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Mega Man Discussion / Re: Do you prefer the name "Megaman" or "Rockman" ?

« on: November 08, 2018, 06:38:47 PM »

Megaman, but only because I'm more used to it over Rockman due to the name being changed outside Japan (and Crashman over Clashman, likewise Balrog, Vega and M.Bison to me will always be a boxer, cage fighter and dictator respectively). I also prefer Megaman (no space) over Mega Man, even the NES games call the character "MEGAMAN", with the exception of a single instance in MM5 after beating the last Darkman robot.

For the non-fighting version, it's Rock all the way. "Mega" belongs in landfill alongside the planned obsolescence known as the PlayStation Portable (and yes, I am still pissed that they didn't even bother releasing Powered Up on the PS2, let alone PS3).

I'm sure Rockman would still have been a huge seller regardless of the name (case in point, American buyers baulked at the box art of the first game, not the name itself). If Mr. Bad Box Art had possibly looked like a rock star (keeping the theme) instead of an obese construction worker it just might have sold better, if they absolutely couldn't keep the anime style of the original game.

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Mega Man Discussion / Re: Things in Megaman that you never noticed before until recent

« on: March 08, 2018, 02:10:12 PM »

Megaman 2: The HAWBQFMC stage order strikes again in the boss rematch stage in a top to bottom pattern:

Code: [Select]

H    F
A    M
W BQ C
On the Wily Wars, if you pause the game when Flash Man or Doc Flash is using the Time Stopper, you can jump and fire after resuming even though you're supposed to be frozen in place, although you still can't walk until it wears off.

Speaking of the Wily Wars, Robot Master weapons from all games work on all enemies and bosses, even though the game never intended you to have weapons from a different game outside the Wily Tower e.g. Metal Blades in MM1, Thunder Beam in MM2 or Leaf Shield in MM3. Of course, it requires a memory cheat to change your weapon on the fly, but it's still interesting that all weapons were programmed to have damage data and/or deflection properties on enemies, Robot Masters and Wily bosses (including the Doc Robots), including those which cannot be hit in-game due to not being in the Wily Tower stages where any weapon can be used.

Maybe Capcom's original idea was to also have every single enemy boss in the game after unlocking Wily Tower, but ran out of cartridge space and had to settle for only three bosses (the Genesis Unit) and a very small set of Wily stages (not to mention the Wily Capsule being part of the Wily Machine itself instead of being the final stage).

After all, it is strange that Wily Tower is missing the boss rush found in every other game in the series, as well as the fact there are only three Genesis Unit bosses despite there being four major Journey to the West characters. While you do fight Buster Rod G twice in separate battles, it's essentially two different bosses with completely different AI (and weapons, literally a rod and a buster respectively) rather than a rematch. Why they didn't make a fourth Genesis Unit boss to keep with the Journey to the West theme instead of fighting the Monkey King twice is anyone's guess.

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Mega Man Discussion / Re: Toughest Robot Master in Each Game?

« on: February 17, 2018, 06:28:40 AM »

MM1: Elec Man by far. Even if you try the stun lock method, miss a shot or hit him while he's still invincible and you get a free Thunder Beam to the face. He also starts with a cheap shot if you were facing left when you climb up the ladder.
MM2: Quick Man. While he isn't exactly tough, the fight is fairly hectic, and even then he can just jump in front of you at the start of the fight and throw boomerangs on the second jump with no possible way around it.
MM3: Needle Man. While he is probably the closest thing to Metal Man in terms of AI, they made it so he can jump and/or fire at any time, making it much more difficult. No doubt this character was Inafking's revenge against the original Metal Man AI being too easy. Shadow Man is nowhere near as difficult, with Shadow it's all about positioning him in the middle of the room so you have time to see whether he will slide or throw a Shadow Blade (both of which are random events, his AI is literally jump, jump, blade/slide, jump).
MM4: Drill Man. Even his weakness does 3 damage (the same as a charged Mega Buster) instead of 4, not to mention the Dive Missiles bounce off his Drill Bombs, and they do not even home in on him when he is underground or otherwise invincible while digging. A close second would be Pharaoh Man as he is quite tricky when he is jumping around the place throwing the small Pharaoh Shots.
MM5: Crystal Man, but only at the start where he fires the four Crystal Eye shots.
MM6: Centaur Man. I have no idea how to predict when and where he is going to use the Centaur Flash, and he is a pain to jump over too. Not energy-tank-draining hard, just annoying.

Wily Wars:
MM1: Elec Man, again. Yes, they somehow managed to make Elec Man even more ridiculous by giving him Quick Man's original speed and letting him spam the Thunder Beam (while he can still only have one shot on screen and it's a slow projectile in this game, it's still too fast between shots that take off 10HP). Ironically, Quick Man's running speed in the Wily Wars isn't much faster than your own walking pace. While Elec Man's boss room has Guts Blocks to stand on which can provide some relief from being zapped, good luck trying to not die on the flat ground in the rematch in Wily 2.

MM2: Flash Man. No, I'm serious. It is practically impossible to do a buster-only perfect run as he spams the Time Stopper. Yes, he can stop time and shoot you, and them stop time immediately after and shoot you again! While you can get him to jump over and over by spamming buster shots (he jumps when you fire in this game, unlike the NES where he jumps when taking damage), he will eventually land on the ground and freeze you, and he will also happily turn around if you manage to jump over him, rather than going from one side of the room to the other as he used to. And just like Cut Man and Quick Man in this game, he only takes 1 damage from the buster too. Strangely, Doc Flash in Wily Wars follows the original around the room walking pattern of the original NES Flash Man. Maybe Capcom swapped the AI for MM2 Flash and Doc Flash...

MM3: It's a close one, but I'm thinking either Shadow Man or Hard Man. In the Wily Wars, you cannot slide under the Shadow Blades, nor can you stand at the edge of the screen to scroll off the Hard Knuckles. Every boss in the entire game also has the same invincibility period as the later games (e.g. MM5), while your shots are a lot slower and you cannot rapid fire. On the up side, Top Spin no longer drains random amounts of energy upon hitting something, and you don't get pushed back when hitting an enemy with it. Shadow Man's AI is now random, he can jump as many times as he wants in this game (Needle Man and Quick Man are the same), and he pauses before throwing Shadow Blades, which can put off your timing.

I don't find the Wily Tower Robot Masters (Genesis Unit) difficult at all. Buster Rod G dies to buster spam (the second battle is even easier), Mega Water S is incredibly easy, and Hyper Storm H is virtually a giant Dust Man with no invincibility during the air attacks, and while he shakes the ground upon landing, it doesn't have the Guts Man/Metall Daddy effect of freezing you in place.

Of course, with weaknesses, all of the bosses are much easier, probably with the exception of Fire Man, Drill Man, Dive Man and Tomahawk Man. No, I have no idea how to stop Fire Man from spamming the Fire Storm if I use the Ice Slasher instead of the buster, the wait and jump trick does not seem to work with Ice Slashers (on Wily Wars however, Fire Man is a piece of cake regardless of how you fight him).

Most annoying non-Robot Master boss? Metall Daddy. That hitbox!!!! I will take the Boobeam Trap, Wily Machine 2, Wily Machine 4, Doc Wood, Doc Quick, Power Piston, and Guts Man G's habit of smacking you into the ceiling any day over that thing.

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Mega Man Discussion / Re: Things in Megaman that you never noticed before until recent

« on: August 26, 2017, 03:03:35 AM »

The Robot Masters beyond the first game were created by people (kids) rather than Capcom themselves. "Crash" is fitting however, especially if you're firing like an idiot and making the Robot Master jump all over the place, there will most certainly be collisions if you do that. Crash Bombs also "crash" into a wall and lock on before detonating; the word "clash" just doesn't seem to fit anything (on a side note, "crush" also sounds similar in a Japanese accent).

Dr. Right's name also makes more sense than Light, when comparing the meaning of "Right" (not the → direction) against the word "Wily".

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Mega Man Discussion / Re: Things in Megaman that you never noticed before until recent

« on: August 07, 2017, 07:41:12 PM »

The weakness order of the Megaman 1 bosses is perfectly interleaved on the pause screen: B, E, G, I, C, F. BGCEIF is one of the easiest ways to get through the stages too!

Of course, you don't get to see the pause menu with all weapons showing until you have beaten every Robot Master in the game, but still...

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Mega Man Discussion / Re: What's Megaman's future?

« on: July 31, 2017, 06:12:15 PM »

Small companies like Phoenix Games had absolutely no trouble releasing millions upon millions of (crappy) games all over Europe, UK, Australia and New Zealand. There is no excuse whatsoever to limit physical release to one or two countries only, they're only shooting themselves in the foot.

If what I read is correct, Legacy Collection 2 has Megaman 7, 8, 9 and 10. Is that all they could squeeze onto a 25GB or 50GB BD-ROM?

Also, Sony and Microsoft consoles only?

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Mega Man Discussion / Re: What's Megaman's future?

« on: July 27, 2017, 09:19:02 AM »

And no doubt they will release it on disc in the US only like the last one and screw the rest of the world over with a digital-only release, unless by then they have woken up that Japan and the United States are not the only two countries on planet Earth. If you ever find that physical Legacy Collection copies become ridiculously rare 20 years from now, you will find that the vast majority of US copies have left the States and gone into the hands of collectors all around the world or are still factory sealed and in a graded hard plastic time capsule, complete with a four or even five figure price tag that no-one will ever pay. On a similar note, I regret having to sell my Australian copy of Super Luigi U now.

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Mega Man Discussion / Re: Useless Robot Master Weapons?

« on: July 18, 2017, 04:39:08 AM »

Hyper Bomb. I think there is only one or two places in the entire game where it can even be used to an advantage, and only if you can't be bothered using the buster or Thunder Beam or Rolling Cutter or Fire Storm anyway, all of which are infinitely faster and use less weapon energy. If a Hyper Bomb could kill a Big Eye in one shot they may have just been worth using on that occasion, but they can't even do that.

Time Stopper is more or less an item rather than a weapon, given that it doesn't hurt anything whatsoever except for Quick Man. It can be useful against the Air Tikis to stop the horns and gremlins from spawning, the falling crabs at the end of Bubble Man's stage, the Moles in Metal Man's stage and in Wily 3 (or the presses after that section, so you can run under them without having to wait), the Pipis in the annoying ladder section in Crash Man's stage so you don't have to do the ladder jump trick or resort to Leaf Shield or Metal Blades (especially if you haven't got them yet), and can stop two out of the three Frienders (Hot Dogs) from spawning in Wood Man's stage. You can also use it against Heat Man at the start if you have trouble dodging his first flame attack, however I tend to use it to freeze the Sniper Armor in mid air just before the boss room, as I find Heat Man's first attack easy to avoid (just run toward him as soon as it lets you move and do a small hop).

I find Needle Cannon fairly useless in the NES version of MM3, it is basically just the buster with slightly varying heights on each shot, and does exactly 1 damage on every single enemy in the entire game. In the Wily Wars however, Needle Cannon goes through defeated enemies like Metal Blades do, which makes it a lot more useful than the buster, and with the horrible firing rate in that game it is much better to just hold down the button and use the Needle cannon's auto-fire when there are a lot of things on screen such as Poles.

Magnet Missile loses weapon energy way too fast to be of any real use, I tend to only ever use it against Hammer Joes, Hard Man and Doc Metal to be honest. 14 uses of a fast-moving weapon that can have two shots on screen? Yeah, not even bothering. Anyone who is less experienced who has also hammered the fire button against Hard Man will have easily run out of them long before Hard Man has been destroyed due to the invincibility frames the Robot Masters have, and then have to resort to the buster and do 1 damage for the rest of the fight. Using Magnet Missiles is like using the Crash Bomber in my opinion. Powerful but next to pointless - Crash Bombs at least get points for killing Blocky (in "difficult" mode) and Kukku (Atomic Chicken) in one hit, hurting Wood Man behind his Leaf Shield and doing decent damage to Quick Man if he wants to keep running into the wall while it is blowing up (even against Flash Man if he uses the Time Stopper near a wall, as the explosion ignores the freezing period), it is also of course required to beat That One Level so it is definitely better than the Magnet Missile.

Spark Shock is definitely useless. I think the only time I ever use it outside of bosses weak to it is to freeze the Bouncers (Bikky) just for comedic effect. In fact, it's probably the second most useless weapon in the entire franchise besides the Super Arm, and only because the Super Arm solely relies on blocks actually being programmed to appear the stage, rather than being able to summon them from the air like Guts Man does (or when using Guts Man in Powered Up, from the ground).

Dive Missiles are also underpowered, whatever damage they can do usually ends up being upstaged by another weapon, be it Drill Bomb, Ring Boomerang, Dust Crusher, Pharaoh Shot, and even Rain Flush in some cases. In fact, if you like spamming buster shots, even the Flash Stopper beats it and gives you an easy target that won't move or shoot back (provided it isn't a boss not called Pharaoh Man), even the Skeleton Joes that otherwise crumble if you shoot them with a regular shot go down in three hits while frozen. Made even worse that the Dive Missile doesn't even do the full weakness damage against the only boss "weak" to it, so it still takes ten hits just like using a charged Mega Buster. That alone puts them down to scrappy tier alongside Spark Shock and Super Arm. The Skull Barrier is definitely one tier above this weapon, as it absorbs shots that would otherwise hit you, does the full 4 damage against Dive Man (the irony), and stops rocks from being dumped on your head in Drill Man's stage. Dive Missiles don't even attempt to home in on an enemy that is immune to them, including Drill Man when he is invincible while digging.

I don't tend to use Plant Barrier much either, I'm not really a fan of shield weapons that vanish as soon as something touches it. Plant Barrier only gets seven uses as well, making it the most useless shield type weapon in the entire series. It can't even be thrown, unlike the Star Crash that preceded it (and unlike Plant Man's own version). Then again, most of the weapons in MM6 are pretty useless besides the Flame Blast.

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Mega Man Discussion / Re: Obscure Mega Man Games

« on: July 15, 2017, 01:50:35 AM »

Well, I did say I didn't count digital releases! I own the US PS2 copies of both Anniversary and X Collection but haven't bought Legacy Collection yet as it's a bit too expensive for my taste, and it would be useless to me as I don't have any of the consoles it was released on either (I lost interest in video game consoles after the PS2). In a way, I'm glad I never really followed the X series as I would have been up for thousands if I was a collector, even X1 goes for over $100 over here just for the loose cartridge, which is a joke in itself when it's worth something like 2000 yen in Japan and not much more in the US. The game isn't even rare, it's about as common as Street Fighter II! Buying MM7 and Wily Wars was enough for me. I have completed MM7 exactly once on the SNES (Wily's capsule... just, ugh - and also Guts Man G when he grabs Megaman and flings him into the ceiling), but Wily Wars has been completed many times.

And now, I am going to sit here watching Cut Man's stage bounce up and down for an hour.

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Mega Man Discussion / Re: Obscure Mega Man Games

« on: July 09, 2017, 01:00:34 PM »

I'm forced to say Megaman X3, at least from a PAL gamer's perspective (I don't count digital releases). Ridiculously expensive on the Super Nintendo (as in, the price of a used car), well over $100 on PlayStation 1 and Capcom decided not to bother releasing X Collection outside the US (or any other similar compilation for that matter - Anniversary Collection and Legacy Collection also remained US-only releases).

X3's rarity in the PAL region makes Wily Wars look like Super Mario Bros. on the NES.

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Mega Man Discussion / Re: My opinion on the Wily Bosses. Yours?

« on: July 07, 2017, 12:09:50 PM »

Rolling Cutter is not as bad as people think, it's perfectly usable against Screw Bombers and the like in Wily 3 and 4. MM3 was way too easy for the wrong reasons - lack of invincibility frames of all of the Wily bosses made them vulnerable to the most broken weapon in the game, Top Spin. If the Yellow Devil could be damaged by Top Spin it too would have been destroyed quickly (it already is a pushover if you get up close with RJ) - in one of the ROM hacks they did just that.

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Mega Man Discussion / Re: What's Megaman's future?

« on: July 05, 2017, 07:15:56 PM »

Megaman's future? I think the franchise is long dead, Capcom has been milking the cash cow for all it's worth for nearly 15 years, releasing nothing but compilations of the same old games over and over. How many times can they sell Megaman 2 to the public? It's almost expected that the next version will be yet another 8-bit style game from a second party like Inti Creates to cash in on MM2. They even screwed up the model when Megaman ended up in Smash Bros. - put the amiibo next to an official Megaman figure (e.g. not from the cartoons) and count the differences.

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Mega Man Discussion / Re: My opinion on the Mega Man series. Yours?

« on: June 26, 2017, 07:52:15 PM »

Megaman 7 was awesome. Difficult But Awesome takes a different meaning compared to the TV Tropes page. I like how they put in a few shoutouts to the NES series e.g. the fact you could freeze the flames in Turbo Man's stage just like you could in Fire Man's stage, then the Quick Man beams, and a lot of upgraded versions of classic enemies, although I think they should have had a weapons/boss archive in this game as opposed to Mash, especially since the battle was in the middle of a robot museum! The game also lacked a middle portion (beyond Mash) in that you went from 8 Robot Masters straight to the Wily stages, compared to Doc Robot, Dr. Cossack, Dark Man and Mr. X in the last four games; of course, that could have also been a shoutout to Megaman 1 and 2.

I also prefer MM7's art style over MM8/MM&B, as it was as close to the original drawings as they ever got - even the arcade games used this art style. With Megaman 8 I think they were trying to use a pseudo-3D art style simply so it didn't look like a 16-bit game on the next generation PlayStation/Saturn, and also the reason why they created Megaman Legends/64 so they could also have a true 3D game hybrid under their belt, as was the fashion at the time (Super Mario 64, Crash Bandicoot, and the awful mess that was Bubsy 3D, never mind RPGs like Final Fantasy 7 and the like). With Megaman Battle & Chase, they even had a Mario Kart type game on the PlayStation although oddly it wasn't released in the US until Megaman X Collection came out on PS2 (why it was released in a compilation of X series games instead of Anniversary Collection is anyone's guess, but maybe they just wanted to fill up the DVD given that X Collection was much smaller on disc compared to Anniversary Collection).

The only annoying part of MM7 is that there is a lot of fake difficulty - charged buster shots only do 2 damage instead of 3 making it almost pointless being there (except for rescuing Beat from the cage, which for some reason is immune to everything else), some bosses stay invincible for way too long e.g. Spring Man and Slash Man, meanwhile your own invincibility timer is about half of what it was on the NES so you take hits quicker. There's also the retrograde step of only allowing 4 energy tanks when the last four games allowed up to 9. Of course, this could have been because they used the X engine and the 4 sub tanks simply became 4 energy tanks, going by the fact that the sub tank sound effect is played when you pick up an energy tank or an extra life, despite the X series having both the extra life and sub tank sound effects.

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Mega Man Discussion / Re: Useless Robot Master Weapons?

« on: June 17, 2017, 09:54:56 AM »

I don't think Metal Blade is that great. It doesn't even work on the Buebeam Trap!

Metal Blades don't work on a number of things where they would have been useful - Sniper Armor, Springer, Crash Man, Quick Man, and they are also weak against Sniper Joe, Tanishi, Kerog, Matasuboro... it only does 1 damage against Wily as well (what's that, it does 2 damage? Stop playing on "normal" mode!!!)

Useless weapons. Every single one from Megaman 5 and 6 could be classified as a useless weapon. All sixteen Robot Master weapons lose to the default Mega Buster and a tiny blue bird! Actually, Gyro Attack isn't too bad (it can be fired vertically), and Flame Blast seems to be the weakness of just about every enemy in the game, including sub-bosses. The rest are a joke.

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Mega Man Discussion / Re: Why I think Mega Man needs to move forward

« on: June 17, 2017, 08:09:04 AM »

I would be fine with the Powered Up/Maverick Hunter X style - 3D graphics with 2D side scrolling movement. If the game has no chargeable shots or sliding, or NES style graphics/music on a brand new console e.g. Nintendo Switch, it's a deal breaker - I don't play wannabe ROM hacks.

Also, Megaman should actually look like Megaman in the official drawings, not the shitty Americanized version from Smash Bros. or Megaman Universe or the complete and utter failures of NES box art, where Megaman has gone from an obese construction worker to being Robocop (MM2 PAL versions, excluding Germany which got it right) to the MAD Magazine kid (US MM3/4/5).