I enjoyed Rockman 5 Air Sliding so much I decided to check out the creator's only other hack: Rockman 2 Yendor Code. I don't know what Yendor means, I guess that's the code. This was Yuki Miyuki's first hack and you can tell. It's just as inventive and transformative as R5AS, but clumsy and a whole lot meaner. R5AS is a challenging game but because its so polished it feels achievable. Yendor Code on the other hand possesses the true and blue heart of the romhack. It's tuned to challenge players who eat Mega Man 2 for breakfast. Alas I'm getting rusty in my old age and I had to rely so heavily on savestates to get past the first robot master that any Gamer Court in the land would convict.
Past the first stage things got easier, as Yendor's weapon roster is useful in that really satisfying crunchy way that only a few Mega Mans (4, X, your favorite) manage to achieve. Each weapon possesses the soul of its original but tweaked in extremely helpful ways. For example, holding down B when equipped with Leaf Shield causes it to turn off and on repeatedly. This allows you to chew through tough enemies with a kind of chain-saw effect, but you have to get close in. Each weapon is similarly balanced with none of them becoming overpowered. This gives them a lock and key effect along the lines to how Mega Man 9's weapons are designed, though not going as far as that game's extremes (no robotic bees to fetch items for you). I wonder if Yendor Code's rough difficulty lends itself to the design in this way. Finding the right weapon to get through a mean situation feels great and lends the game a puzzle quality. And once you've learned a level you can fly through it with all the confidence of a seasoned Darks Soulser. That's the true spirit of Mega Man, right? To bungle through the eight stages until you find one you're just able to scrape up a win, and from there move through the weakness chain, building strength and exploiting knowledge of previous attempts, returning to once difficult stages with arsonal and skill, till the last of them barely feels like a speed bump. This game does that pretty well.
I want to talk about the weapons some more, they are cool and fun.
Air Shooter - Doesn't deal damage, but blows enemies upwards. If they're near the top you can blow them off the screen and away. But otherwise you can sleekly slip under them as you bounce them up.
Quickerang - Creates a cloud of boomerangs that spin behind you and then forward. Feels like a machine gun, and chews through ammo as fast.
Metal Blades - Ignores I-frames. Tears through enemies in one or two hits but at a reduced ammo capacity. They don't cost enough to make you feel stingy, but expensive enough to make you weight the cost of using them for their diagonal benefit.
Item 2 - Straps a jet to Mega Man's back and pushes him rapidly forward. Allows for massive leaps or dashes under enemys. Perfect for speedrun tech. It's no dog-jetpack granted, but so few things are.
The standout moment is the boss refights, strangely enough. From the teleporter room you can hop into battle with Wily right away but Wily Machine 2-Mk-2 will likely tear you to shreds. Each refight, which features harder versions of the robot masters, reduces the amount of projectiles the Wily Machine will throw at you, and make it venerable against that robot master's weapon. A very cool tradeoff of tackling several hard refights versus a singular but very tough boss. It's an approach I could see working well in an official game.
That's 8 more masters scrapped (16 if you count the slightly different refights).