a discussion at all works in Mega Man IV’s favor. This also served as the final time that Capcom would borrow from NES games for their portable cousins: the next entry in the Game Boy series, Mega Man V, would be wholly original rather than half-recycled. It took four tries to get it right, but they got there

Capcom did not get there alone, though. While the game was produced by Tokuro Fujiwara (director of Bionic Commando, Ghosts ‘n Goblins, Sweet Home), who had also served in that role in the other Game Boy entries, and Keiji Inafune was the artist, Minakuchi Engineering was the game’s primary development studio. Minakuchi Engineering was responsible for Dr. Wily’s Revenge and Mega Man III, and would, post-Mega Man IV, also develop V and the Sega Genesis Mega Man compilation, The Wily Wars, before being given the reins for another original in Mega Man X3 on the SNES. It’s safe to say that at this point they were familiar with how Mega Man worked, and it showed in the final product.

Much of Mega Man IV is what you would expect, in that you traverse stages light on health powerups and extra lives, trying to get to the robot master at the end with as much health left as possible. If you have the power-up that is said robot master’s weakness, that fight against them can be over in mere seconds, depending on how effectively you deploy it. You do need to learn attack patterns and how to utilize these powers, though, and being able to take a hit or two would help you, as well. Things are less forgiving in Dr. Wily’s castle, since you have the second wave of robot masters to go with a number of mid-bosses, which also includes the last of the three “Mega Man Killer” robots, Ballade — rather than robots turned toward the purpose of defeating Mega Man, Ballade and the other Mega Man Killer bots were designed specifically with that purpose in mind.

Rush is here, giving you the use of the skills Rush Coil — basically a trampoline for reaching higher platforms or items that are otherwise out of reach — and Rush Jet, which lets you fly forward. You receive these Rush powers from two of the robot masters: Coil from Toad Man, Jet from Charge Man. So, you can pick which robot masters you want to fight based on not just which powers you want to get for Mega Man to be able to fire, but also for the fastest access to Rush’s abilities. Toad Man is one of the first four bosses you can choose from, while Charge Man is in Dr. Wily’s Castle in the second round.

That’s convenient enough, since Toad Man is easy to defeat with just the standard Mega Man shot, so you can start there, then move on to Bright Man, who is weak to Toad Man’s screen-covering Rain Flush, then you can fight Pharaoh Man with Bright Man’s Flash Stopper, and Ring Man with the Pharaoh Shot. And yes, Mega Man IV isn’t perfect, but when you’re pulling from a game with “Pharaoh Man” and “Toad Man” in it, well, you can only blame so much on the game doing the recycling. In the second wave of levels, you can take on Charge Man with Rain Flush, too, so it’s easy enough to kick that group off with an advantage that will let you pick up Rush Jet, too.

The reason to prioritize Rush Coil and Rush Jet in your battle plan here is not just to get it out of the way, but because they have specific uses for collecting items. The first four levels each contain a letter from the word “Beat" to collect, and when you do, you get access to Mega Man’s robo-bird pal, Beat. First introduced in Mega Man 5, Beat will fly around attacking basic enemies and making your life a little easier because of it. Not an essential get, but a nice to have. In the second half of the game, you’ll need to collect a different set of four letters, which spell “Wily,” in order to unlock all the gates at the start of Ballade’s stage.

After completing Wily’s castle — which will see you get through Stone Man, Charge Man, Napalm Man, Crystal Man, a mid-boss, and two instances of Ballade, you’ll then go to space and Dr. Wily’s ship, where he and some additional bosses — as well as rematches against the eight robot masters — await Mega Man. Mega Man IV is heavy on the boss fights, but you do have access to a whole bunch of items, at least. The item shop, which is located in Dr. Light’s lab and you have access to after you complete stages, is full of myriad options for making your life easier, from Energy Tanks that will fully refill your life once in a level, to a W-Tank that does the same for your special weapons, to extra lives, and even the “Energy Balancer,” which will fill up whichever special weapon has the lowest amount of energy left when you pick up a refill in a stage, instead of going to whichever one you have equipped at the time. You can also find some of these items out and about — there’s a small energy tank you can find in the wild, too, four of which make a full energy tank, so a combination of exploration and purchasing can get you there as needed — but there’s a heavy emphasis on this item shop for keeping Mega Man well-stocked.

To buy these items, you need P-Chips, which are a pickup found just lying around in levels, or acquired from defeated foes. You will have a healthy supply of them so long as you keep fighting through, and while this all means there’s a little less to find out in the levels themselves, with the idea being that you’ll buy stuff, it does let you tailor your experience a little bit more. Don’t think that you can be wasteful, though, just because you can purchase extra lives and energy tanks: you still want to learn to avoid taking damage, because it’s not as if there is an infinite supply of P-Chips out there for you, and having to deal with the boss rush late — and multi-stage Wily himself, of course — means you’re going to have a need for refills.

If there’s one real knock against Mega Man IV that keeps it from being anywhere close to the best of its cousins on the NES, it’s that the level design, while a major improvement from its Game Boy predecessors, doesn’t offer up anything particularly noteworthy. What’s here works, and there aren’t any major complaints in terms of quality — cheap deaths, as said, are at a minimum, and there are some cool moments, such as with you needing to shut off the lights and limit your visibility in order to make platforms appear, and the rivers of sand that attempt to carry you along to your room, both of which can cause slowdown because of how much is going on on-screen at those times. But there is a lack of true “wow!” moments, for lack of a better descriptor, making Mega Man IV more of a workmanlike experience. It’s significantly better than its predecessors, but there are much better Mega Man games out there, too, even if only one of those exists on the Game Boy alongside it.

Still, if you were to search out just one of the first four Game Boy Mega Man games, all of which recycle concepts and bosses from the contemporary NES games, this would be the one to go for — there really is no need to revisit Wily’s Revenge, II, or III if you’re not specifically trying to get through everything. Mega Man IV would give you the best version of that experience, and then you could follow up with V, which again, is a completely original adventure, rather than a combination of new with reused designs and bosses. And seeking out IV is pretty simply these days, so that helps.

Mega Man IV originally released on the Game Boy in 1993 in Japan, North America, and Europe in 1993, and wouldn’t come out anywhere again until 2014, when it was released on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console — part of the reason for the large gap in between there is because Capcom canceled the collection they had in the works for the Game Boy Advance, which would have featured full-color versions of the five Mega Man Game Boy titles, as well as bonus history and art features. The 3DS digital shop is now closed down, which temporarily cut anyone off from experiencing these games in the present without original hardware and the secondhand market, but Capcom put all five Mega Man Game Boy titles onto Nintendo Switch Online in 2024, so they are at least available somewhere in the present, even if they still aren’t able to be purchased. And because of the possible filters on the Game Boy NSO channel, you can get a Game Boy Color-esque experience for these games, rather than the monochrome, green-tint of the Game Boy screen.

Perhaps it’s the overall quality of these games that keeps Capcom from releasing them for purchase in a collection, or even in the form that was once promised back in the GBA era, because they basically re-release every Mega Man and Mega Man-adjacent series in a bundle these days. The Game Boy titles and the trio of Legends-universe games are still waiting for their moment, though, but again, at least you can experience the Game Boy titles in the present, if you have a Switch and an NSO account. It’s not ideal, but it’s more likely to get people to dive in than asking them to emulate, especially when you consider that these games are well over 30 years old now, and basically hidden away by Capcom in the intervening decades outside of being plopped onto the 3DS — how many potential players even know they exist, compared to the series’ that Capcom perpetually makes available each new console era?

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