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Rockman NEO

Levels: Good

Graphics: Good

Music: No Change

Enemies: No Change

Bosses: Okay (weaknesses changed, two are BAD)

Weapons: No Change

Castle: Good

Difficulty: MEDIUM-HARD (some bosses are HARD)

Comments: NEO is a decent hard-mode of Mega Man 1 that unfortunately indulges in its cruelty, namely the bosses: the mega buster is only useful against one of them, and most have seen alterations to their room to make them harder. None have more of an absurd glow up than Fire Man, who just straight-up 1-shots you. Due to this you'll probably have to look up how to beat him flawlessly—which isn't too bad to execute honestly—but the 2nd form of the Wily Machine repeats this punishing gimmick, annihilation you instantly for a single screw-up. It's a shame too, because the stages are pretty good for the most part (although there's an overabundance of precarious single block hopping) and the boss rooms themselves add a good amount of variation to the battle (especially in the Cut Man & Elec Man rematch). Due to the dumb 1-shotting bosses I'm knocking this hack down a full grade, but besides that (major) asterisk, NEO definitely has its moments.

As someone who has played the original 'Mega Man 1' and 'Mega Man 2' for 4 years, I can confirm that 'Rockman NEO' was easily one of the most difficult MM1 hacks I've ever come to play, right next to 'Rockman 1 Claw', and I didn't enjoy that either. Ironically, 'Mega Man 2 NEO', another hack released by the same author, was much easier than this one, but in my opinion that was because of the existence of E-Tanks. The reason why I wanted to play 'Rockman NEO' anyway was because I wanted to see the rest of the hack myself, as I would with movies at the theatre.

Literally everything that makes a Mega Man 1 hack insufferable appears at least once in this hack, including absurd attack damage changes (most bosses), questionable enemy placement (Wily 4), tricky platforming with the vanilla game's buggy spike physics, ridiculously tight Magnet Beam sections, the frequent use of Magnet Beam combined with rare refills and quite frankly, mismatched weaknesses (Fire Man).

However, I think the elephants in the room are Fire Man and the Wily Machine 1. The hack demands that you understand how Fire Man's AI works, otherwise it will be borderline impossible to win the fight due to his Fire Storm being insta-kill. For those who want to check out the hack despite the aforementioned danger, remember that as long as you are close to Fire Man at all times and don't attack him, he will do nothing and continue to walk around his room; use this to your advantage to avoid his spamming behavior. in regard to the Wily Machine 1, the first phase's bullets will take away 1/3 of your health, and the second phase's white orbs are... insta-kill; the cockpit of the machine is also insta-kill. Even worse, the second phase has no weakness, so you're forced to use the Mega Buster and play a rather deadly game of hopscotch.

For casual players, stay far, far away from this Mega Man version of the Fitness Gram Pacer Test. For veterans, I wish you the absolute best of luck. For the casual players who want to give this hack a shot, I recommend using Game Genie codes to offset the unusually high difficulty.

Weaknesses: Fire Man (Hyper Bomb, WHY?), Ice Man (Fire Storm), Bomb Man (Ice Slasher), Guts Man (Rolling Cutter), Elec Man (Super Arm and Mega Buster), Cut Man (Thunder Beam), Yellow Devil (Ice Slasher), Copy Robot (Thunder Beam), CWU01P (Super Arm, but there's only one Guts Block this time) and Wily Machine 1 (Ice Slasher for phase 1, none for phase 2).

Hands down the hardest Mega Man 1 hack out there! This game is so unbelievably hard in fact that you have to beat Fire Man without being hit, because one hit from Fire Man and that's it, I had to reduce the speed of game-play by 75% and use save states over and over throughout the battle. It took me about an hour. And if that don't sound discouraging you have to do it again at the end of the game. After many save states I was able to beat this hack in around 4 hours. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone other than the craziest of Mega Man 1 fans.

Rockman NEO actually is a pretty good romhack, but a few of it's stages does cause a little bit of issue concerning enemy placements, and sometimes a barrage of enemies that give certain areas a bit of a headache to deal with. Sometimes you might have to take damage to proceed through the traps, but this is rare.

Unfortunately this romhack became unplayable as soon as you fight Fire Man that can instantly kill you in one hit (FLAMES OF JUSTICE!!!)..jokes aside, but I'm assuming this a game breaking bug since there is really no real way to dodge Fire Man's infamous flame attacks without tool assistance or being a extremely good player.

I'm afraid I cannot recommend this one.