Stop Calling It Mega Man 9: Let's Play Rockman & Forte!

Oh God…am I really doing this? Ok, just…just breathe, you’re gonna do fine, you’re gonna do fine…
Guuuuhhhhh…..
Welcome to Let’s Play Rockman & Forte!



Table of Contents:
1. First Stage: What’s That, Boy? Someone’s Broken Into The Robot Museum??
2. What? We Already Did a Drill Man?: Ground Man
3. Officially Running Out of Synonyms For "Ice": Cold Man
4. Still Embarrassed That You Found Him: Astro Man
5. Here You Goooo!!: Tengu Man
6: It's An Illusion, A Trick Is Something A Whore Does For Money: Magic Man
7. Arrrr, It's Driving Me Nuts!: Pirate Man
8. Propane And Propane Accessories: Burner Man
9. So Many Dynamos: Dynamo Man
10. Intermission: Completing the Database, The Crystal Stage, And Of Course, Shopping
11. In Which The Bosses Start To Become Ridiculous: King Fortress Stage 1
12. In Which The Bosses Become Super-Dee-Duper Ridiculous: King Fortress Stage 2
13. Final Stage: Who Else But Wily!

A bit of personal history: Rockman & Forte was one of the first games I ever played on an emulator, back in 1999, when I was 13 and had just upgraded from a 486 to a Pentium 3 with 56k modem. Having grown up with an obsession with the Mega Man games, as soon as I read about this mysterious Mega Man game that had never been released in the US, I had to play it. Back then, of course, there was no Wikipedia, so accurate info on the game was sometimes hard to come by. Some camps insisted it was “Mega Man 9”, others insisted it wasn’t. Although we now definitively know it’s not MM9, the answer was actually in the game itself: the game’s code refers to itself as Rockman 8.5.

You might notice that the game looks an awful lot like Mega Man 8, and you’d be right. This game really is Mega Man 8.5, or to borrow from a different series, Mega Man 8-2. The sprites for Mega Man are taken directly from MM8, 90% of the enemies are recycled from MM8, the themes of the levels all correspond to a similarly themed level in MM8, and some of the stage gimmicks are lifted directly from MM8 (though, thankfully, none of them involve the words “jump, jump” or “slide, slide”). Even two of the Robot Masters from MM8 are completely ripped off and make a second appearance as bosses in this game. Just about the only thing that’s completely original is the music, which is a lot better than the generic, elevator music crap that was found in MM8. I can’t decide if this is being resourceful and clever, or lazy and unoriginal. Maybe it’s both. However, despite being so similar to MM8, the game looks, controls, sounds, and feels a whole lot better than MM8 and still offers some fresh ideas. Something about that early era of PS1 games feel off for whatever reason…

This game…is quite hard, especially on your first run through. It controls okay for a non 8-bit Mega Man game and has some interesting level designs, but some of the boss battles (especially those in the fortress stages) are a bit on the difficult side, especially for a Mega Man game that doesn’t have E tanks. I’d venture to say that this is the second hardest game in the original Mega Man series, with MM1 being the only game harder (though I’d accept an argument of placing it third hardest after 1 and 9).

Some logistics on how this LP will work.

1. I’m not one of those people who are anal about using the “real” character names, but I am referring to this LP as “Rockman & Forte” for a reason, and that reason is that I will be playing the Super Famicom version of the game that was never released in the US instead of the GBA port that was released in the US in 2002. The port is done reasonably well, but due to the lower resolution of the GBA’s screen, you end up with situations like this:

where you can’t tell there are a bunch of fatal spikes just above the screen. The game was designed with the SFC’s resolution in mind, so that is what I will be playing it on.

2. Despite calling this LP “Rockman & Forte”, I will be using a translation of the game that refers to the characters by their English names (Mega Man, Proto Man, Bass, etc.) and will also refer to the characters as such. My apologies if this is confusing. (The translation of the game provided by the good people at Aeon Genesis)

3. Much like the later Mega Man X games, this game lets you choose between two characters, in this case either Mega Man or Bass (hence the title of the game). I will be playing as both characters simultaneously. Though the narration of the game will largely be done playing as Mega Man, I will show off parts of the game where playing as Bass offers some differences in gameplay or level layout.

4. I love boss battles in Mega Man games and I feel that seeing them in action is the best way to get a feel for how they work, so I will be linking videos of myself playing the boss battles. And just because I feel like showing off a little bit, I’ll be doing all the Robot Masters with just the Mega Buster (although I’ll start using the weapons starting with the second Fortress stage, because seriously…that shit is ridiculous. You’ll see what I mean soon enough.)

OK, enough boring shit. Let’s play Rockman & Forte!

The first stage of this game has really cool music. Forte is fun to play as, and that ice pillar weapon is awesome.

Unfortunately, that's pretty much all I can remember liking in this game.

We start off with the Player Select screen. The game is kind enough to fill us in on the features of the two characters.


Mega Man is the same Mega Man we all know and love: he slides, he charges his shot, he gives his thumbs up of approval.


Bass is a little different. Instead of sliding, he dashes (MMX style, meaning you can use A or double tap to dash). He also has a rapid-fire cannon that can be aimed in all directions, but he can’t move and shoot at the same time (unless he jumps) and can't charge his shot. Also, he can double jump.

First Stage: What’s That, Boy? Someone’s Broken Into The Robot Museum??


The story begins with Mega Man being sent to the Robot Museum to investigate a disturbance. Apparently Dr. Wily’s not behind this one, since he sends Bass to check out the same disturbance (but I’m sure you all believe THAT).


The Robot Museum is an interesting introduction stage, as it revisits moments from the series’ past. The first enemies we encounter are these little guys from the Metal Man and the second Wily stages from MM2.


Moving ahead, we come across a quasi-recreation of the Fire Man stage from MM1, complete with flame barriers and those fireball enemies.


Bass’ double jump comes in handy, as we can simply jump over these if we get impatient.


A little bit later, we cross some water on a raft and find ourselves on a submarine, similar to the one found in Blizzard Man’s stage in MM6. It even goes up and down, just like the old one.

After some more of those Metal Man drills, we find ourselves outside in the rain, just like in Toad Man’s stage in MM4. The rain actually does push you back while you’re jumping, so navigating some of these gaps can be tricky.


Once again, Bass’ double jump actually makes this part of the level somewhat trivial.


After beating our old friend Sniper Joe, we come across the first boss room.

Why look, it’s Proto Man!

King, huh? That’s…certainly a generic sounding name for a generic looking robot. Nevertheless, it seems like he’s the villain of this game.

Get him Proto Man!

Well…crap.


I’m 99% confident that Monty Pyhton reference wasn’t in the original Japanese text.


Mega Man shows some brotherly concern, but Bass doesn’t even seem to acknowledge his existence, let alone give a helping hand. Typical Bass.

Here’s our first boss: the Green Devil. He looks exactly like the Green Devil boss from MM8, and is obviously modeled after the Yellow Devil bosses from past Mega Man games. Unlike all of those, this one is just stationary, barely attacks, and goes down like a chump.


The idea is that shooting him in the face slowly but surely causes his inner eye to be exposed, which is his weak spot. It’s similar in concept to the Sluggy the Unshaven fight from Yoshi’s Island.


Bass can just get a good angle and fire away.


Easy as pie.



Stage Select:


The Stage Select screen is one of the stranger gameplay experiments that this game tries. Rather than start out with 8 levels or have 2 sets of 4 levels, we start with 3 levels, represented by the second column of squares. As we beat levels in the second column, they give access to levels in the third column (5 more), the crystal stage, and eventually that special K logo all the way at the end.


We also have access to the Shop and the Database.


The Shop is where we go to buy items. Unlike MM8 where bolts were hidden items, R&F follows the format of other MM games where bolts are dropped by enemies. Eventually we’ll get access to more items, and Mega Man and Bass will have different items that they can buy. For now, we’ll leave this alone, but we'll definitely be buying several items before the game is done.


Bolts may not be hidden items in this game, but CDs are. As King mentioned in the intro stage, data CDs of each Robot Master (and even some humans) in the entire series were stolen from the Robot Museum, 100 in total. Each one is like a trading card, offering some artwork with the character, plus some stats. We’ll find all of them and present them along the way (although there’s not really any prize for finding them all, so…there’s really no point in doing this).

What? We Already Did a Drill Man?: Ground Man


Ground Man himself is loosely based on Drill Man, while his level is based on Sword Man’s stage.


The sand falls hinder our sight, but we do find our first hidden CD in this little slidey space, hidden right behind the sand fall.


This kind of sand fall with the darker color actually pushes down on Mega Man, making it harder for him to jump and prevents him from getting over to that CD.


Bass, on the other hand, has no trouble getting this CD, plus one more on the way down.


Upon reaching the bottom of the vertical shaft, Mega Man and Bass actually sink in the sand, so we have to be careful to periodically jump, lest we sink and die.


The next few screens involves figuring out how to get past the giant caterpillar that’s hogging the entire tunnel as it comes toward you. For the first screen, we hang out at this ladder til it passes, then book it to the next screen. This continues in a similar fashion for a few more screens.

Bass once again shows up Mega Man by being able to collect a few more items with his double jump (jerk).


With that out of the way, we come across our first mini-boss!


…which is…yet another giant caterpillar. Really digging deep for these ideas, guys.


Like any good mini-boss, the weak point is the head. He flies around the screen in pre-set patterns, occasionally burrowing into the ground or walls and occasionally laying eggs with mini-caterpillars hatching out.


The key to this fight is figuring out which flight pattern he’s currently on, then standing in the safe spot in the room for that flight pattern while aiming at his head.


The next bit is fairly straightforward, but we do come across a fork in which one path gives way to some treasure chests.


The first one contains an extra life! Awesome!

The second one…comes to life and tries to eat our face. Not as awesome.
As for the third one, we clearly need some kind of fire-type weapon to get to it. No choice but to come back later.



The idea in this next sequence is that we need to destroy the red statue in each room to open the door to the next area. However, destroying a non-red statue that’s in our way will advance the scary-looking spikes towards us, so we have to be careful about how many we destroy. In this first room, it’s not really an issue, but it comes into play in the next room.


Bass, with his multi-directional shot, can destroy the one in the ground, presenting us with our first real level path difference between the two characters.



Mega Man continues forward, where he has to be careful not to destroy every statue, lest the spikes come up too far and murderize him.



The spikeys come in sideways too, including coming too far over to grab that CD. Guess we’re coming back for that one too sometime…

Meanwhile, Bass traverses a considerably easier stretch and even manages to pick up a couple CDs, eventually meeting up with Mega Man’s path.


Alright, this is the last bit, and it’s a bit tricky. Those drill-fish enemies pop out of the holes in the ground, but some of them also pop out and forward, destroying parts of the ground and leaving you with large gaps to overcome and only small platforms to stand on. You can try shooting them to prevent them from chewing up the ground, but another one eventually pops up to take its place.




The easiest way to get through this section is to barrel through the whole thing and just keep moving and jumping. Crash into the Sniper Joe if you need to, because once that drill-fish destroys most of the ground, the jumps become pretty difficult.



Once again though, Bass’ double jump makes the difficulty somewhat trivial. We even obtain one more CD in this passage near the top, only accessible to Bass.



Woooo, we finally made it!

This is the first Mega Man game I played through. But I was 10 and it was 2001. Also, it was in Japanese, so the game was more like GOOD LUCK BUYING THING FROM THE STORE, LITTLE BOY.

I was like what the heck are all these disks.

Up until now, you might notice that Bass is really maneuverable, to the point that it makes traversing the levels really easy, even when it’s trying to be hard. You might ask yourself, “why would anyone play as Mega Man?” Here’s where playing as Bass moves from being an advantage to a huge fucking liability. Because Bass can’t charge his shots and because bosses have that invulnerability-flicker for like 3 seconds after getting hit, boss fights with Bass become very very long if you aren’t using the right weapon. It essentially become just using Mega Man with non-charged shots only, meaning it takes approximately 3 times as many shots to kill a boss. For easy bosses, the fight becomes boring and tedious. For hard bosses, the fight becomes even harder. The first boss in any runthrough with Bass takes a really long time, and you better hope you know the right order to tackle the rest of them, or else the rest will take just as long too.


So, Ground Man. He looks like Drill Man on steroids. And just like Drill Man, he burrows into the ground and pops up elsewhere.


He also turns into a little tank and rushes around the room, as well as launching giant drill missiles that can split up into smaller, faster drill missiles.


Oh look, he burrows into the ceiling too, presumably to get the drop on us and…


OH SWEET JESUS, LOOK OUT!! (First time I ever saw this, it scared the shit out of me.)


But overall, Ground Man isn’t hard and goes down for the count pretty easily.


R&F is nice enough to give a demonstration of the weapon you obtain on some enemies. In this case, we get the drill that can split into 2, and then 4.



And with that, we’re done! As you can see, defeating Ground Man in the second column gives access to two more levels in the third column. 1 down, 7 to go.

Number of CDs collected so far: 8


Next: Officially Running Out of Synonyms For "Ice"

Ground Man Boss Battle

I'm having fun so far. I think this is the first (maybe only) Mega Man game I've ever finished. I don't remember Bass's attack being such a liability in the boss fights, though.

The info cards at the end are a little too cramped to read easily, by the way.

Pharaoh Man's card says that he has a weakness for pretty women but he hates tomb raiders. Make up your robotic mind!

Also, I noticed that most of the CDs you found in that stage relate somewhat to the stage itself, or even just to Ground Man. Burst Man and Shade Man seem a little out of place, but other than that, they all basically fit. Even Uranus fits because his stage was also themed like an ancient ruin.

I got this for the GBA, got to the end, but never finished it. The lack of E-Tanks did not help as I recall. I always played as Bass - the platforming for Mega Man was just too sadistic.

I only ever played this on the GBA, meaning I always had to use Bass for the ease of platforming.

Luckily, so much of the game was designed around using Bass that it wasn't much of a liability.

I like how not only Stone Man and Guts Man are drinking buddies, but that it's hinted at that Stone's got a bit of a problem.

What a drab-looking boss room. As flawless as the down-porting of Mega Man 8 assets from PlayStation to SFC seems at first, things like this really drive home what a better-looking game MM8 still is.

I prefer to call him the Jello Devil.

I already like this game a lot more than Mega Man 8.

Wow, I never noticed that, but it sure seems to be that way. The trend continues in my next update too. I wonder if they're all like that? Guess we'll find out!

Officially Running Out of Synonyms For "Ice": Cold Man


Seriously, Cold Man sounds so unthreatening. “Look out, I’m gonna make things cold!” What’s next, Cool Man?


As should be obvious, the MM8 parallel for Cold Man is Frost Man. That ice block to the left sure seems suspicious…


Sure enough, using a Spread Drill on it breaks it apart to reveal a CD.


For the most part, this level is relatively simple and gimmick free (and a little boring). It’s a good first place to go if you’ve never played, but there will be a lot of those ice blocks in the level, so I wanted to grab Ground Man’s weapon first.


Those energy capsules seem like they’re inaccessible, but we’ll get a weapon later on that will let us reach items like this.


This room also has a fake wall that leads to a CD, one that Bass will be getting.


Oh look, another one. Man, we just seem to be tripping over these in this level.


These icy platforms crumble after you step on them for a few seconds, so it’s important to keep moving.


Some of the jumps get a little tricky, especially with those helicopter dudes shooting at you.

Once again, another CD that requires double-jump master Bass.


Aha! Your precious double-jump is useless here, Bass! Mwahahahahahaaa!!


Alright, mini-boss time. Once again, aim for the head. He sucks in a large amount of snow (and tries to suck you in) and then launches a bunch of mini-snowmen into the air, which come parachuting down. He also jumps around, destroying his own snowmen in the process.


It's a little tricky to hit him in the head consistently, but ultimately he goes down.


Woo! Another section only Mega Man can access! Thanks to the magic of the slide, we pick up 2 more CDs.


Bass will have to settle on using the Spread Drill to pick up a CD of his own.


Careful jumps over spikes.


But hmmm…this one doesn’t have any spikes.


Sure enough, it’s a secret passage that allows us access to yet another CD.

After a short climb, we come to this last bit with these ice block generators. They toss ice blocks at you, pushing you back and causing damage if you get pinned up between a wall and an ice block.


In general, you want to avoid them, but sometimes you want to ride on them.


Overall, a pretty short and uneventful level. We’re at the boss already.


Just like this is a pretty easy and boring level, Cold Man’s a pretty easy and boring boss. His first phase of attack just involves him creating these spiky ice blocks and tossing them at you. They slide along the ground and rebound against the wall. Just jump over it and shoot him when you have a clearing.


With half his life gone, Cold Man starts releasing these cloud enemies too. They make if difficult for you to jump or move if you come in contact with them, so the idea is to shoot them before they can envelop you. It gets a little tricky trying to kill them while jumping the ice blocks. If you do come into contact with one, you can try to shake them off.


Bass has a slightly easier time hitting the clouds, as he can aim his cannon in all directions.


But overall, this is probably the easiest boss in the game after the Green Devil. Not much to see here.


For our efforts, we get the Ice Wall weapon, which produces an ice block similar to the one Cold Man produces. Just push on it and away it goes, sliding forward and damaging enemies.


Just like with Ground Man, beating Cold Man gives access to two more levels.

Number of CDs collected so far: 18

Yep, that's a lot of ice-related CDs there.

Next: Still Embarrassed That You Found Him

Cold Man Boss Battle

...PTA meetings!?

There's at least one thing about Rolls CD that strikes me as being a bit... off.

I'm not sure how much of this translation is just the translators having fun and making stuff up, but apparently this one's not because it's the same as the Capcom translation on the GBA. Odd but true.

I'm more weirded out by Flash Man, personally.

As if being called Flash Man didn't already make him sound creepy enough.

EDIT: Also, congratulations to Tavir for not falling into the trap of making all kinds of cold puns. Had I done this update, it would have gone something like this...



...and that would have been terrible.

Question: Do Mega Man and Bass use the subweapons the same way? Can Bass aim them or is it the exact same at that point?

You should start showing Bass against the bosses, too, if the strategy changes enough to warrant it.

I think that past MM3 (and 9) I would much rather watch/read and LP than actually play them. Good job so far!

No, they both use the same weapons the same way. I think they might have different colors show up when their equipped, but that's it.