Some people wondered where I was through the latter half of last year. I'm not going to tell you about that, but I do have a nice little story for you.

Once upon a time, there were robots. And like all good robots, they came from space with the noble goal of ending human suffering by blowing us up and enslaving us. These robots are called the Krion Empire, and this is their conquest. That's really about the extent of it. I miss the old days when conquerors and maniacs could blow us up 'just because,' after about 3 dozen RPGs where the villain is either misunderstood or so 'evil' he waits until the closing credits to tell you why he's so f'ked up. None of that plot-crap here. Just robots and blowing things up, in a setting that looks like Megaman 3 except it isn't.

"Whattaya mean, 'Is that Needle Man's level?' No, that's not an enemy from Megaman 3. Look, Wally, do you want to work for us, or do you want us to transfer you to Wisdom Tree?"

The game starts off with a girl being attacked by aforementioned robots. However, the invaders had no idea what they were up against- for the young girl has a STICK! That alone would be enough to scare off ninjas or mutants, but this is a friggin' SPECIAL stick. It's special because, inside lives a little witch who looks like Megaman in drag.

Where's that ^&*% Elec Beam?

In fact, the whole game is a lot like Megaman in drag. The weird, hesitant scroll between certain screens, the sound effects, the enemies. You'd almost swear this was just a crummy hack. Except our little witch, Francesca has a few things up on our panty-wearing blue friend. Firstly, she has cleavage. Yes, the programmers went out of the way to make sure 8-12 year old boys had something to stare at while waiting for their turn. Of course, it's really as provocative as She is gifted with the ability to look up at, and shoot things above her head. And that's not all! She can pull her hat over her head and DUCK. Megaman didn't even learn how to do that until 30 years in the future.

There's also the fact that you start out the game with all her spells in the menu (which, of course, was ripped straight out of the first Mega Man) which saves you the trouble of hunting down gimmick-based Robot Masters. NORMAL gives you the ability to do anything you usually could. Like run, jump, get squished, or shoot energy orbs from your wand. And, in a totally innovative fashion, you can hold down the fire button for a bigger blast. Man. FIRE turns you into a Phoenix, obliterating everything onscreen. which would be a great attack except it works on you, too. I'm serious, it cuts off half your bloody life bar. I've yet to figure out what FREEZE has to offer beyond NORMAL besides turning you blue. Maybe later on in the game, you'll be fighting a TV weatherman from Krion with a machine gun and the head of Megumi Hayashibara, and you can quickly turn 'invisible' behind the weather map's bluescreen effect. BALL is bouncy and fun to play with. DOG is especially weak against BALL. SHIELD summons Nick Fury to tell kids to stay off drugs and to treat themselves to a Hostess Pie after they're done playing this game. And finally, BROOM invokes the time-honored mode of transportation for witches, mages, and substitute teachers. The only catch is, it likes to just randomly vanish on you. Usually over spikes. Which, just like in Megaman, instantly explode you.

But that doesn't mean you'll necessarily be any good at this game. In fact, I myself can only get to level 1-3. This is of course, taking into account I usually only play long enough to get a taste of the controls and a hint of how screwed up it is in general.

There are numerous flying things who are incredibly tough to kill. I have no idea why I can't get a good angle on them before they smash into me about twenty times. My guess is, that it's because I'm more concerned with figuring out WHAT THE HELL THEY ARE and what I want to eat later than winning this game.

I suppose if you like Megaman a lot, and want to give something eerily similar a try, this is your game. Of course, a game like this is so rare to find in second-hand stores you may as well give up and get the ROM. Which you'd probably do anyway, but the one I have at least skips the intro, depriving me of the cool cutscene at the beginning.

I hear the ending sucks.

GRAPHICS	3	...Megaman... You're wearing a dress. You do know that, right?
SOUND	1	I only heard two pieces of music. One made me wanna shoot myself, the other made me wanna hang myself.
GAMEPLAY	2	...Now honestly, Megaman... if you ever want to talk about this, I'm here for you.
OVERALL	3	I know you're hurting, man. But relax. Dr. Wily is safely behind bars. Today, anyway.
FAN SERVICE FACTOR	+1	(You think Megaman would have more fans if he had these?)

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