Mega Man Fan Game Collection Topic

[MusashiAA]

Friendly reminder that ROM hacks have beein doing that for years, and it never mattered. But I can't help to think putting that as a "selling point" is less a joke and more a confession of laziness on your part.

A good game isn't one that never recycles old content, just look at Mega Man games: mostly new graphics, music and weapons, same base level design, characters and gameplay. There is nothing wrong in using "stock" content, just as long as something else is new like new boss patterns, or new stage gimmicks, or a new control scheme and moves for the player character.

[Dr. Freeman]

I'm bored, so I'm just gonna go through this game (or as much as I have patience for) and talk about it as I go.

Right off, I do question why this is an installer and not an actual game. It's not a big deal (and I think Limelight might have done something similar...) but it is rather odd.

Though the general concept of recycling actual robot masters in fangames bugs me to no end. A cameo or something like Weapons Archive from 10 is one thing, but just saying "HEY GUYS IT'S THE SAME BOSSES" in something that's not a romhack just makes it seem lazy. A romhack is just hacking the base game, so keeping the bosses makes more sense, a fangame is something new made from the ground up. You're coding the same bosses anyway, just be original with them and don't make them samey mc same. Which they are. 4MI while a romhack, introduced new things that made each stage memorable and different, even while using the same graphics.

Oh and right away MM6 Intro.
Midi.
This is not a good sign.

And as was seen in the trailer, this is totally just going to recycle graphics and (midi) music from the original. Which basically already makes it so gameplay is the only thing it has going for it. Gameplay is important, but if he messes it up...

Not going to mention the charge things that Shinryu mentioned, but I will say that the walking feels weird. I can't tell if it's just me but it feels just a bit sluggish and off. I can't pinpoint it and it may be my imagination.

It has also just occurred to me that there's a score counter. That's really weird. That and the very first thing you run into are pit enemies. These are not good first impressions.
Speaking of weird, the enemies are all from the actual game but all of them feel stiff. The Hammer Joes have weird timing and the walking spring guy enemies from MM3 (Wow I dont' remember their names!) are super slow until they fall then they speed up for some reason before slowing back down. Weird is the only word I can think of to describe them. It's not BAD, but if you're going to just use normal enemies, at least have them act the same.

Also, it looks like it wants me to backtrack to the intro stage later on. That's just really freaking weird. No one likes backtracking. At least in the RM stages you can choose so it's a bit forgivable as if you play your cards right, you don't need to backtrack. But this is the intro stage. Having breakable boxes and ladders I can't reach is kinda dumb.

And then Knightman is talking.
...Okay?

And then the intro boss has spikes on the ceiling. I get that it's easy but it's rather unnecessary for the intro boss. Just seems like it's there to be more stressful than it really is (even though it's not a problem at all)
Oh god this weapon get midi is horrible. Why do so many fangames persist on using MIDIs? If you're going to make it look like the classic games, just use the freaking music and not crappy midis. This is so gross sounding.
HOLY GOD
My computer isn't that great, but it can handle a good chunk of things. It runs 8BDM just fine (not that taxing) generally handles multiplayer like Terraria and the such.
It cannot handle Toad Man in this game. I have no idea how it's optimized, but the game has moved to a freaking crawl due to this rain. I don't even know how this happens. I'm just gonna game over because I don't want to do this.

Wait.
There's no stage select option when you game over. Just continue and password.
So one game reset later and let's just go to Stone Man.

Well that's a lovely glitch with the spinny platform thing. Have to ride it, jump off, then get back on. I didn't get back on but it respawned so I went back jumped on it and it was stuck forever and I had to die.
And there's no checkpoint yet!
That's a restart because I don't care enough to actually beat it. I'll try Tornado Man if only because I'm curious.
And it's Wind Man graphics.
Because finding Tornado Man's tiles were too hard????
That's really weird that everything else is just the game but Tornado gets Wind (I presume Magma also doesn't get his own tiles)
Oh and a gimmick where parts of the background block your vision. Because everyone likes that one!
Oh wait, now it's Tornado Man tiles! That just makes the whole Wind Man even weirder.

That's enough for now. I can say I got a picture for the whole thing. Well, the second a MIDI plays you can probably guess the quality of the game. It's not offensively awful nor is it Mega Man Unlimited but it's boring and has a lot of really weird quirks. Just not in the good way.

[Shinryu]

Just got done doing some more testing on the Robot Master stages. Safe to say, I'm not exactly in a good mood after going through some of these, and I have the urge to vent some of it out. I may as well list the general and stage-specific things I discovered/found to be downright annoying.

[General Gameplay]

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- As mentioned before, Mega Man's charging seems a bit messed up. Aside from reusing Mega Man Rocks' weird palette shifting and sound effects while charging up, the other sound effects for partially charged and fully charged shots seem very out of place. The time it takes to fully charge your buster also seems a bit too long.

- Most of the gimmicks in the stages I've played so far seem to be introduced in outright hazardous and obnoxious ways. I get that the stages are supposed to get tougher as they go on - that's just the nature of Mega Man in general. However, even from the beginning in most of these levels, their unique/recycled gimmicks are first shown to you in overly lethal situations. For some examples of these: The first few conveyor belts in Yamato Man's stage are introduced over pits and spikes, one of which is also coupled with a large spear-tossing enemy that's positioned just off-screen. The first moving platform you see in Tornado Man's stage is not only positioned over a pit, but part of it also gets obscured by the clouds in the background, making it difficult to judge your jump at first. Magma Man's stage tries to introduce the sideways magma lasers in a safe manner by putting a platform off to the left of the room where they're introduced, in the sense that you could land on it if you happen to be holding left at the time you're dropping down into said room. If you're not however, you pretty much have to rely on quick reflexes once you realize what's going to happen.

- Once you have the ability to use him, Rush is summoned with the C button. I have no idea why this is, but it's very disorienting given the obvious. When I have Rush selected, I'm pretty much always inclined to just hit the fire button to summon him - basically how it's functioned in nearly every classic Mega Man game where he's available. Then again, that's not the only problem Rush has...

- Rush can't be summoned on spikes. I learned this the hard way during Yamato Man's stage, where I wanted to use him to bypass a rather nasty block puzzle. Imagine my surprise however when I jump on him as he's landing...only for him to suddenly teleport away, leaving me to fall in the spikes. This wasn't some kind of glitch where I just happened to jump too soon, either. After testing it out on another spike pit without jumping directly on him, Rush immediately flies off after landing. Rush has always been a support for this kind of stuff in nearly every Mega Man game - so for a seasoned veteran of the series, pulling this is just downright cruel. It's as if to say: "You're going to do our poorly constructed block puzzle, and you're going to like it."

[Toad Man's Stage]

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- Not too much to say about this stage, other than that I found the waterfall and underground sections to be rather annoying. The waterfalls themselves don't inhibit your jumping like they did in the original MM4, which is nice I suppose, but a bit strange to get used to at first.

- The first Snail mid-boss is stationed in a room similar to the one where you encounter it a second time in MM4, where a waterfall is constantly threatening to push you off the edge of the platform on either side. Again, this is an awful way to introduce something - especially a mini-boss. Not everyone has played MM4, so chances are there are going to be people who won't know how the Snail functions at first, making the addition of the waterfall a complete nuisance. This is the kind of stuff that should be saved for the second encounter with a mid-boss, once you've gotten the feel for how their pattern works. Ironically however, the second and third Snails in this game are even easier than the first, mostly because you can stand in one spot to take them out without much trouble.

- There are bottomless pits in Toad Man's boss room. At least there's some platforms over them at the start, but once you touch them, they fall and never respawn for the rest of the fight.

- Toad Man himself. It's not to say his pattern is difficult or anything, but his fight does pull a gigantic dick move if you're not expecting this (and trust me, you won't the first time you're playing). Toad Man now has a desperation attack where he hops into a waterfall in the background, then periodically appears to fire shots at you. It's an easy enough pattern to deal with at first...however, should you be anywhere in the actual sprite of the waterfall, Toad Man can suddenly appear where you're standing, grab you, then pull you inside. Not only does this deal an absurd amount of damage, but it also HEALS him in the process. This is, bar none, the most unnecessary thing I've seen in this game so far. I mean, this is Toad Man we're dealing with here. I can commend the effort to make him a more difficult boss, but throwing cheap gimmicks like this one at the player isn't the way to do so.

[Magma Man's stage]

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- The gimmicks are all over the place in this stage, and they seem almost custom designed to make the player angry. Hey, have you ever wanted to continually jump on top of those platforms from Shadow Man's stage that detach themselves while avoiding magma lasers? No? Well, too bad, because there's a few sections in this level that can outright force you to do so.

- Magma Man's fight has two magma laser generators at the top of the room. Though the telegraph for when he activates these is pretty clear and somewhat long, I'm still not a fan of having instant-death in a standard boss fight.

[Yamato Man's stage]

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- As said before, the gimmicks in this stage are introduced in rather annoying manners. The conveyor belts are almost always stationed over pits or spikes, along with the crickets from Bright Man's stage in MM4 also making an appearance in conjunction with them.

- The crickets themselves seem to have some sloppy collision detection. There was one instance where - after painstakingly getting past a series of annoying block puzzles - I managed to get to a small section with one of these crickets. As I tried to edge very carefully to his head in order to get the best distance for an upcoming jump, I somehow fell right through him and died on the spikes.

- Truth be told, I haven't beaten this stage yet. The reason why is a combination of an annoying series of block puzzle rooms coupled with a few other annoyances at the end of it. The block puzzles themselves require extremely precise timing, with all of them involving pits of spikes. You have to do three of them in a row, and there's no checkpoint after you get past them; Meaning if you die after that - specifically to the mini-boss if he's there - you get to do all of these block puzzles again.

- Speaking of the mini-boss, the Mega Man Killers are in this game. After you beat two of the Robot Masters, they start appearing in some of the regular stages to fight you - somewhat similar to Bit and Byte from Mega Man X3. While it's a neat idea, I honestly can't even begin to comprehend what was going on when they designed Enker in this game. First off, hitting him while he's preparing to use his Barrier Spear doesn't do any damage to him. I don't know why they buffed him with this somewhat unnecessary trait, but it proves to be very annoying in the fact that he can absorb your bullets half-way across the screen, even if you didn't fire in his general direction. I'm not even certain if it contributes to his attacks, either. Sometimes he fires out one shot after powering up, and other times he shoots out four in different patterns. Aside from the seemingly random nature on his spear attacks, he's downright annoying with his movements as well. He seems to move and jump around way too quickly, making it difficult judge whether or not he's going to run straight at you, or just randomly pause in the middle of the room and then jump at you to completely throw off your timing.

...So yeah, I'm not exactly having fun with this game so far.

[finisher]

Hey Shinryu, are you planning to make a complete playthrough recording so I can can turn to it if I get stuck finding hidden items, secrets, etc? :P (seriously, though, it's a compliment; I often look at your videos when trying to find hidden items I missed and can't find)

EDIT: Looks like that won't be necessary. Someone got on it seemingly ASAP and it's on youtube, heh. Well, if I ever get stuck in my completionist-compulsive run, I got some assistance.

[Shinryu]

Hey Shinryu, are you planning to make a complete playthrough recording so I can can turn to it if I get stuck finding hidden items, secrets, etc? :P (seriously, though, it's a compliment; I often look at your videos when trying to find hidden items I missed and can't find)

EDIT: Looks like that won't be necessary. Someone got on it seemingly ASAP and it's on youtube, heh. Well, if I ever get stuck in my completionist-compulsive run, I got some assistance.

Honestly, it's very debatable on whether or not I'll be doing a playthrough of this for now. I initially had a plan to do so, but after playing through the whole game...good lord, it's not going to be worth it. The game itself is tough, damn tough - but for all the wrong reasons. The levels are exceedingly difficult due to several cheap-shots and insane layouts, they stretch on for what feels like an eternity, and the checkpoints are even worse than the ones in the initial release of Mega Man Unlimited. After taking the time to get everything, there's barely any decent rewards (a boss rush, along with a 100 room challenge that's basically even more ridiculous level layouts).

If someone has already started doing a playthrough of it, I'm more than willing to bet it's one of the beta-testers. They can probably do a better job describing where everything is than I can, but a part of me feels some of the more evil aspects will get shoved under the rug at the same time. I'm half-way tempted to do my own playthrough if only for pointing out just how unnecessarily brutal and flawed this game is, despite a few decent ideas it has from time to time. To be honest though, I've played it so much at this point that I'm starting to get sick of it (especially that game over screen, which I've probably seen about 50+ times by now). I might settle down this month and play something decent instead...like Mega Man Christmas Carol. At least that game doesn't actively hate the player with every fiber of its being (unless you pick "wut" mode difficulty).

[finisher]

Yeah, really, whaddya know? The guy doing the run knows the author. Ah well, bottom line is it'll serve its purpose. And I'd have to agree with you: while I haven't played the game, common complaints with this fan game are that it's difficult due to frustration rather than challenge. IOW, the wrong reasons.

[Darkflamewolf]

Welp, I can't please everyone, esp. with the Megaman community having high expectations. Regardless, maybe I should have been upfront (even though I put out a lot of videos detailing how the gameplay would be like) about this not being a full 1:1 recreation of the core mechanics. My aim was to go for a Megaman & Bass style of difficulty with some Megaman 1 mixed in. Going in with that mentality might have been better.
The best part about fan games however, is that they can be changed and updated! So...Shinryu, since you seem to be the reigning expert here, I would actually like for you to see where I can improve. Where to move spikes, where to remove them. Where to place enemies, where to remove them. The overall structure of the levels and the core mechanics on a base level probably can't be changed at this point, so don't go looking for heavy changes there. HOWEVER, I am more than willing to tweak and edit the levels to a point where you feel it'd be fair or at least not as frustrating. So by all means, I'd love a laundry list to work by. Even Megaman Unlimited met with this criticism and later made up for it with some updates. The same can be applied here. This is a group effort and we can help tune/polish it up to something better/great!

So, yes, I am hearing you. Now what do we propose to do about this instead of gripe? Help me to help you play a better game. ^_^
Note: If you read any sort of negativity in this post, sorry, my humor can come off a bit harsh. But I assure you I'm not troubled in the slightest.

[Sn0w]

I believe after playing through this myself, I could add to your list of quirk, anomalies and frustrations, but I deign to approach this from a technical viewpoint instead.  The game was designed to push Mega Man gamers to the ultimate threshold of pain, just as Ninja Gaiden II for XBOX 360 did for that game series.  It's punishing, it's almost hateful sometimes, but then consider, Wily really must be sick of Mega Man altogether to drop this 50 ton weight on the Blue Bomber's head!  Just as Mega Man is most likely very sick of Doctor Wowie Reboots!  This game is like a VERY aggressive two-sided desperation move collision.  This game doesn't hate the player, it reveals the hate Mega and Wily have for each other after over a decade of nightmares.  

Some of the criticism made so far are a bit eccentric, too.  I do not mean to be rude, but, I feel the game designer wanted to pay homage to those Robot Masters that did not get resurrected in the game plot by including their tiles in the level design...such as Tornado and Wind tiles in a single stage.  In all honesty I believe most of the quirks are intentional.  The skating effect from running was removed intentionally.  Water density seems to be reduced intentionally.  And yes, Wily is trolling Mega start to finish.  Rush was after all only repaired with found-upgrades in the game's story, so, may have been tampered with or similarly damaged and quirky to explain why Rush cannot tolerate spikes.

I might be wrong, but, I enjoyed the game, personally, though some of those 50 kilometer long checkpoints got to me.....and trying to beat Wily and the Hidden Stage....ugh!  I'll be slide-dashing in me nightmares for a week.

[Shinryu]

Well, I'm at least glad to see the creator is taking interest in improving the game and keeping an open mind on criticism. While I do have quite a bit to say about nearly every stage and mechanic in the game, I'd like to keep this concise to the basic mechanics and certain aspects I noticed while playing. I ended up writing a lot more than I initially thought I would, so feel free to click the spoiler tag if you want to see my incredibly long analysis.

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For the most part, the main thing I have to address on this game can be summed up as thus: There is a fine difference between a game that's enjoyably difficult, and a game that's downright punishing to its players. While there's several aspects that define both types of games, I'll point out the ones that are the most relevant in this case; A punishing game will often throw several instances of unfair deaths at the player. A fair death is something that you can clearly see coming and have enough foresight to carefully plan your way around something. In short, it's your fault that you died during that section. An unfair death however, is something that comes out of nowhere and blindsides the player, killing them with little to no foresight and relying solely on split second, twitch-reflexes for them to get by it. Unless you know it's there, you'll probably die to it.

Granted, Revenge of the Fallen doesn't have too many instances of this, but they're definitely present with some of the enemy placement in a few stages. A few of the notable examples include the first few dropping enemies seen in Tornado Man's stage. The first time you encounter them, you're on platforms that are essentially composed of a singular block. This means that if you don't know the enemy's function, you'll most likely get hit and get knocked right off the edge. While this is admittedly at the start of the stage, meaning it's not that far of a trek back should you die, it's still a very unfair situation to suddenly thrust the player into. This is especially so in the fact that two more of these enemies quickly spawn the moment you jump to the next platform afterwards, giving you little reaction time to deal with them. Other instances of this can be seen in Centaur Man's stage, specifically in the upper paths where several submarine and pelican enemies can spawn directly in your path, knocking you into the water and into the spikes with no possible way to get out. Yet another instance of this I recall is the first Hammer Joe in Knight Man's stage, who is positioned just off screen on a ledge lined up with yet another 1-block wide platform. Unless you know he's there before-hand, you'll most likely jump to that platform, only to be hit by his projectile and fall right off.

That in turn, leads me to my other issue with this game: The numerous deaths. Even as something akin to Super Mario Bros. 2 Japan - where the game was intentionally made for players who had already mastered the original game - this is outright cruel with the amount of instant death in nearly every room of every stage. Aside from a few specific points, there's barely a single room in this game that doesn't include spikes, bottomless pits, or other forms of instant death. This basically turns the game from "Mega Man" into a lengthier version of "The Big Adventure of Owata's Life" (the game that inspired I Wanna Be The Guy, in case you're unfamiliar with it). There's so much instant death around every corner and turn that you may as well not have a health-bar at times. I understand this is to make the game more challenging and probably put the player on edge, and I could accept that if the check-point system was more reasonable. I appreciate the fact that there are permanent check-points at the mid-boss rooms (especially considering the length of the stages), but half the time it seems like that's the only check-point aside from the boss rooms. Perhaps I'm missing something in the numerous paths this game takes, but getting knocked back all the way to that point after getting so far into a stage is downright discouraging - because it essentially amounts to you having to trudge all the way back to that point where you died, just so you can have another attempt at the section you fell to.

I would say the game is forgiving in its check-point placement at the boss rooms...but that immediately goes out the window at the Wily stages. Why on earth does the permanent check-point rule apply to every other stage of the game, but not these ones? Just because they're the final stages of the game doesn't mean anything in those regards. The fact that if you get a game over, you have to start from the beginning of the Wily stages - even if you got to where the permanent check-point would normally be in most of the other ones, eg, the mid-boss room or otherwise - and the fact that there's no checkpoint in the boss corridor is downright punishing. In fact, it actually breaks the consistent rules set earlier in the game: You get a game over, but can continue from a set point if you reached it. That was established in every single stage up to this point, so why now take it away and force the player to go through everything in the level again if they die too many times?

Now I could be wrong on this, and feel free to point this out if I am, but I think dying too many times can also lead to other forms of unnecessary punishment: Specifically in your Tank count. When I was going through the Wily stages, I had around 3 or so E-Tanks and 1 W-Tank. After dying numerous times on a few stages and getting a few game overs however, I noticed that my tank count was suddenly shot down to 1 E-Tank and absolutely zero W-Tanks. I have no idea if this is a glitch or intentional, but either way, it really rustled my jimmies, so to speak.

Beyond all of that, I honestly think the basic concept of the game is fine enough. I don't mind that it re-uses graphics from other games, along with going off old ideas while adding a few new ones (specifically the extra power-ups in each stage). I just wish the layouts and check-points weren't so constantly hostile to the point where you'd want to outright quit the game due to frustration.

[Darkflamewolf]

The checkpoints are something that are hard coded in the game unfortunately. We would have to overhaul the entire system to accommodate more which would set back a 1.2 release by quite a few months. We are two folks with busy lives that worked on this off and on, so I can't predict how long it would be to fix something like this. As it stands, there are two temporary midpoints and two permanent midpoints in each level...well at least all the main robot master stages minus Knight Man's stage, but that was intentional. I don't believe the Wily stages have used all the available midpoints, so at the very least I can check to see if I can add another checkpoint at the boss door. That's a quick fix for now until I can confer with Jman (my programmer) to see how rough it would be to overhaul to allow for more checkpoints. So there's that explanation.
The tanks you acquire to add up to permanent tanks in the main robot master stages will never go away. However, the tanks you acquire in the Wily Fortress stages are temporary and aren't saved into your game file. But it looks like it might be an oversight that they disappear on a game over which is probably where your issue of them disappearing comes in. I will again confer with Jman and see if there is anything to be done to rectify this so that tank pieces you get in the Wily stages aren't saved to your game file but are at least saved through your current play session regardless of Game Overs.
Your final concern with unfair deaths. I love your Tornado, Centaur and Knight man examples, (but Knight Man's stage was meant to be harder than most) but without a full laundry list of things I could/should change, I can only hazard a guess as to all the instances I need to fix. But I can at least look into the specific examples you mentioned now. Anything else?

[Shinryu]

I didn't know the checkpoints were primarily due to engine limitations, but it's an interesting note that I can understand. It's clear there was some heavy modification to the original one (Mega Man Rocks), though I can't quite remember how the initial check-points in that game were laid out, I can understand that being a technical limitation.

As for anything else, I did actually encounter a few bugs that I wanted to point out. From what I understand, this game went under a ton of bug-testing before release, and for the most part I didn't encounter too many glitches while I was going through the game. There are a few minor things (and one potentially game-breaking thing) that I did find, though.

[Bug List]

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- In Stone Man's stage, I found a section with a tornado platform that led to a mini E-Tank. Since I didn't have Tornado Blow at the time, I figured I'd try to use Rush Coil to get up to the mini E-Tank instead. Upon summoning Rush on top of the tornado platform, while the animation for him teleporting down played out just fine, Rush himself suddenly disappeared after touching the platform. Although he wasn't visible, he still functioned the same - I could essentially jump on the spot where he would be, and I was launched up so I could obtain the mini E-Tank.

- A similar glitch occurred in Wily 2, during the disappearing/reappearing block segments. Summoning Rush on top of one of these blocks causes him to become invisible, though he still functions the same (by touching the spot where he would be, you get an extra boost in mid-air). I'm not sure if this happens on any instance of these blocks, but this was the stage where I discovered it in.

- On the same note of these disappearing/reappearing blocks, should you be riding Rush Jet and should Rush come into contact with a spot where one of these blocks would be - even if it hasn't appeared yet - Rush will immediately teleport away, most likely giving the initial impression that Rush Jet has randomly stopped working and dropped you into something like a pit for no reason.

- The Yamato Spear can be used to get outside the boundaries of Pharaoh Man's stage. This glitch happened after I took the secret path at the beginning of the level through the quick-sand. After going down two screens, I encountered this particular room and a small, open space in the wall:

I honestly thought there was a secret in that space at first, so I used the Yamato Spear's new function of sticking into walls and placed one at the right height so I could slide into that gap. The end result had Mega Man phase into the wall. I could walk around a small bit, though jumping off to the left would result in him falling off the screen and dying.

[Darkflamewolf]

Bug 1 & 2, those seem to stem from the same bug. I'll count those as one and the same since they both involve the same object: Rush Coil landing on a moveable object.
Bug 3, I thought we fixed this already! I guess not, we'll reattack this.
Bug 4, Don't do that? I checked again and it does show there should be a solid there, but I guess we never considered how megaman reacts when hitting a solid while sliding after coming off a sliding moveable object (the Yamato Spear) on a one-space wide ledge. Its so specific a bug we probably never tested for it! However, what did pull off brilliantly was the failsafe that should the player go outside the bounds at any time, you will die if you go too far off screen, this is to prevent the game hanging and players having to restart. Not sure how this one could be fixed. Not quickly anyhow, the collision system of Game Maker sucks arse, so this might just be left alone. I'm just glad the insta-death failsafe works in rare cases like this.

EDIT: Your tank issue: Are your PRIMARY tanks going down? There are mini-tanks and primary tanks. Which numbers are decreasing? If its primary and its only because of minitanks you've collected throughout the wily stages that have decreased then that is a problem. However, if its because of tanks you've received via points and getting bonuses from performing well, then those do go away and is normal behavior. Does that make sense?

EDIT 2: Bugs 1-3 are fixed, we're not going to officially touch 4 until we know further what we are dealing with. as for your tank issue, without further clarification, we're not sure where that's stemming from. Regardless, I am making a sweeping host of small changes and tweaks. In the GRAND scheme of things, the levels are not changing that much, however instances like you've described and multitudes others will be either gone or modified to be easier. So you may notice an easier time in those specific areas overall. I still like to keep my blistering difficulty, but without all the unfairness involved. And yes, we've figured out how to make more temp midpoints! There will always only be 3 permanent midpoints: beginning middle, and boss room. But we can add a few more temp ones in the middle...at least until a game over! Hopefully this will rectify some of those issues.

[Zero1000]

Does someone still has Hard Hat 3 on it's default settings and musics? Because i can't download it from the first post link and want to play it.

[Shinryu]

EDIT: Your tank issue: Are your PRIMARY tanks going down? There are mini-tanks and primary tanks. Which numbers are decreasing? If its primary and its only because of minitanks you've collected throughout the wily stages that have decreased then that is a problem. However, if its because of tanks you've received via points and getting bonuses from performing well, then those do go away and is normal behavior. Does that make sense?

I believe it was the primary tanks. The mini-tanks I collected stayed the same number (I believe it was 5), though my primary E-Tank count decreased from 3 to 1.

Does someone still has Hard Hat 3 on it's default settings and musics? Because i can't download it from the first post link and want to play it.

I checked, and it seems like Damaged Games' website is indeed down at the moment (though they've stated that they're currently in the process of moving to Tumblr). Doing a quick search, there seems to be a download for Hard Hat 3 on CNET. This also seems to hold true for the other games in the series. Until Damaged Games can get up and running again through new means, we'll probably have to settle for downloads from secondary sources when it comes to the Hard Hat series.

[Darkflamewolf]

Shinryu: Okay, the primary mini-tanks give you a permanent E-tank every 4, a permanent W-tank every 3, and a permanent M-tank for the 3 pieces you collect. Any extra mini-tanks you acquire in the Wily Fortress should also give you permanent tanks at those number intervals for that PLAY SESSION ONLY, and should remain even after a game over. Any extra tanks you receive via your point score value (50,000 intervals get you etanks, 100,000 intervals get you wtanks and the 500,000 interval gets you a mtank) are temporary and go away after a game over. This is normal behavior.

EDIT: Also, we are working on some wonky transition issues as a result of these new checkpoints. But hopefully we will have a release sometime tonight or tomorrow for 1.2! It won't nerf everything, but it will at least remove a lot of those unfair situations you spoke of. (although Knight Man's stage is a special case, its a hidden level that is meant to be harder than most, so I changed little in that stage, but I did change stuff!) With unfair situations removed and bad enemy placements removed along with one or two additional checkpoints as well as permanent boss door checkpoints for Wily, its a step in the right direction, yes?