Nintendo is plumbing the depths of the Blue Bomber’s portable efforts this week. All five Mega Man Game Boy games launched simultaneously via Nintendo Switch Online, and are now available for those who have a subscription.
The games included in the drop are Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge, Mega Man II, Mega Man III, Mega Man IV, and Mega Man V. You just need the basic Nintendo Switch Online paid membership to dive in, so no worries for those who haven’t ponied up for the Expansion Pass version. You can relive all the green-tinted glory in Nintendo’s June 2024 Game Updates trailer below.
Starting with Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge in 1991—known as Rockman World in Japan—the Game Boy takes on Capcom’s NES platformers were actually pretty impressive efforts. Many of them can be seen as remixes of sorts, with the first challenging players to four Robot Master stages from the original Mega Man, followed by fights with four Robot Masters from Mega Man 2 within the treacherous halls of Wily Castle.
Mega Man II mixes content from the second and third NES games, so you can see a pattern developing. The series came to a close with Mega Man V in 1994, featuring Super Game Boy support and, in a first for the Game Boy entries, a totally fresh story with new levels, bosses, and weapons.
All of the games have their awkward aspects, but they’re absolutely worth firing up if you have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. And hey, it beats paying exorbitant eBay prices for complete versions of these bite-sized bad boys. Now we’ll just patiently wait for Nintendo to expand Switch Online support to include the DOS version of Mega Man 3.
