A playthrough of Capcom's 1998 interactive movie for the Sony PlayStation, Super Adventure Rockman.

Each disc functions as its own independent game, so this video covers the first episode, "The Moon Temple."

Episode 2: A Fight to the Death! Wily Numbers (   • Super Adventure Rockman, Ep. 2 (PlayS...  )

Episode 3: The Final Battle (   • Super Adventure Rockman, Ep. 3 (PlayS...  )

Since the game never saw an international release, I've subtitled the video with my own English translation of the game's dialog and text.

Following in the footsteps of Street Fighter II Movie (   • Street Fighter II Movie (PlayStation)...  ) and Fox Hunt (   • Fox Hunt PS1 Complete Playthrough - N...  ), this FMV-based Mega Man game was the third interactive movie that Capcom released on 32-bit consoles.

Super Adventure Rockman is based on the characters of Mega Man 1-3, and it's built on the back of a three episode OVA series that Capcom commissioned specifically for the game. The story was also later adapted for Archie's Mega Man comic series.

Taking place in 20XX, the story begins as an earthquake deep in the Amazon reveals the mysterious ruins of a 20,000 year old civilization. The ruins start emitting dangerous waves of electromagnetic radiation, and Dr. Wily seizes the chance to claim the power as his own in yet another misguided attempt at world domination. Roll has already been affected, and if Mega Man doesn’t stop the evil doctor, all humans and robots will be wiped out within two weeks.

The gameplay follows the "choose your own adventure" template. As the FMV clips play, you'll be presented with quicktime events and your choice of paths to take whenever you hit branch points, and your inputs at these moments determine which clip you'll see next. You also encounter enemies at certain points, and you'll fight them in gallery shooting minigames (think Lethal Enforcers) that encourage you to make use of the weapons you've scavenged from the battered bodies of your fallen foes.

It's a neat relic from a time when multi-disc games came packed full of heavily compressed video clips, and though the gameplay is nothing special and there's little in the way of replayability, Super Adventure Rockman is a fun way to experience Mega Man from a new angle.

The quality of the animation is fairly cheesy but servicable - it's in keeping with what you'd expect from a typical VHS OVA release - but I loved how closely the style adheres to the look of Keiji Inafune's character art from Mega Man's NES era of games.

Super Adventure Rockman also bears the dubious distinction of being the only game that Inafune has ever officially struck from the series' canon: he apparently hated how far it strayed from the tone of the games with its fixation on death and its generally bleak tone. I suppose that's his prerogative, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit.

I hope you guys enjoy the show and the translation!

(Please note that I had to cut the intro theme, "Electrical Communication" by Ganasia, for copyright reasons. I replaced it with the intro music from Mega Man X4.)
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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