MegaMari - The witch sister of Mega Man

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Hello everyone! After the last entry dedicated to the hilarious mix between two classic franchises of the video game industry such as Art of Fighting and Kunio-Kun, in this new entry of my blog I bring you MegaMari, a tale about witches... Japanese lolita witches, that is. Developed by indie Japanese developing team Twilight Frontier, MegaMari is a 2D action and platform game inspired by Capcom´s Mega Man classic series and starring characters from the Touhou Project, a series of “doujin” (the equivalent to indie games in Japan) games that take place in a world of magic and fantasy and which belong to the shooter genre, and more specifically to the subgenre know as “Danmaku”, “Maniac Shooter” o “Bullet Hell”. I´m going to try to explain some of the main features of this great game.



Let´s begin with the game´s story. Being the Japanese game it is, as many of you could probably already guess, it could not be your typical story of witches with flying brooms and black cats. The witch Patchouli Knowledge (I really love these names) is tired of having our protagonists, Marisa Kirisame and Alice Margatroid, “borrowing” her magic books, so she has decided to lock her book collection deep inside a mechanical fortress full of deadly traps (of course, where else!) and has asked other witches who for whatever reason hold a grudge against Marisa and Alice to help her stop these two from “borrowing” any more books, but far from giving up, Marisa and Alice have decided to find Patchouli´s fortress in order to fulfill their mission: get more of their beloved magic books. Oh, yeah, just one more important thing: all the witches are lolitas. What do you think so far? Good? Alright, let´s go on then. The best way to describe MegaMari´s gameplay is with another megaword of the megagame industry: Mega Man. As I mentioned at the beginning of this entry, this game is heavily inspired on Capcom´s Mega Man franchise, and just like in Mega Man, we will be able to complete the first 8 levels of the game in any order we want. Once we defeat the boss at the end of each level, Marisa and Alice will learn a new power based on the one of the boss we just defeated, which will be extremely helpful to defeat, not just normal enemies, but also the remaining bosses. This will have the players replaying some levels in order to find out which is the best weapon to defeat the boss of each stage, since it will be extremely difficult to take out some of the bosses without using the proper weapon. The first 8 stages bosses will be:

CIRNO

Weakness: Marisa´s Psycho Missile and Alice´s Mental Sacrifice.

Acquired Weapon:

                                     Ice Vulcan (Marisa)                                              White Rose Cluster (Alice)

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 EIRIN YAGOKORO

Weakness: Marisa´s Ice Vulcan and Alice´s White Rose Cluster.

Acquired Weapon:

                                        Black Lotus (Marisa)                           Force Crisis (Alice)

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 YUYUKO SAIGYOUJI

Weakness: Marisa´s Black Lotus and Alice´s Force Crisis.

Acquired Weapon:

                                     Butterfly Stream (Marisa)                     Reincarnation Ghost (Alice)

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 REIMU HAKUREI

Weakness: Marisa´s Butterfly Stream and Alice´s Reincarnation Ghost.

Acquired Weapon:

                    Yin-Yang Strike (Marisa)                                          Homing Amulet (Alice)

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 REMILIA SCARLET

Weakness: Marisa´s Yin-Yang Strike and Alice´s Homing Amulet.

Acquired Weapon:

                                       Red Magic (Marisa)                                               Bloody Curse (Alice)

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 SAKUYA IZAYOI

Weakness: Marisa´s Red Magic and Alice´s Bloody Cross.

Acquired Weapon:

                                   Thousand Knifes (Marisa)                              Quicksilver (Alice)

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 YOUMU KONPAKU

Weakness: Marisa´s Thousand Knives and Alice´s Quicksilver.

Acquired Weapon:

                                      Ghost Cutter (Marisa)                             Rolling Slash (Alice)

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REISEN UDONGEIN INABA

Weakness: Marisa´s Ghost Cutter and Alice´s Rolling Slash.

Acquired Weapon:

                                    Psycho Missile (Marisa)                           Mental Sacrifice (Alice)

Dodge, dodge! I have plenty more!

As you can see, the gameplay follows Mega Man´s formula in many ways, including its graphic style and high difficulty, so we could say that we are basically talking about almost a clone of Capcom´s classic. Almost. But no quite. MegaMari gives Mega Man´s formula an extra twist, bringing its gameplay closer to the one seen in other classic Run N Gun games such as Konami´s Contra series of SNK´s Metal Slug series, and you know what that means: we will have to dodge a lot of enemy attacks. Like A LOT. Another element that sets MegaMari apart from Capcom´s classic is that we will be able to control two characters, being able to switch between them at any given time. Just like in many classic shooters we have several types of ships with their own weapon types for us to select from, each of the main characters of the game has her own unique attack, so while Marisa can shoot quick and powerful projectiles that will be able to destroy most of the normal enemies with a single attack, while Alice shots a beam that, although is not as powerful as Marisa´s attack, it will be extremely helpful to pierce the defenses of some enemies. This will force the players to plan well which character will be more convenient depending on the given circumstances, making the gameplay that much richer.


If you like the Mega Man series or classic platform games and cannot wait anymore till Keiji Inafune and his guys finish the nice looking Mighty No. 9, you should definitely give Megamari a chance, I´m sure it won´t disappoint you!


GAMEPLAY VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DDgAAyhlbs