Mega Man - We're Here Forever!

[MonkeyShrapnel]

fake floors or intangible floors, either one works.

Anyways, I can see why people would dislike this boss, but I find it hard to just because it's an interesting idea, it just doesn't work well in the context of Mega Man since you get stuck if you don't have full energy, but having to actually think about what to shoot is something that rarely happens in a game like this.

also I fought ice man for over an hour and literally died after i killed him so no way this boss is worse than him

[Blue]

There's Japanese on the gut's tank?? I had no idea!

LPガス, LP Gas, Liquid Petroleum Gas.

[Ashan]

LP小さな岩の男の子, LP A little rocky boy, Let's Play Mega Man

[Zinfandel]

Fun fact: Metal Man's self-weakness was confirmed as being intentional by one of the developers during an interview in an episode of GameCenter CX. I forget who it was, but he stated that games in that era had to have "secret tricks" that could be disclosed in Japanese game magazines in order to get featured in them. Metal Man's weakness was one such trick.

And now you know the rest of the story!

[Mister Apple]

It's nice to see how cheesily easable easily cheesable the bosses are with weaknesses.

[Sugar]

Wily Machine's (EDIT: second phase) only weakness is Crash Man's weapon. Yes, that was mean of them.

Also, Dr Wily is a cheater, and it's literally impossible to dodge his projectiles in second phase of a fight. So it's completely fine to tank his nonsense, because outside of using Crash Man's weapon, that's the only thing you can really do.

[Ashan]

Also, Dr Wily is a cheater, and it's literally impossible to dodge his projectiles in second phase of a fight. So it's completely fine to tank his nonsense, because outside of using Crash Man's weapon, that's the only thing you can really do.

That's disappointing because the first phase is really neat. You kinda have to lure the shots so you can dodge them. I always thought it was pretty neat. Bouncing balls less so, but I had previously assumed I just hadn't learned to deal with them.

[Voltgloss]

Wily Machine's only weakness is Crash Man's weapon. Yes, that was mean of them.

For the second phase, yes. For the first phase, a fully charged Atomic Fire can also destroy it in two hits, a la Woodman. Probably not as fast a kill as spamming Metal Blades at it though.

[strongbadman]

It had to be intentional that Wily's weaknesses here would be the powers you were guaranteed not to have against him

[Divemissile]

my headcanon is that the petals that fall during spring are actually yamato man's bullets raining down on mega man

[Ashan]

I like the idea that Wily created the fakeout "I was an alien the whole time!" machine literally just to trick a robot before killing him. Like, he clearly wasn't gonna go around terrorizing the city with it. It could only move along a fixed path in his little holodeck area. So he just wanted to have some artificial intelligence (Mega Man) think he was an alien before killing him.

On a more serious note, I do think it's a pretty fun boss to fight, and it's a clever idea that his weakness is the water weapon, cause it doesn't make sense at first, but once you find out it's a robot it makes sense cause you're like, frying the electronics.

Anyway, 3 is next. A lot of people's favorites. It was one of my first in the classic series, and actually might have been the first of the classic games I beat? I personally think it's the jankiest of the series, maybe barring 1. I can't help but immediately think of the doc robot stages, and nutso flicker/slowdown, and weirdness of Rush jet/marine, etc. when I think of 3.
But we'll get there when we get there.

[Crow]

mega man 2 romhack where all the stars in the final boss instakill you

[AuraLancer]

This game is definitely better than the first game, but it's not the holy grail of the series that the internet likes to insist it is.

[Bean]

Yeah, that grail should be reserved for these next two even though they all have their own flaws. 3 and 4 are my favorites anyway.

[Mister Apple]

"Neil Gaiman" is an anagram of "NG I am alien".
But seriously, was that a reference to one of his books or just general raocowness?

[10204307]

What a weirdly disappointing final boss. It didn't even have its own battle music.

[Voltgloss]

What a weirdly disappointing final boss. It didn't even have its own battle music.

Unique final battle music doesn't become a thing in this series until Mega Man 4, with the advent of the Wily Capsule.

[Le Neveu de Rameau]

The ending of Mega Man 2 is curiously abstract, all things considered. I guess it makes sense, in a way, as there isn't really much of a story, or rather what story there is is sort of a simplified version of the previous game's (if delivered more stylishly), and the apparent twist is resolved immediately after the battle, give us little more to conclude. But then again, that done, why not take a quiet moment (especially one that allows us to linger a bit in a peaceful natural environment, contrasting with the mechanized quality of the rest of the game) to meditate on the changing of the seasons? I always did sort of like the reflective nature of the endings of the original Mega Man games, and this is sort of a distilled version of that. I'm not sure I'd want that all the time, but it works well enough here.

[Divemissile]

mega man 3 is such a weirdly polarizing game. i've heard little opinions on it other than "it's da best" or "it's da worst". personally i really really don't like the game. it's hard to describe but so much of it feels all wonky and not right, from the weird difficulty curve, annoying menu, odd weaknesses (mainly doc robots, the normal guys are ok), etc etc make this game not very good in my eyes. i wouldn't say i hate it though

reading about the behind the scenes history on mega man 3 is really interesting though

[Blue]

Megaman 3 was the game that killed my love for the franchise. I'm not going to deny it improved the series as a whole just by virtue of slide alone and that it had a ton of neat ideas in it, but it introduced something that I can't really forgive it for: Boss weaknesses making no sense whatsoever. 1&2 were sketchy at times, but I could at least make logical guesses that heat and metal man would defeat wood, that bubble defeats fire, that either fire man or ice man was weak to the other one, and that bomb man was probably weak to either fire or cut based on how fuses work, so it was probably ice beating fire. Once you get the logical weaknesses out of the way in 2, and just have flash/crash/quick, timestop made sense for hurting the hyperactive guy, and it was just a coinflip whether speed beat explosions or time bombs beat a time stopper.

I can get behind magnet missile beating hard man. That sort of makes sense, he's a slab of metal, you're using magnets. But there is no logic thread that makes a constellation weak to snakes, or a ninja weak to spinning around, or spikes weak to constellation-based lasers. One of the things I really liked about the first two games was puzzling out what defeated what, and it basically goes away from 3 onwards.

Best overall OST of the series though, I reckon. 6&9 give it a good run for its money.

[Ashan]

@Blue
I mean, MM1 did the rock-paper-scissors thing, and MM2 did the logical elemental weaknesses. From there I can't think of much more for "logical" boss weaknesses. A lot of subsequent games have some sort of fire and ice/water boss where one is weak to the other. If you want weaknesses to make sense you'd probably have to start with the boss weapon and work a robot master around that. Hard Man's got a fist punch weapon - what's weak to being punched? Punching Bag Man?
That's not to say I'm first to defend 3. As previously mentioned, I think it's the jankiest in the series. I think the simple act of trimming the doc robots would have gone a long way. Every time I think of this game I just start imagining like... The top spin, and not only its uselessness in dealing damage, but also it's random weapon consumption. And the fact that it's the final boss weakness and can either take 20 hits or 1 hit. I would have liked if they put the time spent on the doc robot stages into polishing the other content.

[Blue]

what's weak to being punched? Punching Bag Man?

in my personal experience the faces of everyone that really pissed me off
But for an actual answer, Hard Knuckle seems like the kind of thing that would work against anything brittle or armored. You could sell me on it being the weakness of someone theoretical like tank man, because it has enough force to bust through its armor, or the equally theoretical glass man, who gets shattered by it. I could see it working against bright man because lightbulbs don't particularly like getting punched. I could see it working against an ice-type or rock-type robot master because it would smash them apart. Hell, I could see it working against hard man -- Strong enough to break his own armor, like metal blades against metal man.

I'd say the problem is less that the boss weapons are difficult to design around as much as they started doing really freaking weird robot masters. I mean, centaur man? What's HE supposed to be weak to, getting turned into glue after breaking a leg? Hydra man could be weak to fire, vampire man could be weak to wood or fire or silver, but centaurs don't have any sort of established weakness.

[AlchemistHohenheim]

It's been a while since I've played it, but I think I mostly liked Mega Man 3 (though 4 is the one that gets all my nostalgia). ...Except the Doc Robot stages. Screw those. Nice idea, awful execution.

[AuraLancer]

I played Mega Man X a little as a kid, but it wasn't until I got the Classic Collection on Gamecube that I managed to try any other games. I was already in my twenties by that point. I'm only bringing this up to say that my opinion has no nostalgia affecting it.

I don't think any of them reach perfection. 9 comes very, very close, but they all have different flaws weighing them down. Some more than others.

[Ashan]

I'd say the problem is less that the boss weapons are difficult to design around as much as they started doing really freaking weird robot masters. I mean, centaur man? What's HE supposed to be weak to, getting turned into glue after breaking a leg? Hydra man could be weak to fire, vampire man could be weak to wood or fire or silver, but centaurs don't have any sort of established weakness.

I believe there's a Glue Man in Mega Man Unlimited