Mega Man & Bass

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Mega Man & Bass
Developer(s)	Capcom
Publisher(s)	Capcom
Release date(s)	April 24th, 1998 (Super Famicom), August 10th, 2002 (GBA)
Genre(s)	Action / Platform
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	ESRB: Everyone
Platform(s)	Super Famicom, Game Boy Advance
Media	24-megabit cartridge

Mega Man & Bass, known in Japan as Rockman & Forte, is a game in the Mega Man Classic series. It takes place after Mega Man 8.

The original Super Famicom version of Rockman & Forte was marketed exclusively in Japan in 1998 and was one of the final third party titles for the console. However, before the Game Boy Advance version was released in the United States and Europe, the Super Famicom version was translated into English and Italian through console emulation. The only enhancement featured in the Game Boy Advance version is quick-saving.

There was also a sequel titled Rockman & Forte: Challenger From the Future released for the Japan-only Wonderswan hand-held system made by Bandai.

[edit] Story

In the year 20XX, after a year of peace since the emergence of the "Evil Energy" on Earth and its use by Dr. Wily to build extremely powerful robots to take over the world, a new villain arrives who goes by the name of "King."

At first the goals of this new, arrogant being seem unclear, but after a while they become quite certain. King desires to create a utopia in which robots will be able to live in peace and harmony. The only problem with this goal is that humans are left out of the picture, and as far as King is concerned, they are the enemy.

King desires to build a massive army of robots with which to build his utopian world, so he breaks into the Robot Museum and collects all of the Data CDs upon which the information of the creations of Dr. Light and Dr. Wily are stored.

Even though he is a pacifist by nature, Mega Man has a strong sense of justice and knows that King's goals are against everything that he and Dr. Light stand for. Dr. Light tells him that he must go at once to the Robot Museum and put a stop to King's plans before they get out of hand.

However, Mega Man is not the only one who has a bone to pick with King. Bass, Dr. Wily's most powerful creation, is quite upset with King proclaiming to be the most powerful robot in the world. Bass, who is quite arrogant himself, decides to prove that he is the strongest of them all by tracking down and defeating King before his rival, Mega Man, can.

The two head to the Robot Museum and after fighting their way through the hordes of enemies that King had with him they confront him there, but find that Proto Man had beat them to him. Proto Man asks King what he is doing there and King replies that he has finally collected all of the Data CDs and will build an army so powerful that neither Dr. Light nor Dr. Wily will be able to stop him. When Proto Man tells King to stop this madness and fires his buster at him, King evades and heavily wounds him with his axe. Bass and Mega Man are left to deal with King, who decides that the time is not right to deal with them and leaves them to fight the "Green Devil," which they promptly defeat.

After all the Robot Masters were defeated, Mega Man and Bass went to the outer area of King's fortress called the "Hatches," which required them to use each of the eight weapons on a special crystal switch in order to ensure that each of the Robot Masters had been defeated. Once the switches had been cleared, the gate to King's fortress opened up for them to enter.

After fighting their way through the fortress, defeating King's Tank and Airmech, they confronted King himself, who hid behind a giant shield shooting giant X's at them. They could do nothing against the shield, and eventually Proto Man, fully repaired by Dr. Light, came to the rescue, but could do nothing to the shield either. He decided to put all of his energy into a special "Big Bang Strike" attack, but that nearly killed him. However, this destroyed King's shield, so Mega Man and Bass fight King, who now used his axe.

Once King was defeated, he asked why they fought against him, who only wished for robots to be able to live in peace and why they defended the humans. Mega Man asked how he was so misguided in his cause and said that robots were created by humans and thus they should live together in harmony and that he was living a flawed lie. King says that he will repair Protoman as he is the "King of all Robots". Bass asked him who created him, and then, to Mega Man's surprise and Bass's anger, Dr. Wily appeared on the monitor and asked King what the problem was, repaired him, and told him to crush the two.

King broke the wall and ran into the next room, combined the tank and airmech, but Mega Man and Bass destroyed the new machine as well, bringing King to his senses. King told him where Wily was and said that they had to bring him to justice and his mech exploded.

Mega Man and Bass fought through Wily's fortress, defeating the eight Robot Masters again, and in the end, they fought Dr. Wily himself.

Bass asked Wily why he created King in the first place, and Wily told him it was to see if Bass really was the strongest in the world. In the end, he was implying that it was a prototype of sorts for a new generation of robots (Zero), of which Bass is an accident (this is hinted at in the arcade series as well, Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters). Then, he points to a computer monitor which displays the title and blueprints for "King II," but Proto Man warps in, blasts the computer away, and has a talk with Bass before leaving.

Mega Man goes back to the lab and everyone greets him happily (Dr. Light, Auto, Eddie, and Roll), but he is sad because of King's death. However, Roll cheers him up by showing him a letter that is address from King with his signature "K" seal on it telling him that they will meet again in the future and work together and that he hopes for peace for all robots...

[edit] Robot Masters

King has constructed six of his own unique Robot Masters to confront Mega Man and Bass, along with two who join his armies that were originally creations of Dr. Wily:

#	Robot Master	Designer	Debut	Weapon	Weakness	Stage
KGN-001	Dynamo Man	King	New	Lightning Bolt	Copy Vision	Landside Loft
KGN-002	Cold Man	King	New	Ice Wall	Lightning Bolt	Igloo Illusion
KGN-003	Ground Man	King	New	Spread Drill	Remote Mine	Doughnut Desert
KGN-004	Pirate Man	King	New	Remote Mine	Wave Burner	Sunken Ship
KGN-005	Burner Man	King	New	Wave Burner	Ice Wall	Fairytale Farm
KGN-006	Magic Man	King	New	Magic Card	Tengu Blade	Clutched Carnival
DWN-057	Tengu Man	Wily	Mega Man 8	Tengu Blade	Spread Drill	Licorice Limbo
DWN-058	Astro Man	Wily	Mega Man 8	Copy Vision	Magic Card	Toasty Technodrome

[edit] Gameplay

The gameplay holds quite true to the eight games of the main Mega Man series, but there is a second playable character. The player can choose to start the game as either Mega Man or Bass. Like before, Mega Man's exclusive abilities are the charged shot, and being able to slide through very small gaps. Bass is able to fire his arm cannon at all 45-degree angles except straight down, but he cannot shoot while moving. His arm cannon fires rapidly, and cannot charge up. Bass is also able to double-jump (jump a second time in mid-air), and dash along the ground, which lets him cross great distances by doing a dash-jump. Oddly, Bass can do the double-jump even after doing a dash-jump into the air. In other Mega Man games that included such abilities (Mega Man X4, for instance), the player cannot jump again if the first jump was a dash-jump. This makes negotiating the various levels easier for Bass. On the other hand, Mega Man's charge shot can do more damage to bosses at once, which makes boss battles somewhat easier (however, Bass can get an upgrade for his buster that boosts its power.)

Distributed throughout the levels are a collection of data CDs, which contain info on every prominent character in the original Mega Man series, including the Stardroids from Mega Man V and the three unique Robot Masters from Mega Man: The Wily Wars' Wily Tower, which has yet to be released in North America, and this thus gives the characters their only physical exposure in the U.S. as of February 2006 (the three robots are collectively called "Genesis Unit" after the Sega Genesis which featured the game). Collecting them all does not unlock anything, but it can be interesting to attempt to collect all the CDs in one playthrough. Most of them are hidden, either behind obstacles that need to be destroyed with a special weapon, or accessed with a certain ability. Under normal conditions, both characters aren't able to collect every CD in the game for various reasons; some of them are behind one-block-high gaps, which only Mega Man can get through. He is also the only character to have access to the "Rush Search" ability, which is needed to get the buried CDs. Bass has a double jump and obtains the ability to fly by merging with Treble (Gospel in Japan) which are needed for some of the CDs.

In a similar fashion to Mega Man 4 for Game Boy, Mega Man 5 for Game Boy, and Mega Man 7, enemies will often drop bolts after they are destroyed (as opposed to Mega Man 8, where the bolts are limited), and these can be exchanged for various items and upgrades.