And for now, the Mega Man entries in this blog come to a temporary end. I wasn't originally going to include this - but I was surprised by how many levels is actually present within the Wily Tower mode, and after some discussion with fellow Mega Man fans, and realising that Wily Tower includes more unique levels than even some of the other standalone games, I decided this had a fair enough reason to be present here.

So, what is the story this time? Well after beating the first three remakes of the NES titles within this game, you unlock the Wily Tower mode, in we discover the context of the three remakes - turns out Wily has taken over the Chronos Institute and has used this to travel back in time to defeat Mega Man in a earlier adventure, with Mega Man hot on his pursuit. Once he has completed his revisits to the past, Mega Man now has to use all of the weapons he gathered from his first three adventures to venture through the tower, defeat Wily's Genesis Squad, and put a end to his time travelling schemes once and for all.

So, to briefly go over the remake aspect of it - the Wily Wars is essentially this series' version of Super Mario All-Stars, featuring a Genesis remake of all three games, complete with new visuals, music, and all three games on one cartridge. As such, we see a number of technical improvements as well. No slowdown, no sprite flickering, and a lot of issues with the original NES games. Personally, I think it's a matter of taste of which you prefer. You may not like the visual or music upgrades of Wily Wars compared to the original NES versions, but personally, with the flickering and slowdown fixed up, along with the music and visuals still being good in my opinion, the technical improvements make it my favourite way to play the third title in the series, if not the other two as well, and I think it's a shame that it sees so very little remasters in favour of the original game.

Wily Wars also has a unique piece of history, as it was never released in the US, not properly via a cartridge at least. While the EU and Japan got physical releases, Wily Wars in the US was instead a exclusive to the SEGA Channel download network, meaning that for awhile, once the SEGA Channel went kaput, there was no official way to play this game in the US.

Which is a shame because in some ways, I personally think that it does things better than the best comparison - Mario All-Stars. The Wily Tower mode might as well be it's own game, with the unique Genesis Squad bosses, and stages to go with it, as well as a full blown Wily Castle to run through - but on top of that, it has one of the unique coolest traits of any Mega Man game - you get the full line-up of Mega Man 1, 2, and 3 weapons/items, letting you choose your own assortment of weapons and tools to bring into the mode with you. Being able to make a combination of the Metal Blade, Shadow Blade, Ice Slasher, Leaf Shield, and any of the Rush gadgets or Item 1/2/3 is really fun. It is such a cool concept and it's a shock it only got used for this one game.

So, what else is there to say? I suppose we have our box art check in to do:

...well actually, it looks great. By virtue of it just reusing the Japanese cover, making this among the best of the Mega Man covers. Although, there was a unreleased cover for the US release...

...Yeah, that's more like the US Mega Man art we've grown accustomed to.