Yet another romhack, this one's pretty good. There are two major additions. First, you can double jump, of course, and second, there are dash tank items that massively increase your speed placed
in most of the levels. The boost seems to be about as fast as
in Burst Chaser X Air Sliding. The mobility you get from combining the double jump with the dash tank lets you show serious disrespect to the level designs and boss patterns alike.
As usual, being able to double jump makes character handling feel really good
in exchange for the game demanding less responsible play. Even yoku blocks are fun when you can double jump. Instead of memorizing your way through, you can use your first jump to stall and see what's about to happen, and your second to get into the right position. Dying or finishing a level will remove your speed boost, and dash tanks don't respawn. Mess up and you have to do the rest of the stage as regular old slowpoke Rockman. Losing your blazing speed after dying feels like a cruel punishment, but conversely, it makes keeping it feel like a reward. There's an alternate game mode called dash mode where you have permanent super speed. This hack autosaves after every stage so if you pick one mode and regret it, all you have to do is reset the game, select the other mode, and you're right back where you were. Also, if you want to delete your save and start a new game, you need to hold B and press A on the title screen.
Rock makes the soy face over his new dash tank
The level design is good. It's fast-paced and you're always running into new ideas. The only outstanding weak point is that the enemy formations are about as threatening as the ones
in the official games, but with double jumping and dash tanks you're a lot stronger than you were
in the official games. There are a few hidden areas and branching paths, and sometimes you'll an upgrade item
in one of them. They tend to give you useful features like removing knockback when you get hit, or convenience features like adding energy pickups to your other weapons if your current weapon is full. The latter really ought to be a available from the start, but better to have it hidden than to not have it at all.
There's a huge gap between how dangerous different bosses are. Star Man and Gravity Man are nasty without their weaknesses. Most of the Dark Man fights are a joke even with just the buster. The special weapon set is pretty nice this time around. For a few examples, napalm bomb gives bosses only a brief instant of mercy invincibility, meaning it has very high potential dps, but its short range makes that risky. Star crash seems able to block just about any projectile
in exchange for quickly burning through your energy. The problem with these weapons is that they're largely unnecessary. The buster is plenty strong on its own, and double jumping removes its weakness against attacks from above. Bosses tend to be weak against weapons that are easy to use against them, like what Capcom did
in Rockman 2. Star Man has a force field that makes him hard to attack, but gravity hold, which is his weakness, goes right through it. Dark Man 4 likes to jump up high on the walls where most weapons have a harder time hitting him, but crystal eye can do it easily, and it's also his weakness.
Setting aside the dash and double jump mechanics, this doesn't feel too far off from something Capcom could have made. I don't recognize the music from anywhere. It seems to be original, but it sounds distinctly like Rockman music. Double Jumper's one major flaw is that it's too easy. Might be even easier than the original Rockman 5. There are a few rough bosses to watch out for, but aside from them it's smooth sailing. One could draw a comparison between this and Rondo's Maria. Most of the game's enemies can't deal with your overwhelming mobility, but it's still a great hack for some low pressure, feel good gaming.
B+
You can download Rockman 5: Double Jumper here.
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2620/