Hold on a second; this isn’t Mega Man.

Azure Striker: Gunvolt is close enough, though. In fact, it’s produced by Keiji Inafune, the man who created Mega Man in 1987. Inafune had a falling out with the company he worked for, Capcom, and had to go elsewhere. The rights to his original creation were stuck with his old bosses, though, so he decided to continue producing games in the same vein. One of those games is the upcoming crowd-funded title Mighty No. 9 and another is Azure Striker: Gunvolt.

Would you believe a crossover of the two was just announced?

Gunvolt is built like a classic game from the ’80s, a platformer such as Mega Man and the more widely known Super Mario Bros games. Unlike Mario, there is a lot more coordination and strategy involved. Levels are built to last, full of pitfalls, enemies, and they contain other hazards to keep players guessing. Of course, this is old news by now; games have been made this way for approximately two decades.

No matter who makes games such as Gunvolt or where they end up being released, the point (at least in my imagination) is to take all of those levels that are built to last and string them together into an entire game that is built to last. Considering how much more expensive gaming is compared to going out to movies or having a Netflix subscription, this design implementation is a good idea in most cases.

The appeal of little gaming morsels, Gunvolt in particular, is to tide consumers over until the bigger, more expensive games hit store shelves and get more widespread attention. Gamers with a Nintendo 3DS who want something challenging and engaging need look no further than Gunvolt for a temporary fix as the tide of fall releases begins to flood the market starting this month.

No disrespect to Gunvolt, games such as this often have a lot of replay value. If a player rides the bus a lot or just needs to kill time before class starts, this game can always be there for people to do another run on a random level to improve their time or execution.

Azure Striker: Gunvolt is available now for Nintendo 3DS.