A playthrough of Capcom's 1992 platformer for the NES, Mega Man 5.

Mega Man 4 lacked a bit in originality compared to the first three superstar games in the series, but it still did more than enough to distinguish itself with the addition of the mega buster, the adapters, and being the first game that pulled trick where the bad guy isn't Wily, but only until Mega Man actually figures out it is Wily.

Mega Man 5 feels like the development team decided that it would try to reclimb that hill yet again, only to not reach as high as it wanted to before it slipped and skid farther down than down than it really should have. But then it got tired and decided to stay put. Good enough.

There are a lot of things to like about Mega Man 5: some new things are introduced in the levels that hadn't been seen before (like inverted gravity, a jet ski), and a new helper (Beat) comes along, but it feels bythenumbers this time out. The level designs tend to feel like cheaply and lazily cobbled together sets of assets flipped from the earlier games, and several of the enemies have been recycled from Mega Man 3 and 4. Mega Man 5 attempts its own innovations, but none of them feel as meaningful as series staples like the Mega Buster and the Rush.

The graphics are pretty nice and there's loads of detail, but I am not a fan of this soundtrack. It feels almost sacrilegious to say something like that about a Mega Man soundtrack, but I don't like it. It hasn't got the energy of the older games' music, and I didn't find most of it memorable in the slightest. After the incredible music in 14, that was both a surprise and a bummer.

I do have to give it props for that intro, though. It blatantly rehashes the same old plot, but the part at the end (right before the title screen, when you see the closeup of the scarf accompanied by an allcaps "PROTOMAN!?") has to be one of the most comically melodramatic things I've seen on the NES. What an awesome transition to a title screen it is.

Mega Man 5 is absolutely a solid game and worth the time to play through: it compares favorably to most NES action games, but within the context of the series, the "improvements" feel unnecessary and tacked on and the stages and bosses are lacking the character that Mega Man fans who had followed the series to this point had become accustomed to.

If you'd like to see more Mega Man playthroughs, check out my playlist!    • Mega Man Playthroughs  
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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