...or Mighty Number 2?

Creator Invisible Tile describes Giga Girl as a “retro run 'n gun platformer heavily influenced by, and paying homage to, the original NES Mega Man games.” So obviously, comparisons to the recent flop that was Mighty No. 9 are going to be made, even if the two titles took their homage in wildly different directions. 

You see, like Mighty No. 9, Giga Girl was made by someone who loves the Mega Man series and feels the world needs more games like it. However, instead of trying to take a classic forward, Giga Girl stops at emulation. 

Whether or not that is a good thing depends on your definitions of homage and rip-off. 

Invisible Tile makes no secret that the project started off as a Mega Man 2 remake, and it shows in the way the Giga Girl beams into a level, explodes when she dies, and has life and power meters that refill from big and small power-ups. These obvious nods to Mega are differentiated just enough not to get sued, but probably not enough for fans of the Blue Bomber to hold back their screams of a knock-off. And Giga Girl feels and looks like it, sadly; I would almost expect to find it on one of those 150 Games in 1 Plug-and-Play machine, they sell at the little kiosk in the mall. 

Let's get into the meat of Giga Girl's problems. 

First and foremost, the game looks more like an 8-bit title than the 16-bit it touts itself on being. 8-bit might even be too generous, as Giga Girl herself looks more like clip art than a pixelated heroine. 

The second problem Giga Girl faces is its lack of a story. Well, to be fair there is an opening, with the game’s introduction laying out the basic framework for a robots’ revolution, with little to no intrigue. 

Now we could forgive the lack of a storyline, even the neglect toward visual design, but the lack of customizable controls for those without gamepads is a problem. 

The last gripe I have with Giga Girl is the fact that bosses aren’t named. I ended up labeling them myself: Green Guy, Blue Guy, Yellow Guy, Vacuum Face, and Fireball. Yeah, actual names would have been nice, but probably wouldn't have gotten the giggles from my eleven-year-old. 

After all my complaining, you’d expect a red flag: avoid Giga Girl. You’d be wrong. 

Sure, it's a Mega Man rip-off, but Mega Man was a great game. Ripping it off means Giga Girl gets to start on a great footing, and once past the flaws, you'll find a fun and challenging game. We had loads of fun, daughter and I, dying and replaying levels over and over again, trying to get the patterns and jumps timed right. The music, written by Jukka-Pekka "the Machinist" Lyytinen, is fantastic and never gets annoying, no matter how many times you fail and repeat a level.