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Mega Man 4 - Ridley X Hack 4

Levels: Good

Graphics: Okay

Music: No Change

Enemies: No Change

Bosses: No Change (Pharaoh Man's room is different)

Weapons: No Change

Castle: Good

Difficulty: EASY-MEDIUM (Dive Man's stage is MEDIUM)

Comments: 4's Hack 4 fares better than 4's Hack 3, mainly because levels are a lot less flat and offer up some solid platforming challenges. You get some levels with decent stage design (Toad Man, Drill Man)... but still others that feel dull (Pharaoh Man, Dust Man) or weirdly punishing (Ring Man, Dive Man). I should state for the record that Ridley X does an admirable job remaking Mega Man 9's stages here, especially in the Cossack stages (and kudos on using Fake Man's level). Sadly, it lacks 9's enemies and hazards, making 4's Hack 4 feel like a pale imitation of the bet MM game. It's alright, but like most Ridley X Hacks, it's nothing special.

Ridley X decides to use MM9 graphics in this hack, and it was a good touch.

The level design is great, the enemy placement too. The graphics works perfectly with the level design, giving this hack a re-play value.

Recommend it.

Ridley X must be the most productive Mega Man hacker out there. He's made so many NES Mega Man hacks I can't count them anymore.

At some point to keep making his hacks fresh he started using graphics from other games, mostly from other Mega Man games. This is what this hack is all about : the entire game uses MM9's graphics.

As a result we can play an interesting mix between MM9 and MM4 : the graphics are from MM9 but the enemies, musics, weapons and bosses are from MM4.

A good half of the level layouts are re-creations of the original MM9 stages, but using MM4's enemies instead, and the rest are original, interesting layouts.

Although rather easy and straightforward all the way through this hack is really interesting for the fact alone that you can play in MM9's graphical world on an actual NES, and that the original layouts is the closest we got so far of a "MM9 romhack".