Two characters, two different methods to beat levels, two different gameplay styles, same old classic MegaMan fun.
A new robot named King has recruited new robots including rebuilding 2 others from MegaMan 8 in his attempt to create a robotic army to take over the world and enslave the human race, which is up to MegaMan to stop him. But there's more to it: MegaMan's rival Bass joins the fray to prove that he is the strongest robot ever built and would stop at nothing to defeat King to do so.
This is easily the most unique game on the classic MegaMan lineup (unless you've played MegaMan X4 which was also released the same year as well and plays the exact same way). For starters, with MegaMan and Bass being the only playable characters, they each have different styles to each other that makes for unique gameplay. With MegaMan, boss battles are incredibly easy with his chargeable MegaBuster and slide technique yet navigating the stages can be a bit treacherous. Bass on the other hand doesn't have the fire-power as MegaMan since his chargeable Forte Buster is replaced with weaker machine gun fire, making boss fights a bit harder. On the other hand, his dash technique and double-jump ability make the stages look fairly easy.
Also making a bit of a comeback is the Auto Shop feature and Bolt currency. Obtain enough bolts in order to purchase new parts to make things a bit easier for you.
But the one thing that makes this game more unique than any of the others: CD database. 100 CDs, each containing information on almost every single robot in the classic MegaMan Universe, are spread across the 8 robot master stages and it's up to MegaMan and Bass to recover them all. You'd find yourself getting the most amount of CDs with MegaMan though, which some will take a while to find unless you bought the right parts to obtain them.
Needless to say, this game was relatively unknown to the western part of the world for a long time until emulators came about, and it was released on the GameBoy Advance which is the only version to get right now. To me, games like Rockman and Forte make them a lot better when they are unknowns to a certain audience since they easily stand out over the others as the years go by.
Now, would I recommend playing Rockman and Forte? You bet. You definitely will not regard it.