Mega Man & Bass

Gameplay in Mega Man & Bass is similar to earlier games in the series. It is an action game where the player is tasked with completing a series of stages while overcoming obstacles, solving minor puzzles, and battling enemies. Destroying the "Robot Master" boss at the end of a stage lets the player acquire its special weapon. In previous games, the player generally took on the role of the hero Mega Man.

In this game, the player can choose to start the game as either Mega Man or Bass. However, whichever character is picked must be used for the rest of the file and cannot be changed. Mega Man is able to charge his shots to make them more powerful, slide and fire while he's moving. Bass is able to rapidly fire his arm cannon in eight directions, though his shots cannot pass through walls unless a certain upgrade is equipped and firing stops him in place when he's on the ground.

Bass is also able to double-jump (jump a second time in mid-air) and dash along the ground (similar to X in Mega Man X ). Performing both simultaneously lets him cross great distances by doing a dash-jump. The stage structure is much different from other games in the series. After the introduction level, the player can only choose between three Robot Masters, with following stages being unlocked once the initial ones are cleared.

Clearing one of these unlocked stages opens the way to a security room where the player must destroy a series of crystals with obtained Robot Master weapons. Bypassing all eight crystals opens the way to the fortress stages. In a similar fashion to previous installments in the series, enemies often drop bolts after they are destroyed, and these can be exchanged for various restorative items and upgrades. However, unlike in Mega Man 7 , the game features a security cavern which offers a way to obtain large amounts of bolts without having to repeatedly visit stages.

Some upgrades are unique to either character, such as Mega Man's ability to call on his dog Rush to search for items, Beat to receive a barrier that makes him temporarily invincibile and Eddie to receive healing items, or an adaptor for Bass to combine with his wolf Treble to temporarily fly. Also distributed throughout the introduction and Robot Master levels are a collection of 100 data CDs that contain information on prominent characters in the series. Most of the CDs are hidden either behind obstacles that need to be destroyed with a special weapon or accessed with a character-specific ability, making it impossible to collect them all on a single playthrough, as when the character is chosen in a file, the other character can only be used in another file. For example, some places are too high for Mega Man, who lacks the mobility options that Bass has, or too low and narrow for Bass, who can't slide, and a good chunk of the CDs can only be found by Mega Man by calling Rush and make him dig to search them.

CDs collected in each playthrough are permanently placed in a database and remain unlocked after beating the game. Saved games are used in place of the series' traditional password system.