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As someone who is especially hard on Mega Man ROM and fan projects hacks, it's probably expected that I'd come down on this one — a hack of my favorite Game Boy Mega Man game — like a ton of bricks. I do, indeed, have criticisms. But, honestly? I really like what was done here. I like what was done a lot!

The Good

• For the most part, the gameplay is completely untouched. No new surprises or gimmicks, no major changes, nothing like that. Just nicer graphics and sound design. Very good for purists!
• The entire game has been beautifully colorized! Every single pixel of every single sprite has never looked better!
• The graphics have been significantly upgraded!
  • Megaman's wonky "scoot" animation or "compact" slide animation have been fixed up to better suit their NES counterparts.
  • Other graphics have been redesigned as well, such as the conveyors in Metalman's stage which now mimic their NES counterparts.
  • Previously unused graphic effects, such as the animated gears in Metalman's stage, and even new effects, such as the fading in Crashman's stage, add another layer of polish to this project and the game!
• The new soundtrack is, in a word, amazing. As someone who previously redid the entire soundtrack for another project, I can honestly say that what I've heard is (for the most part) very impressive and a lot of fun to listen to!
  • Huge bonus points for giving players the option between the original and arranged soundtracks, too!
• The new weapon menu looks spectacular! It's very reminiscent of the later NES game entries and has some very nice weapon icons, too.
• Minor spoiler, but the unused ending theme variant gets used in this version! (If the arranged soundtrack is enabled, anyway.)

The Bad

• The game will not run in Game Boy or Super Game Boy mode. There's also no warning or error screen telling you this. It just soft-locks on a blank screen. Yes, I know running a colorization mod on black-and-white hardware defeats the purpose, but still. An error message would be nice.
• The sound engine still goofs up at times.
  • This isn't strictly a problem with this hack, specifically. The original sound engine by Thinking Rabbit tends to change the frequency of the Square Wave sound channels when certain events fire, or when the music hits a certain point. It's a minor thing, but I would've thought it would be fixed, since SpecialAgentApe and forple (I assume) tinkered with the sound engine when redoing the soundtrack.
• Sprite overload can still happen — specifically in Hardman's stage with the Have "Su" Bee and Chi Bee enemies. If this happens, the game kind of freaks out for a minute and doesn't know what to draw.
  • It should be noted, though, that the player has to go out of their way to have this happen.
• Pretty sure this is totally incompatible with any existing ROM hacks and Game Genie codes, which is to be expected.
  • Edit: Lies and slander! As of the time of writing this, all known patches and hacks can be applied. Both "music improvement" patches update the original soundtrack, and the "graphic update" patches work for the most part. However, the graphic upgrades will butt heads, leading to some oddities such as odd colors on text or style clashes with some graphics. Roll-chan World 2, in particular, just doesn't look right.
  • As noted in another review, the Weapon Refill patch actually is completely incompatible. It crashes the game when applied either before or after the color patch. Very odd.

The Ugly

• This might be beyond the scope of the hack, but a couple of things still feel "off":
  • The weapons menu. Can we just take a moment and acknowledge that the weapons are just kind of put haphazardly all over the place? It was like that in the original, too, but is there really no way to rearrange them? (Mega Man 2 weapons in one column, Mega Man 3 weapons in the other, for example?)
  • Mega Man still can't be knocked off ladders (he has "magnetic gloves", so to speak), making him "wiggle" in his damage state when going up or down one.
  • Metal Blade still doesn't lock the player in place, making it very awkward to use.
  • Top Spin. Oh, my goodness, Top Spin... Giving more enemies more vulnerability to this poor thing would make it a little more viable.
  • Due to how it works, Sakugarne is still next-to-worthless. (But, what can you do?)
• Some of the new music just sounds kind of wrong:
  • Metalman's theme is too fast, making it very frantic.
  • Topman and Magnetman's themes are a little boring. They should be more energetic, in this reviewer's opinion.
    • Topman's theme also has a very annoying off-beat part during the bridge between loops...
  • The "unused" ending theme is terribly slow, which makes the ending feel a little depressing, again, in this reviewer's opinion.
• The timing on the boss theme for Quint's arena feels off as the music plays as soon as the screen transitions.
  • Was adding boss music to the Quint fight really even necessary?

As a huge fan of the original game as it was, I was extremely skeptical of this project — particularly, the redone music. I really did not like the "music improvement" ROM hack from 2019, so I wasn't sure what to expect. However, giving this game a literal coat of fresh (digital) paint and redoing the soundtrack in the way forple did... Well... It makes my favorite game in the Game Boy line even better.

Thank you SpecialAgentApe, forple, Kensuyjin33, and anyone else who contributed! You've made this Mega Man World 2 fan very-very happy! I don't just recommend this. I highly recommend it!

This colorization of Mega Man II, made by Specialagentape, is very brilliant. It gives at the game a fresh touch of color, just like Specialagentape did with the first game and marc_max with the fifth. It also fixes most of the ugly sprites that the original has and the remixed soundtrack made by forple, is excellent.

The reason I say but is because I'm not a fan of the original soundtrack, due to being an octave higher and off-key. Would be cool if this hack includes the Supper's pitch correction hack over the original soundtrack in order to give players the right experience for those who prefer the original soundtrack without making the player's ears bleed. Hope if this can be done in a future update.

EDIT: After Specialagentape said to me that the Supper's Patch should be compatible with his hack, I tried to add Supper's patch with this GBC patch and it worked! 0 crashes, 0 glitches, 100% compatible. This is a good notice for who wants to play this hack with the original soundtrack without having an ear cancer. So I have no more complaints. This hack is perfect and I strongly recommend it! Special thanks to Specialagentape (and who worked with him) for everything!

P.S.: Also for Quint, I suggest to use the unused theme which I think fits better for the battle.

This hack colorizes the game, as advertised, and it's a very solid job. My favorite areas are the small section up the first ladder in Metal Man's stage, the interior or Magnet Man's stage (which reminded me of Fire Man's stage from the hacker's colorization of the previous game; nice throwback), and the final stage. The final stage in particular was reminiscent of Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages, a game that I certainly appreciated aesthetically a lot more than I did mechanically, so very well done there! The other palette choices don't stand out all that much, but since that wasn't the point of the hack, I can't really ding it for that. The reworked music was a wonderful touch, too; this game's soundtrack always had solid composition and GARBAGE implementation, but if you prefer the original, that's still an option. I can't speak much to the other little tweaks, since I'm not super familiar with this game, but it's clear that a lot of love and care went into this.

This colorization is very well done and looks professional, color palettes are well chosen, it basically looks like an official NES game.

I commend the extra effort to implement an extra soundtrack (and to add an option to toggle between the original and new soundtrack !). If there's improvements to be made, I think it's on some details of the new soundtrack : sound effects are a bit too loud for my taste, it's a nitpick but it does get grating, and music is too toned down as result, which makes the whole thing feel much less epic.

But make no mistake, despite these minor flaws it's a great hack, play it !

As a kid, Megaman II on game boy was the game of the series that I played the most (primarly because it was the easiest one), but compared to the NES version, it always felt a little bit "off".

I guess there were many reasons for that : the music was quite different (and didn't reprise any of the tunes from its big brother), the "sliding sprite" was different, so was Dr Wily's, etc.

This wonderful patch, apart from delivering a very cohesive colored version of the game, does everything right with the above : you can still keep the original score if you prefer (or for the sake of nostalgia), but the game provides a remixed version that most of the times sounds much closer to the usual "Megaman tune", if I may say.

As for the sprites, they were corrected, which is particularly nice for the final battle, and contributes to make this game feel like it belongs to the series more than it did back in the 90s'.

I really enjoyed replaying the game, and advice any of you to download this patch!

Thanks once again to SpecialAgentApe and friends for making a Gameboy game actually playable in the modern age. Playing this game in color is a night and day difference from the original release, and there's a lot to love here. The use of color is amazing, especially in this game's unique stages (where the hackers' creativity is allowed to shine). Including the remixed music is awesome as well, as it sounds much better than what's available in the vanilla game (no thanks to a nasty programming bug). The only real complaint I have with this hack is that it's currently incompatible with the "Refill Weapon After Death" hack, which is very helpful in not soft-locking to some of this game's stage gimmicks.

We all know how good Specialagentape's colorize from the First Megaman World! But the remix music is another best touch(you don't know how many people hate this game because of the F up pitch) Thanks for the effort!! Hope more to come so more people can re-enjoy all the gameboy hidden gem!

Very little needs to be said here. This is yet another brilliant full colorization of a GB classic that brings new life to an otherwise drab looking monochrome title, and as a bonus, bases its title screen on the much superior Japanese naming convention and style for these portable entries.

I can only hope MMW3 and MMW4 follow suit some time in the future, so we can have all the good portable Mega Man adventures in glorious color and can collectively forget the awful Game Gear version that had color as its sole merit.

I've been waiting for this as Mega Man II & V are my favorite Gameboy Mega Man titles, so it's great to see both in color. The soundtrack is unique from the NES version and that's a good thing because a lot of the music is very well done, not to mention there is also a remixed soundtrack. I played through this twice with both soundtracks and listening to the new remixed soundtrack was nice, although I will always prefer the original. The colors are great, making it feel refreshening playing through Mega Man II again. Great job to all those involved in the project, looking forward to the next release.

Specialagentape does it again! Having played the original recently, this colorization patch does so much to improve World 2 that it should be mandatory for any playthrough.

Forple's contributions cannot be understated. His music and sound effect improvement goes such a long way into making World 2 a better experience. No longer will the Gameboy screech at you as you play, nor will the sound effects sound like they are bootleg. I could actually appreciate the melodies of the songs; they're honestly pretty decent. It's nice to see the audio driver this game uses disprove its infamous reputation; ''with the right user, any tool can do the job\''.

Specialagentape's colours are well-chosen, sticking mostly to the colours of the NES originals. While this does mean that, unlike World 1's GBC patch, the stages can come off as imitations of the NES originals, I feel that there are enough variations and additions in the later stages that help World 2 retain an identity of its own. I particularly liked the look of the final stage with the shades of purple and green. The added animations really help sell the aesthetics and the replacements of some of the more janky sprites such as Mega Man's slide show the attention to detail present in this hack.

Overall, this is an excellent upgrade that takes a mediocre game and makes it good. It won't fix some of the level design being pretty whatever, the bosses not being all that interesting, nor Quint being incredibly lame. However, it does let World 2 shine on its own merits, without the limitations of the Gameboy.

Now, onto some notes and bugs:

When I first started the game on mGBA 0.10.1, switching from remix to classic and back to remix caused the game to freeze. I reset and attempted to replicate this behavior by mashing select on the title screen, yet the game worked just fine. I can only assume this to be the fault of my own laptop, rather than a fault with the hack.

During the credits, one of the enemies (I think the guy that rides the Metal Cog in Metal Man's stage) causes Mega Man's face to briefly disappear.

I find it odd that typos such as Clash Man have not been corrected. While I understand if it would be kept to stay as close to the original release as possible, but the hack in its sheer existence goes against that mentality. As such, I would welcome the typos be corrected.

Two of the weapon icons, Leaf Shield and Hard Knuckle, have their item icon frames missing a few pixels. I understand the intent is so that the weapon icon within the frame is emphasized, but no other icons have it be as extreme as these two. This is especially egregious for Leaf Shield, as its icon does not even have a need to go outside the frame like some of the others. I feel both of these could be changed to be more consistent with the rest.

This is really nitpicky, but I still don't like the pause/teleport sounds, nor the landing-from-a-jump sound. The jumping sound can get pretty annoying due to its pitch and how frequently you hear it; I didn't find it to be too big of an issue, but I still dislike it. Meanwhile, the pause sounds still feel pretty ear-piercing, fitting right in with the original sound effects the game had. I managed to get used to them, but, if I had to pick one thing to change about the hack, it would be the pause/teleport sounds.

Ultimately, my "complaints" are very minor and something I see as easily fixed with an additional patch update. Even if they aren't addressed, this is still an excellent hack; one where you can feel the sheer passion and effort put into it. Specialagentape and Forple, you have all my admiration and gratitude for breathing new life in this small, obscure piece of the Mega Man franchise. Thank you.

Wow! What incredible work, the same work done previously on MMW1/5 now on 2 too, the colors are perfect and it was very well done, I recommend it infinitely!