I played my fair share of the original Mega Man II, and frankly I should have left my memories in the past instead of trying to relive them on the iPhone version.
Mega Man II was probably one of the defining moments in my gaming life. It was one of the first games that stuck in my brain. Runners up include The Legends of Zelda, Blades of Steel, and Tecmo Bowl. I look back on the massive amounts of time spent playing those games with great fondness.
Mega Man II for the iPhone bastardized the whole damn memory.
Does the remake represent the game accurately? Sure. Does the control mechanic in the iPhone version work how you’d expect? Hell no. It might just be that my dexterity has deteriorated a little over the years, but jumping from ledge to ledge should be a task worthy of a pat on the back every time I land a jump successfully.
Some things just don’t work on a touch screen, and I’d argue that Mega Man II is one of those things. The side scrolling action when mixed with a touch screen control system just ends up being a giant pile of fail. It’s not Capcom’s fault. The game is as good as they could have made it. It’s the original Mega Man II wrapped in a tight little package, but like I said earlier, the controls absolutely suck.
If you’re an iPhone gaming savant, and have mastered the touch screen control system then you’ll love this game, and should ignore everything I just ranted about.
Why are the controls terrible?
It comes down to game design. I’m not sure what the incentive was to try and recreate the feeling of playing Mega Man II on an old fashioned arcade machine, but it eats up way too much screen real estate, leaving us with buttons that are too small. I don’t have giant fingers, in fact it’s quite the opposite for me, so if I’m having a hard time using the control scheme there’s probably an excellent chance that others are as well. Capcom would have been better off making the game fullscreen and overlaying the buttons. Had they done that, it would have afforded them the ability to increase the button sizes.
