MegaMari



MegaMari is a sidescrolling Platformer/Bullet Hell created in the vein of Mega Man and Touhou. Uses many elements from both series, including having eight "robot masters" as most Mega Man games do, and then the final castle stages where Wily Patchouli awaits, as well as the gameplay being quite similar to Mega Man games. The enemies focus largely on bullet patterns, with single enemies shooting anywhere from a single bullet to 12+ bullets at a time. The results when many enemies are on the screen can be quite overwhelming.

The plot doesn't quite involve world domination here, it's pretty much Patchouli getting annoyed with Marisa and Alice "borrowing" books out of her library and not bringing them back, so she transforms her library into a castle and has multiple characters who have something against Marisa try to stop her and Alice from breaking into it.

The main characters handle relatively the same as far as jumping and running speed go, but the pair both use different weapons. Marisa's standard shot behaves the same as Mega Man's pre-charge shot gun, while Alice uses a laser beam that pierces shields, such as the Prismriver's instruments, and hits more rapidly the closer to the enemy you are. On the down side, it's only about half as strong as Marisa's weapon.

Unlike Mega Man series that have multiple playable characters, where weapons achieved from beating bosses are usable by both characters, here you have to decide which character gets the weapon the boss drops, while the other character gets nothing. Both characters also have an extra weapon/item, Marisa's broom, which behaves similarly to item 2, being given after earning four boss weapons, and Alice's Shanghai Doll which is given if she receives four boss weapons and behaves similar to Beat, following onscreen enemies and rapid fire shooting at them.

This game provides examples of:

 * Blow You Away: Aya doesn't attack, but uses wind to push you backwards instead...usually into a cluster of fairies or a pit.
 * Boss Rush: This is a Mega Man clone, after all.
 * Bullet Hell: All of the boss fights dip into this at one point or another. Not to say that the stages don't sip into this at times either.
 * Desperation Attack: Lots of bosses have one of these when they reach varying amounts of health.
 * Youmu's ghost half flies above the fight and shoots down large bullets in a circle until the fight ends.
 * Reimu releases a Yin Yang Orb twice during the fight, and at low health she goes nuts and spams them.
 * Reisen starts shooting 3 Psycho Missiles instead of one.
 * Cirno makes icicles continually rain from the ceiling.
 * Sakuya jumps high into the air and sends a lot of knives flying everywhere.
 * Yuyuko hovers in the middle of the room and shoots two lasers and drops cherry petals.
 * Remilia jumps up and shoots a lot of assorted bullets at you.
 * Eirin starts firing off large meteors, usually enough to pose a threat at once.
 * When  is at half health she transforms into   and gains a charging attack and
 * Mecha Patchouli charges up and then shoots a hologram of itself at you which is almost an instant kill if you don't jump it (read: 75% of your health bar!).
 * Doppelganger Attack: Hong Meiling returns in Patchouli Castle alongside a clone of herself that's equal in strength.
 * Dual Boss: Yukari fights you alongside Ran and Chen, her two Shikigami.
 * Dummied Out: Sakuya's stage has an area with a few enemies and two ladders going off the bottom of the screen that's unreachable.
 * Evil Twin: Clone Marisa, following in Copy Mega Man's steps...
 * Excuse Plot: Marisa and Alice decide to break into the Scarlet Devil Mansion to steal some books from Patchouli. Patchouli takes a page from Dr. Wily. Go.
 * Flunky Boss: Alice's boss fight for the fourth Patchouli stage is Shikieiki Yamaxanadu, whose court will take potshots at you and jump at you to attack. Komachi also charges in from the sides of the screen on her boat to attack from time to time.
 * Fragile Speedster: Youmu takes extra damage from the standard weapons but is about as fast as Quickman.
 * Also the hover machine rabbits in Eientei. Possibly the only things worse than Lily White is when three are coming at you out of sync.
 * For that matter, all of the rabbits in general. They typically jump all over the place and charge at you in varying patterns. One rabbit generally isn't that hard to take care of, but you're often dealing with several at once.
 * Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: In a game where all the bosses are established Touhou characters, the final boss is a huge robot modeled after Patchouli. How did she even get a giant robot in the first place?
 * Nitori and the river kappas, obviously.
 * Graphics Induced Super Deformed: You have a perfectly good (half) photo of Marisa and Alice in normal proportions on the side, but everything in the game is tiny.
 * Hitbox Dissonance: If Alice or Marisa are shot through the head, nothing happens to them. Bullets have to hit dead center in their bodies to do real damage, like in the actual games.
 * Hoist By His Own Petard: Reimu's Yin Yang Orbs can be destroyed in one hit once you get them as well.
 * Humongous Mecha: The final boss, Mecha Patchouli.
 * Interface Screw: Rumia covers the stage with darkness as long as she's on screen, forcing you to either remove her or make the jumps blind.
 * Let's Play: One done by Azureblade 49
 * Let's Split Up, Gang!: Marisa and Alice split up and take on their own path versions of the third castle stage.
 * Lightning Bruiser: Hong Meiling and Youmu Konpaku could both give Quick Man a run for his money, and neither of them slouch in the damage area, either.
 * Nintendo Hard: Take what was hard about the Mega Man series. You following? Good. Now, take Touhou, add tons of bullets, and you get this game. This game is the equivalent of Mega Man if it had Lunatic Mode.
 * Sequential Boss: The final fight with Patchouli starts by herself, then she hitches up into in a large ship which looks like a teapot once the front is demolished (a parody of the Wily Machine), her saucer (the first time ever that a saucer in a Mega Man like game has been a boss), and finally, Mecha Patchouli. All of them are insanely tough.
 * The player gets a break between the "teapot ship" and the saucer, thankfully.
 * Shout-Out: All of Marisa's third Castle stage, to Super Marisa Land, a previous work by the authors of Mega Mari.
 * Skippable Boss: Two fights with Patchouli (one by herself, the other in her saucer), thanks to a a glitch involving Thousand Knives.
 * Spam Attack: Eirin's attack strategy is to fill the screen with as many attacks as possible.
 * Reimu's desperation attack involves spamming Yin Yang Orbs continuously. They also don't disappear from the screen. If you don't kill her quickly after she starts shooting them, you soon won't have room to stand.
 * Sakuya's desperation attack as well. Knives everywhere.
 * Stealth Pun: Suika, the Oni, is the stand-in boss for the Yellow Devil, also called "Yellow Demon".
 * Teleport Spam: Yuyuko.
 * Victor Gains Loser's Powers: After every boss you'll get some new toy to inflict hell in your enemies.
 * As you pick one trick for one of your two characters to learn, and the enemy charactes use multiple powers, this also displays the Unskilled but Strong and Weak but Skilled contrast in the protagonists. Marisa will usually learn something flashy and/or damaging. Alice will pick something lower-key which usually gives her new angles to attack from. For example, Marisa will grab Reimu's Yin-Yang orbs (huge, heavy bouncing balls which wreck armored mooks) while Alice goes for the paper homing amulets.
 * And of course, Marisa and Alice are the two characters which subvert those tropes: Marisa is a Badass Normal who intensely studies to produce bigger and bigger explosions and blasts, while Alice is Willfully Weak, pursuing precision and finesse rather than tapping into the tremendous raw power she possesses.
 * Warmup Boss: Cirno's attacks are nearly always easy to dodge, and Alice's weapon deals 2x damage to her. Not to say her stage is as forgiving, however.
 * X Meets Y: It's Mega Man fused with Touhou.