Mega Man Preview

You may have thought that Capcom's best days were well behind it--back in the Street Fighting age, when every corner pizzeria and local arcade sported a garish monument to international pugilism, and all gamers worth their salt involuntarily practiced the "Ha-Dou-Ken" quarter-circle in their sleep. Well, OK, you may very well have thought right--up until a few weeks ago, when Lavastorm announced it was working to yank three venerable Capcom hits out of the time stream and deposit them anew on mobile. I had a golden opportunity to give them a test drive at GDC Mobile last week when I bumped into Lavastorm's Tobin Lent, and I can tell you that these titles looked just as good on his Moto T720 as they did on my sputtery old Nintendo.

Mega Man(Rockman to you Japanese readers), Capcom's absorbent cybernetic poster boy, has made the transition to mobile in stellar--if somewhat miniature--form. All of the original game's music made the jump intact, and the Blue Bomber will revisit his familiar foes in their old haunts, from Cutman to Gutsman to Elecman (complete with his insidiously difficult level)! In all, the game clocks in at around 400k, handily breaking the world record for one of Verizon's Get It Now downloads. One major new obstacle that Mega Man will have to surmount is mobile's generalized lack of chording support. I noticed that this impediment deprived him of his eminent agility, making jumping much more difficult to control. Of course, this handicap is hardly Lavastorm's fault, and it has compensated admirably by slowing down the pace of gameplay a little to allow for more careful platforming.

Commando and 1942 looked great too, tricked out with autofire features and all the classic overhead-scrolling action you could possibly want. Naturally, it's going to be difficult for these games to compete for attention with Mega Man--but as ancillary components of a Capcom suite, they'll work like gangbusters.

According to Lavastorm, these titles will be arriving on Verizon "very soon." Better start remembering which weapon works on which boss.