Made by the creator of Minus Infinity, which is probably the greatest Mega Man ROM hack out there, EP isn’t nearly as good, but still super crazy and imaginative.

Like Minus Infinity, EP changes the weapons, level design and boss patterns completely. It’s hard to include elements from other Mega Man titles in 7 because of the 16-bit art style and all, but the hacker did what he could with the OG assets. EP also has some clever homages to Castlevania, Gradius and even DKC2.

And again like Minus Infinity, EP is fairly brute-forceable. It does have some chaotic enemy placements, and the boss patterns can be tough, but this hack showers you with E-Tanks and health refills, and you’re equipped with a bunch of pit rescue items by default, to the point where most of the game almost feels mindless.

Not surprisingly, the weapons are amazing. Turbo Man’s power ignites Mega Man and makes you 100% invulnerable to all damage except projectiles, causing other interesting effects too like constant damage to everything underwater (like it’s boiling the water! Pretty cool). Shade Man’s weapon is an even bigger, spammable Noise Crush that looks like Ripple from the Gradius series, and what do you know, there’s a full Rush Jet shmup stage where this weapon shines.

Speaking of, the main problem with this game, which may be a product of MM7 hacking still being new, is the exaggerated number of autoscrollers. Practically every stage has one, with the castle being the worst offender, being made almost entirely of forced scrolling. They’re still varied and interesting to discover, but not very replayable.

Probably also as a result of MM7 hacking being new, there aren’t many secrets here or unlockables. Looking forward to updated versions of EP and other elaborate MM7 hacks now that the mod tools for this game are out.

Cool game.