Delicious Fruit
Download Game Screenshots
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by Bob
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by ElCochran90
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by ElCochran90
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by ElCochran90
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by ElCochran90
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by ElCochran90
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by DerpyHoovesIWBTG
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by ElCochran90
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by ElCochran90
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by DerpyHoovesIWBTG
14 Reviews:
PlutoTheThing
This review is based on a clear of Very Hard Mode
Popularity is a pretty well known fangame, and one of it's makers, eden, is pretty infamous in the community for the kinds of things he creates, popularity demonstrating his diabolical ideas. While there are easier difficulties in the form of medium and hard, the former of which I did end up playing and enjoyed, they are definitely not what the game is known, likely due to the kamilia games making the Very Hard final boss pretty well known. On Very Hard popularity becomes one of the biggest tests of patience and skill, not just skill in needle or avoidance, but skill in incredibly niche gimmicks you only really see in much easier adventure fangames. This creates super unique gameplay on this mode, which is definitely gonna challenge basically anyone. The best stage was the Kirby stage for me, as the gimmick is super hilarious and leads to really entertaining situations, plus it's super satisfying to clear a screen. There's definitely some weak points, like the weezing boss, and the dragon quest 2 stage, but also some high points throughout, with lots of memorable sections and bosses. The true final boss, Gravityman, is a fight that I used to hate whenever I played him in the Kamilia games, but I actually was quite fond of him, likely due to me having finally adapted to the boss. It's very tough however, but a very satisfying clear, much like the rest of the game. It's extremely far from perfect, but I really think this game is good, and worth playing at some point in your fangame lifespan.
[3] Likes
Popularity is a pretty well known fangame, and one of it's makers, eden, is pretty infamous in the community for the kinds of things he creates, popularity demonstrating his diabolical ideas. While there are easier difficulties in the form of medium and hard, the former of which I did end up playing and enjoyed, they are definitely not what the game is known, likely due to the kamilia games making the Very Hard final boss pretty well known. On Very Hard popularity becomes one of the biggest tests of patience and skill, not just skill in needle or avoidance, but skill in incredibly niche gimmicks you only really see in much easier adventure fangames. This creates super unique gameplay on this mode, which is definitely gonna challenge basically anyone. The best stage was the Kirby stage for me, as the gimmick is super hilarious and leads to really entertaining situations, plus it's super satisfying to clear a screen. There's definitely some weak points, like the weezing boss, and the dragon quest 2 stage, but also some high points throughout, with lots of memorable sections and bosses. The true final boss, Gravityman, is a fight that I used to hate whenever I played him in the Kamilia games, but I actually was quite fond of him, likely due to me having finally adapted to the boss. It's very tough however, but a very satisfying clear, much like the rest of the game. It's extremely far from perfect, but I really think this game is good, and worth playing at some point in your fangame lifespan.
Rating: 7.5 75
Difficulty: 82 82
Aug 25, 2023
ElCochran90
Rating is based on Medium difficulty, as well as the Difficulty rating.
I Wanna Be The Popularity is only popular because of K2's popularity, ironically. The game merely consists of 4 stages with less production and entertainment values than I Wanna Be The GB, the second one consisting of a gimmick that must move the kid with the mouse, featuring an atrocious detection box.
The Dragon Quest adventure, however, is somewhat funny, and the fight is... bizarre. Overall, this game is horrible, but the Mega Man designs look quite decent, which is only one screen to access all other stages excluding the intro screen.
Well, it's one screen if you go for the easiest difficulty, which is quite the breeze. However, you must play the Very Hard mode to unlock one of the most (in)famous bosses in fangaming history: Gravity Man. Currently, that is my task. The game is nightmarishly modified with hundreds of spikes and unthinkable jumps. Add to that additional screens. This is only getting worse and worse in entertainment value, but I am doing this for the sake of a legendary segment which many claim to be rewarding, including the boss, which is credited to be an extreme experience. I'm looking forward to the reward.
Review will be updated by that time, including the rating. Difficulty rating will remain the same, but will be mentioned in the review for the Very Hard mode.
------------------------------------------
Edit for clear of Very Difficult on April 29, 2022. Quality and difficulty ratings are now based on Very Hard Mode.
This is a legendary game for a plethora of reasons. You know that particular feeling when a game was clearly intended for a Medium Difficulty, and when you choose the Hard Difficulty, the game loses all balance. Some humorous instances happen and makes it obvious in certain games, such as my favorite love-hate fangame: Breaking Out. When choosing the Hard Mode, you have those colored rectangles flasing, but they are empty, signaling where would the "Wuss" saves are actually meant to be.
That's the feeling of this game, and something of similar nature happens, but reversed: for the actual true ending, you're supposed to play the game on Very Hard Mode, which basically buffs all screens to unreasonably precise levels, buffs bosses and adds trash screens, especially going to the extent of lazily putting the same final screen design at the end of almost every stage with the same layout, with the exception that you must implement the gimmick of the stage at hand.
That's where my respect towards the game stops: each stage is different... very different between each other. The Super Mario World formula had been done to death, even by 2011-2012 standards, and the Very Hard Mode is a chore to get through, but it's there for probable homage purposes. It's the game that couldn't ever be excluded in an adventure fangame themed on other original games. Awful traps, unnecessary corners and an obsession with diagonals in succession. The first screen will make you bleed.
The boss of this stage is buffed stupidly and throws RNG everywhere while drawing arcs / half-moons from left to right and right to left. Shockingly, you get used to this after 15 minutes, I kid you not. However, when you introduce pattern with density RNG, that's when you get inevitable blocks and you will get that a lot. This boss took me 10+ hours easily (out of my run of 44 hours in total after beating the true final boss). It's 1 minute of nothingness (sometimes you don't even have to move), until you get the rolling Koopa and the bouncing Boo which will waste yout time after inevitable BS walls and unreadable combinations of pattern and RNG. This boss is certainly the lowest point of the game and, if it wasn't for the final boss, it would be reason enough never to play the Very Hard Mode.
Enter the Kirby ball gimmick, based on an actual videogame which name, frankly, eludes me (my younger brother is certainly the expert on videogames and I'll come back here to put the name unless someone reminds me first). Some movements are actually frame perfect. Since the Kirby ball has actually a 32X32 hitbox, and the obstacles occupy the same space, you'll find yourself making the perfect align before making progress. Brace yourself for accelerate-fast-as-hell-and-then-stop-immediately-afterwards techniques to master this stage. It takes time, and it has new unthinkable traps (creative for once), but it's something you'll remember for the better or for the worse.
The boss is, well, Kirby? Why? Weren't you the one I was controlling? Are you taking revenge for all the times I killed you? Anyway, hyperactive boss, quite funny, nothing seriously difficult. Shouldn't take more than 45 minutes for the less experienced.
Nothing relevant to add to the Dragon Quest II stage which had the maximum potential to shine and the actual game to ruin everything with a stupid spotlight gimmick, ordinary needle, more screens than before (some of them you will easily recognize, like the eternally copy-pasted GB screen or the first orange screen of LoveTrap), and the you come to the infamous garden """avoidance""" section..... Remember Miku 2's eternal wait before you could actually move? The one that Go the Dotkid! replicated in the final boss? Meet that here, but exaggerated. There's a whole dialogue scene that actually reenacts and spoofs a scene from the actual game (I love NES and SNES JRPGs with a particular passion). In this section called "The Courtyard of the Castle", the following dialogue ensues:
-The King: We had a peaceful time. However------!! However------!! However------!! However------!! However------!! However------!! However------!! (this section lasts EXACTLY 60 seconds of you waiting doing nothing).
-The King: This is------! What the hell happened!?
-The King: You're here! He's hiding!
-The King: What is in my body. Even if it happens, I don't know.
-The King said, "Come on, let's go! I want to tell you about this, to the King of Loresia. I have to let you know.
"The King.!" "Here we are!".
[King burns bird]
King, you monster!!
[King burns bird #2, but he is stopped and gets burned]
"The King--!"
"It's dry!"
[king gets burned]
and clear.
The scene itself is hilarious, but during the whole freaking dialogue after the first minute, you have to be dodging curved birds for 45 seconds and it's a woeful trial and error exercise. It only could be worse if it wasn't because of the great soundtrack.
And there you go, boss time. Boss is fun, I'll give it that. Precise at the end and looks deceptively simple, but you'll realize in the final phase that the white projectiles which can be bounced back to him are not that conveniently placed. Still, ok visual work and implementation.
The cursor gimmick stage depends a lot on your mouse sensitivity settings and literal physical space for you to maneuver it. If you have a small mousepad, you'll suffer a lot since you'll be placing your mouse back to the initial place, but we all know that landing the mouse causes some movement by default, so be sure to make room for your mouse. Also, did I mention beautiful backtracking? Unfun times.
The boss is an I wanna be the Tribute tribute, a game that had spirit but implemented most of its ideas quite horribly, mostly save distribution, cryptic areas, annoying traps and awful bosses. This boss sucks equally, although it kinda wants to implement the "Greeeeeeen" gimmick to make it more versatile, but sucks still. It's hilarious that they say "It's Koffing!" still, because in Very Hard mode, it isn't. Smoke of different colors have now different functions, but still, it's frustrating.
The I Wanna Be the Guy section is a bad copy-paste of the Kirby area, with zero special things, except for the last screen which references the secret item in the Ghosts 'n Goblins area. This screen is very fun. Boss is a memory game based on Super Wagan Land, the third entry into the series after the first 2 NES entries. OK for variety, cannot complain much, but there are too many cards for few tries. It's the easiest boss if you have a good memory and just a little bit of luck.
That's where the normal game would end, except you went through the cheapest buffs. You can tell the game was meant to be played in Medium. It all seems more natural that way.
But then that opens a path to a VVVVVV stage. Despite of not having reversed gravity gimmicks, it is the most solid stage of them all. I can only recall one stupid screen which requires you to screen wrap while falling through diagonals. It's so dumb it hurts; I swear the final diagonal before the warp is frame-perfect, pixel perfect jump, and since it's really close to the screen-wrap at the top, it's just garbage.
Otherwise, the stage is really cool and triggers act nicely; there are not so many traps to drive you insane, and difficulty is challenging, but surprisingly fair.
Now... onto the boss.
Everyone knows this boss because of the Kamilia games, but I'd like to go deeper into the logic of why this boss was included. I'll degress a little.
Carnival was a notorious, young maker who was one of the pioneers of the Medley concept and this could be seen since Crimson, not necessarily Destination. What about "medley bosses"? Could such a thing exist? Well, in a way, the amazing Boshy did this before anyone as far as my knowledge allows me to claim. Solgryn has the power to summon all previous bosses from the game, who are, simultaneously, games from classic, renowned original gems, modern and newer. This inspired Influka to make the final boss of the incredible Timemachine 1 under the same logic, and the previous fight to Influka (also Solgryn), implemented this. This translated into Kamilia 1: the idea of the final boss summoning all powers from previous bosses, finding out they were not enough, for then using her own, was something Solgryn did first in a spectacular and epic fashion (and, as we speak, that game is still being speedrun 12+ years later after its initial release, which shows how timeless and ahead of its time the game was).
Gravity Man is a stunningly well made, masterfully planned and excruciatinly nail-biting implementation of a "medley" boss. Instead, it quite isn't. The whole boss is a homage to Rockman 5, which I consider to be the most "gimmicky" of the first 6 NES games: controlling the vertical scrolling of the limits of your screen to avoid getting killed, low gravity, and, hey! Is that the reversed gravity gimmick from VVVVVV? Yes it is? This game was intelligent enough to place at the end a pivotal NES boss, underlooked because of the first 4 Megaman NES games, that actually has a correlation with VVVVVV: reversed gravity.
Back when I played Mega Man 5, Gravity Man was the stage and boss that surprised me the most because of its unique gimmick; I was no stranger to love... I mean to VVVVVV, but what had pioneered this? I have no proof to say that Mega Man 5 pioneered this in a platforming adventure game as deeper research is required, but it did it in a great fashion.
What is Gravity Man in popularity? It's a game of timing, strategy, memory muscle and reaction combined throughout. It challenges your boss/avoidance/memory/timing/gimmick fangame abilities all at once, and that's something extremely rare to find.
To put it shortly, the boss is glorious and one of my Top 15 bosses in fangames so far.
It is crucial to know Mega Man 5 and its bosses:
-Gravity Man: He controls when you flip gravity; you don't. His moves are entirely pattern and always follow the same path. At instances, he shoots bullets at you, which, depending on your position, might require you to do something, or actually nothing at all. The latter sounds dumb, but when you actually try to dodge another attack, you might jump into them.
-Stone Man: He jumps all over the place, but his trademark attack is spawning big rocks in a circular fashion, with each circle being each time bigger. You must time when you enter the circle and not get hit by them.
-Gyro Man: He's... green, and throws green Gyro discs, whatever that is. Lame, forgettable boss, but when you actually use the weapon in-game, it's very useful.
-Wave Man: An annoying boss to attack, particularly if you use his weakness against him: the charged kick, as he shouldn't be standing against a wall. I always found this boss inconsistent in strategy but that's just me; he creates water waves out of broken pipes (so lame), so nothing special about it.
-Charge Man: This is the toughest boss based on hitbox sprite and damage inflicted. He can take you out with 3 hits. He charges against you like a train, but his trademark attack is making a train sound, dropping something in the air and spawning 3 fireballs from the ceiling.
-Crystal Man: The stage is more memorable than the boss; his trademark attack is random crystal balls which bounce on walls, floor and ceiling, so correct reading is required while also avoiding the boss' sprite.
-Napalm Man: Cool design, to be honest, but not so special regarding its attacks. He throws missiles at you at a pace that can be very easily read and avoided, and also throws two "napalm bombs" at you which explode upon impact of anything. For some bizarre design-related reason, they are peanut-shaped, so the fangame community just decided to call them peanuts (in the Spanish community we used more synonyms/derivatives like "maní", "cacahuates", etc.). Basically salty seeds.
-Star Man: The easiest of the bosses; his trademark attack is having a shield made of stars spinning around him for them throwing it at you.
This explanation is not in vain, trust me, as I have already explained what Gravity Man in this fangame does. He has two phases, where the first phase has four sub-phases:
-In the first phase, he will just be Gravity Man. Be sure to learn his cycle, because you will be demanded to memorize it and move through the screen without seeing him since you should already know where he is.
-In the second phase, he will simultaneously use Gyro Man discs and curving rocks from Stone Man.
-The third phase is where you require a really specific strategy of when and where to be: he will simultaneously use the Wave Man attack from two opposite corners of the screen (one up, one down), and will also fill the screen from left to right with Charge Man fireballs. The blind spots are always the same, so you'll find yourself being on the same spot throughout this sub-phase.
-The fourth phase is nasty doom, UNLESS you marry with a position-based strategy. Most players (with "most" meaning everyone I have seen playing against this monster), will decide to start Sub-Phase 4 when he's on the upper right corner of the screen. During this part, he will use the two remaining attacks: Crystal Man spheres, which are 100% pattern and bounce everywhere, and the Napalm Bombs, which don't explode, but give you disgusting RNG. It is crucial to know that the path the Crystal Man spheres go depend 100% on when you end the previous phase and they will always behave the same depending on their initial spawning spot. So, given that you should already know the jumps Gravity Man does, and once you master the trajectory of the crystals, it all comes to Napalm Bomb reaction as long as they don't interfere with your aforementioned blind spots. At instances, they will, and they will crush you. This is the run killer.
Congrats!!! --------------------------------- NOT!!! I said there were two phases, man...
Protoman decides to betray you (as a nod to the plot of Rockman 5, without giving away spoilers surrounding that event), and gives a freaking E-Tank to Gravity Man. Now G-Man is pissed. The background from the original NES game turns gray, his life bar fills up again, you wish you did go through an autosave checkpoint (hint: you didn'), and... wait, did I say that the two remaining attacks were Crystal and Napalm?
Scratch that: It's Star Man shield time. His shield circles around him so fast that, according to my roughly estimated rate of success, each bullet you shoot from your gun has a probability of 20% of hitting him. It's stupidly insulting.
What is the second phase?
HE USES ALL 8 ATTACKS AT ONCE.
I don't need to say more, except that you will require a solid memory-muscle strategy to avoid the RNG instances of Napalm and the pattern instances of Crystal, Wave, Gyro, Stone and Charge. Mostly, it's a pattern boss, but the makers knowing this, decided this to make a complete clusterf*ck. This is one for the legends, all Mega Man 5's fury against your face, spirit and balls, hitting you harder than a soccer ball during a penalty kick.
Is it awful? Hell, no. On the contrary, it's a fantastic final boss, a brutal challenge that will require patience and a huge and long learning curve, because if you die, you're back to Phase 1 all over again.
The extra content paradoxically raised my rating for this game, which was much lower for the Normal version, but truth to be told, the last stage is the best, and the final boss is a legendary moment compared to the bunch of lows you have to go through before in 5 different stages.
Recommended?
It's so difficult to say. The pain of Super Mario World's boss is too big to endure and it has very boring and repetitive moments, and watching Dragon Quest 2 being wasted like that is uncalled for, but it definitely doesn't have a western essence. It's a surreal dream, a rarity of all sorts that got attention because in the Easter community it was more popular. Add him to K2's boss rush and everyone talks about it. It's like Tarantino's references of films that you had never heard of before if it wasn't because of Tarantino.
My answer, then, is yes: BARELY yes. If you want Gravity Man, you'll definitely spend more time with him than with the previous mess of a game.
G-Man took me 28 hours.
STATS
-Medium-
Deaths: 270
Time: 0:56:04
(Played in 16/1/2019)
-Very Hard-
Deaths: 7965
Time: 45:41:45
(Beaten in 29/4/2022)
VOD highlights:
-G-Man glitch: https://www.twitch.tv/elcochran90/clip/EncouragingIncredulousWeaselOpieOP-xbZNle8pKydlzURQ
-Mental Breakdown Into Insanity After Incredibly Unfair RNG: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1467251683
-Clear: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1470016124
[2] Likes
I Wanna Be The Popularity is only popular because of K2's popularity, ironically. The game merely consists of 4 stages with less production and entertainment values than I Wanna Be The GB, the second one consisting of a gimmick that must move the kid with the mouse, featuring an atrocious detection box.
The Dragon Quest adventure, however, is somewhat funny, and the fight is... bizarre. Overall, this game is horrible, but the Mega Man designs look quite decent, which is only one screen to access all other stages excluding the intro screen.
Well, it's one screen if you go for the easiest difficulty, which is quite the breeze. However, you must play the Very Hard mode to unlock one of the most (in)famous bosses in fangaming history: Gravity Man. Currently, that is my task. The game is nightmarishly modified with hundreds of spikes and unthinkable jumps. Add to that additional screens. This is only getting worse and worse in entertainment value, but I am doing this for the sake of a legendary segment which many claim to be rewarding, including the boss, which is credited to be an extreme experience. I'm looking forward to the reward.
Review will be updated by that time, including the rating. Difficulty rating will remain the same, but will be mentioned in the review for the Very Hard mode.
------------------------------------------
Edit for clear of Very Difficult on April 29, 2022. Quality and difficulty ratings are now based on Very Hard Mode.
This is a legendary game for a plethora of reasons. You know that particular feeling when a game was clearly intended for a Medium Difficulty, and when you choose the Hard Difficulty, the game loses all balance. Some humorous instances happen and makes it obvious in certain games, such as my favorite love-hate fangame: Breaking Out. When choosing the Hard Mode, you have those colored rectangles flasing, but they are empty, signaling where would the "Wuss" saves are actually meant to be.
That's the feeling of this game, and something of similar nature happens, but reversed: for the actual true ending, you're supposed to play the game on Very Hard Mode, which basically buffs all screens to unreasonably precise levels, buffs bosses and adds trash screens, especially going to the extent of lazily putting the same final screen design at the end of almost every stage with the same layout, with the exception that you must implement the gimmick of the stage at hand.
That's where my respect towards the game stops: each stage is different... very different between each other. The Super Mario World formula had been done to death, even by 2011-2012 standards, and the Very Hard Mode is a chore to get through, but it's there for probable homage purposes. It's the game that couldn't ever be excluded in an adventure fangame themed on other original games. Awful traps, unnecessary corners and an obsession with diagonals in succession. The first screen will make you bleed.
The boss of this stage is buffed stupidly and throws RNG everywhere while drawing arcs / half-moons from left to right and right to left. Shockingly, you get used to this after 15 minutes, I kid you not. However, when you introduce pattern with density RNG, that's when you get inevitable blocks and you will get that a lot. This boss took me 10+ hours easily (out of my run of 44 hours in total after beating the true final boss). It's 1 minute of nothingness (sometimes you don't even have to move), until you get the rolling Koopa and the bouncing Boo which will waste yout time after inevitable BS walls and unreadable combinations of pattern and RNG. This boss is certainly the lowest point of the game and, if it wasn't for the final boss, it would be reason enough never to play the Very Hard Mode.
Enter the Kirby ball gimmick, based on an actual videogame which name, frankly, eludes me (my younger brother is certainly the expert on videogames and I'll come back here to put the name unless someone reminds me first). Some movements are actually frame perfect. Since the Kirby ball has actually a 32X32 hitbox, and the obstacles occupy the same space, you'll find yourself making the perfect align before making progress. Brace yourself for accelerate-fast-as-hell-and-then-stop-immediately-afterwards techniques to master this stage. It takes time, and it has new unthinkable traps (creative for once), but it's something you'll remember for the better or for the worse.
The boss is, well, Kirby? Why? Weren't you the one I was controlling? Are you taking revenge for all the times I killed you? Anyway, hyperactive boss, quite funny, nothing seriously difficult. Shouldn't take more than 45 minutes for the less experienced.
Nothing relevant to add to the Dragon Quest II stage which had the maximum potential to shine and the actual game to ruin everything with a stupid spotlight gimmick, ordinary needle, more screens than before (some of them you will easily recognize, like the eternally copy-pasted GB screen or the first orange screen of LoveTrap), and the you come to the infamous garden """avoidance""" section..... Remember Miku 2's eternal wait before you could actually move? The one that Go the Dotkid! replicated in the final boss? Meet that here, but exaggerated. There's a whole dialogue scene that actually reenacts and spoofs a scene from the actual game (I love NES and SNES JRPGs with a particular passion). In this section called "The Courtyard of the Castle", the following dialogue ensues:
-The King: We had a peaceful time. However------!! However------!! However------!! However------!! However------!! However------!! However------!! (this section lasts EXACTLY 60 seconds of you waiting doing nothing).
-The King: This is------! What the hell happened!?
-The King: You're here! He's hiding!
-The King: What is in my body. Even if it happens, I don't know.
-The King said, "Come on, let's go! I want to tell you about this, to the King of Loresia. I have to let you know.
"The King.!" "Here we are!".
[King burns bird]
King, you monster!!
[King burns bird #2, but he is stopped and gets burned]
"The King--!"
"It's dry!"
[king gets burned]
and clear.
The scene itself is hilarious, but during the whole freaking dialogue after the first minute, you have to be dodging curved birds for 45 seconds and it's a woeful trial and error exercise. It only could be worse if it wasn't because of the great soundtrack.
And there you go, boss time. Boss is fun, I'll give it that. Precise at the end and looks deceptively simple, but you'll realize in the final phase that the white projectiles which can be bounced back to him are not that conveniently placed. Still, ok visual work and implementation.
The cursor gimmick stage depends a lot on your mouse sensitivity settings and literal physical space for you to maneuver it. If you have a small mousepad, you'll suffer a lot since you'll be placing your mouse back to the initial place, but we all know that landing the mouse causes some movement by default, so be sure to make room for your mouse. Also, did I mention beautiful backtracking? Unfun times.
The boss is an I wanna be the Tribute tribute, a game that had spirit but implemented most of its ideas quite horribly, mostly save distribution, cryptic areas, annoying traps and awful bosses. This boss sucks equally, although it kinda wants to implement the "Greeeeeeen" gimmick to make it more versatile, but sucks still. It's hilarious that they say "It's Koffing!" still, because in Very Hard mode, it isn't. Smoke of different colors have now different functions, but still, it's frustrating.
The I Wanna Be the Guy section is a bad copy-paste of the Kirby area, with zero special things, except for the last screen which references the secret item in the Ghosts 'n Goblins area. This screen is very fun. Boss is a memory game based on Super Wagan Land, the third entry into the series after the first 2 NES entries. OK for variety, cannot complain much, but there are too many cards for few tries. It's the easiest boss if you have a good memory and just a little bit of luck.
That's where the normal game would end, except you went through the cheapest buffs. You can tell the game was meant to be played in Medium. It all seems more natural that way.
But then that opens a path to a VVVVVV stage. Despite of not having reversed gravity gimmicks, it is the most solid stage of them all. I can only recall one stupid screen which requires you to screen wrap while falling through diagonals. It's so dumb it hurts; I swear the final diagonal before the warp is frame-perfect, pixel perfect jump, and since it's really close to the screen-wrap at the top, it's just garbage.
Otherwise, the stage is really cool and triggers act nicely; there are not so many traps to drive you insane, and difficulty is challenging, but surprisingly fair.
Now... onto the boss.
Everyone knows this boss because of the Kamilia games, but I'd like to go deeper into the logic of why this boss was included. I'll degress a little.
Carnival was a notorious, young maker who was one of the pioneers of the Medley concept and this could be seen since Crimson, not necessarily Destination. What about "medley bosses"? Could such a thing exist? Well, in a way, the amazing Boshy did this before anyone as far as my knowledge allows me to claim. Solgryn has the power to summon all previous bosses from the game, who are, simultaneously, games from classic, renowned original gems, modern and newer. This inspired Influka to make the final boss of the incredible Timemachine 1 under the same logic, and the previous fight to Influka (also Solgryn), implemented this. This translated into Kamilia 1: the idea of the final boss summoning all powers from previous bosses, finding out they were not enough, for then using her own, was something Solgryn did first in a spectacular and epic fashion (and, as we speak, that game is still being speedrun 12+ years later after its initial release, which shows how timeless and ahead of its time the game was).
Gravity Man is a stunningly well made, masterfully planned and excruciatinly nail-biting implementation of a "medley" boss. Instead, it quite isn't. The whole boss is a homage to Rockman 5, which I consider to be the most "gimmicky" of the first 6 NES games: controlling the vertical scrolling of the limits of your screen to avoid getting killed, low gravity, and, hey! Is that the reversed gravity gimmick from VVVVVV? Yes it is? This game was intelligent enough to place at the end a pivotal NES boss, underlooked because of the first 4 Megaman NES games, that actually has a correlation with VVVVVV: reversed gravity.
Back when I played Mega Man 5, Gravity Man was the stage and boss that surprised me the most because of its unique gimmick; I was no stranger to love... I mean to VVVVVV, but what had pioneered this? I have no proof to say that Mega Man 5 pioneered this in a platforming adventure game as deeper research is required, but it did it in a great fashion.
What is Gravity Man in popularity? It's a game of timing, strategy, memory muscle and reaction combined throughout. It challenges your boss/avoidance/memory/timing/gimmick fangame abilities all at once, and that's something extremely rare to find.
To put it shortly, the boss is glorious and one of my Top 15 bosses in fangames so far.
It is crucial to know Mega Man 5 and its bosses:
-Gravity Man: He controls when you flip gravity; you don't. His moves are entirely pattern and always follow the same path. At instances, he shoots bullets at you, which, depending on your position, might require you to do something, or actually nothing at all. The latter sounds dumb, but when you actually try to dodge another attack, you might jump into them.
-Stone Man: He jumps all over the place, but his trademark attack is spawning big rocks in a circular fashion, with each circle being each time bigger. You must time when you enter the circle and not get hit by them.
-Gyro Man: He's... green, and throws green Gyro discs, whatever that is. Lame, forgettable boss, but when you actually use the weapon in-game, it's very useful.
-Wave Man: An annoying boss to attack, particularly if you use his weakness against him: the charged kick, as he shouldn't be standing against a wall. I always found this boss inconsistent in strategy but that's just me; he creates water waves out of broken pipes (so lame), so nothing special about it.
-Charge Man: This is the toughest boss based on hitbox sprite and damage inflicted. He can take you out with 3 hits. He charges against you like a train, but his trademark attack is making a train sound, dropping something in the air and spawning 3 fireballs from the ceiling.
-Crystal Man: The stage is more memorable than the boss; his trademark attack is random crystal balls which bounce on walls, floor and ceiling, so correct reading is required while also avoiding the boss' sprite.
-Napalm Man: Cool design, to be honest, but not so special regarding its attacks. He throws missiles at you at a pace that can be very easily read and avoided, and also throws two "napalm bombs" at you which explode upon impact of anything. For some bizarre design-related reason, they are peanut-shaped, so the fangame community just decided to call them peanuts (in the Spanish community we used more synonyms/derivatives like "maní", "cacahuates", etc.). Basically salty seeds.
-Star Man: The easiest of the bosses; his trademark attack is having a shield made of stars spinning around him for them throwing it at you.
This explanation is not in vain, trust me, as I have already explained what Gravity Man in this fangame does. He has two phases, where the first phase has four sub-phases:
-In the first phase, he will just be Gravity Man. Be sure to learn his cycle, because you will be demanded to memorize it and move through the screen without seeing him since you should already know where he is.
-In the second phase, he will simultaneously use Gyro Man discs and curving rocks from Stone Man.
-The third phase is where you require a really specific strategy of when and where to be: he will simultaneously use the Wave Man attack from two opposite corners of the screen (one up, one down), and will also fill the screen from left to right with Charge Man fireballs. The blind spots are always the same, so you'll find yourself being on the same spot throughout this sub-phase.
-The fourth phase is nasty doom, UNLESS you marry with a position-based strategy. Most players (with "most" meaning everyone I have seen playing against this monster), will decide to start Sub-Phase 4 when he's on the upper right corner of the screen. During this part, he will use the two remaining attacks: Crystal Man spheres, which are 100% pattern and bounce everywhere, and the Napalm Bombs, which don't explode, but give you disgusting RNG. It is crucial to know that the path the Crystal Man spheres go depend 100% on when you end the previous phase and they will always behave the same depending on their initial spawning spot. So, given that you should already know the jumps Gravity Man does, and once you master the trajectory of the crystals, it all comes to Napalm Bomb reaction as long as they don't interfere with your aforementioned blind spots. At instances, they will, and they will crush you. This is the run killer.
Congrats!!! --------------------------------- NOT!!! I said there were two phases, man...
Protoman decides to betray you (as a nod to the plot of Rockman 5, without giving away spoilers surrounding that event), and gives a freaking E-Tank to Gravity Man. Now G-Man is pissed. The background from the original NES game turns gray, his life bar fills up again, you wish you did go through an autosave checkpoint (hint: you didn'), and... wait, did I say that the two remaining attacks were Crystal and Napalm?
Scratch that: It's Star Man shield time. His shield circles around him so fast that, according to my roughly estimated rate of success, each bullet you shoot from your gun has a probability of 20% of hitting him. It's stupidly insulting.
What is the second phase?
HE USES ALL 8 ATTACKS AT ONCE.
I don't need to say more, except that you will require a solid memory-muscle strategy to avoid the RNG instances of Napalm and the pattern instances of Crystal, Wave, Gyro, Stone and Charge. Mostly, it's a pattern boss, but the makers knowing this, decided this to make a complete clusterf*ck. This is one for the legends, all Mega Man 5's fury against your face, spirit and balls, hitting you harder than a soccer ball during a penalty kick.
Is it awful? Hell, no. On the contrary, it's a fantastic final boss, a brutal challenge that will require patience and a huge and long learning curve, because if you die, you're back to Phase 1 all over again.
The extra content paradoxically raised my rating for this game, which was much lower for the Normal version, but truth to be told, the last stage is the best, and the final boss is a legendary moment compared to the bunch of lows you have to go through before in 5 different stages.
Recommended?
It's so difficult to say. The pain of Super Mario World's boss is too big to endure and it has very boring and repetitive moments, and watching Dragon Quest 2 being wasted like that is uncalled for, but it definitely doesn't have a western essence. It's a surreal dream, a rarity of all sorts that got attention because in the Easter community it was more popular. Add him to K2's boss rush and everyone talks about it. It's like Tarantino's references of films that you had never heard of before if it wasn't because of Tarantino.
My answer, then, is yes: BARELY yes. If you want Gravity Man, you'll definitely spend more time with him than with the previous mess of a game.
G-Man took me 28 hours.
STATS
-Medium-
Deaths: 270
Time: 0:56:04
(Played in 16/1/2019)
-Very Hard-
Deaths: 7965
Time: 45:41:45
(Beaten in 29/4/2022)
VOD highlights:
-G-Man glitch: https://www.twitch.tv/elcochran90/clip/EncouragingIncredulousWeaselOpieOP-xbZNle8pKydlzURQ
-Mental Breakdown Into Insanity After Incredibly Unfair RNG: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1467251683
-Clear: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1470016124
Rating: 4.1 41
Difficulty: 87 87
Jan 16, 2019
just_another_Guy
One of my favourite fangames, all difficulties were fun, I only disliked the Ghosts 'n' Goblins screen, very mediocre, but the rest was really good, lots of cool mechanics and stuff, and the extra stage needle was really fun. Gravityman is an amazing boss, so much better than the K2 version, the fourth phase is so much more tolerable here, granted the final phase is really hard, but the boss was equally as fun as the rest of the game. There's no reason not to play this, if you're a newbie or just suck a lot, play on medium, for a simple slightly challenging game, play on hard and if you're looking for an interesting challenge, very hard mode is the way to go.
[2] Likes
Rating: 9.4 94
Difficulty: 35 35
Nov 18, 2015
BloggerOP
Rating based on very hard mode. fuck gravity man
[1] Like
Rating: 4.0 40
Difficulty: 84 84
Aug 30, 2024