Overview

You'll be remiss to find much in common with the original Mega Man 4 outside of the control scheme and spritework. This is a complete evolution that incorporates and draws inspiration from the wide range of classic titles and others still. There are enemies, gimmicks, mechanics and even bosses from all walks of the franchise, and more impressive still, any number of original concepts PureSabe has seen fit to develop himself. Bosses are entirely transformed from their original selves, as are weapons and tools, some not even resembling their original selves. Entirely new tools and weapons also find their way into Mega Man's hands. From a purely technical standpoint, this is the most impressive romhack I've ever seen and pushes its native system to the absolute limit, and likely beyond. The degree to which things have been repurposed, imported or built from scratch defies expectation at every available turn. The graphical overhaul, whether in terms of animation, sprite limitation or simply background, is astounding, as is his passionate attention to detail. More than anything else, this has the feel of a loving tribute in all aspects of its design. There are cameos galore, charming cutscenes or sequences built into most every level, a plethora of callbacks and just about every level's design is dripping with personality.

This would all be an appreciable but unrewarding accomplishment if PureSabe's talents as a level designer weren't equal to his talents as a programmer, and in the grand scheme of what he's presented us, they are. Many of his unique concepts are creative, clever or just plain cool, and more importantly, are implemented with consideration and restraint. Those he's drawn from existing material are used in cunning combination or put to singular effect in ways their original developers hadn't dreamed of, and he has a serious eye for enemy placement as a means of supplementing challenge and not tedium. This is always a major strength to a hack concerning this series in particular, where enemies with promise are often roadblocks or afterthoughts. The same can be said of the various mechanics he's assorted from other Mega Man games. The layouts that bind these elements together service their progression well, and this has some of the more well-paced stages I've seen come out of a romhack. His bosses in particular can really steal the show, and some individual ones act as some of the most rewardingly challenging and outright fun I've faced in a Mega Man title, and that's not limited to romhacks.

Unfortunately, there are always two sides to ambition, and this hack suffers from clouded judgment in some major aspects that cannot be understated, though they are certainly, to me, mitigated and surpassed by its accomplishments. In an attempt to be the be-all end-all Mega Man fan game, Minus Infinity is in serious need of some trimming shears. There are a good number of misfired or outright bad ideas taken from Mega Man games that should never have left the drawing board in their native products, let alone reused in this one. This extends itself to more than just mechanics or enemies, and starts to, most tellingly, seep into the design itself. Damage imbalance, trial-and-error traps taken past the point of tolerability, tedious time-lengtheners and grossly underthought AIs are present in various, sometimes significant portions of Minus Infinity, and it's less excusable in the face of there being staunch counterparts in its successes that correctly avoid or outright oppose these unfortunately shortcomings. It also creates a problem of extreme fluctuations in difficulty, oftentimes within the same stage, and sullies many moments of creative deviousness or legitimate trial with uninteresting, unfair or unthoughtful challenge. The specifics behind these faults will be expanded upon as they show up.

The second major failing of this hack stems less from overambition and more from a lack of a critical voice. Being the sole developer of your product tends to create sharp divides between your experience with your creation and that of your players. With no uninitiated criticism possible, your definition of acceptably demanding or negligibly troublesome will often be in stark contrast to that of someone without the minutiae of the system or its intricacies, as, tellingly, will the foreseeability of your traps or the execution of your gauntlets. You have no one to reel you in, and you're not liable to do it yourself even with the sharpest developer's mind on the planet, because you've grown too familiar with what you're presenting others. Frankly speaking, you can't present something as audience-dependent as a video game to your own moderation. It needs a blind test. That's what play-testers and teams are for. By far the most evident and egregious consequence of this is in the way PureSabe has decided to incorporate damage in this game. Mega Man no longer has invincibility frames, nor does he have knockback. This gives you the slightest of moments between one hit and the next, and can and will lead to three if not more hits from the same mistake. You'll see a third of your lifebar vanish by passing through one enemy if its hitbox is wide enough. The level design and enemy placement is in no way built around this aspect, and so you'll find sharp rises in frustration or declines in fun that are entirely a result of the same botched programming decision and not the level design itself. It acts as a serious detriment to the enjoyment of the hack in places with otherwise quality craftsmanship. It's the sort of misfired idea that would've been taken out at square one if he'd had someone there to tell him how little it serviced everything else he was building.

Issues like the notion of accessibility are ones that might also have been addressed given a second eye, because even though the challenge is predominantly earned and rewarding, it is almost always prohibitive. Difficulty options should really be an inclusion for challenge at this level of severity, and simple changes to damage ratios, a lessening of enemy congestion and locking of certain enemy or boss attacks would've been more than sufficient to differentiate the bulk of this game's trials. It isn't the kind of package that demands a complete reshaping of design from the ground up just to service a more casual option, which makes its unapologetic lack of any such consideration more baffling. This is obviously intended to be a game for experts of the original series, which is fine on paper, but some things here are simply a level beyond. This hack has some individual challenges, including a deal of its fair ones, that are beyond anything I've personally encountered in a Mega Man romhack without save stating built into its philosophy. I need to stress I have no issues with the inclusion of these challenges because they are usually so well handled, but to build up a level of hardship so restrictive in a project so brimming with ideas the wide range of Mega Man fans could appreciate and enjoy seems folly without a window for them to experience it from too.

How all these disparate elements intermingle and how the overall product fares, I'll leave to your personal opinion. But for my money, though a flawed triumph, this project is a triumph nonetheless, and a major one at that. By way of this barebones challenge, I intend to showcase the intricacies of this hack to their fullest, and present my personal reasons for considering it so highly. Hopefully the footage speaks well enough for itself to give you adequate means to judge where this hack stands for you and how you feel it delivers on its designer's ambitions. And, as always, I hope you enjoy.