Fight, Nezumi Man! For everlasting cheese!
Nezumi Man is a homage to/parody of the classic NES Mega Man games, starring a rat who can run, slide, jump and shoot like the Blue Bomber himself. His goal is to stop the plans of Big Bad Dr. Gyoniku and his henchmen, along with seven other rat and ratlike characters. And a kangaroo whose name means "rabbit".The game is freeware packaged as a Windows executable as opposed to being a ROM hack. Nezumi Man has a lower difficulty compared to many other Mega-clones, especially once you learn the patterns of the bosses or figure out their weaknesses. Most of the surprise comes from the unique designs and wacky juxtapositions, though there are a handful of new gameplay challenges that wouldn't be out of place in a real Mega Man game.
The original website for the game seems to be unavailable, but there is a mirror to download the game here
. It includes a configuration executable and a HTML manual — written in Japanese, though at least it includes a good number of screenshots.
Tropes not already covered by Mega Man include:
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Milky Nezumi wears a cape and sunglasses.
- A Dog Named "Dog": "Nezumi" is Japanese for "mouse". Thus, Nezumi Man is literally a mouse man.
- After Boss Recovery: If the player beats a stage with fewer than two extra lives, they'll refill to provide a couple of chances to tackle the next stage.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Ice Nezumi and Smoke Nezumi, with the former being a refrigerator and the latter a smoke cloud, both with rat faces.
- Anthropomorphic Food: The second fortress boss is a skewer of gigantic dango, each of which shows a different face and has a different method of attack.
- Arcadia: Butter Nezumi's stage. Well, almost.
- Art Shift: Delay Nezumi's face is noticeably different from the other "Nezumi" characters.
- Barrier Warrior: Butter Nezumi, whose weapon is the Butter Barrier.
- Battle Boomerang: The monkeys in Usagi's stage wield bananas as boomerangs.
- Cartoon Cheese: The large health pick-ups take this form. Sadly, the large weapon energy items are not "blue" cheese.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Aside from Nezumi Man changing color for each weapon like Mega Man, the lottery machine-like cannon enemies have different colors to identify the types of projectiles they shoot.
- Cosmetic Award: Each weapon you get from a boss also comes with a piece of costume for Nezumi Man's swag, which he wears on the "weapon get" screen. The full costume's also his armor in Special mode.
- Crouch and Prone: Nezumi Man does have the ability to crouch, unlike classic Mega Man.
- Eye Beams: The Final Boss has them in the second form.
- Fish People: Dr. Gyoniku seems to have the head and torso of a fish with humanoid-shaped arms and legs.
- Flying Seafood Special:
- Usagi's stage has a couple of places where large fish dart at Nezumi Man through thin air.
- The first fortress boss is a giant octopus that can apparently hover and fly by spinning its tentacles.
- Funny Animal: Nezumi Man and many of the other main antagonists have human-shaped bodies but not the proportions. Usagi and most other animal-based enemies are minimally human-like.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Nezumi Man and the bosses run the gamut of different types of outfits. Milky Nezumi comes closest with just a cape and sunglasses. Nezumi Man himself builds up a full costume of his own with each boss he defeats, though only on the "new weapon" screens.
- An Ice Person: Ice Nezumi, who wields the Ice Lance.
- Improvised Platform: The Ice Lance sticks into walls but melts after a few seconds. This technique is required in a couple of the fortress stages, so the manual freely explains this feature.
- Lethal Lava Land: Dragon Nezumi's stage takes place in a Volcano Lair.
- Made of Explodium: The Martian enemies create a harmful explosion after taking a single hit, so don't stand too close.
- Making a Splash: Wave Nezumi, wielder of the Shock Wave.
- Meaningful Name:
- Everyone whose name contains "Nezumi" is a rat (or has a rat face; see Animate Inanimate Object above), since that word is Japanese for "rat".
- Dr. Gyoniku's name means "fish meat", which fits with his appearance.
- Mega Neko: The giant maneki neko boss of the third fortress stage. Then again, the hero is a rat.
- Mouse World: Dr. Gyoniku's secret lair appears to be in some sort of two-star motel. Actually, it's the doghouse next door.
- No Cartoon Fish: Zig-zagged in that there are large, realistically-proportioned fish as semi-common enemies, in contrast to the cartoonish sunfish-head-robot enemies as well as Dr. Gyoniku.
- Non-Indicative Name: Usagi's name is Japanese for "rabbit", yet the character is a kangaroo.
- Odd Name Out: Usagi again, being the only one of the main eight bosses without "Nezumi" in the name. And is also the only non-rat in the group.
- Orbiting Particle Shield: In true classic Mega Man fashion, Butter Nezumi's Butter Barrier is this.
- Prison Episode: Delay Nezumi's stage is one of them, with all the atmosphere of a generic medieval dungeon. Even the boss wears jailhouse stripes and has an ugly mug to match.
- Respawning Enemies: Zig-zagged in that not all enemies automatically reappear when the player scrolls away and comes back. Sometimes, after Nezumi Man dies and respawns at a checkpoint, the player finds that destroyed enemies don't reappear. Good if you're worried about being swarmed, bad if you're in the habit of farming recovery items.
- Stealth Pun: Milky Nezumi (as in Milky Way), the boss who shoots out stars.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: Downplayed with the Special mode unlocked from completing the game — it's still a side-scrolling platformer, but the design resembles a different Capcom franchise. Namely, Ghosts 'n Goblins.
- You Dirty Rat!: Zig-zagged in that both the hero and most of the main antagonists are rats. But even the enemy rats have the same cute face as the player character. The exception would be Delay Nezumi, whose prison/dungeon motif comes across as the most grim of all the bosses.
