by Stephen Deck
Review written by Stephen Deck; originally published 01/28/2019 on Teacher by Day, Gamer by Night
Dr. Discord’s Conquest is a My Little Pony themed fan hack of Mega Man 3. Truthfully, there’s really nothing of interest here to anyone other than retro gaming bronies – a niche market if there ever were one – but for those of us who DO happen to be both a brony and a retro gamer, this is a pretty neat hack. It’s far from perfect, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t thoroughly enjoy going through Mega Man levels as Twilight Sparkle blasting things with my unicorn magic.
As far as gameplay goes, the game is exactly what you would expect from a Mega Man 3 hack; you run and jump your way through a platforming level while blasting every enemy in your path until you reach a boss you have to destroy. Then you get a special power that can help you defeat other bosses. The end boss, obviously, is Discord, but the stage bosses (standing in for the robot masters) are Celestia, Fluttershy, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Trixie, Rarity, and Luna; and the character portraits for each on the level select screen are actually really well done. The music includes some decent 8-bit renditions of MLP songs, but it’s not quite as impressive as the MLP music in Pony Quest.
Being a hack of Mega Man 3, the game obviously plays amazingly, but the real star of the show as far as I’m concerned is the attention to detail that went into this hack. The visuals, both enemy sprites and environments, have been totally redone to reflect the My Little Pony theme. It’s a bit weird seeing Twilight walk exclusively on her hind legs, yeah, but the sprite itself looks good. Even Derpy makes an appearance as a bubble-chucking enemy even despite not being one of the boss ponies. While just a random fan project, it’s obvious that this hack was a labor of love with the amount of care that was put into it.
Dr. Discord’s Conquest may be “just” a Mega Man 3 hack, but it’s a hell of a Mega Man 3 hack that had a lot of effort put into it. From the presentation to the quality of the sprites to the music to the level design, nothing was half-assed in this hack. It’s a little awkward to see Twilight spend the whole game on her back legs, but that’s more than made up for by the fact that you spend an entire game blasting enemies in hours of gameplay reminiscent of the changeling swarm scene during the season two finale. There’s really not much point in playing this if you’re not a fan of My Little Pony or a FERVENT Mega Man fanatic who plays every halfway decent ROM hack, but if you are a fan of MLP and classic Mega Man, then I absolutely recommend checking out this hack. It’s fantastic.
