Headscratchers / Mega Man (Classic)

• Mega Man
• Mega Man 3
• Mega Man 6
• Mega Man 7
• Mega Man 9
• Mega Man 10
• Mega Man 11
• Mega Man Powered Up

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• Assuming the Mega Man Killers, Enker, Punk and Ballade DID succeed in killing Mega Man, what would they do afterwards? Would Wily scrap them since they completed their only purpose in life, or would he keep them since they were that strong?
• How in the name of Tesla, do you have an unstable, SOLAR, core?
  • It was never said the power supply was unstable, just the core itself. It's probable that the core wasn't perfect in managing itself (Remember, Proto Man WAS the first of his kind, and people having no prior experience in creating something the first time they ever create it), or it short-circuited and was damaged when he was first activated. And anyways, how are you gonna power your solar batteries when it's a cloudy day or the middle of the night? (Which is also the reason why solar-powered cars and the like are unconventional and nowhere near completion)
    • A must in any solar powered device is some sort of long-term storage device, such as a battery or capacitor. Given that new battery technology is promising high capacity rechargables with super quick charge times, it's likely that they have something like that. Also possible is a secondary power system, specifically for that reason.
• What happened to the original cast before the X series began?
  • It's a popular fan theory that Zero killed them all.
    • It was Jossed by Word of God.
  • The X series takes place at least a hundred years after the original. The human characters are almost certainly dead, and the robots are probably obsolete.
    • Actually, it only takes place at least thirty years after — that was the minimum time for X's testing to make sure he was safe. 20XX and 21XX could be only one year apart, if the first XX is 99, and the second is 00. Granted, that's still enough time for this theory to be correct, as technology can become obsolete quickly, and Dr. Wily and Dr. Light were old, but it raises the question of why they're not even mentioned.
    • The first Mega Man took place in the year 200X. Aka before 2010. Makes the gap to 21XX much longer then 30 years.
    • I seriously doubt the World can change that much in only a year.
    • And, as I said, a year isn't actually an option — X's testing period makes it 30 years, minimum. I just mentioned that it could be as little as a year going by the listed "dates" alone to demonstrate that the difference between 20XX and 21XX isn't necessarily 100 years, it could be anywhere from 1 to 199 years. So it's between 30 and 199 years.
    • Word of God (and, if I remember correctly, the actual game itself, possibly the manual) said 100 years. The 30 years thing was just how long the tests would take. Also, the idea that Zero killed them all just causes plot holes, and there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever to suggest it's even remotely true. (Sorry. I belong to a Mega Man fan forum, and this comes up a lot.)
    • Let's not forget that Zero, as powerful as he is, couldn't beat the entire Classic cast. Fat chance. If Dr. Light could create the Ultimate Armor while he was still alive, you'd think he'd be able to come up with a weapon to cream Zero, too. Same thing occurred with the Stardroids from the Game Boy Mega Man IV.
    • Why not? He's about as good as X, X is better than the original Mega Man, and Mega Man took down more or less the entire classic cast by himself. I mean, maybe not if they ganged up, but if he fought them one-on-one, sort of like what Mega Man did? Why not?
    • It works reasonably well in the Ericoverse.
    • No it didn't. They all went on vacation, remember?
    • Word of God says that Zero didn't kill Mega Man nor the rest of the "Light family", which leaves the gap between Classic and X a complete mystery.
    • Obviously, the fact that Wily was able to reprogram a Future Mega Man into Quint to fight Mega Man, which is something that Wily COULDN'T do to a newly-built Mega Man tells me that by the time of 21XX, Mega Man himself was past his OWN expiration date, or that the earlier Mega Man might've destroyed Quint. Proto Man also likely died by the energy imbalance. This only leaves Bass unaccounted for by 21XX.
    • Wily could have reprogrammed Rock. He just chose not to because at the time Rock was just a lab gopher. Once Rock became Mega Man, he became worth reprogramming.
    • It works in the Ericoverse because its depiction of the classic Mega Man world takes its cue from the slightly Darker and Edgier "Rockman: The Robot War," which establishes Robot Masters on unrelenting killing sprees and Dr. Wily continuing to grow more and more insane, to the point where creating a killing machine, ensuring that it kills by means of a self-replicating computer virus, and immediately unleashing it seems far more in-character than creating a "rival" for X and just setting it to activate some time after he does (as seems to be canon). The canon Wily is perhaps more believable being satisfied with such a thing because he's more of a comical villain, belonging as he does to a cartoonish world. For that matter, Mega Man himself is portrayed as a somewhat less happy-go-lucky hero, and indeed his retelling of the classic series in general feels less goofy, as it were, so a tragedy like the "cataclysm" doesn't feel quite so out of place.
    • In Rockman and Forte for wonderswan, the main villain is 'Rockman Shadow'. Apparently he's the perfect fighting robot Wily built after reverse-engineering Mega Man in the future, before Wily decided to just reprogram Mega Man into Quint. Abandoned, Rockman Shadow gained a massive inferiority complex. So he went to war with the rest of the planet. And won. Then, after running out of challenges in the future, he went back to when Mega Man and Bass were active to fight them instead. So... that's pretty much it. He's a dude from the period between the games who killed everyone - fits the criteria pretty well.
  • Something that makes this even weirder is the fact Dr. Cain was an archaeologist, who found X inside some ruins. Ruins from a hundred years in the past are hardly the kind of stuff an archaeologist would normally work with.
• Why is Mega Man never invited to the "world's strongest robot" tournaments?
  • My personal theory is that he is, but chooses not to enter to be fair to the other competitors.
  • Mega Man is very much opposed to fighting, and only does so when required. So he wouldn't join the tournaments.
  • I could have sworn that it was canonically that Dr Light was opposed to fighting and didn't feel the need to flaunt his ability or something along those lines..
    • I believe that was in the MM 6 manual.

• If Wily was such a genius, why was he never capable of making a robot that was invulnerable to all weapons but its own? Or a robot made entirely of the same material as a Met's helmet?
  • Same reason that his fortresses are all technically passable deathtraps. If it was completely impossible to send Mega man in for a surgical strike the world governments would escalate to large-scale conventional weaponry. The robot masters are set out both to collect as many resources as they can and as a delaying tactic while he assembles his final army. In the event of a completely impossible obstacle, Mega man would beam out, the factory gets nuked, and Wily now has to deal with both the loss of his operations and a super fighting robot. This way, at least he has a chance of taking out his most hated nemesis in the process, and has a longer time period before his operations get taken down. And Metool helmets are really heavy, so a robot with a full armor set couldn't move.
  • Here's why.
    • That comic is so awesome. Here's hoping he finishes it.
  • Arms race. Wily kept trying to make his fortress such that Mega Man couldn't make it, and Mega Man kept ending up with the abilities he needed to get through anyway. Similarly, the whole "invulnerable robot" thing was tried, in the Game Boy Mega Man 5, with the material that was immune to Mega Man's buster. Light was able to come up with another weapon that would do the damage anyway, and we all know the rest of that story.
  • Also, it's not that every Robot Master has only a single weapon that acts like Kryptonite to them: Robot Masters reappearing in later games are sometimes vulnerable to completely different weapons. Every design has it's flaws, and when deploying such a wide variety of Robot Masters, it's only natural that there would be weapons that worked effectively against each one (2 arguably had the most realistic take on it, with each Robot Master vulnerable to a variety of weapons, to various extents).
• Why was an old, incompetent pedophile who had to steal another's ideas the good scientist?
  • Huh? Old, I can see. Incompetent pedophile? Stealing other scientists' ideas? Light stopped creating advanced robots when he saw the damage Wily was doing with them, and his personal robot, Mega Man, is among the strongest robots in existence.
  • Not to mention Light did eventually design at least eight more robots.
  • It's actually Wily who mostly stole others' ideas, in-universe. In roughly half the games, he didn't actually build the Robot Masters he used, but instead repurposed pre-existing robots or had someone else create them. The Robot Masters from the original game — depending on the continuity you go by — were either created by Light with assistance from Wily or created solely by Light then stolen by Wily, the ones from 3 were repurposed Light robots that Wily only helped create, the ones in 4 were designed by Dr. Cossack as part of his first Man Behind the Man scheme, and in 6 he stole and reprogrammed robots entered into a fighting tournament. As well, Forte and Gospel are wholesale ripoffs of Rockman and Rush.
  • Except in 2, 5, 7, 8, and 10 he actually built these robots himself, but Wily is sort of a lazy sort who obviously likes things the easy way.
    • Actually, the robots in 10 were driven mad by Wily's Roboenza virus. They were probably only listed with DWN serial numbers so Capcom wouldn't have to create completely new scientists as throwaway characters.
  • Keep in mind that in the Mega Man games, you only ever fight robots that have been programmed, reprogrammed, stolen, etc. by Wily; apart from a handful of robots such as Mega Man, Roll, Proto Man and Bass, you never see any Robot Masters that don't get kidnapped and/or made to take over the world. Light has likely made a lot of robots that you never have to fight, like Auto. (Of course, the serial numbers would suggest otherwise...)
• Is Dr. Light and Wily's relationship based on Edison and Tesla?
  • Good question: see Mega Man for details.
• Why was Light's holographic, posthumous A.I. version of himself so much more competent than he was in life?
  • He programmed it that way.
  • Supposedly, the AI isn't just a program, but an independent and learning machine, capable of adapting to circumstances and understanding many different things. The capsules don't just provide X with armor upgrades. In X5, the hologram actually talks to Zero. Like, a conversation. And then references a robot the hologram would have no way of meeting. When Light created those holograms, he did it right, apparently.
  • One fanon concept is that it's Light himself, by way of Brain Uploading. If you had 100 years to study something, you'd be really good at it.
    • ^ The above works even if the hologram is just an AI. It still has 100 years to learn everything it needs and become more competent.
  • By the time Light actually makes the holograms he is more competent.

• It is consistent that the Ice Slasher is Fire Man's weakness in Mega Man 1, and the Bubble Lead is Heat Man's weakness in Mega Man 2. However, Flame Man's weapon is Blizzard Man's weakness in Mega Man 6! Why the elemental reversal from "ice weapon beats fire robot" to "fire weapon beats ice robot"? This troper has heard stories about other examples of this sort of thing, but this is the one he has actually encountered.
  • Independent contractors. Wily didn't make the MM6 batch, they were stolen by "Mr. X."
  • It works, though. Fire melts ice, water puts out fire. Either one can be a point of weakness to the other. Another reason could be just to kill the monotony involved, throw in a little challenge by tricking people into fighting the wrong robot first.
  • I think Fire Man is too hot for water to work. It'd evaporate before it even hit him. However, the Ice Slasher melts into water before it hits him, but before it evaporates.
  • Just to make it even sillier, in Battle Network 3 Flame Man is in fact weak against water elemental chips, with the only water navi chip being Bubble Man's. His chip is strong against Plant Man.
  • The original games have no elemental system, so this is all moot.
  • Besides, the fact that a robot's weapon is a particular element doesn't necessarily mean the robot itself is. And each robot will have different design flaws, determining what "element" they're weak against.
  • Another theory: Fire Man is a robot who you fight in a red-hot area, meaning that he's made of hot metal. And when you cool down hot metal, it becomes brittle. Simple enough, if you ask me.
• In Rockman and Forte, why would Auto and Roll sell stuff to Forte? He's a Wily bot! And by the same token, why do Astro Man and Tengu Man, being Wily bots themselves, fight against Forte?
  • 1.) Forte was working against Wily; perhaps they saw him as backup/profit.
  • 2.) Maybe they just don't like him. And remember, Forte was, at that time, the enemy.
    • Ah, just beat the game. Turns out that Wily was using all the fights against the Robot Masters as data for King, so pitting them against his most powerful creation before King makes sense. Forte was in the dark, of course.
    • I thought Forte temporarily went rogue because he didn't like the idea of being replaced.
• Why can Mega Man, who is a robot, MADE OF METAL, be hurt by METAL SPIKES? I could possibly understand damage being taken, but instant death? Dr. Light apparently was working on a tight budget.
  • They're Windows Vista-tipped. Same reason they're an insta-kill in Network Transmission.
  • My theory? They're all cone-shaped antennae. Mega Man warps into the bases, so an antennae emitting the right frequency could force Mega Man to warp out, which is why he turns into balls of light that float away instead of just blowing up. Also explains how he comes back seconds later. Lives aren't actual lives, they're just how much power Mega Man has to teleport back to Dr. Wily's Base. Also, the checkpoints are dead zones between the antennae that are so small, Mega Man couldn't see on radar when he warped to the base. This explains why he warps to the beginning of the stage instead of straight to the Robot Master. Why do you think most boss fights take place in a small secluded room with thick walls? I forget; did I answer your question?
  • METAL spikes. METAL robot. Anyone who's played Mega Man 2 will know this is simple Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors in action.
  • The only thing that bugs this troper is why people assume metal can't cut through metal. As pointed out above, although with abit less humor here, it's very likely that the spikes are made of a metal stronger than Mega's armor, and therefore would kill him quite easily if he landed on one without a Spike Guard or Mercy Invincibility.
  • Spikes are sharpened to the molecule or something like that. Building off of that, the reason why spikes that come from enemies (i.e. Needle Man) are not lethal is likely because containing said molecule-sharp spikes would be difficult, thus less sharp spikes are used.
• Where did the Magnet Beam come from? If it was related to Elec Man's abilities, then why was it squirreled away in his base rather then, you know, equipped.
  • Considering what his personality is like in the remake, he probably thought he didn't need it.
• Why are all the Dr. Light Robot Masters humanoid? I mean, in the case of Rock and Roll, who are meant to be assistants, it makes sense. Same for Proto Man, who was a test to see if they could get the concept right, and a few others. But Fire Man, who's supposed to be an incinerator? Cut Man, who's just supposed to cut down trees? Galaxy Man, who's function was to calculate rocket trajectories, something that could be just as easily done by a computer that wouldn't spawn all-consuming black holes if it got pissed off? Not to mention that for the more industrial robots like the aforementioned Cut Man, wouldn't being in a small, humanoid form decrease their productivity and make them outclassed by technology we have in Real Life present time? I can buy it for the Wily bots, which were designed mostly to go toe-to-toe with Mega Man, but robots actually designed for work? And why give them advanced AI if they're just going to be mass-produced for menial work?
  • Apparently, they were all custom-made back then.
  • Not sure about Galaxy Man, but with Fire Man and Cut Man, Doctor Wily was his assistant during the design and construction phases, and probably wanted them to be humanshaped so that they'd be perfect soldiers (smaller so more efficient, human shape means can interact with machinery and such), so he probably BS'd Light.
    • Unfortunately, that only works if you go by the Americanized story. In the original Japanese 'Rockman' canon, Dr Wily was never Dr Right's assistant, but his academic rival who disappeared off the radar until resurfacing to steal the six Robot Masters.
    • The Robot Masters weren't just designed to do the jobs: they were meant to lead other machines in work, and possibly adapt to emergencies. The humanoid form is much better for lifting a fallen tree off of a fellow logging machine, for instance, than the form of the logging machine itself.
  • Another possibility: If the robots were meant to serve as leaders for other machines, they likely would have had to interact with humans frequently. Making them humanoid would make interaction with humans easier; it would make it easier for humans to relate to them and treat them as intelligent robots rather than base machines.
• If Mega Man's original name was Rockman, why doesn't he have powers over rocks?
  • Same reason Roll doesn't control wheels, Blues doesn't control emotion or color, Forte doesn't control how good people are at their specialty. Its not "rock" as in "a chunk of the Earth's crust", its "rock" as in "rock on, dude! Rock and roll!". There's a robot named Enka, for Light's sake.
    • My question was with regard to Rockman. The others don't have the -man or -woman suffix names of the other robot masters with special powers.
    • The point is that his name has nothing to do with his power and everything to do with the musical theme naming.
    • When he was a simple assistant his name was Rock. When he was converted into a super fighting robot he added the -man, I guess to show he was equal with the other robot masters.
  • You realize that they changed his name to Mega Man in the US version just so they wouldn't have to answer that question, don't you?
    • No, they changed their name because a higher-up (Director of Marketing or something like that) hated the name. What a nameass.
• Why would Dr. Light bother giving Roll what has to be enough body detail to warrant her wearing panties? I can only think of a very very few non squick inducing reasons.
  • Maybe he didn't, and actually built panties on instead to avoid having to do that while still enabling her to pass for human if need be?
    • So Roll is Barbie?
  • Quite possibly it was done for semi-aesthetic reasons. Not the amount of detail but the worn panties are simply so you can't see that she's smooth like a mannequin. Sure there are some squick left there as to why he'd ever see her in a swimsuit but still.
  • It's very possible he didn't build them on her, but she elects to wear them anyway. Perhaps Dr. Light built his robots with enough detail for them to have a specified gender, and they choose to express their gender through their clothing choices.

• Are the Mega Man 1 Robot Masters good nowadays, or are they still evil? According to the manga and Super Adventure Rockman, they were rebuilt with their original programming restored and now work under Dr. Light, but some of them still seem to be serving Dr. Wily in Mega Man in Dr. Wily's Revenge, Mega Man Soccer, and Mega Man 8.
  • According to Wordof God, the Robot Masters aren't destroyed when you defeat them, but only damaged to inactivity. Dr. Light repairs them and removes Wily's programmingafterwards, so they become good again. "Dr. Wily's Revenge" is just a remake of the first three games with some new stuff added, Mega Man Soccer is a spinoff game (like the Mario sports games), and the ones who appear in 8 seem to be copies of the Robot Masters, not the Masters themselves (this is also the explanation for re-fighting them in Wily's fortresses, the second time is against a mindless copy).
  • If 9 can be considered cannon the 1 Robot Masters are long since decommissioned. It seems that robots go Maverick so to speak with increasing regularity after a certain shelf life and thus are taken offline prior to that happening for safety reasons.
• Anyone else ever wonder why Mega Man and Proto Man are given generic X-"Man" names like all the robot masters, while their sister Roll has a unique name?
  • Their real names are Rock and Blues respectively. Probably they get the X-"Man" names upon being converted into combat robots. Roll would likely get one if she got a good canonical combat upgrade. Unlikely, because she's got Bad Point: Coward in her profile.
• How come Wily makes levels for Mega Man to jump around in? How come he doesn't just make a world that's just all spikes, or with tons of enemies to kill him? If Wily wants to kill Mega Man so much, and he apparently has enough materials to make all of these complex labyrinths for him to travel through, why doesn't he just make a death trap that Mega Man CAN'T GET THROUGH? Furthermore, why can't Mega Man just save his time and effort and just teleport to the robot master's fortress?
  • There is no better answer to those questions other than The Last Days of Dr. Wily
    • OP: That was a funny video, but it didn't answer the last one, which is a good point. If Mega Man can teleport into the stages, wouldn't it make sense for him to teleport directly into the robot master's fortress and attack him with full health?
    • Someone had a theory about that further up this page: "This troper had always thought of it as the area having some kind of anti-teleport scrambler, and Mega Man would have to teleport as close as he could get without going inside the scrambler field."
    • OP: That only raises the question: Why doesn't Wily make the field wider so Mega Man can't get in?
    • There's bound to be a limit to how wide he can make the thing, for a start, and the field doesn't do anything to stop him from walking in, so the only affect would be Mega Man, a robot who never gets tired, would have to walk a couple hundred more yards.
    • The Last Days of Dr. Wily here. Along with the suggestion of an anti-teleportation field, my guess is that the enemies in the robot master stages are troublesome like the Robot Masters, and Mega Man wants to get rid of them before they start problems. There are very few levels in the classic series that are unimportant to civilization in any way, after all. For example, if Pump Man's minions had no opposition, there would be flooded basements and untreated sewage discharged out of the sewer system, and if Wood Man's robots were free, there would be nobody around to maintain and admire the natural beauty of the forest his stage is set in, with all of the killer robots around.
• Where is Shadow Man's stage set in? Is it a sewer, or some kind of factory? And what's the red stuff supposed to be? In Shadow Man's stage, it's blood red, and it kills Mega Man. In Pump Man's stage, which looks similar, the fluid is brown and harmless, clearly raw sewage.
  • It looks like a metal or alloy treatment plant considering all the tubes, death liquid, and such.
  • I can answer that. On youtube, they have OST music for the robot masters stages, and the title of the songs are probably where the Robot Masters are stationed (Elec Man is stationed at an Electric Tower, for example) Shadow Man's theme was labeled "sewer", so that probably answers your question.
  • The sewage itself isn't what kills Mega Man, it's the bottomless pit underneath. Probably leading to deathspikes, or whatever Bottomless Pits normally lead to.

• How Dr. Wily survived the aftermath of Mega Man 3? We can clearly see that he was CRUSHED TO DEATH by falling bricks. Watching the ending scene and then suddenly noticing Wily's UFO flying away in the background only indicates that he just did. No explanation whatsoever. We can only make some asumptions such as these:
  • Plausible-and-Logical Explanation: Maybe Wily decided to pull yet another trick with decoys. Sounds quite logical: leave the final battle with Gamma, but put a dummy in the cockpit. Mega Man still couldn't differentiate this "Dr. Wily" from a real deal, because he was crushed under a rocks moments after said "decoy" perishes. And when the time comes, Wily - who is alive and well - may just unexpectedly show up, like: "SUPRISE, MUTHAFUCKAS!".
  • Batshit-Crazy-and-Ridiculous Explanation: There is no way that the old man like Dr. Wily could be alive after being squashed by large fucking rock! From the chronological standpoint of Mega Man series, the mad doctor must be in his 50s at best; thus his physical condition is not in his prime. Yet the fact that he survives couldn't mean anything other than Dr. Wily suddenly having super-durability akin to Hulk. Archie Comics's take on the events of Mega Man 3 rolls with this explanation.
  • Crazy-Prepared-yet-Nonexcludable Explanation: Dr. Wily might knew exactly where to stand if the castle self-destructs. Maybe the block that fell onto him was in no way that hard: is it made from styrofoam and masked as such, or something? Quite ridiculous, but let's take into account that Wily is a Mad Scientist. So mad, in fact, that he can make up back-up plan for his back-up plan and add another back-up plan on top of it (sounds like Batman on steriods, only on the Dark Side). This version might sound as believable.
  • Simple-yet-Nonindicative Explanation: It's a video game logic! Who gives a shit?
    • What makes this worse is that Mega Man 3 itself wasn't quite completed according to Keiji Inafune and his team. The development was so stress-inducing that it could be rushed. And thus, there was no time left for devs to explain Wily's unexpected survival.

• Why hasn't Mega Man killed Dr. Wily yet? I'm not talking about ethics or pragmatism. I'm talking about how at the end of every game, Wily attacks from inside a large machine or a saucer (or both), and MM shoots the thing until it explodes with a great deal of force, vaporizing every molecule of the thing and leaving not even scrap metal... yet somehow Wily remains unscathed. There isn't even evidence of an ejector seat!
  • I think he has some sort of protecting shield device of sorts. It's not a far stretch. Wily once teleported into the scene like Mega Man does at the beginning of the stage, when Dr. Cossack stopped fighting Mega Man in 4. He could have the technology. Also, Wily's pretty damn tough. He survived being crushed by huge hunks of debris at the end of Mega Man 3 and 7 without even getting injured.
• The opening of Mega Man 4 said that Rock had a strong sense of justice, and volunteered to be turned into a fighting robot. Mega Man X gets into the whole "thinking for themselves" thing. Wait a minute! Didn't the original Mega Man think for himself? Okay, maybe classic Mega Man was just following a "justice" program, but unless "kicking evil's ass" was part of that program, I think classic very much has emotions.
  • The original Mega Man did think for himself to a point, but he still had constraints (allegedly). X was the first to be completely without constraints; that's why Dr. Light had him undergo 30 years of testing before release, he wanted to make sure he wasn't creating a monster by allowing him complete free will.
    • To elaborate: Robots like the robot masters are probably strictly limited to whatever their primary programming is: If they're programmed to be good, they're good. If they're programmed to be evil, they're evil. Robots like Mega Man, Proto Man, and Bass blur the lines in that they do exhibit some kind of free will, but they're ultimately still limited to their primary programming. These guys are implied to be advanced robots so they probably have the capacity to act within the parameters of their primary programming with more freedom than the average robot, but they still lack the ability to go beyond that programming (though given how human-like these robots are, it was probably only a matter of time before one of them managed to do it). X on the other hand was the first robot to be built with no primary programming to follow, no parameters to be limited by- he was born with true free will and the ability to do whatever he wants without any kind of preset constraint.
    • Wouldn't Proto Man choosing on his own to leave Light out of fear, as well as choosing to leave Wily after being repaired by him suggest that Proto has full free will? You could argue that Mega was always loyal to Light and Bass was simply programmed to become the strongest at any cost (at the cost of Wily losing a level of control over him), but Proto regularly made his own human-like decisions based on his emotions (in the case of leaving Light) and own morality (in the case of leaving Wily) and continued to live independently for the rest of the Classic series. There's also the fact that unlike Mega (programmed to be an assistant) and Bass (programmed to be the strongest), Proto had no tasks or objectives assigned to him during his programming, the entire purpose of his creation was to test robotic AI.
  • The classic series robots could make decisions to a certain extent, but were constrained by their core programming. You could say Mega Man's decisions are always constrained within the core of "being an assistant" (which eventually led him to want to assist against the Wily problem by fighting). He can choose how to assist Dr. Light, but he can't choose not to do it anymore. The difference with X's "true" AI is that X could, of his own volition, decide to be whatever he wanted. He ended up deciding to fight for humanity, albeit reluctantly, but that was truly his own choice, not something instilled within him.
• Granted, I haven't played that far up the series, but how does Rush have footage of games he didn't exist in?
  • My guess is that they got the footage from, say, security cameras and downloaded them into Rush.
• Been wondering why Wily's never made a Copy-Protoman. Closest he got was Dark Man, and the disguise is shed before you fight him.
  • Protoman is rebuilt by Light after his Heroic Sacrifice in Mega Man and Bass, but 9 and 10 still have him with the energy induced glass cannon thing.
    • Maybe at that point, it's too late for Light to fix Proto Man's unstable core. Maybe now if Light tries to tamper with it, He'll explode.
• Does Wily program his robots to obey the 1st Law? Keiji Inafune claimed he was very disturbed by a scene in Super Adventure showing Wily's robots apparently killing people (more precisely, blowing up helicopters with humans inside) and said he would never have included such a scene if he had more input. So, are we supposed to believe that in all of the rampages Wily has sent his robots on, they have never harmed a single human being? The intro to MM7 shows a Mad Grinder burning a city to the ground (and just about every other game's intro shows a large city being rocked by explosions). Was it a completely abandoned city that was already evacuated? If even Wily's robots are forbidden to harm humans, it seems unlikely they would even need Mega Man to stop them.
  • You're missing his point. He said he wouldn't show such a scene, not that Wily wouldn't have his robots kill.
  • The above troper missed the OP's point; the latter said, even if Wily's robot can and will kill if necessary, Inafune wouldn't show such a scene. As to respond the OP, no, I don't think Wily needed his robots to be exactly Three Laws-Compliant - otherwise they cannot wreck chaos.
• Can someone please give an in-story reason as to why Mega Man lost his ability to slide prior to Mega Man 9? (I can at least fashion a justification for him not having the chargeable buster by having Rockman World V as being between 8 and 9, but that would then call into question how Magma Man's weapon is chargeable by Mega Man. Come to think of it, did Proto Man ever slide himself prior to that game?)
  • Okay, let's break this down. It might seem like Mega Man's slide is just your garden variety slide-into-second-base-feet-first slide, but that probably isn't the case. For one, he's a heavy robot, and thus probably weighs much more than a human boy his size would weigh. Add that with the fact that he can accelerate into a slide while standing still, and it becomes clear that the slide is a function rather something he can just do. Backing this up is the fact that the slide cannot be performed in Mega Man 1 or 2. In addition, issue #19 of the Archie comic, while not canon to the games, has Dr. Light and Dr. Lalinde installing the slide into Mega Man's legs, and Lalinde even refers to it as a function. Back to the original question, it's possible that for one reason or another, the slide function simply stopped working (and in the same vein, it's possible that the Mega Buster burned out the charge function) and Dr. Light didn't repair it before being kidnapped by Wily in 9. Of course, none of this explains why Dr. Light didn't repair the slide and charge shot for 10, but maybe Roboenza had something to do with that.
  • Let's break this down in another way. Throughout the Mega Man games, Mega Man is nearly killed repeatedly, only to be bailed out at the last second by a Big Damn Heroes moment. This usually happens because Mega Man, by himself, lacks the mobility to get himself out of danger quickly, a problem that his slide only partially solves. The last straw would've come in Mega Man 8, when Mega Man is nearly killed because he couldn't avoid being grabbed by Wily's guard robot. In Mega Man 9 and onward, his slide is being repurposed into a multi-function onboard mobility system to escape these situations, and his Mega Buster is receiving a massive upgrade to its offensive and utility capabilities to further improve survivability. All upgrades that Mega Man's successor would put to liberal use in the sequel series.
• Okay, so Dr. Wily did say that “Robots Can’t Harm Humans”, right? And all of the Mega Man robots from the Classic era are subject to the Three Laws Of Robotics, right? If that is the case...then Why do Mega Man and Roll have no problem harming humans in other Capcom games without any consequences?! And it’s not like they are fan-made games, either; They are official games created by Capcom themselves! Just to prove my case:
  • Mega Man can attack two human villains in Cannon Spike, namely Cat Lady Beauty and Psychiccer Sting!
  • Mega Man and Roll have no problem attacking the following human fighters in Marvel Vs. Capcom: Clash Of Super Heroes and Marvel Vs. Capcom 2: New Age Of Heroes: Captain America, Captain Commando, Chun-Li, Jin Saotome, Ryu, Spider-Man, Strider Hiryu, War Machine, Zangief, Akuma, B.B. Hood, Cammy White, Charlie Nash, Dan Hibiki, Dhalsim, Doctor Doom, Guile, Hayato Kanzaki, Iron Man, Jill Valentine, Juggernaut, Ken Masters, M. Bison, Ruby Heart, Sakura Kasugano, and Tron Bonne!
  • Roll is apparently allowed to harm the following human beings in Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom: Casshan, Doronjo, Ippatsuman, Joe The Condor, Jun The Swan, Karas, Ken The Eagle, Polimar, Tekkaman, Tekkaman Blade, Yetterman-1, Yatterman-2, Alex, Batsu Ichimonji, Chun-Li, Frank West, Kaijin No Soki, Mega Man Volnutt, Ryu, Saki Omokane, and Viewtiful Joe!
  • Because they're fighting games, not an accurate representation of how the laws of robotics work. There's no "case" to prove. You might as well ask why any of those humans can survive the missiles and laser beams Mega Man is firing.
• If Mega Man can't harm humans, why doesn't Dr. Wily just hire a bunch of human soldiers/mercenaries to go after him? Give them some kind of power armor with weapons and Mega Man would be powerless to fight back.
  • Wily doesn't just want to beat Mega Man and rule the world, he wants to show that his robot creations are superior.
• How does Mega Man slide without building up momentum?
  • Apparently he pushes himself with his arm, but no one's animated that part of the move.