Mega Man II Now Available for the iPhone
I love Mega Man II and I love my iPhone, having them together would be like a little taste of heaven for me. The ability to to take out my phone and play one of the greatest games of all time, anytime, sounds perfect. Well, the ‘ability’ to do that has happened, but just like some people say, “be careful what you wish for.”
If you log on to the App Store right now and search for Mega Man, you’ll find the first sequel just waiting to be downloaded. For only $4.99, the retro game can be yours and will only take up 13.2 MB of space. I almost purchased the game, until I saw the screenshot (above) and read some of the user-reviews. First, the best thing people had to say about the game was how good it looked. Graphically, the port looks identical to the NES classic. Sadly, that was about the only positive thing that was written.
The biggest complaint was the controls. “I was really excited to see this, but… I’m sorry, the controls are terrible,” wrote Dr. Tails. Mizzou2 agreed, “The Controls are AWFUL, nearly unplayable. I hope this can be fixed.” And even more bad stuff was written, “This Version of Megaman 2 has terrible controls,” wrote Blueblur.
Checking out the screenshot above, it is hard disagree. Why on earth would Capcom only use a small portion of the phone’s screen for gameplay. On top of that, the touch screen ‘buttons’ look hideous. Why would they even draw a joystick to move Mega-Man!? Just looking at these pictures make it seem like horrible game design.
I guess for now, I’ll stick with the Wolfenstein 3D port for my iPhone.
Source: ripten
March 30th, 2009 at 10:34 am
The NES was 256×240, compared to the iPhone’s 320×480. The gameplay area in the iPhone port is the exact same dimensions as an NES screen. If they enlarged the gameplay area, it would either mean resizing the graphics and thus making them look fuzzy and gross, or it would mean making the game widescreen format and thus fundamentally altering the level design.
That being said, they might have been able to go with a landscape layout with the d-pad to the left of the gameplay are and the buttons stacked vertically to the right. It’s harder to “double-thumb” my iPhone when it’s vertical.