Mega Man & Bass

Mega Man & Bass
Developer(s)	Capcom
Publisher(s)	Capcom
Platform(s)	Super Famicom, Game Boy Advance
Release	April 24, 1998 (Super Famicom), June, 2003 (GBA)
Genre(s)	Action / Platform
Mode(s)	Single player

Mega Man & Bass, known in Japan as Rockman & Forte (ロックマン&フォルテ, Rokkuman ando Forute), is a game in the Mega Man Classic series. It takes place after Mega Man 8.

The original Super Famicom version of Rockman & Forte was released exclusively in Japan in 1998 and was one of the final third party titles for the console. The game is not considered a sequel to Mega Man 8, but was a "side game". During development, the game was labeled "ROCK8.5" [1].

Story

In the year 20XX, after a year of peace since the emergence of the "Evil Energy" on Earth and its use by Dr. Wily to build extremely powerful robots to take over the world, a new villain arrives who goes by the name of "King."

At first the goals of this new, arrogant being seem unclear, but after a while they become quite certain. King desires to create a utopia in which robots will be able to live in peace and harmony. The only problem with this goal is that humans are left out of the picture, and as far as King is concerned, they are the enemy.

King desires to build a massive army of robots with which to build his utopian world, so he breaks into the Robot Museum and collects all of the Data CDs upon which the information of the creations of Dr. Light and Dr. Wily are stored.

Even though he is a pacifist by nature, Mega Man has a strong sense of justice and knows that King's goals are against everything that he and Dr. Light stand for. Dr. Light tells him that he must go at once to the Robot Museum and put a stop to King's plans before they get out of hand.

However, Mega Man is not the only one who has a bone to pick with King. Bass, Dr. Wily's most powerful creation, is quite upset with King proclaiming to be the most powerful robot in the world. Bass, who is quite arrogant himself, decides to prove that he is the strongest of them all by tracking down and defeating King before his rival, Mega Man, can.

Robot Masters

Tengu Man and Astro Man both make reappearances in this game, but only Tengu Man retains his previous attack pattern--with some minor changes to mix it up.

King has constructed six of his own unique Robot Masters to confront Mega Man and Bass, along with two who join his armies that were originally creations of Dr. Wily:

#	Robot Master	Designer	Debut	Weapon
KGN-001	Dynamo Man	King	New	Lightning Bolt
KGN-002	Cold Man	King	New	Ice Wall
KGN-003	Ground Man	King	New	Spread Drill
KGN-004	Pirate Man	King	New	Remote Mine
KGN-005	Burner Man	King	New	Wave Burner
KGN-006	Magic Man	King	New	Magic Card
DWN-057	Tengu Man	Wily	Mega Man 8	Tengu Blade
DWN-058	Astro Man	Wily	Mega Man 8	Copy Vision

Gameplay

The gameplay holds quite true to the eight games of the main Mega Man series, but there is a second playable character. The player can choose to start the game as either Mega Man or Bass. Like before, Mega Man's exclusive abilities are the charged shot, and being able to slide through very small gaps. Bass is able to fire his arm cannon at all 45-degree angles except straight down, but he cannot shoot while moving. His arm cannon fires rapidly, and cannot charge up, nor pass through walls (unless a certain upgrade is obtained that allows it to do the latter). Bass is also able to double-jump (jump a second time in mid-air), and dash along the ground, which lets him cross great distances by doing a dash-jump. Oddly, Bass can do the double-jump even after doing a dash-jump into the air. In other Mega Man games that included such abilities (Mega Man X4, for instance), the player cannot jump again if the first jump was a dash-jump, with the exception of Mega Man Zero 3 and 4. This makes navigating the various levels easier for Bass. On the other hand, Mega Man's charge shot can do more damage to bosses at once, which makes boss battles somewhat easier (however, Bass can get an upgrade for his buster that boosts its power).

CDs

Distributed throughout the levels are a collection of data CDs, which contain info on every prominent character in the original Mega Man series (with the exception of Dr. Cossack, Kalinka, Darkman, Doc Robot, and the crew from Battle & Chase), including the Stardroids from Mega Man V and the three unique Robot Masters from Mega Man: The Wily Wars' Wily Tower (Genesis Unit ("Mega World Corps" in Japan): Buster Rod-G, Hyperstorm-H, and Megawater-S), which only appeared on the Sega Channel for the Sega Genesis (the three robots are collectively called "Genesis Unit" after the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis which featured the game). Collecting them all does not unlock anything, but it can be interesting to attempt to collect all the CDs in one playthrough. Most of them are hidden, either behind obstacles that need to be destroyed with a special weapon, or accessed with a certain ability. Under normal conditions, both characters aren't able to collect every CD in the game for various reasons; some of them are behind one-block-high gaps, which only Mega Man can get through. He is also the only character to have access to the "Rush Search" ability, which is needed to get the buried CDs. Bass has a double jump and obtains the ability to fly by merging with Treble (Gospel in Japan) which are needed for some of the CDs.

The US release of the Game Boy Advance game was plagued with a good deal of nonsensical words and phrases in the CD Database. One notorious example would be Dr. Light's "Bad Point" (which simply says "Douchie".)

Bolts

In a similar fashion to Mega Man IV (Game Boy), Mega Man V (Game Boy), and Mega Man 7, enemies will often drop bolts after they are destroyed (as opposed to Mega Man 8, where the bolts are limited), and these can be exchanged for various items and upgrades.

Game Boy Advance port

Released in June 2003, Mega Man & Bass for the Game Boy Advance was the game's U.S. and Europe debut. This version is almost completely identical to the original Super Famicom version, though certain instruments of the soundtrack have been toned down due to the fact that the Game Boy Advance uses a combination of software sound and the four sound channels carried over from the original Game Boy which when not used correctly, provide fairly weak sound quality.

The game is largely unchanged from the Super Famicom version besides the story to accurately depict it to follow Megaman 8, an auto-save feature and some bug fixes: occasional sprite flickering and music corruption due to too many sound effects being played at once have been corrected.