I’m sure you know the deal by now: buy Azure Striker Gunvolt, view receipt, find download code, enter download code, download and play. Mighty Gunvolt is even more of a Mega Man game than Mighty No.9 but set in the (Mega Man Zero/ZX) world of Azure Striker Gunvolt. In-fact the protagonists from both games (Beck and Gunvolt) are playable as well as Ekoro from Gal*Gun. Fortunately they come from the Super Mario Bros. 2 school of alternative characters with Beck dashing and ducking, Gunvolt double jumping and Ekoro doing what Orville always wanted to do.

Other than gameplay design and playing the fuck like Mega Man; Mighty Gunvolt looks the fuck like Mega Man, especially so 8-bit Beck who could even be confused for Mega Woman if such a woman existed. Inti Creates go one step further in trying to make a Famicom game than most wannabe developers on iOS or Kickstarter with not only the look (they even chose the ‘correct’ aspect ratio) and the sound (the music is AWESOME) but the entire feel. If my review of Mighty Gunvolt’s big brother emphasised how unimmediate it can be; Mighty Gunvolt is the exact opposite.

Playing almost like a stripped down version of Azure Striker, it is essentially the same world with 8-bit versions of the enemies and similar level structure. The boss battles are completely awesome and one arguable advantage this game has is the lack of the electricity function which makes everything far less complex in being able to see (and thus avoid) enemy fire, arguably the disadvantage is that this removes an entire essential element of Azure Striker and reducing Mighty to just the old-school side scrolling platform shooter that it is. A finite number of lives reenforces the game is inherently old-school.

And old-school is where Mighty Gunvolt remains: you know what you’re getting and what you are getting is done incredibly well but where-as Azure Striker turned around once the controls were gotten used to, the text overlays were X buttoned and the bland introductory level was beaten; Mighty Gunvolt remains where it was: one very good game. Being free too is an incredible bonus and I feel amiss pointing out there’s just five short-ish levels but this shouldn’t get in the way of a game that would look and play excellently on a Family Computer as well as it does on a Nintendo 3DS.

6/10

Review by Bri Bri. For more information on Mighty Gunvolt go to http://gunvolt.com/mighty/