The Game Boy Mega Man games have been added to Nintendo Switch Online.
As Nintendo themselves announced earlier today, Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge, as well as Mega Man II to V, are now part of the Game Boy app. You simply need to click on the app on your Switch to get the prompt to download these games.
These games were last released on the 3DS eShop all the way back in 2013, so their return is much welcome, and long overdue.
Much like other early Game Boy games, these Mega Man games were an effort to partly recreate the console experience on a portable console. Mega Man V stands out in particular, because it is not the same game as Mega Man 5 on the NES. And yes, Capcom did deliberately use English language numbers on the NES releases, and Roman numerals on the Game Boy releases.
An interesting trivia surrounding these games was that Capcom was rumored to have lost their source code. The Lost Media Wiki refers to a lost build of Mega Man Anniversary Collection for the Game Boy Advance. This collection would have comprised of these Game Boy games, to complement the PlayStation 2/GameCube/Xbox version of Mega Man Anniversary Collection, which had tweaked versions of the NES games.
It was never really proven or confirmed that Capcom had lost the source code to these games as claimed. However, as you can plainly see today, these Game Boy Mega Man games have only been rereleased again under Nintendo platforms. Capcom released nearly all of their Mega Man titles in the last decade, under the Mega Man Legacy Collection branding, to make them playable on modern platforms.
In fact, their most recent release in this anthology is Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection, bringing back the now definitely forgotten Mega Man Battle Network tactical RPG spinoff games. These games certainly deserved to be rediscovered, but the same is true of the Game Boy games, and for that matter, Mega Man Xtreme 1 & 2, released for the Game Boy Color, deserve to be rediscovered as well.
So why haven’t the Game Boy Mega Man games been released multiplatform yet? Nintendo didn’t stop Capcom from releasing the NES Mega Man games to the PlayStation all the way back in the 1990s. There is one credibly explanation, though we should clarify it is speculation on this author’s part.
It’s possible that these are Nintendo’s own backups of Capcom’s games. If Capcom could bring them to other platforms, they may have to pay Nintendo for them in some way, and its just prohibitively expensive to do so.
There are other plausible alternate explanations, too. For example, they haven’t gone to other platforms because they would look terrible blown up on HD, and Nintendo is the only platform holder who still makes portables. But Capcom isn’t blocked from making some form of HD remake of these games, so it doesn’t answer anything.
Whatever reasons that these have remained only on Nintendo platforms, here’s where we point out that Mega Man Xtreme 1 & 2 also surfaced on the 3DS eShop. So it’s possible that those games will also reemerge on the Switch Online subscription in the future too. The Game Boy library is particularly sparse, so those would definitely be welcome additions.
In the meantime, you can check out the trailer for these latest Nintendo Switch Online additions below.
