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This hack is just Mega Man. Mega Man with slightly altered colors and a Quick Swap button, but Mega Man all the same.

The Good

• The "all new" title screen mixes features from the US and Japanese title screens.
• The title screen no longer blinks when Start is pressed. It just goes right to the game.
• The Game Start screen now has a starfield, like Mega Man 2.
• The Point System is gone, as are Point Balls. This leads to more pick-ups dropping from enemies. (I think.)
• The Select button now switches through weapons. This is a lovely addition, honestly.
• There's a save function that triggers after every stage or Game Over. (I think.)
• The Game Over screen looks alright. It's from Mega Man 2, more or less, so...
• The bulk of the game is otherwise completely unchanged. Great for purists!

The Bad

• The mapper conversion doesn't do diddly for slowdown. Not sure why it was converted, to be honest.
• The title screen is not "all new" in the slightest. That's just false advertising.
• The title screen no longer blinks when Start is pressed. No sound, no pause, nothing.
• The Point System is gone, as are the Point Balls. They weren't integral, but still... seems counter-productive for a "purist" hack.
• The Select button no longer pauses the game, but the weirdness that of Megaman flickering happens — which has its uses (avoiding enemies in vertical sections) and its downsides (locking your controls momentarily).
• There's no way to scroll backward through weapons or reset to the Buster. This can be pretty inconvenient.
• Cycling through weapons with the Select button often leads to palette errors with Megaman during screen transitions. (The Weapons Menu updates the palette memory, saving it between screens, but the Select button usually does not.)
• The Game Start screen goes completely black when Dr. Wily is leaving. That makes the scene feel very empty and cheap.
• The bulk of the game is otherwise completely unchanged. For better or for worse.

The Ugly

• The Robot Masters leaping out of the new Game Start star field and into the middle looks awkward.
• No Copipi Easter Egg on the new Game Start screen?
• Those altered palettes...
• Cutman's Stage looks worse than it does in Legacy Collection and Elecman's Stage looks like a nightmare circus.
• Megaman looks like a clown when using Hyper Bomb. He's purple. Why is he purple. And, why is he green when using Thunder Beam? Did you get these two palette addresses swapped or something?
• The Yellow Devil is still the Yellow Devil. This was mentioned in at least two reviews. However, I have this to say about it: Can't beat him? Practice. Learn his pattern. (Yes, he has one.) Use Thunder Beam, for crying out loud. He's not impossible. He just requires actually paying attention. I can generally beat him without taking damage because I've played the fight so many times. That's not me bragging; I memorized his pattern. Simple as that.

When I think of "Remastering" something, I generally equate that to making something nicer quality. This hack does very little to improve the overall experience of the first Mega Man game. This hack provides is a Quick Swap button for weapons and a save feature, but it adds new bugs, fixes none of the existing ones, doesn't change any graphics, tosses in a lazy title screen, and does some extremely unnecessary color changes. This is not a "remastering" and a far cry from being "the ultimate Mega Man enhancement patch". This is a joke.

I do not recommend this hack unless you desperately need a Quick Swap button for weapons. Otherwise, you're better off playing the original — or better still, the Wily Wars version.

Update to review: There is SO MUCH Good about this hack. The graphics and the style of the game and yet... Still no fix of Yellow Devil... And this is the most unfair and annoying boss in the whole game... I didn't want to change the review to negative one and was expecting the update. But this boss is the actual GAME BREAKER. It's not fun, unfair and a complete pain. While the hack has many good points they all are overshadowed by the Yellow Devil. So I have to change the review to NOT RECOMMENDED. At least (hopefully) until this issue is fixed.

The good: The controls are much better, it always felt off and didn't really bothered to beat it, just went on to the second game, the minor tweaks are welcome, but then, there's the awful part:

Claims that it has a save feature, I have yet to see it in any way, later games gave you passwords very clearly, if it's not possible to do, fine, but specify how to access the feature.

Removing the pause: Switching weapons with select is a nice feature, but it completely breaks the Yellow Devil Fight, a fight that was already unfair and impossible without the pause trick, so instead of removing the pause and slowing down the pattern of the boss, they left it as is, to anyone claiming that you don't use it or that you beat it legit your first time and didn't knew about the bug until years later, no, seriously, you gain nothing from lying. Just play on an emulator and slow down the game, the boss cheats, so cheat too.

Changing the color palettes: So, let me get this straight, you didn't bothered to actually fix the worst boss of the game, but you went and changed the look of two entire stages? Why? I don't mind, but when there where more important aspects to tweak, like a whole boss, it just feels like an insult.

Until the Yellow Devil fight is fixed, I can't really recommend this, good work, but it falls apart very close to the end.

This Hack was, and is, amazing. Taking away the point system is a major plus in my book. The point balls are just annoying and serve no real purpose other than getting a bigger score just for bragging rights (which nowadays doesn't compare to much). Having real-time weapon switching is a nice addition. And since the weapon switching is used with the Select button, there is now no more pause trick, which is fine since the damage taken is reduced fairly for the most part. The addition of the energy and weapon energy pick-ups being replaced by the ones in later games is pretty cool too.

Aside from all the awesome stuff mentioned, and the stuff I probably missed on my playthrough, there are a couple things I noticed that should be looked at. First, in keeping with the remastered theme I think having Mega Man stop instantly when releasing left or right should be implemented as it would go along with the other changes, but using FateForWindows's Mega Man: No Slide hack alleviates this problem. Second, while entering the next screen, no matter what weapon is equipped, Mega Man turns back to his original blue color, while still keeping the selected weapon, along with the weapon energy having the same color as the Magnet Beam. I don't know if this is because of the No Slide hack or what but it does need to be looked at either way.

I had a great time with this version of the game and I highly, highly recommend this to anyone who is curious or just wants an updated gameplay experience to the original Mega Man. You will not be disappointed.

This hack is a great step towards making Mega Man 1 feel more in line with the rest of the NES series.

The first thing you'll notice is Mega Man from the japanese title screen restored in a way that more or less looks like the designs from Mega Man 3 onwards. Personally I don't like the "Remastered" title in there, I prefer when improvement hacks make it look like the original game received a silent update instead of separating themselves as their own thing.

The background color changes in some stages are surprising at first but later feel very welcome. It actually looks better now, and it's easier on the eyes than the bright cyans that plagued the original version.

The score system removed seems like a silly thing to do on paper, but when playing I really appreciated not having the distraction of pointless items and not having the score on top (which constantly flickers on the original version). It's a simple yet very welcome removal of a small distraction, specially since the game has trouble managing much stuff on-screen as it is.

Other reviews compare this unfavorably to "Mega Man 3 Improvement" which I think is a little unfair, comparing how different is the scope of the project. Yet they raise a very valid topic: this hack is a start, but makes you want to see further improvements in the future.

Besides slowdowns (which can be solved by overclocking and removing sprite limits when playing on emulator), I would love if the physics were adjusted to be more in line with other games in the series, specially. Less slippery, and without those weird changes in falling speed when walking off some moving objects.

Another thing is that I would really appreciate if this hack was available on the japanese version, without the changed title screen, for people who prefer the one in that version. It would potentially work great together with the "Rockman to Mega Man" hack, which retranslates the original Rockman game to english and keeps the original japanese title screen but changes the logo to "Mega Man".

My only real complaint is that this doesn't seem to work on hardware. I tried it on an Everdrive and all I got was a blackscreen.

THANKS FOR MAKING THE YELLOW DEVIL HARDER!

Now that that's out of the way. I can safely say that this is a great start... But there's lots of things the other reviews for this had issues with..

It's a pretty solid patch, but there are still things left to fix.

Mega Man slides a bit on non-ice terrain when you let go of the D-Pad, causing him to clumsily fall off ledges and die (especially when collecting health/weapon refills near said ledges). Mega Man is not a momentum based platformer, so addressing this is for the best.

Excess lag in many areas. Too many areas to name. Yes it is possible to remove slowdown since "Mega Man 3 Improvement" did just that (and much more). Lag-free Mega Man 1 would be deeply appreciated.

Bonus Balls should be left in a separate patch included in the download, since they are just a nuisance to the player.

When collecting health/weapon refills, the game pauses. Yes, this is an integrated part of Mega Man but the gameplay flow is so much smoother when this is absent (ex: MM3 Improv)

Changing weapons in real-time would be fantastic. (MM3 Improv did it)

These changes would make Mega Man 1 a much more enjoyable game. That is a fact.

There are three changes important for players of this hack:

The SRM save option: This allows you to keep a save of your lives, items, and beaten stages. Of course, this is extremely neat, even more when considering the original Mega Man doesn't even have a Password System!

Improved palettes: The improved palettes are pretty well-done. Elec Man's stage's purple fits surprisingly well! The skies in stages are mostly of a different colour. For example, Cut Man's sky has a sunset-like orange colour. Those different sky colours make the stages look even more unique, and that was exactly the author's intention.

Other small changes: The Robot Master bar and the removal of score points. The first improvement makes the battle much more orderly. The score removal makes the game feel more like the later Mega Man games.

I think this hack is a good improvement hack, and certainly worth over the original version.