Fresh off the surprisingly good Mega Man Land III, Capcom (actually Minakuchi Engineering) asked itself “how can we make this more awesome?” Their answer is Mega Man Land IV, a rip-roaring, gloves-off celebration of all things Mega Man. Yes, you still fight four bosses from Mega Man 4 (NES) and four bosses from Mega Man 5 (NES), but the level designs are so completely different that you may as well be playing a different game. Notably, each level is significantly longer than its NES counterpart, and it uses elements from the NES games in imaginative and stronger ways. For example, in Napalm Man’s NES stage, you shoot giant drills in an isolated hallway, but in this game you use the drills as platforms in increasingly creative ways to get through the stage. Charge Kick is suddenly situationally useful for breaking certain blocks, while Ring Boomerang picks up items that are otherwise out of reach.

There are even a few enemies that encourage use of Rain Flush! Seriously, everything about this game is better than its NES forbearers. You get to fight another member of the Mega Man Killer team (Ballade) who has an awesome weapon that you have to use to escape from Wily’s castle. This is insanity for a Mega Man game. What? Brand-new, challenging, lengthy stages and creative uses for Master Weapons isn’t enough? How about throwing in a simplified version of the Shop from Mega Man 7 (SNES)? Yes, kids, now you collect P-chips and use them between stages to buy items from Dr. Light. You can also find Mega Man’s pet bird, Beat, by collecting the “BEAT” letters in the first four Robot Master stages. You can revisit stages to farm P-chips and grab BEAT letters that you missed, of course, although there’s no way to exit a stage without getting to the end.

The game is also impressively challenging, and I made good use of the Restore Points now available.

Bottom-line: there’s no downside. This is one of the best Mega Man games ever made, and I can’t wait to play Mega Man V.