Mega Man 5 - Reception and Legacy

Reception and Legacy

Mega Man 5 has enjoyed generally positive reactions from printed and online publications. Many critics were complimentary of the game's graphics, music, play control, and challenge level. IGN's Lucas M. Thomas holds Mega Man 5 as one of his favorite entries in the series and, because of its lowered difficulty compared to its predecessors, considers it the easiest of the bunch to casually pick up and play through. IGN lists Mega Man 5 as the 84th best game on the NES.

Like other sequels in the Mega Man series, Mega Man 5 has suffered criticism for its lack of innovative gameplay and storytelling. GamePro summarized the game as "déjà vu all over again for disciples of the series" and that "Capcom must get some kind of cash rebate for recycling video games". 1UP.com's Jeremy Parish painted Mega Man 5 as "a painfully phoned-in episode lacking not only innovation, but pretty much all the polish and balance that made the earlier games so enjoyable".

In 1999, Mega Man 5 was re-released for the PlayStation as part of the Japan-exclusive Rockman Complete Works series. It featured a helpful "navi mode" for beginners, arranged music, encyclopedia modes, and artwork. A port of this version with fewer extras was released in North America for the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube in 2004 and Xbox in 2005 as part of Mega Man Anniversary Collection. Another port of the game was released in Japan in 2007 for mobile phones compatible with Yahoo! Mobile and EZweb applications. Finally, in 2011, the NES version was made available on the Wii Virtual Console service in both Japan and North America, and the PlayStation Network in Japan.