The followup to Inti’s crossover Mighty Gunvolt expands on its predecessor in all the best ways, with more features, more complexity, and a style wonderfully beyond 8-bit.

We’re still in the realm of pixel art, but detailed and beautifully animated. The playable characters still have more basic abilities than their source games, but a deep and deeply integrated customisation system lets you tweak and tinker many details of their firepower and defences.

Finding hidden collectibles will expand the options you have for customisation, and crystal pickups (both hidden and dropped normally by enemies) give you a higher limit on how many additions and power-ups you can apply. Gradually becoming stronger in this way, or suiting yourself to a particular stage, or choosing in which precise way to make yourself overpowered through min-maxing, is all very satisfying. The wealth of options and their effects is almost overwhelming but not quite.

Mighty Gunvolt drew from Mighty No. 9, Azure Striker Gunvolt, and Gal Gun. Burst takes its stages and bosses entirely from MN9, which helps its consistency in plot. In fact, this gives Inti the chance to do a “retake” of sorts for MN9, and I’ve even seen some claim this is what MN9 should have always been in the first place. Either way, new stage gimmicks and boss patterns (some recontextualised from Gunvolt, I noticed) help it feel fresh in its gameplay. Some basic enemies and the final boss still come from the Gunvolt games though, so there’s still something of a fun crossover feel.

There’s also the characters of course. The three defaults return from the three series mentioned (Ekoro became paid DLC on 3DS, but can still be accessed by transferring save data from the demo), and although many customisations are common between them, they each have unique skills to help them feel somewhat different. A big difference is their “aerial action”, which for Beck is an air dash and for Gunvolt a double jump, for example. With enough customisation points they can also be chained delightfully.

Two more characters from each series also appear as paid DLC. It wasn’t worth buying them all for me, as I’d already played through the game multiple times by that stage, but I got Ray because I loved her playstyle in MN9 and she didn’t disappoint here. As a melee focused character she gave a different feel, and her health drain can be turned off as part of the customising mechanic. They also had rearranged enemy types and locations in every stage of her story, which was a nice touch.

The game I’ve played recently that this most reminds me of is Megaman Xtreme 2. Between the multiple playable characters, air dashing with a second tap of the jump button, a parts system that expands your moves with in-game currency, and rehashing content we’ve seen before… Burst does a much better job at all these things. It’s really been the high point of my recent run through the contemporary Mega Man successors; it’s more or less a Classic-style game but really fun and fresh, with a joyful 16-bit-ish retro style that I appreciated. Lovely stuff.