Tiger Electronics also got into the game and made Megaman 2 & 3 electronic hand-held games. Obviously, they weren’t anywhere near as good as their Capcom counterparts, but they’re still worth talking about.
The controls consist of a directional button and two other buttons labeled “Fire” and “Weapon”. Up on the directional button makes Megaman jump and down has him jump down from an upper platform. Right moves forward and left has Megaman jump and cling to the wall behind him (similar to MMX). You can only progress forward; you can’t go back. The Fire button has Megaman shoot whatever weapon he’s equipped with and the Weapon button switches weapons.
A couple things to note about Megaman’s weapons. 1) His buster also uses weapon energy, so you must use it sparingly. If you run out and you have no other weapons, you have no choice but to start over. 2) Airman and Flashman don’t give you new weapons; their weapons are just normal plasma shots like yours.
As in other games, you can take on the robot masters in any order. They look pretty grotesque in this game. They only consist of a generic robot body with a distinguishing feature of some kind: Bubbleman has flippers, Airman has a fan in his stomach, Quickman has a boomerang on his head, Heatman has flames on his hands, Metalman has a blade on his hands, and Flashman has a hollow center (and Crashman’s arm for some weird reason). Also, like in the original game, each robot master has its weaknesses, which are listed below:
Bubbleman > Quick Boomerang
Airman > Bubble Lead
Quickman > Metal Blade
Flashman > Quick Boomerang
Heatman > Bubble Lead
Metalman > Atomic Fire
Croaker (1st Wily boss) > Quick Boomerang
Mech Dragon (2nd Wily boss) > Nothing
Dr. Wily > Bubble Lead
The only stage enemies in the game are Batontons and Snappers.
Health and weapon energy randomly appears in the stages. Be sure to get them, since you only have one life and no continues (meaning you must start all over from the beginning if you die).
Tiger’s second run, Megaman 3 was a little better. At least the robot masters looked more respectable. Once more there are only 6; Hardman and Topman were left out.
For the most part, it plays just like the MM2 version. Only difference is, you don’t get to cling to walls, so the left directional button is only used for picking up health and energy capsules. You can’t move backwards, though, so be sure to pick up those capsules because you can’t go back for them if you miss them.
Rush is also here. In each stage you’ll run into an obstacle where Rush is automatically called to get you across. Besides the Pepes that are your normal stage enemies, you’ll sometimes fight a Giant Snakey, a big cat, or the Yellow Devil as a mini-boss. Here are the weaknesses; most of them are like the original game this time:
Snakeman > Magnet Missile
Geminiman > Search Snake
Needleman > Gemini Laser
Shadowman > Needle Cannon
Sparkman > Shadow Blade
Magnetman > Spark Shock
Dr. Wily > Search Snake
All in all, I suppose they’re not too bad. They could be better, but they could be worse. If you want a portable Megaman game, however, the GameBoy games are still the way to go.
