Video Game / Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest

"They started out as Mario contests, in both SMW and SMBX. One day I was drunk enough to be all like 'hahaha let's do that but with mega man!!' and the rest is history."

— SnoruntPyro, on the contest's origin

Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest (or MaGMML Contest) is a fan-made Mega Man (Classic) competition and game organized by SnoruntPyro that over 20 people participated in.

The goal of this contest was for level designers to create a good Mega Man level using Game Maker 8.0 and a super-modified version of Blyka's Engine, a Mega Man game engine also created using Game Maker.

All of the entered levels would be scored on six categories (personal fun factor, other person fun factor, uniqueness, creativity, graphics, and music), organized into tiers, and then included into a compilation game. Both the competition and compilation game were originally released in early 2016. Overall, 20 main stages and a few postgame levels were included in the final game, with the contest results livestreamed by Flashman85. A Remastered version, made using the Mega Engine, was released in May 2019, on the two year anniversary of the original MaGMML game.

A sequel, Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest 2, was produced, which this time allowed the wider public to participate with level submissions and also featured an early version of the Megamix Engine, a new and more polished engine (even in its state at the time) that's also coded in Game Maker, with public testing done on the devkit before the contest officially began. Submissions closed at the end of February 2017, with a total of 81 level submissions being received, and the contest results were once again livestreamed by Flashman85 the following May, which are archived here. The game was released on October 1st, 2017.

A third contest, Make a Good Mega Man Level 3, was announced some time after 2's release, and will be made using a more robust and polished Megamix Engine which, among other features, includes almost every enemy, miniboss, and gimmick across the series (including the Game Boy games and Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousensha), and almost thrice the number of prebuilt bosses. The devkit was released on September 15th, 2018, and the submission period ran from September 22nd to November 25th, with a penalized grace period afterwards for late submissions which ended on December 2nd. After a number of delays, judging has finished, with the results livestreamed August 14, 2022. The game is currently being prepared for release.

There have also been two side contests. The first was Make a Good 24 Hour Mega Man Level, a private contest which used the MaGMML2 devkit, and had two added gimmicks: Each participant was given two devkit enemies and two devkit gimmicks that need to be incorporated into the level, and the level had to be completed within 24 hours, hence the name. The second one was Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level, a public contest using the Megamix Engine that was later used for MaGMML3, with two changes from the 24 Hour contest: The time limit for the level was doubled, and three devkit enemies were provided in the box instead of two. Make a Good 24 Hour Mega Man Level was released in February of 2018, and the submission period for Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level ended August 24th, 2018. The judging and development of the 48 hour contest were finished on September 6th, 2021 - and the game was finally released on the same day.

Another collaboration called "Episode Zero" was officially announced on May 23rd 2018. Originally envisioned as part of the remastered version of the first game, this interquel follows Zero as he investigates the mysterious group SRARA (Simulation Recon and Regulation Administration) and their attempts to sabotage the second festival under the pretense of safety inspection. It was released on June 26, 2020.

You can watch the trailer for the third contest here!

The contests and games can be found here. The second game has its own website here.

---

The overall series provides examples of:

General Tropes

• Alternate Continuity: A number of aspects are altered or changed in this continuity.
  • The X Series has been stated to not happen in the universe of these games, due to the Z-Prototype in Mega Man Unlimited breaking down, and becoming unsalvageable afterward.
  • It's ambiguous if Quint is an alternate future for Mega Man, or even the same character as Rockman Shadow from Challenger from the Future.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: Both games feature their own take:
  • The first game has a fairly straightforward example, patterned after the typical Classic series Boss Rush. The final level consists of a simple platforming area followed by a large room containing 20 teleporters, each of which contain mini-challenges based on every entry to the contest. Clearing all of them allows the player to challenge the Wily Machine.
  • Because of the Sequel Escalation that Make a Good Mega Man Level 2 underwent, the first game's formula is abandoned in favor of another. This trope gets played twofold, with the bulk of the final stage consisting of a Rockman 4 Minus ∞-style maze that combines many different stages from official Mega Man games, explained in-universe as a distortion in reality. Scattered throughout the maze are five "glitch" areas that serve as teleporters to substages which, once again, are based on the entries to the contest; due to how many more entries there were, these stages consist of a mash-up of two tiers each. While not every entry is featured in the substages, each one has its own boss, which are themselves mashups of two custom Robot Masters from the entries.
• Boss-Only Level: The tier bosses are fought in their own self-contained level, although still using the tileset or theming of the tier that they're the boss of.
• Broad Strokes: The wiki has an article detailing which fan games are part of the MaGMML series lore, noting that any and all references to Zero within these games do not occur due to the Z-Prototype from Mega Man Unlimited breaking down beyond repair. Including ones like Bob and George, that heavily rely on his existence. The wiki explicitly says "Don't ask questions."
• Canon Welding: Rokko Chan, Mighty No. 9, and Zook Hero Z are said to take place in the same world as Mega Man in these games, just in different continents. The government has the Xel technology confined to the MN9 setting. Meanwhile, Wargates from Skullman In: Scooby Doc 4: The Destroyer (Featuring Atsushi Onita) appear in Episode Zero.
• Crossover: Characters from Mighty No. 9, Rokko Chan, and Zook Hero Z show up, being tied to the setting, but the game also includes characters from the Touhou Project, Magical Doropie, and even an out of the way cameo from Gordon Freeman.
• Dungeon Bypass: In the original MaGMML, City War has an Energy Element to the left of the level's starting point due to issues with the level's collision. Later MaGMML games, including the remaster of the first game, add green Skip Teleporters to long, difficult or buggy levels that take the player to a separate room containing all of the level's collectables.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The devkit for the first contest contains no bosses. As a result, only four contest entries featured bosses, all built with custom code. From the second game on, many premade bosses have been included within the devkit, and as of MaGMML3, it boasts 61 bosses.
  • Almost all of the cast in MaGMML1 are from the games, and the game is relatively subdued about the series' in-jokes. MaGMML2 would go on to feature even more characters, many of which are from either various adaptations or other game series, and significantly increases the Mythology Gags.
• Expy: Zero is said to be a parody of Zinnia, according to the contest lead. His long-winded manner of speech and Leitmotif being Zinnia's theme both indicate such.
• MacGuffin: The Energy Elements, which Mega Man collects at least one of in every stage. They form the crux of Wily's plan in 1, 2, and Episode Zero.
• Press X to Die: All games allow the player to die at any time by pressing the 2 key. It can be done in menus, too.

Main games:

Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest 1/Remastered

• All the Worlds Are a Stage:
  • Instead of the standard Mega Man boss rush (which was saved for the Arena), the teleporting hatches in the sixth Wily Castle stage take you to abridged versions of all the level entries that were submitted to the contest.
  • "Hall of Fame", Blackmore Darkwing's Wily Fortress stage, also combines stage elements and enemies from the top four contest levels^*The falling platforms and glass shield enemies from Glass Man's stage, the black hole gravity gimmicks from "Neon Gravity", the Mario-ified enemies from "Mega Man World", and the Guts Platform segments from "Citadel Basement", and uses the bosses from those levels as stage bosses.
• Anticlimax: Due to the lack of premade bosses in the devkit, several entry levels^note Level, Midnight Snow, Sky Ziggurat, Napalm Forest and Caves, Hard to See Land, Thunderclyffe Plant, and Citadel Basement (which doesn't feature the usual shutters in its corridor) end off with a Boss Corridor... and then having nothing more than just an Energy Element in the boss room itself. Hard to See Land is especially bad since its corridor leads to you falling through a few empty screens filled with eye-searing colors before reaching the Energy Element.
• Bait-and-Switch Silhouette: After finally defeating Wily, he announces that Mega Man must now fight his GREATEST CREATION EVER! Zero's silhouette starts to appear... before he turns out to be an ugly red blob that is only vaguely shaped like the real Zero, and the resulting Zero-Effort Boss was just Wily's distraction so that he could escape again.
• Berserk Button: Mega Man presses Dagger Man's in the remastered version by repeatedly making puns based on his name.
• Boss Rush: The unlockable Arena has you fighting every boss in the game, except for Bright Man. On the other hand, the Wily Castle averts this in favour of All the Worlds Are a Stage instead, although Gravity Man and Glass Man reappear as mini-bosses in the fourth Wily Castle stage.
• Brick Joke: Talk to Air Man and he'll tell you he's not going to make a "Can't defeat Air Man" joke. His boss battle at the end of Wily Stage 5 has "I LIED" printed underneath his battle capsule and the boss theme music is an 8-bit rendition of the song.
• Call-Forward: In the remastered version of the game, Knight Man mentions his dreams of going into the city and setting up a business there, referencing Chateau Chevaleresque from the sequel.
• The Cameo:
  • The fangame Robot Masters. See Continuity Nod.
  • Rainbow Man appears as one of the NPC Robot Masters in Tier 3, making him both the only fan-made Robot Master to appear in the hub world, and the only one that isn't a boss.
  • Thomas the Tank Engine appears at the beginning of Tier 5, as a reference to Pyro's joke fangame Mega Man: Square Root of -1, where he appears as a boss.
  • raocow shows up at the far end of Dr. Light's attic after getting all the energy elements.
  • The end of the Tier 1 level "Level" has an inexplicable cameo from Waltz, a very minor character^*As in, "only appears in a single panel and an unrelated piece of splash art" minor from the Mega Man Dreamwave comics. However, because she's just a sprite randomly pasted in with no animation, hitbox, or AI, you can't fight her or interact with her in any way. She's just kind of... there?
• Charged Attack: The Mega Buster and Pharaoh Shot can be both charged up.
• Continuity Nod: Several Robot Masters from other fangames — Jolt Man (original game only — replaced with 'Him' in Remastered), Dagger Man, Yoku Man, and Justice Man — are included as tier bosses (with the Hand Wave that they were revived by Dr. Wily in the original Blyka's Engine version), complete with the boss music from their original games and slightly modified attack patterns. Mega Man also comments on their reappearance before fighting them, such as recalling how brutal Yoku Man's stage was and — in the original Blyka's Engine version — asking how Justice Man is even back at all, since he was Killed Off for Real in his game.
  • In the original Blyka's Engine version, Knight Man brings up how he was Dr. Wily's Dragon in Mega Man Revenge Of The Fallen, wondering if that technically makes him a fangame Robot Master too.
• Deadly Disc: The Metal Blade. Just as powerful and capable as it was. It can be fired in eight directions and has a ton of weapon energy.
• Death Dealer: The Magic Card.
• Denial of Diagonal Attack: Averted with the Metal Blade and Pharaoh Shot, which can be aimed diagonally. Played straight with everything else.
• Emergency Energy Tank
• Excuse Plot: The world is at peace, and a robot ceremony is in session. However, Dr. Wily has once again risen up, and has stolen 24 energy elements and scattered them across the festival grounds. It's up to Mega Man to collect the 24 energy elements and save the world from Dr. Wily's nefarious schemes.
• Hub Level: Outside of the main stages, Mega Man can explore Dr. Light's lab and several areas of the ceremony fairgrounds. Here, he can use teleports to other areas, access the main stages, talk with characters, and locate secrets scattered across the world.
• I Lied: After a certain point, Air Man shows up in the attic of Dr. Light's lab, and if you speak to him, he tells you that he's explicitly not going to make an "I can't defeat Air Man" joke. Fast forward to the fifth Wily Castle stage, where he's not only the boss of the stage, piloting a Wily Capsule of his own, but the text "I LIED" is printed beneath him before the fight begins, complete with an 8-bit rendition of "Air Man ga Taosenai" being used as the boss theme.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: Present in several characters' dialogue.
• Joke Level: NoLynch's level "Objective: Vain Space". There is no level. Mega Man falls down several screens of empty void before landing directly on top of the energy element.
  • Later in the game, the levels are "remixed" in this game's Wily Teleport system the way the previous Robot Master fights are redone in most Mega Man classic games. The remix of "Objective: Vain Space" (along with the original remix of "City War") qualifies for this trope as well.
• Jump Scare: Spiky Meltdown has a doozy of one right before getting the energy element. One of the judges even went so far as to call it "psychological torture, which is illegal".
  • In Remastered, the skip area of The Quickening also has one.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to the official and other fan-made games. The game is self-aware, the tone is tongue firmly planted in cheek, and the final battle is thoroughly ridiculous.
• Marathon Level:
  • kumuhmuh's level "Mega Man World", which is much, much longer than your usual Mega Man stage.
  • Flashman85's level "Maze of Death", which requires quite a bit of navigation and backtracking just to destroy the barriers blocking the exit.
• The Maze: Flashman85's aptly named "Maze of Death" level, which requires you to navigate around trying to destroy various weapon barriers blocking the way out from different directions.
• Nostalgia Level: In the Remastered game, each of the five revamped Wily levels has a hidden data disk that, once found, will allow you to access the corresponding original Wily level once you finish the game. These older levels keep their remastered bosses, however.
  • In both versions of the game, Wily Combo is a remake of both the second Wily stage from Mega Man 3 and the first Wily stage from Mega Man.
• Optional Boss:
  • There are two secret bosses in the game. The first is Bright Man, who can be found in a wall of all places. Then there's the True Secret Final Boss: the Soul of Zero combined with MaGMML's trophy as the final boss of the Arena.
  • The remastered version adds another boss: A drilling robot called the Impaler fought only in the arena before Wily and the two Zero fights.
• Pacifist Run: Duvi0's Wily Fortress level, "Be the Bigger Person", sort of enforces one, with barricades that appear and block off parts of the level if you kill any enemies on the screen. They don't prevent you from completing the stage, but they do force you to take a much more difficult path through the platforming sections. And in keeping with said pacifist theme, the original stage boss is impervious to all damage and can't be harmed, forcing you to hold out until its slowly degenerating health bar reaches zero.
• The Power of the Sun:
  • The Pharaoh Shot. Like in Mega Man 4, it can be fired in eight directions, and charged up to increase the projectile size and damage.
  • The Solar Blaze. Like in Mega Man 10, once the main orb is fired, it'll split into two fire waves travelling in opposite horizontal directions.
• Power of the Void: The Black Hole Bomb. Like in Mega Man 9, it can absorb enemy projectiles and enemies themeselves. It can also absorb Force Beams in the original Blyka's Engine version.
• Press X to Die: Pressing 2 instantly destroys the player character. Useful if you get stuck and you need to get back to a checkpoint.
• Reflecting Laser: The Gemini Laser. The main difference between this and its original incarnation is that the new version travels faster and doesn't lag the game.
• Remixed Level: Thoron's level "Napalm Forest and Caves" is a remix of Napalm Man's stage.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: Because the levels of this game were submitted by many different level designers of differing skill-levels, and that the levels were organized in tiers based on their score, this was inevitable. If a player were to play the levels in order from worst to best, this will become readily apparent, as one of the first-tier levels is very difficult, and in fact is designed to be difficult.
• Shaped Like Itself: The 18th place level entry is called "Level".
• Shock and Awe: The Thunder Wool. The main difference between this version and the old iteration is that the cloud flies up into position much faster. Its damage output seems to have been improved as well.
• Spin Attack: The Top Spin. Unlike its original incarnation in Mega Man 3, this version will always provide invulnerability while active.
• Stylistic Suck:
  • The All the Worlds Are a Stage version of the infamously buggy "City War" is just several screens of Mega Man falling through the floor, eventually landing on the fake Energy Element.
  • Zero, the final "boss" Wily sics on you, has a very badly drawn sprite with no animations and an extremely simple attack pattern which can't even hurt you.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: In the first room of The Quickening, there are several extra lives present for Mega Man to pick up. With the lives system active, You're going to need them. If you manage to get to the checkpoint, there are several more extra lives to pick up. Again, you're going to need them.
• Take That!:
  • The MaGMMLC version of Zero is considered this towards the Mega Man Classic series fan games that shoehorn in the real Zero at the end, especially if he's used as a final boss. The Foregone Victory nature of the fight may also be considered this towards the unwinnable fight against the Z-Prototype at the end of Mega Man Unlimited, which was a source of several complaints.
  • The original remix of City War in the final stage is one, exaggerating the flaws with the original. The remastered version does this as well, as even though it's actually a playable level this time, the invisible pits and ladders remain, and at one point an Illusian can be seen creating illusory ground above pits.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Mega Man's reaction to the prospect of fighting Yoku Man again.
• Took a Level in Badass: Yoku Man and Justice Man got quite the tune-up going from the original version of the game to Remastered, as they are both much harder fights.
• Trade Snark: The orginal game has an @ symbol instead of a © on the title screen, with an arrow pointing out "Not actually a copyright symbol. pyro is a fraud." The remastered version instead lacks any kind of copyright text on the title screen.
• Turns Red: Exclusive to the remastered version — when The Impaler's first health bar is completely drained, it gets angry and destroys the floor, forcing you to fight over a lava pit that it gradually drills closer and closer towards.
• Unexplained Recovery: In his game of origin, Justice Man was irreparably destroyed, so by all accounts, Dr. Wily shouldn't have managed to recover him. Mega Man understandably lampshades this. The Remastered version addresses this by retconning him into a hologram replicated from Mega Man's memory.
• Video Game Remake: In 2019, a "Remastered" version of the game was released which uses the Megamix Engine instead of Blyka's Engine, revamps the Hub, bosses and other features, but did not feature an interquel involving the game's version of Zero, as originally planned.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Two definite aversions, as the changes to the patterns of the Tier 2 and 4 bosses add on mainly natural extensions to their respective repertoires and, in the case of the Blyka's Engine version of the Tier 4 Boss, removing his "tells". Granted, Justice Man was previously a Final Boss, so he had to have his 2 forms condensed into 1, but the charge shot and the removal of the "tells" make up for that.
• Zero-Effort Boss: The "fight" with Zero. He slides back and forth, occasionally firing a single projectile, but neither the projectile or colliding with Zero will do any damage^note Heh heh, Zero Effort Boss....
• Cheat Code: A cheats menu is unlocked upon reaching 100% completion in a save file.
• God Mode: A toggleable option is present in the cheats menu labeled "INVINCIBILITY" that causes the player to receive no damage from most hazards.
  • This will not save you from bottomless pits or game overs.

Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest 2

• Adaptation Dye-Job: Averted with Scorch Man (Mega Man Sunrise), who never had any official illustrations. ^note Mega Man Sunrise was made with a Game Boy presentation in mind.
• Adaptation Name Change: The infamous Nightmare Snake from Mega Man X6 is renamed "Donut X" in this game.
• Adaptational Villainy: The Tier 5 boss, Lord Elewoofro, was a benevolent deity in his source game. In this case, the Wiki mentions that he became vengeful after people started worshipping false gods from other fangames. The ritual to summon him being interrupted was the final straw and what prompts him to attack you.
• Advancing Boss of Doom: The Hall Master is a variation of this, as its huge crash damage can empty your life bar in no time if you don't destroy it quickly enough.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: Instead of a teleporter hatch system, Wily 6 is a large, looping maze with 5 different mini-stages inside of it. Each mini-stage remixes elements from two entry tiers at once, referencing most of the levels submitted to the contest.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: With the animal characters in this game largely being robots, this is justified. Not so much one of the judges appearing as this.
• Ambiguously Evil: The hooded figure. Although he clearly is against Dr. Wily, Mega Man suspects that he is planning to do something behind everybody's backs. In the post-game, all the Energy Elements open a portal to Tier X, where he has been preparing the Null & Void tower and the Absolute ZERO mech. Once those are beaten, it turns out that he's actually MaGMML1's Zero, who just wanted to fight Mega Man all this time.
• Anachronic Order: Tiers 1 through 5 are arranged like this, to Flash Man's bafflement.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different:
  • Shinryu's level "Identity Crisis" has you forcibly transforming into Hornet Man, Jewel Man, Nitro Man, and Bright Man, who are locked to their respective weapon with infinite ammo and must traverse through segments designed to use the mechanics of their weapon to the fullest extent. It's pretty much the Mega Man version of Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest's "Animal Antics."
  • The Tier X level "Mario Land" has you playing as Mario, complete with most of his general abilities, physics, and his Fire Flower power-up.
• Animated Actors: Implied with the Tier 7 boss. Future is less than pleased about having been reduced to working at McWily's, claiming that he is classically trained.
• Anticlimax:
  • Despite the inclusion of premade bosses within the devkit this time, there are still cases where entries conclude with Boss Corridors that lead to nothing but an Energy Element. This was one of ACESpark's bigger pet peeves.
  • A more deliberate example in the Combust Man stage. This time there is a boss, but he dies in one hit. ACESpark was fine with this one, presumably because it actually showed thought and effort, and worked as a "punchline" to the level.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Levels that are unreasonably difficult or take too long to complete fully have a teleporter at the start of the stage that offer all the Energy Elements and Noble Nickels in the stage without having to find them normally.
    • Similarly, bosses that are deemed unfair are exempt from The Arena.
    • The levels Neon Man and Bouncy Castle have NPCs standing outside their levels with "Read Me" signs that will notify you that the level causes motion sickness. The former has a skip teleporter, while the latter's sickness-inducing gimmick can be turned off.
  • The Wily stages make it explicit that you don't need to complete them all in one sitting, a notification that was likely spurred from Roahm Mythril forcing himself through the judge levels of MaGMML1 in one night thinking otherwise.
  • Due to its sheer length, Wily 6 has mid-stage autosaves each time you defeat one of the chimerabots, but only if it's during your initial run through the Wily stages.
  • Collecting 120 Noble Nickels gives you the Auto Map upgrade, which is activated with the weapon cycle buttons and shows a map for the level you're in, as well as Noble Nickel locations.
  • In the Pit of Pits, obstacles that would normally be instant death instead cause damage. Falling in a pit also resets you to the start of the current "floor", with slightly less health.
  • If the Player Character dies in the fight against Seven Force, Dr. Light sends the player a holo-message saying that he can let the player bypass all forms that have already been defeated at the cost of the Noble Nickel. Additionally, Eddie is on hand to deliver a large energy sphere to Mega Man between each phase of the fight (and these energy recharges remain even in the True Arena version of the fight).
  • In "The Stage Nobody Asked For", despite the stage teaching the player that "red equals instant death", the red attacks of Spiked Wall Man are not instant death.
• Arc Number: 81, the prophecized number of submissions. As it turns out, there were, in fact, exactly 81 submissions.
• The Artifact: At the beginning of the game, when Dr. Light explains the simulations to Mega Man, he explicitly notes that Mega Man can't "die" in them, justifying the lack of a lives system. However, the initial run through the Dr. Wily stages are supposed to take place in the real world of the game, yet Mega Man can still die without consequence as if he's in a simulation.
• Ascended Extra: Tier 5 Boss Lord Elewoofro did not originate as a boss from his source game, wherein he acted as a power-up dispenser. Now he's a fully-fledged boss fight with an attack pattern that uses moves from the official bosses that he steals parts from.
• Ascended Meme: The boss of the stage called "The Stage Nobody Asked For" is none other than Spiked Wall Man, of Dr. Wily Fails at Life fame.
• Author Avatar:
  • JupiHornet and ACESpark use Hornet Man and their fursona as their avatars, respectively. Both of them also have unlockable costumes.
  • Karakato, the artist who drew the illustrations for many of the entry bosses, has his own avatar Karrot Man as an unlockable costume.
• Back-Alley Doctor: The old man who programmed the hologram projector for Tier 6's hub. Truth be told, he did a better job than the poor scientist that worked on Tier 1's hub.
• Bait-and-Switch: After destroying Wily Machine SWORD, Wily reveals that, using the Reality Core, he's found an Alternate Universe "filled with computers" where Wily was "more evil than he is now", and plans to summon "an evil version of Mega Man" from there to fight our Mega Man for him. Battle Network fans expecting him to call forth MegaMan DS based on that description clearly don't remember the last contest, because what Wily gets instead is megaman sprite game.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss:
  • Happens with the Tier 7 boss. At first, it looks like you're going to fight Pepsiman; however, once his health bar finishes filling up, Future kills him with one of his sickles and fights you instead.
  • Done again with the Wily stage 1 boss. CWU-01P doesn't even get the courtesy of its health bar appearing before getting shot by Mecha Bubble Man.
  • In the Tier 10 contest entry "Quarantine Woman", upon reaching the boss room, it at first looks as though you're about to fight a giant mutant monster, but all you get to see of it is one of its arms before it abruptly explodes and you fight the stage's eponymous Robot Master. Notably, this is the only boss that cuts to the chase upon respawning from death or accessed from the Boss Gallery and Arenas, unlike the other two, which repeat the fakeout even when there's no point anymore.
• Barrier Change Boss: Autobounce, the boss of Wily 4, changes its vulnerability every time it takes damage; its weakness matches whatever weapon it looks like.
• Bash Brothers: The Wily robots Launch Man & Shuttle Man, who are rarely seen apart from each other to the point that Shuttle Man will actually flee if you defeat Launch Man first. Also, Launch Man encourages you to enter Tier X before Shuttle Man comes back.
• Beast Man:
  • ACESpark, one of the judges, is apparently one of these. Much to the complete and utter confusion of those in-universe. His fursona, Davwin Armanios, is also one of the unlockable character skins.
  • Pluto and Uranus, both of whom are animal themed, complain that they aren't allowed in McWily's because of the restaurant's "No Pets" policy. They also have unique dialogue with Davwin for the same reason.
• Bee-Bee Gun: The Hornet Chaser, which retains the ability to retrieve most items.
• Becoming the Costume: You can buy alternate costumes from Roll's shop. Despite supposedly being costumes, it's more like you're actually sending that character into the festival levels — any dialogue the character has with tier bosses is changed from Mega Man's Unfazed Everyman personality to the characterization of the person portrayed, and the respective character's NPC disappears from the hub while Mega Man himself appears by the entrance to the Tier 3 hub as a NPC who notes that it's nice to take a break sometimes (unless you play as Rockman CX — whom, being an Evil Knockoff, Mega Man expresses distain towards — or Roll — in which case Rock will start operating the costume shop).
• Blamed for Being Railroaded: Once you kill the Whopper miniboss while aboard the ship during the Guts Man's Asteroid stage, the ship you're on explodes around you, and you drop on to the titular asteroid, where you get a communication from Dr. Light for ignoring his previous orders to capture the ship, and instead taking out the main power core and blowing it up. This actually plays with the trope; if you ignore the Whopper, you can proceed straight to the bridge, take out the single weak mook robot in the way, and take over the spaceship as you were ordered (netting an Energy Element in the process). However, to collect both the Energy Elements in this level, you have to run the stage twice...once by taking the longer path opened by destroying the Whopper, and the other by ignoring the Whopper and continuing to the bridge as you were ordered to. Most players will blow up the Whopper on their first go, however, since they won't realize the consequences of doing so.
• Book Ends: Sort of. Both the very first Wily stage and the Final Boss battle are Unexpected Shmup Levels.
• Bootstrapped Theme: As of this game, the 8-bit remix of A-Ha's Take On Me from MaGMML1's NEON GRAVITY level is the official trailer theme for every entry in the series.
• Boss Bonanza: Some of the "enemy challenges" between questions in Deep Thoughts are actually boss fights. Specifically, Air Capsule II (with springs instead of bubbles), Chomp Man (in a room full of ice blocks), Sheriff Man (on a floor of water jets), Alter Man (in a pit of quicksand), and a souped-up Cheat Man are fought throughout the stage.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Done quite literally with Quarantine Woman, who jumps into the boss room as a Hazmat Joe, then proceeds to tear off her hazmat outfit to reveal herself.
• Boss-Only Level:
  • As with the previous game, the tier bosses are fought in their own self-contained level, although still using the tileset or theming of the tier that they're the boss of.
  • Unusually, BizzareIdeaMan's level "Alien Temple" just consists of a few empty screens, and then a boss fight against the titular alien.
  • The MaGMML1 boss battles in Tier 10 are also fought in their own self-contained levels; notably, Birdo's level forces you to ride on an egg to access her boss door, which you will be needing for her fight.
• Boss Rush:
  • There's multiple arenas to choose from this time; the first is available from the beginning, but the latter two must be unlocked first:
    • The first one has you fighting all the included dev-kit bosses (and Quick Man, a non dev-kit boss), including a few that ultimately went unused in the level submissions, before fighting Gamma at the end.
    • The second one contains almost all of the custom bosses included in the level submissions, the exceptions being Joe Man R, Avoidance Cherry, the Hall Master, Pharaoh Man's Revenge, and the Yggdrasil bosses.
    • The third and final arena contains the tier bosses, the Wily Castle bosses, and other miscellaneous bosses, the exceptions being the Stone Butterfly and Strawberry Milk.
  • One of the stages, Wily Tower, does this to Dev-Kit bosses. It did not score very highly.
• Boss Subtitles: The fight against the Wily 5 boss Seven Force does this for all seven forms.
• Boss Warning Siren:
  • The beginning of Haunt Man's boss theme features a brief klaxon for a second.
  • In good old Shoot 'Em Up fashion, a "WARNING!" message appears heralding Vanguard's entrance in Wily 0.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The boss of Tier 6, Cheat Man, hurls the letters of the dialogue box at you as projectiles at the start of the fight.
  Mega Man: If I don't say too much right now, then surely the number of bullets that will rain down upon me will be lessened — oops!
• Brutal Bonus Level: The Pit of Pits. A collection of 120 Endless style levels that you have to clear all in one sitting, with none of your original E-Tanks or Bolts. Galaxy Man has several small shops in the Pit that you can buy items from to make the experience a little easier.
• Burger Fool: Tier 7 is set inside the fast food restaurant McWily's, which has robots (and sometimes a human woman) working there. Future is extremely displeased about having a job there and fights the player, assuming they are there to mock him.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Mega Man doesn't even remember the Tier 2 boss Ombuds Man at all. No wonder, given that his source game Mega Man 42 is an earlier fan project that was overshadowed by Unlimited.
• The Cameo:
  • notencore's level Misty Lake has a room where you can find Mega Man Y+1's Melon Man, frozen in an ice block. His mugshot also appears on a "VOTE" poster in the Tier 4 hub.
  • King Dedede appears as a NPC in the Tier 8 hub, where he notes its visual and technical similarities to Butter Building's rotating tower segments.
  • Mega Man: Reverse of Time's Toast Man appears in the Tier 7 hub, speaking like the game's creator Chengkitsun.
  • Storm Man from Mega Man: The Dark Resistence' appears in Knight Man's pub after collecting enough Energy Elements. He mentions he's excited for the release of the (canceled) fangame Mega Man: Infamous Intent.
  • Mega Man Volnutt appears as an NPC at the end of one of the paths in Bouncy Castle.
  • Gordon Freeman can be found in a secret alcove near the Tier 2 boss. He sings.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Galaxy Man is characterized this way. ..Or so you would think, as he eventually drops the act and challenges you to a boss fight.
• Canon Foreigner: Tier Bosses Butter Nezumi, Jet Man, and Scorch Man are all from games that don't use the Mega Man title.
• Charlie Brown from Outta Town: The only possible reason why Jolt Man's cameo appearance on a Tier 4 poster hasn't been removed^*All references to Mega Man Eternal were removed from the public version of the game, in compliance to Eternal's creator, as he wears a sombrero and a mustache as "El Jolto".
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: While MaGMML1 tier bosses Dagger Man and Yoku Man reappear in this game (and the latter brings along with him most of the Unlimited Robot Masters as well), Justice Man is noticeably absent, while Jolt Man is only a background cameo.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: As the fight with Absolute ZERO progresses, he gets more verbose and less threatening. His third form's attacks are pretty weak, and the final form can't hurt you at all.
• The Coats Are Off: A more mundane version is pulled off when Future removes his McWily's outfit before fighting the player.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: In "The Stage Nobody Asked For", white sprites have no collision, blue sprites are safe to stand on and red sprites deal One Hit Kills.
• Comic-Book Time: Downplayed; while it is the 30th anniversary of Mega Man's first victory over Dr. Wily, the doctors Light and Wily don't look any different. Most of the rest of the noteworthy characters are robots, Kalinka only wears a Concrete Man costume, and all other humans are assorted NPC civilians.
• Composite Character: Oil Man appears as a NPC sporting his western Mega Man Powered Up design (blue body and yellow lips) but apologizing for kidnapping Roll, which is something he has only done in his debut arc in the Archie comics (where he had a black body with a red scarf completely covering his lips).
• Continuity Cameo:
  • The Doctor Lalinde Numbers Quake Woman and Vesper Woman can be seen in the main hub and Tier 9 respectively. Quake Woman tells the player she's at the festival to defend it against any potential attack from the Emerald Spears, an Archie-original anti-robot terrorist cell. Motion Sickness Man from the Archie Comic: Short Circuits series also appears to warn players of levels that may cause motion sickness.
  • In a mix of this and Production Throwback, various characters from Mega Man's Christmas Carol (Scrooge, Past, Tiny Tim, and Bob Cratchit) appear in Tier 5 and 7's hubs.
• Continuity Nod: Ice Man being nervous around Roll is a reference to his crush on her.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: Up to eight players can play the game together. Some levels are closed-off from this, however.
• Crossover: The three bosses of Yggdrasil (Crator, Cream, and Kichona) hail from an obscure webcomic known as the Cutezome Mythos.
• Cryptic Background Reference: During the Tier 4 boss battle against the Scorch Men, the one from Mega Man Sunrise realizes that he and the Zook Hero Z one should stop competing against each other and team up "like we were told to". What he means by this wasn't elaborated upon.
• Damage-Sponge Boss:
  • Door Man has four health bars. Ultimately Downplayed, as the energy element will pop up about midway through the fight and will let you just skip him. The True Arena cuts out said health bars, too.
  • Joe Man R has three health bars, in addition to having a shield which isn't dropped very often. Better hope you have a lot of Slash Claw energy when you go to fight him. He shows up again at the end of the Tier X level "Metallic Ocean", this time with 10 health bars... only to instantly die as soon as his health fills up.
  • Doc Robot also has three health bars, and a multitude of attacks that make him unpredictable. Mercifully, the appropriate Arena knocks him down to one health bar.
  • Neapolitan Man has two health bars, with an altered pattern with the second bar as well as two pits that open up on the sides of the boss room. Justifiably, this is still true in the Arena incarnation.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: An achievement requires you to complete a level while drunk off of Knight Man's beer. While that's a mild challenge (depending on what level you do), the effect is removed if you pause. It gets a fair bit more challenging, fighting off force of habit whenever you want to switch weapons.
• The Day the Music Lied: After CWU-01P gets suddenly destroyed in Wily stage 1, its boss theme (a remix of the Mega Man fortress boss theme) is immediately cut off and the regular fortress boss theme kicks in.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: The lives system has been done away with entirely, allowing you to die as many times as you want without having to restart the level. As a result, 1-UP items now fully heal you instead.
• Demoted to Extra: Yoku Man and Dagger Man, both of whom appeared in the first game as bosses but are now just NPCs.
  • Bright Man doesn't even get that, as there are statues of him spread around the hub. However, you become him in Shinryu's Identity Crisis level (as well as the Wily Machine battle) and get a costume of him, so it works out.
• Denser and Wackier: This entry has even sillier humor than the first one (which is saying a lot).
• Depending on the Writer: All entry levels that use dialogue, as you might expect. The most humorous case being Flashman85's level "Guts Man's Asteroid", which interprets Mega Man as being reckless and prone to shooting at things and destroying them (regardless of their importance), to Dr. Light's annoyance.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Tier 9 boss Butter Nezumi will express frustration over the death of Tier 1 boss Milk, if you play the game starting from Tier 1 and ascend in ratings (which most people do). Fighting the Tier 9 boss before the Tier 1 boss has alternate dialogue: Butter Nezumi will still express his rage over Milk's death, but this time Mega Man will be noticeably confused.
  • In the final Wily level, if you're playing as a costume, you revert to Mega Man after the Wily Machine is defeated in an attempt to make the story still make sense. This does not happen in the Boss Gallery and Arenas.
  • Toad Man has a random, low chance of appearing in the Dojo, next to the training dummy and boss gallery teleporter. If a variant of Toad Man is selected in the boss gallery, Toad Man will quickly jump to join Mega Man in the teleporter to the boss fight. Additionally, destroying the training dummy (which can take a lot of punishment) and talking to Toad Man will make him comment on it.
  • Centaur Man is programmed to jump over ledges if the floor in his boss arena is uneven (preventing him from being trapped on one side). However, since no stage uses Centaur Man as a boss (let alone one with uneven ground), this quirk goes unused in the final game
  • Using the alternate weapons causes barriers only destroyed by one weapon to change their sprite to one fitting its alter weapon counterpart (e.g. Jewel Blocks become crates bearing the Badge Barrier's icon).
• Disproportionate Retribution: The Tier 3 boss Door Man decides to kill you for the heinous crime of not holding the door open for him.
• Double Unlock: Most costumes are unlocked by completing challenges or certain levels, but you have to pay Roll before you can actually use them.
• Dual Boss:
  • The Scorching Duo on Tier 4.
  • Strife's Launch Man & Shuttle Man level also has this type of boss fight with its title Robot Masters.
• Easy Level Trick: If you get hit with the midboss's attack in Cyber Man's stage, you get warped into a unique room with a door to the right. Going through that door leads back to the midboss, but if you go left instead, you'll find another door, which leads to a room full of minor enemies and a Noble Nickel. Leaving that room to the left puts you in the boss corridor, just before the boss himself, skipping most of the stage.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Volt Man Assimilator, kind of.
• Eldritch Location: The setting of the stage Yggdrasil, with invisible warps, strange-looking enemies and bosses, and has a peculiar slant to its graphics.
• Energy Weapon: As expected from some level entries, with Force Man taking the concept to its logical conclusion by being a Robot Master that uses force beams as his main weapon. ^note Thankfully, only one of his attacks can do a One-Hit Kill, and it's telegraphed by skull icons that show where they will come from. You can also unlock it as a weapon.
• Escape Pod: Humorously, after the final boss fight, when Wily's ship begins to fall apart due to battle damage, he prepares to flee using an escape pod before his ship explodes... before remembering that said ship IS said escape pod.
• Escape Sequence: The name of one of the levels. Unsurprisingly, it features Mega Man in an exploding base and trying to get out. The first room explains that Mega Man's power limiters have been disabled, so he goes through the level running faster and with infinite uses of special weapons.
  • The default ending plays this straight after you defeat Dr. Wily. Fortunately, you don't need to do anything at that point, since the preceding stage was already long enough as it is.
• Exact Words: One of the challenges in the Challenge Tent is for a player to go through the True Arena without using weapon energy. Against bosses where you are required to use Robot Master weapons, your weapon energy is not drained.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: When Vesper Woman talks to the player character about enjoying the levels, she realizes the implications behind them.
  Vesper Woman: Heya you! Hope you've been enjoying yourself! Must bee fun going through all of these simulations, with all of their enemies, and bugs, and death spikes, and...bottomless pits...and...bosses......and...uh...perilous platforming...and............uh...
  ...
  PLEASE DON'T BE MAD AT US!
• The Faceless: Quarantine Woman is unique among entry bosses for wearing a gas mask, which thoroughly hides her true face (if she has any).
• Fee Fi Faux Pas: When Beed 28 submitted his level "Bouncy Castle" for the contest, his love for bouncy worlds was reflected in the whole level having a frequent bouncing motion. Unfortunately, this caused beta testers and the judge ACESpark to become nauseous, so it got disqualified as a result.
• Final-Exam Boss: Wily Machine SWORD forces you to become the Robot Masters featured in Shinryu's level "Identity Crisis", starting with Hornet Man and capping off the entire battle with Bright Man.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the entrance to the Tier 6 hub, there is a poster of a silhouetted Zero with a question mark on him. Sure enough, you ultimately encounter Zero from MaGMML1 at the end of Null and Void.
  • The fact that Tier 7 has several NPCs from Mega Man's Christmas Carol, as well as a Christmas themed bonus level, foreshadows the Tier's (real) boss being from Christmas Carol as well.
  • Tier 9's hub has background music from Nezumi Man, and Pharaoh Man mentions smelling dairy products nearby. Putting the two together points to Butter Nezumi, the Tier 9 boss.
  • The few times the mysterious figure is seen moving on screen, he is not actually animated.
• Fusion Dance:
  • The sixth Wily stage features a group of five bosses known as "chimerabots", each one made from two entry bosses at a time (Joe Man and Bond Man, Chomp Man and Combust Man, Quarantine Woman and Neapolitan Man, Match Man and Force Man, and Sheriff Man and Cyber Man respectively).
  • Parodied with the Scorching Duo on Tier 4. They'll try to fuse together once their health is halfway depleted (complete with dramatic cross-cuts to their faces), but the "fusion" is just them crudely tied together with a rope.
• Gainax Ending: The True Final Boss and the ending that follows it. You fight a Zero mecha piloted by the hooded stranger, who turns out to be MaGMML1's Zero, he gives out his motivation, asks the player character what they thought of the battle, and ascends to the heavens once his purpose has been achieved. Note that the last thing isn't even acknowledged.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: See The Artifact above.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere:
  • Shortly after beginning the sixth and final Wily stage proper, after Dr. Wily has activated the Reality Core but before entering the main maze itself, you encounter... a green, holographic version of the Mecha Dragon. Its existence is out of the blue, and no mention of it is made again after its defeat, nor does it make any further appearances outside of the True Arena and Boss Gallery.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: ACESpark's comic review for Airflow Hubble. Naturally, this level was given a skip teleporter. His comic for Cardinal Man also depicts Davwin going insane from it.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: In the Options screen is a "Text Content" filter that can be set to PG-13 or Family. Setting it to "Family" generally results in this trope, though profane uses of the word "suck" are untouched, "crap" becomes "carp" and bizarrely enough, "Hell" is not replaced with "Heck", but "Hello Kitty".
• Guest Fighter: Some of the costumes are characters from other intellectual properties who are related to Mega Man in some way. These characters are Rokko from Rokko Chan (a tribute to Mega Man), Beck from Mighty No. 9 (a Spiritual Successor to Mega Man), Doropie from Magical Doropie (a contemporary Alternate Company Equivalent to Mega Man), Marisa Kirisame from Touhou Project (alluding to the Fusion Fic fan game Mega Mari), and Sonic the Hedgehog (continuing the Archie references in Composite Character and Continuity Cameo above, alluding to the Archie Comics crossover storylines Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Collide and Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Unite).
• Guide Dang It!: Acquiring the Noble Nickels in RedBlupi's level "Cyber Man" requires a lot of skill and out-of-the-box thinking involving the level's gimmick.
  • One of the Noble Nickels in Just an Ice Level is so obtuse, even the judges didn't realize it was there until after they'd already judged the level. It's accessed via an invisible ladder in the level's upper path. An invisible ladder that has no real "tell" as to where it is.
  • The Green Star Mode that can be unlocked from the cheat menu takes this up to eleven. Several of the stars are hidden behind objects or in areas that require going outside of intended level boundaries to get to.
• Hailfire Peaks:
  • MrKyurem's "Boil Man", appropriately enough, is mostly a straight Down the Drain level, but has a fire-based enemy selection and boss.
  • The judges criticized the last place entry, "Snow Man", for (among other things) mixing levelsets together inconsistently and haphazardly, resulting in one of these: The stage starts out as a typical ice stage before mixing it with a construction site tileset, then ending the level with a sandstorm.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Happens to most enemies that are destroyed with Slash Claw.
• Hijacked by Ganon: Eventually, the boss of Tier X is revealed to be MaGMML1's Zero, wanting to have a proper rematch with Mega Man and not letting Dr. Wily interrupt it.
• Hitbox Dissonance: A few of the unlockable skins (like Rush) look like they should have hitboxes that match their smaller size, but they have the same hitbox that Mega Man has.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Metal Man returns as a devkit boss, and with him comes his infamous allergy to his own weapon. While he is very weak to the weapons similar enough to Metal Blade (Triple Blade and Wheel Cutter), there's an even easier way to exploit this weakness: Rebound one of his own Metal Blades back at him with Jewel Satellite, and he dies in one hit.
  • Due to the way the unlockable Alter Weapons share damage stats with the default weapons they replace, certain Contest Robot Masters also wind up being weak to their own weapons. Specifically, Force Man, Neapolitan Man and Haunt Man's final phase are weak to Force Beam, Neapolitan Bomb and Haunt Pumpkin, respectively.
  • At the end of the fight against Vanguard in Wily 0, it signals the Wily Star to fire gigantic laser blasts in a last-ditch attempt to stop you. Unfortunately, the boss doesn't move out of the way of one in time...
  • In the penultimate Wily battle, Wily tries to summon an alternate, evil version of Mega Man to fight on his behalf. However the Mega Man he summons isn't so much evil as he is selfish and amoral, and so almost immediately attacks Wily "for being an asshole."
  Mega Man: Something tells me you didn't think this through.
• 100% Completion: Unlike the previous game, you only need to collect a handful of the Energy Elements to get to the Wily Castle this time. Additionally, there's the Noble Nickels, which are completely optional, but will give you a reward if you collect them all.
• Hurricane of Puns: The last paragraph of ACESpark's review of A.D. 2101 is filled with Rolling Cutter-related puns based off one of the boss's attacks.
• Hypocrisy Nod: ACESpark criticizes a stage for using Wall of Text in the intro to the stage...and quickly apologizes, because that particular review is itself a Wall of Text.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: These are prominent enough that Volt Man (at the end of the Mega Arena) complains about it.
• Interface Screw: Find enough Noble Nickels and Knight Man will start serving frothy pints of beer. Taking one causes the screen to go wavy and create double vision (up until you pause, that is).
  • Examining the Polybius machine will produce a similar effect which can be dismissed the same way, or by entering a stage.
• Joker Immunity: Taken up to eleven, even for series standards: Wily is trapped in an exploding spaceship inside his asteroid fortress as that fortress is deleted from reality, yet he reappears in the Dojo with almost no mention of his supposed death.
• Jump Scare: Right when you're about to reach Quarantine Woman, a giant mutant arm (known in the code as the Hall Master) breaks through the second boss door and crawls towards you.
• Kaizo Trap: After Vanguard's defeat, you still have to dodge a few more of the Wily Star II's giant lasers.
• Killer Rabbit: Match Man fully lives up to his name by being a person-sized matchstick. He's still one of the more challenging entry bosses.
• King Mook: The midbosses from "Conveyor Mayhem", Big Fire Telly and Super Cannopeller, as well as Joe Man and the boss of the Tier X level "Metallic Ocean", Gigabgyo (both of which were made by Zieldak).
• Last Chance Hitpoint: The Skull Amulet allows the player to survive fatal enemy blows with one hit point.
• Last Ditch Move:
  • When Future runs out of HP, he rains fire down on the stage for about 30 seconds before actually dying.
  • When Galaxy Man runs out of HP in the Pit of Pits battle, he teleports into the middle and unleashes two waves of rainbow projectiles, the second of which covers the entire screen save for the area behind a group of black holes he spawns pre-attack.
  • Parodied with Absolute ZERO in the True Arena. When its third form runs out of HP, it goes to its final form and immediately makes you enter it and fight its heart, as it assaults you with a barrage of unavoidable attacks. This does absolutely nothing to you and it self-destructs.
• Laughably Evil: Absolute ZERO, as it turns out. Yes, Dr. Wily is as comical as always, but he does his best to try and crush you even as he escapes, while Absolute ZERO winds up falling apart completely during the course of its battle and fails embarrassingly.
• Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid: Lava Factory, to the point where robots aren't even harmed by going into the lava. Actually a subversion; it's not a lava factory, it's Shadow Man's wine factory.
• Legacy Boss Battle:
  • Returning from the first game, The Moon from Neon Gravity, Birdo from Mega Man World, and Glass Man from his eponymous stage all return as Optional Bosses in Tier 10, all 3 of whom have had a major difficulty spike.
  • MrKyruem's judge level in MaGMML1 featured the Air Capsule as a boss. His MaGMML2 entry as a contestant features a hidden easter egg: go left from the starting room to fight a rehashed version of the Air Capsule.
• Lethal Joke Weapon: The Chomp Claw from the alternate weaponset. It's obviously not meant for combat, being very unwieldy due to being shot straight vertically. However, it does have a very specific use against enemies that float above reach from Mega Man: The head of the claw lasts for a long time and doesn't disappear when it hits an enemy. It's very effective against the Disco Ball, Giant Fire Telly, Super Cannopeller, and the Air Capsule.
• Level Ate: Blackmore Darkwing's Neapolitan Man level, which is entirely themed around ice cream, having crumbling ice cream sandwich platforms, truck enemies, tub enemies dumping ice cream, cannon enemies that shoot three flavors, and even a blender machine mini-boss. Then there's the boss himself.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Displayed by Splash Woman and Quarantine Woman, the game's two female Robot Master bosses. Splash Woman has a graceful design, mainly attacks from a distance and is a Doctor Light Number. The Doctor Wily Number Quarantine Woman looks more savage, gets up close and personal with a barrage of attacks and has a faceless gas mask.
• Load-Bearing Boss: Averted with Tier X, as Zero lets you freely use it as you wish right before he departs.
• Loads and Loads of Loading: The game came with an optional "auto-tiler" system that level creators could utilize so that they wouldn't have to go through the trouble of individually setting collision with the level terrain, and to try to avoid the problem that happened with the "City War" level from the original which ended up with invisible pits and invisible solid blocks. Unfortunately, this automated system ends up inducing long loading times if it's used on a larger level, as it checks for every tile that's been placed in a single frame, especially if the game is being played on a weaker system. This also happens every time you die and restart.
• Life Drain: The Grab Buster, which transfers life from the enemy to Mega Man as per usual.
• Marathon Level:
  • Yggdrasil is far and away the longest entry in the game, coming in at 92 screens with 3 exits.
  • Escape Sequence has more screens at 125, but this is counteracted by Mega Man being given an 11th-Hour Superpower that lets him move much faster than normal and use Robot Master weapons without limit. The relatively straightforward design of the stage also helps to make the stage feel less long.
  • Forgotten Fortress has nearly as many screens as Escape Sequence, but without the mitigating speed, and also requiring the player go through several areas of the stage just to get everything.
  • Wily 6, the final stage of the game, takes over an hour to complete on the average run.
  • The Pit of Pits, which is lampshaded by the player character after finally clearing it.
  • The Tier X stage "Hardcore Parkour" is described by Toad Man as "over 90 screens of death" during the stage.
  • Finally, there's the "true finale", unlocked by collecting all 125 Energy Elements - Null and Void. Going through it normally will bring you through six floors, each with four "rooms" for you to choose from, all of which are of a short length^note to clarify, the shortest one is eleven screens long. If you want 100% completion, you'll need to complete each and every one of those rooms instead of just one per-floor, a total of twenty-four different rooms^note which mercifully don't have to be done all in one go, and after that you still need to fight the True Final Boss at the end - Absolute ZERO, who is a rather long fight itself (even if it becomes a Zero-Effort Boss past phase 2).
• Metroidvania: Sector Upsilon 6 is this. It's very large, and it'll take awhile to find all the noble nickels, energy elements, and the collectables that are unique to this level. The level is so long that it warrants a skip teleporter, and is notable for being the highest-ranked stage that contains one.
• Mickey Mousing: Spiky Situation features an Optional Boss that'll shoot its bullets to the beat of the soundtrack.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • Playing through the levels in tier/placement order from lowest to highest, all of ACESpark's reviews are in the form of comics up until Yggdrasil, which he makes known is his least favorite with a wall of text review. After that, all his reviews are regular.
  • The battle with Absolute ZERO is suitably epic until you defeat the second form. At that point, it fell apart so thoroughly that its face looks silly, has only one functional arm, and the music is replaced by a Sexy Parodius song. This form is immediately followed by a more unsettling version of MaGMML1's Zero, which can't even hurt you.
• Mysterious Stranger: A cloaked individual appears throughout the game, offering help and advice throughout, and even giving Mega Man access to the Wily Star. Ultimately revealed to be Zero from MaGMML1, angry at Wily for how he used him at the end of the last contest, and as revealed in Episode Zero, forgot about him despite being the one who gathered the Energy Elements.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In the first area near Strike Man's ball-throwing game, you can find Flash Man getting confused about the order of the tier hubs. It's a reference to Flashman85 getting confused about the world hub during his livestream of the game.
  • Kalinka wearing a Concrete Man costume is a comically sly nod to Concrete Man himself wearing a costume of her in the previous game.
  • One of the meals sold at McWily's is the Wily Combo, which was the name of one of the levels from MaGMML1. In fact, McWily's itself is based off of Duvi0's review for said level.
  • Upon defeating Zero, he explains that upon being defeated in the first game, he escaped from the castle under the cover of exploding, and "hid myself while I repaired myself". The real Zero infamously gave a similar explanation in Mega Man X6 for how he returned from his apparent death in X5.
• New Game Plus: Two of the features of the Cheat Menu is "New Game+" (it allows the player to begin a new file with all the upgrades, Noble Nickel unlockables, and costumes unlocked) and "Free Roaming" (all progress-based areas are available from the beginning of a new file).
• Ninja Prop:
  • Cheat Man begins his boss fight by sending the letters in the text box after Mega Man.
  • In one of the 6F Null and Void rooms, the main challenge is a snowboard segment a la Mega Man 8, complete with "Jump" and "Slide" signs. Near the end of the segment, there's a third sign - a "Die!" sign^note using Ganon voice clips, no less; just after it shows up, a bunch of force beams appear and try to kill you. But it turns out to not just be a notifying sign; the Die Sign is actually the boss of the stage, and openly attacks you.
• "No. Just… No" Reaction: Garirry's written review for Cardinal Man's stage was simply "No."
• Non-Indicative Name:
  • Several level entries have no Robot Master battles, even though they have Robot Master names, which is something that disappoints ACESpark in particular.
  • The level "Something Original" consists of segments based off of the first three Mega Man titles. While the name could make sense From a Certain Point of View ("original" meaning "the original three titles"), it is heavily misleading, and this was called out by the judges.
• Nostalgia Level:
  • The infamous "City War" level from the previous game is included as a hidden level; you can access it by pressing up at the City War arcade cabinet in the tier 5 hub. Unlike the original level, the invisible ladders are visible this time, but the invisible holes remain.
  • Some of Rainbow Man's stage from Mega Man Unlimited is one of the rooms in The Pit of Pits.
  • Several rooms in The Pit of Pits are based off levels in the first contest. The higher-ranking stages tended to be used more in these, though others like Chroma Key and Objective: Vain Space also got mentions.
  • Ancient Tomb, while not 100% identical in layout, is essentially just Pharaoh Man's stage from Mega Man 4 with enemies not present in the original stage added. Oddly enough, Pharaoh Man himself isn't present despite him being a boss in the game's devkit.
  • Parts of AD 2101 are taken from Quick Man's stage in Mega Man 2. This includes the Force Beam segments, though said Force Beams are no longer one-hit kills.
• Not So Above It All: Enjl and Garriry were the judges most likely to give proper reviews to stages, even those that were obvious messes like Snow Man, Mix & Match, or The Fall (all of which had super-brief quips given by Pyro and Jupi, and comics by ACESpark). But with Cardinal Man, even Enjl and Garriry went for quips over proper reviews.
• Orbiting Particle Shield: The Jewel Satellite, of course.
• One-Steve Limit: The only main Mega Man Unlimited Robot Master that doesn't show up is Jet Man, due to the Tier 8 boss being Rokko Chan's Jet Man. Parodied in the boss fight for Tier 4 with the Scorch Men from Mega Man Sunrise and Zook Hero Z, who constantly bicker with each other over who is the better Scorch Man.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: Milk and Cheat Man both employ glitchy visual effects. They're both used for humor rather than fear, with Milk telefragging the glitchy devkit bosses before yelling GNEUSRCH (and, well, being a glass of milk), and Cheat Man's fight theme being a silly-sounding chase theme and him sending the text box words to attack Mega Man.
• Obsessive-Compulsive Barkeeping: Knight Man. This is actually lampshaded by Volt Man at the end of the Mega Arena.
• Obvious Rule Patch: In early versions, the Pit and Arenas could be somewhat trivialised with the unlockable Super Mode. In later versions, said areas are now blocked off to Super Mode until you've cleared them at least once.
• One-Winged Angel: Subverted. The true final boss, Absolute ZERO, has a whopping four forms. The second is played normally by video game standards, being a fairly inarguable upgrade. The next two get more realistic, however, as they are respectively a broken down and then utterly decrepit progression from the second form, and get decidedly weaker each time...the final form only doing one damage per hit.
• Poison Mushroom: In between their regular attacks, Lord Elewoofro throws out poison E Tanks, energy pellets and 1-UPs to hurt Mega Man.
• Pop Quiz: M-Jacq's level Deep Thoughts is one for the contest as a whole, while also mixing in assets, enemies and bosses from other contest levels between questions to keep things interesting.
• Pose of Supplication: Not done by Dr. Wily, but Air Man, after you defeat his Capsule in MrKyurem's Boil Man level. Likewise, Zero does this upon defeating Absolute ZERO, though due to his lack of actual animation, it looks more like his sprite is rotated counterclockwise.
• Post-End Game Content: Upon beating the game, the Pit of Pits and a new room in the Dojo that allows you to replay the Dr. Wily stages are unlocked, along with the Mega Arena and Tier X upon reaching certain conditions.
• Press X to Die: As with the previous game, pressing 2 instantly destroys the player character and sends you back to the previous checkpoint.
• Recognition Failure:
  • All five of the judges failed to recognize the source material Mount Sabre was drawn from (Crystalis), though they at least recognized there was probably a reference being made that they were missing. It didn't stop them from rating the stage highly based off its design and other merits.
  • They also failed to recognize the source material that Duwang was drawn from (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure part 4). There was some backlash from fans of the series when the judges universally panned the "death hands" section, but the judges' (valid) complaints pointed out that the mechanic was not sufficiently telegraphed, and what little was there^note a single sign indicating "no left" just before the section in question, and an ominous ping whenever the sprite faced left wasn't nearly enough to get the point across to those who were unfamiliar with the work.
• Recurring Boss: Dev-Kit Bosses Komuso Man, Volt Man, Quint, Mecha Dragon and Chill Man show up a lot throughout submissions, with the first three even being designated the "Dev-Kit Boss Royal Flush" when all three appeared in a single level.
• Recurring Riff: A handful of the lower tier levels use Galaxy Man's theme and a remix of Pharaoh Man's because of them being the default music. A remix of Galaxy Man's theme is also used in Tier 2 and his shop, as well as a remix for his own boss fight.
• Reference Overdosed: Boy, the devs really pulled out all the stops when making this game. You'll find references to Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousensha, the Mega Man DOS games, and the Archie Worlds Collide series, as well as some of the more obscure Mega Man fangames like Mega Man 42, Mega Man Sunrise, Mega Man Rocks, Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Final Attack, Rockman CX, Mega Man: Square Root of -1, Mega Man's Christmas Carol,^note though, to be fair, the last two games are ones the judges have worked on in the past and the list goes on.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In "Launch Man & Shuttle Man", killing Launch Man first causes Shuttle Man to panic and fly away, ending the fight early.
• Self-Deprecation: Smedis2's level is decidedly called "Smed's Big Annoying Mess of a Level". While not the most ideal entry, it did make it all the way into Tier 8 and scored higher than many lesser entries.
• Sequel Escalation: With 81 submissions, a very long Wily Castle and postgame stages, this game eclipses the original completely and utterly.
• Sequential Boss:
  • A few level submissions have a Sequential Boss in them somewhere.
    • Strife's level "Launch Man & Shuttle Man": the Optional Boss Dennis cycles through multiple different Met forms from across the six NES Mega Man games.
    • Korby & Freeman's level "Haunt Man": the titular robot master first possesses a dark knight statue, and then a mage statue to fight you, before trying to battle you himself.
  • The boss of Wily 0, Vanguard, drags in two extendable spike walls from off-screen after you deplete its health once, and then calls in a Wave-Motion Gun the second time
  • Wily 3, "Lever Oriental Enchanted": You fight one Ripling on its own at the end of the level, and then the other two attack you simultaneously once the first one is destroyed
  • Wily 5, "Unobtanium Mine": The endboss is Seven Force, with a new set of seven forms for you to fight through
  • The boss of the Mega Arena is a large army of Volt Men, when they're defeated they fuse together into a crudely drawn monstrosity against a Giygas-esque background for the final phase.
  • Renhoek's Tier X Level "Mario Land": The boss of the second path, Air Man, transforms into a gigantic version of himself when he drops below half health, filling his health to two whole bars and becoming significantly harder.
  • The True Final Boss, Absolute ZERO, has four forms (or five in the True Arena). Notably, only the first two are any threat. The third form only has one weak attack and the fourth (and fifth) forms are completely incapable of hurting you.
  • The ultimate Superboss, Knight Man first fights you exactly the same way he did in Mega Man 6, then he fights you on Rush Jet in space, and then he fights you in Super Saiyan form while on the moon.
• The Sheriff: Sheriff Man, if you couldn't tell. His true alignment isn't clear, but he's fought as a boss (and littered his stage with "Wanted!" Posters of Mega Man and Proto Man.
• Shoot the Medic First: Inverted with Launch Man & Shuttle Man. Shuttle Man will periodically heal Launch Man, but killing Launch first is a better idea as it causes Shuttle to run away from the fight.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Spread Shot: The Triple Blade, just like in its source game.
  • Truffle Cluster, the alternate weapon which shares a slot with Triple Blade, spreads in a similar way, with four explosive projectiles instead of three.
• Stealth Pun: The final phase of the Absolute ZERO battle in the True Arena has you go up against Heart of Absolute ZERO, which launches a string of Bullet Hell attacks and explodes immediately afterwards. It suffered from a heart attack.
• The Stinger: At the end of the true staff roll, an unidentified person gloats over the power potential that the Reality Core had briefly displayed.
• Superboss:
  • Several level submissions have a superboss of their own:
    • Zieldak's level "Joe Man": After beating the titular Robot Master, you can opt to fight Joe Man R, which is the Robot Master you just fought brought up to eleven. Notably, he's one of the few bosses to be banned from the arena.
    • Shinryu's level "Identity Crisis": At the end of the stage, you have the choice of facing against Alter Man, who appears to be a Joe wearing Mega Man's armour and uses weapons that weren't featured in the stage. You can fight as one of the Robot Masters you played as during the stage or as Mega Man himself.
    • Strife's level "Launch Man & Shuttle Man": It appears to be an ordinary Met, but each time you "kill" it, it cycles through all the various Met incarnations from throughout the six NES Mega Man games until eventually it dies for real and yields a key. Using it to open the door above reveals a notice revealing its name to be "Dennis" and that Wily hasn't noticed its powers.
    • 128-Up's level "Spiky Situation": You can opt to face against "Avoidance Cherry", in which you must Hold the Line against its various Bullet Hell patterns until it self-destructs. Oh, and the pause menu is disabled during this gauntlet, which means you can't use E-Tanks. Due to the difficulty of the boss in question, this boss is also banned from the arena.
    • MrKyurem's level "Boil Man": Going over the wall to your left at the beginning of the stage leads to a fight against Air Man inside the Air Capsule II, in a Call-Back to the first game. Unlike the other entry superbosses, his defeat simply offers you loads of bolts and E-Tanks, and no Noble Nickels at all.
    • Entity1037's Level "The Stage Nobody Asked For": In the part where the red terrain is introduced for the first time, use Sakugarne to pogo over the instant death. At the end of the gauntlet, you'll encounter a souped-up version of Pharaoh Man. This boss is also banned from the arena.
  • Sanct subverts this gloriously. When you find him, he gives a long and drawn out opening monologue, only to discover that he has no actual means of harming you, prompting him to beat a hasty retreat.
  • At the end of Tier 7's secret bonus level "Twilight Lodge", you fight Wishing Star.
  • After you beat Butter Nezumi in Tier 9, if you go back to Tier 1 to fight Milk, it will transform into Strawberry Milk as revenge for killing his master. Notably, this locks out normal Milk from the Tier 1 hub, so you can completely miss the original fight, but normal Milk is always fightable at the Dojo regardless of whether or not you skipped him. The regular version of Milk is always the one encountered in the Arena, however.
  • Once Wily Star has been defeated, in Tier 10, you can find completely optional rematches with The Moon, Birdo, and Glass Man from the previous game, all 3 of which are a lot harder this time around.
  • At the end of the Pit of Pits, you challenge Galaxy Man to a battle in free-fall, with both of you flying through the air trying to shoot each other down, including a Last Ditch Move on Galaxy Man's part when you've depleted his long health bar.
  • When you collect all 220 Noble Nickels in the game, you can fight Knight Man while he's using the power of the Noble Nickels, resulting in a long fight that's vaguely reminiscent of Nightmare. He even goes Super Saiyan in his final phase.
• Surreal Humor: The me irl skin, which just looks like something that came out from a Tumblr shitpost. The skin is Mega Man, but without a torso and with his head connected directly to his legs. Purchasing it causes Roll to say "same" before exiting the dialogue. Rush has gotten a similar treatment of having limbs removed, and Sakugarne has been replaced by a pogo stick with Rush's face. Appropriately enough, you unlock this costume by getting squished by a crusher.
  • Quite a few Tier bosses hail from odder fan games, games that are Mega Man-esque, and a rom hack.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment:
  • The Stove Guy's level "Beneath Sand and Rock" contains a hidden room under a specific patch of quicksand: the room in question is monochrome red and black, the terrain has textures which resemble faces screaming in anguish, and the catchy theme that the stage plays is suddenly dropped.
  • The True Final Boss' final form is a giant, high-resolution version of MaGMML1's Zero. The original looks kind of like a crappily-drawn Kool-Aid man pixel art; this one looks like a creepy kid's drawing redone by a professional artist to emphasize the creepy. It comes off as more jarring when the form that comes before is obviously intended to be funny.
  • NaOH's level "Quarantine Woman". It looks like an ordinary level until you get inside the laboratory complex, which has bugs and mutants instead of the usual robot enemies. Then the alarm sounds and Hazmat Joes start raiding the place. And then when you get to the Boss Corridor, a giant mutant hand breaks through the opposite door and begins crawling towards you.
• Stylistic Suck: The MaGMML1 Zero costume has no animations at all, just like in his source game.
• Take That!:
  • City War from the first game has been brought back... as an arcade machine that NPCs in-universe notice to be full of glitches. By extension, the level City Under Siege is seen by the judges as an improvement of that particular level.
  • When you purchase the Beck costume for the first time, Roll will wonder why does the world laugh at him.
  • Talking to Mega Man while wearing the Rockman CX costume will cause him to be shocked at his rip-off's presence in the festival.
  • While Roll normally happily greets whichever costume you reenter her shop with, she shows disdain towards Bad Scissors Day Cutman.
  • In ACESpark's comments for Yggdrasil, he says the level is worse than the laziest Mega Man 2 ROM hacks, the Mobile phone ports of the various games, the Mega Man: Upon a Star OVAs, and Mega Man X7, to the point he says that he'd rather fight Flame Hyenard who has annoying vocal lines as he Discusss, over playing the stage, or even play X7 with all sounds replaced with Flame Hyenard's vocal lines.
  • One of the features of the unlockable Cheat Menu is "Ultra MaGMML2", with the description, "Play the game with an alternative storyline! Only $39.99." Only slight changes are found. This is a reference to the criticisms of Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon perceiving it as too similar to the games they're based on.
  • Dr. Wily, in the City Under Siege stage, says that his headquarters are on 721 5th Avenue; the address of Trump Tower in New York.
• Took a Level in Badass: Gamma, which is considerably less of a pushover than in their source game.
• Two-Part Trilogy: The Stinger mentioned above sets this up with this game.
• True Final Boss: Absolute ZERO, a giant Zero mecha created by Zero from MaGMML1 to be the ultimate boss, fought at the end of Null & Void.
• Turns Red:
  • Quite a few entry bosses do this.
    • Zieldak's Level "Joe Man": The Optional Boss Joe Man R drops to one knee, and then changes up his arsenal slightly whenever you deplete one full bar of health.
    • betasword's Level "Ruined Lab": The Giant Metall with a health bar visibly flashes when it gets low on health, before speeding up.
    • Thoron's Level "Conveyer Mayhem": Every boss in the level does this, increasing their attack volume when lower on health.
    • Blackmore Darkwing's Level "Neapolitan Man": The titular Robot Master will create pits in the battlefield and change his tactics slightly when he drops below half health.
    • Entity1037's Level "The Stage Nobody Asked For": The main boss, Spiked Wall Man, switches to a new phase every time you deplete one of his health bars.
  • The Tier 4 bosses, Scorch Man and Scorch Man, will fuse together when below half a health bar, completely changing their fighting style.
  • Notably, Wily Machine SWORD at the end of Wily 6 does this instead of being a traditional Sequential Boss, changing tactics 4 times after it drops below half health.
  • Both the Moon and Glass Man do this when they drop to one health bar, adopting completely different fighting styles for their second phases.
  • The boss of Zieldak's Tier X Level "Metallic Ocean", Gigagbyo, speeds up and starts dropping mines when below half health.
  • Renhoek's Tier X Level "Mario Land":Air Man's giant phase also does this when below half health, dragging you to a different stage with tornadoes in the floor that knock you upwards if you land on them.
  • Final Optional Boss Knight Man, in his Super Saiyan form, switches to a new phase every time you deplete one of his health bars.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Null & Void, a large multi-path level made in collaboration between several different devteam members, as well as a few guests from the entry levels..
• Visual Pun: cheez8's Tier X level "Coyote Man". Instead of a traditional boss, it features the coyote from Looney Tunes in a capsule fight. It's a Wile E. Capsule.
• The Voice: Humorously done with Kalinka, who is only seen wearing a rather convincing Concrete Man costume.
• Unexpected Shmup Level:
  • Before entering the Wily Star II proper, you have to use a spaceship made up of the energy elements you've collected to breach the Star itself. This time, your weapons are slightly modified in order to work in space.
  • This happens again at the end of Wily 6, where you use a super-charged spaceship to fight the Final Boss.
• Unexplained Recovery: Despite being caught in a malfunctioning escape pod while the Wily Star II imploded, Dr. Wily is alive and well in one of the Dojo's rooms. Granted, he did get out of bad scrapes before and is a series staple.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight:
  • No one seems to be too alarmed about the presence of a Wily-themed fast food restaurant (except Tornado Man, who tolerates this after having tried the food).
  • Door Man and Lord Elewoofro are the only Tier bosses that Mega Man doesn't comment on.
  • MaGMML1's Zero's ascension into the heavens after his battle strangely isn't commented on.
• Vanity License Plate: Wily Machine SWORD has one on its back that reads "B4D BOYZ".
• Wake-Up Call Boss:
  • The Tier 5 boss Lord Elewoofro is the point where the game stops holding its punches (regarding the Tier bosses, anyway).
  • After you empty Vanguard's health bar in Wily stage 0, it deftly demonstrates that the castle boss fights won't be typical this time around.
• Wall of Text: ACESpark lampshades that his judge comments are like LoTR in length. Whenever they're not being comics, that is.
• "Wanted!" Poster: "Sheriff Man" has several around the stage, featuring Mega Man and Proto Man's mugshots.
• Weirdness Magnet: Sanct thinks that the player character is one of these. Not that his words should be taken seriously.
• Wrap Around: Present in Yggdrasil and the Tier 6 hub.
• Zero-Effort Boss: Peterdun's level "Combust Man" features the titular Robot Master... who just stands there and goes down in a single shot. He still deals Collision Damage, however, which can catch you off guard if you were foolish enough to run into him thinking he was an NPC. Interestingly, he does have damage data for Mega Man's weapons...he takes 28 damage or more from all of them.

---

Side games:

Make a Good 24 Hour Mega Man Level

• Anti-Frustration Features: While Super Arm still requires finding a block in the level to pick up and throw, it's no longer limited to blocks designed specifically for Super Arm; the Junk Blocks from Mega Man 3 and Chill Man ice blocks from Mega Man 10 can also be used by Super Arm, and will work the same as a regular Super Arm block.
• Author Appeal: One of the judges, CreshMan, seems to love Super Arm blocks and his comments always have him disappointed when levels don't have them. In his Wily stage, there are a ton of Super Arm blocks to toss around, even though they're not the main gimmick.
• Balance Buff: Water Wave can now be used in the air, slightly strengthening its ability to defeat enemies compared to Mega Man 5.
• Boss Arena Urgency: The Quick Man battle in Breaking Ground takes place over the ice blocks from Chill Man's stage, which easily break under the weight of Mega Man and Quick Man, and are easily destroyed by Mega Man's projectiles. Fortunately, there are enough rows of blocks that the battle likely won't end before reaching the bottom. If Mega Man does reach the bottom, however, he will be greeted by a floor made entirely of Wanaan traps, which can kill him within seconds.
• Bottle Episode: A private contest that only allowed use of devkit enemies and gimmicks, with a mere six entries.
• Multi-Mook Melee:
  • The last obstacle in Air Trick before the boss is a room where Mega Man must wait for two Yoku Blocks covering the next room's entrance to disappear, warding off constantly-spawning Lyrics while he waits.
  • Breaking Ground features vertical auto-scroll segments where Mega Man rides an "elevator" while avoiding Space Metalls. One such elevator is also covered with Spring Heads, and another is made out of Wanaan traps.
• Mythology Gag: The pause menu is modeled after the first two Mega Man games.
• No Plot? No Problem!: The game doesn't bother connecting the entries together with a plot, nor does it explain the Wily levels.
• No-Sell: Spring Heads are immune to all weapons except for Super Arm, and even then the weapon can only destroy them if the block hasn't already split up. Because Super Arm is so situational, this means there are several areas in the game where Spring Heads are outright unbeatable due to a lack of Super Arm blocks in the vicinity. Fortunately, they can still be frozen with Chill Spike, which can even make them fall off the elevators in Breaking Ground. Spring Heads are also less of a problem after unlocking the extra weapon sets, which include Slash Claw, a weapon that can reliably take out Spring Heads in one shot.
• Sequential Boss: The Wily Machine Arc has four phases, each based on a Robot Master who's weak to one of the four Special Weapons.

Make a Good Mega Man Level: Episode Zero

• Absurd Cutting Power: The Cutter Chip can be equipped by Zero, and is the first one obtained. Its weapons focus on returning projectiles.
• A Day in the Limelight: The game serves as one for Zero.
• An Ice Person: The Icicle Chip imbues Zero's weapons with ice. It slows Zero down, but can grant him powerful abilities, like shooting icicles from his Z-Saber or creating an ice shield that floats on water.
• Anti-Air:
  • The shockwave pillar that the Zap Saber creates is incredibly good at hitting enemies directly above him.
  • Similarly, Psycho Burst's spread shot is deadliest at the height of its arc, where the dense cluster of bullets can shred anything that doesn't have Mercy Invincibility.
• Anti-Frustration Features: For those who don't want to play as the Joke Character "goblin silhouette" Zero is in MaGMML canon, new saves can be started with the Original Costume, which more closely reflects his actual appearance in the Mega Man X games.
• Ascended Extra: The very minor scientist NPC who created the Tier 1 hub world in MaGMML2 returns in this game, and is given more focus in the story as well as her own character portrait. Her name is Sophie Hyde, and you can call her on your Z-Phone and have her explain how your various weapons and chips work.
• Astral Finale: The last level before you obtain the Psycho chip is a very literal version of Space Jam, taking place in a space station with the decor of a sports arena.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: The final boss of the Ultimate Choice descends wearing Lingering Will's armor and wielding its Keyblade as Rage Awakened starts playing... and then the armor busts open to reveal the true final boss: Gamestop Duck, whose moveset is a hybrid of Lingering Will's and X-series Zero's.
• Balance, Power, Skill, Gimmick: The Chips serve as a variant. No chips, Cutter Chip, and Flame Chip are balanced in their own ways^note Chipless and Cutter are good in many situations and last longer than all the other chips, while Flame provides slight buffs to everything; Icicle grants powerful attacks at the cost of slower movement; Zap gives a speed boost, but lasts shorter and its attacks are less reliable; and the Psycho Chip is the oddball, with strange weapons compared to the others in addition to a curious floating gimmick.
• Boring Yet Practical:
  • The Cutter chip. It lasts longer than the other chips, its Saber can be used in midair for a multidirectional rolling slash, and the Cutter Drive is great for hitting shielded enemies and ones positioned at weird angles.
  • Flame as well, which gives its weapons straight buffs more than new properties. Flame Buster shoots fast bullets that follow the same trajectory, while the Flame Saber has an extended reach that makes it easier to hit things.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Quick Man, one of Wily's strongest Robot Masters, spends most of his day lounging around the beach outside Entrance Succession and letting the Octobulb inside the facility manage everything for him.
• Buffy Speak: Owing to Galaxy Man's rather spacey nature, his Z-Phone hints for finding CDs all involve this. Not that they aren't helpful once you're in the right spot, however.
• But Thou Must!: When Galaxy Man asks for Zero's help to stop the rampaging construction robots in the future Pit of Pits, Zero's reply options are "I can help!" "Leave it to me!" "I'll handle this!" and "No problem!".
• The Cameo:
  • Silver the Hedgehog makes an appearance during the ending credits, as well as various characters that showed up in MaGMML2.
  • The True Final Boss is the GameStop Duck, the subject of an 2017 image macro showing a duck in a GameStop store. To make things a little more challenging, he's armed with the Lingering Will's Keyblade.
• Canon Welding: The Wargates from Scooby Doc 4 are revealed to be Genesis Portals left over from the events of Worlds Unite.
• Cheat Code: At least four that can be entered in the file selection screen (the Konami Code removes their effects):
  • New Game Plus: Select a new file and enter Left, Right, Up, Down, Right, Right, Left, Left.
  • Start as Hooded Zero: Select a new file and enter Up, Down, Up, Down, Up, Up, Up, Up, Down, Down, Down.
  • Black Zero: Select a file and enter WS-Left, WS-Right, WS-Left, Down, Up, Left, Left, Down, Right, Up, Up, Down, Left, Up (the "WS" stands for "Weapon Switch"). You learn the code for this by completing Knives' quest.
  • Ultimate Mode: Select a file and enter Down, Right, Left, Up, WS-Right, WS-Left, WS-Right, Down.
  • True Black Zero: Select a file and enter the code for Black Zero, but replace the final input with a Down instead of an Up.
• Combat Haircomb: Knives wears a knife in her hair. According to the secret call spot in Lightningrod Lab, she glued it in place to keep it from falling out.
• Continuity Cavalcade: The Robot Museum that can be visited at the end of Chapter 1. Ra Moon, Xander Payne, a reference to the Sub-Tank, it's all there. The cherry on the top is the television screen, which is a hyper-extended version of Mega Man 9's own continuity cavalcade Wily defeat montage. Episode Zero's version includes defeats from The Wily Wars, V, Challenger from the Future (substituting Wily with Mega Man Shadow), 9's own sequence (as well as ones from 10 and 11), and sequences from multiple fangames (specifically Super Fighting Robot, Revolution, 42, Revenge of the Fallen, Rocks, Sunrise, Unlimited, Rock Force (substituting Wily with Justice Man), and √-1) before ending with the sequence from the first MaGMML game.
• Disc-One Final Dungeon: SRARA HQ, the final area of Chapter 2. Despite it being the headquarters of the game's aforementioned Big Bads, Zero ends up facing Duo at the end of the level as SRARA have already fled to Tier X by the time Zero arrived.
• Double Subversion: The cutscene for the infamous Zero reveal at the end of MaGMML1 is in this game, but you can double subvert it into having the silhouette belong to the X-series Zero by selecting his costume when loading a new game.
• Early Game Hell: The first couple of stages are filled to the brim with Bottomless Pits and difficult platforming challenges, when you're still trying to get used to Zero's moveset and playstyle, especially with the lack of weapons until half-way through Surveillance Canyon. Things start to get more manageable by the time you get to the stage Defeat The Giant Spear Man, after which is then followed by a plot-based boss fight that ends with the Cutter chip and Blank Drive unlocked.
• Easter Egg:
  • Eddie appears exactly twice in the game. His first appearance is in Frosty Fields, encased in an ice block. His second one is in the credits scene depicting the festival... but, only if you freed him from the ice that first time.
  • The Z-Phone has many secret phone numbers that can be accessed if the player manually inputs a 4-digit code. For example, one number that players tend to call first is 69, which earns them a response that sarcastically congratulates them for their sense of humor.
  • Fighting Fefnir has a rare chance to spawn taking the appearance of a blob form, a-la Zero's canonical appearance in this series.
• Emergency Weapon: Downplayed. Zero's default Z-Buster is suggested to be weak compared to the Mega Buster, primarily due to its slow-moving bullets. However, it also offers some merits that the Mega Buster lacks, such as an extra onscreen shot and slight aiming capabilities.
• Failed a Spot Check: The Amoeba Droid's description states that "none of its data matches up with any known signs of it being a Dr. Wily creation", despite Eggman's logo being very clearly replaced with Dr. Wily's logo on its sprite.
• 555: All of the Z-Phone numbers start with this.
• Flunky Boss: The semi-final boss Unununium creates Wargates, which summon forth bosses from Mega Man: Square Root of -1 and Scooby Doc 4 in randomly-selected pairs: Illuminati with Ford Taurus, Angry Sun with Thomas, Doodlebob with Slam Man, and Toss Tortoise with Non-Human.
• Guide Dang It!: The postgame content, which starts with a mysterious note found in Mega City's Chateau Chevaleresque requesting you to call the writer, but leaving you to guess the phone number — using sources outside the game as hints.^note Said sources are certain tweets from the MaGMML Twitter account leading up to the game's release. From there, you need to find specific spots in every level to call the character Knives (not to be confused with Knives Chau from Scott Pilgrim) and progress the sidequest. As per usual, Tropes Are Tools; here, it's used to encourage community participation in finding the most obscure locations that you'd need to get to.
• Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: The levels tend to put a lot of strain on Zero's enhanced platforming abilities, encouraging a fast, reckless playstyle that can get him killed easily. Bosses, on the other hand, fall to Zero's attacks fairly quickly if one exploits their weaknesses to deal massive damage.
• I Just Want to Be Badass: The main driving force for Zero is to become a hero, and ultimately to fight against Mega Man once again.
• Infinity +1 Sword:
  • The Double Jump upgrade, which can trivialize many of the platforming sections. It doesn't become available in the shop until Zero returns to Dr. Wily's Secret Bunker to investigate sudden tremors though, and even then, it costs an astounding 999 bolts.
  • Also, the Giga Crush, which you obtain from beating all five Golem Optional Bosses. It's a full-screen nuke that deals heavy damage to bosses, if not one-shotting them, but necessitates beating every level from Chapter 2.
• Laser Blade: One of Zero's most powerful weapons is the Z-Saber, a short-ranged one that can pierce through enemy shields.
• Marathon Level: The final level is this, as it's Null and Void again, this time with seven floors and five levels to choose from on each (except for the final floor which only has four). Once you get through that, you have to deal with a three-part Boss Rush — the four members of SRARA back to back (in random order), Unununium, and finally, Zero and Duo teaming up to fight Trio.
• Mickey Mousing: The first freefall segment of Explosive Freefall is synchronized to the music, unless the player pauses or plays the game with a slow framerate — both of which will desynchronize the game to the music.
• Missing Mission Control: Towards the end of Chapter 2, you can no longer call Dr. Wily on the Z-Phone, since by this point Wily has gone crazy and Zero had realized he doesn't really care about him, deciding to challenge Mega Man himself. After beating the game, however, Dr. Wily will once again become available on the phone.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: After getting fed up with trying to make the Reality Core project work and leaving for an impromptu vacation, Wily suddenly returns crazier than ever, scaring off all of his loyal bots. When Zero tries to reach out to him, the mad doctor doesn't even recognize Zero or remember their quest to gather Energy Elements for him (along with seemingly not remembering that he'd even been on vacation in the first place) and dismisses them. Feeling spurned and cast off (and not noticing the signs that Wily is suddenly acting Not Himself), Zero cuts ties with Wily right there, resolving to focus on stopping SRARA instead.
• Musical Nod: The final boss's theme is a medley containing riffs from Trio's boss fights from Proto Man's Return and Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch, as well as Duo.exe's theme from Mega Man Battle Network.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The music for the rest areas The Ultimate Challenge are all songs associated with Zero, such as the intro stage theme for Mega Man X where his very first appearance is, the famous X vs Zero theme, and Mega Man ZX's final level theme.
  • Two of the cheat codes listed under that trope's example are based off of Zero's appearance when using similar cheats in his playable appearances.
  • X series:
    • Using Giga Crush briefly transforms Zero into his Absolute Zero form if he's using the Mega Man Xtreme costume. If he's using the hasty costume, he briefly turns into Zero Soul from MaGMML1R instead.
    • Steel Massimo appears as a database CD, here reimagined as a comic book character.
  • Zero series:
    • One of Pirate Man's calls advocates giving Pirate Man credit card details, or Zero won't be able to stop Ragnarok.
    • If you call Yamato Man while fighting Mega Man 2 NETA from Null and Void, Zero proclaims he's a god of destruction, one of Omega's most famous lines.
    • Fighting Fefnir makes an appearance, and his CD notes that he enjoys hanging out with Splash Woman and Tornado Man, an allusion to their Expy status of Leviathan and Harpuia. Cementing the joke further, Tornado Man says that he had a dream about leading an army and working with "a creepy version of Mega Man". One Pirate Man's broadcasts even talks about them supposedly having a ghostly fourth member of their group, appropriately called Phantom.
• Noodle Incident: Wily, Stern and Knives all remark that Gusty Gorge used to be a great picnic spot, until some unspecified incident happened that completely ruined it. It's not elaborated on what exactly happened, but it resulted in the infestation of all the robot flying squirrel enemies you fight there.
• Nostalgia Level/Call-Forward: As an Interquel for the MaGMML series, several stages are explicitly based off of original stages from both 1 and 2:
  • "Kingdom Crisis" is a Mario World-themed level based off of "Mega Man World" from 1. Agent Krantz even confirms they're set in the same location.
  • "Abandoned Lab" could be considered a precursor to "Ruined Lab", as both are based off of Wily's dilapidated lair from Mega Man 3 and feature the same boss.
  • "Recoil Recon" and "Lightningrod Lab" are both remakes of levels from the first contest ("Sunset Siege" and "Thunderclyffe Plant", respectively) with new gimmicks to play with.
  • "Midnight Aurora" is a twofer, being a mashup of "Midnight Snow" from 1 and "Aurora Man" from 2.
  • "Metropolitan Neapolitan" is a high-speed action-packed sequel to the second contest's "Neapolitan Man", and even starts in original level's boss room before dropping you onto Neapolitan Man's delivery fleet.
  • "Entrance Succession"'s weird name is a play on "Escape Sequence"'s, and shares the same sort of speed boost mechanic.
  • "Stormy Spire" begins as a remake of 2's much-maligned "Airflow Hubble".
  • "Cursor Corruption" is an obvious extension to "Cursor Curse".
  • "Ghouls n' Ghasts" is a throwback to "Goblins n' Ghasts", the first level of Tier X.
  • "Toxic Tunnels" is based off of Snoruntpyro's fortress level from 2, "Water Ducts".
  • Both "Ice Breaker" and "Code Landfill" are corrupted versions of, respectively, "Breaking Ground" and "Pollution Park" levels from the Make a Good 24-Hour Mega Man Level side contest, with the latter having also been haphazardly fused together with "Mario Land". Both feature remixed bosses from MaG24HRMML's fortress stages as well.
  • "Lily Airpad" is set in the construction yard containing Toad Man's not-yet-finished airship from "Hardcore Parkour", though in a much more non-linear fashion. Two of the CDs even require you to traverse some incomplete sections of the original level backwards.
• Not-Actually-Cosmetic Award: The purchasable costume from Dr. Wily's base that makes Zero resemble his Mega Man Xtreme sprites has a slight difference from the base costume: he holds out his buster to shoot, while normal Zero's bullets come from where his mouth is.
• Optional Boss: The Golems, giant elemental droids each themed after one of Zero's Drive Chips that can be fought as random encounters on the world map at a certain point. Defeating one upgrades the corresponding Chip's energy efficiency and defeating all of them allows Dr. Hyde to upgrade Zero's Blank Drive into a devastating screen clearing attack.
• Playable Epilogue: After beating the game, all the NPCs return to the Wily Bunker, and Wily himself can be talked to again in person and over the phone. Notably, this has been stated to be non-canon and happens for gameplay reasons (namely, livening up the Wily Bunker and re-enabling Wily's phone commentary so it's not Permanently Missable Content).
• Playing with Fire: Zero can equip the Flame Chip, which imbues his weapons with fire. In terms of gameplay, it emphasizes raw power over everything else and makes Zero move a little faster.
• Psychic Powers: The Psycho Chip imbues Zero's weapons with psychokinetic energy. It makes Zero move slower and fall slower, and has weapons that travel in unique paths or have strange abilities.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • The Wily Robots flee Wily's bunker once his Reality Core starts, leaving only Reggae as the shopkeeper. They come back once Null and Void are finished.
  • After obtaining what he wanted from Knives, Zero promptly teleports away from her before they can start their "date".
• Shock and Awe: The Zap Chip imbues Zero's weapons with electricity. Some of his weapons gain a stunning effect from it.
• Spread Shot: Zero's second new weapon is the Z-Burst, which fires out a spread of four powerful, long-ranged projectiles.
• Stealth Pun: The final boss in the game is a two-versus-one fracas between Zero and Duo against Trio. There's a strong Numerical Theme Naming pattern, but "Solo" is missing... except, the boss just before, Unununium, fills being number one in two ways: the "un" in its name is similarly pronounced to the word for "one" in multiple Latin-based languages, and the real-world element it references^*Which was renamed to Roentgenium in 2004 has the atomic number "111".
• Stylistic Suck:
  • There's a setting in the options that disables Zero's animations, reflecting on his lack of any real animation in the other MaGMML games. Works best with the Hasty Costume.
  • Unununium is a big, badly-drawn MS-Paint doodle of a purple Energy Element.
• Tuckerization: Sophie Hyde's name is derived from the chemical "Sodium Hydroxide"; one of the Megamix Engine's developers goes by the username "NaOH", the formula of said chemical.
• Villain Protagonist: Zero isn't malicious, but he works for Dr. Wily, collecting Energy Elements and assisting with the plan to build the Reality Core. He later pulls a Heel–Face Turn and betrays Wily, and decides to hunt down SRARA and use the Energy Elements to challenge Mega Man.
• Voice with an Internet Connection: Towards the end of Chapter 1, Zero receives the Z-Phone, which he can use to call up to seven different characters. The numbers for Wily, Hyde, and Krantz are automatically added as the story progresses, but the numbers for Galaxy Man and Yamato Man need to be earned by clearing "Construction of Constructions" and "Mojo Dojo" respectively, you can get Pirate Man's number by simply talking to him at Chateau Chevaleresque, and Knives' number is tied to the postgame Side Quest detailed above under Guide Dang It!:
  • Dr. Wily gives a general description of the level you're currently in, often involving the backstory of the location.
  • Dr. Hyde details your currently equipped Chip and how it interacts with your weapons.
  • Agent Krantz outlines the current level's obstacles and enemies.
  • Galaxy Man provides hints for getting the CDs.
  • Yamato Man gives strategies for the current boss you're fighting.
  • Pirate Man has generally inane rambling, though once in a while he does provide a helpful gameplay tip (like Horizon Zero and Metropolitan Neapolitan being good currency grinding locations).
  • And, last but not least, Knives generally assesses the specific spots you call her from, determining if they're appropriate according to her ideas for the greatest date in history.
• Unwinnable Joke Game: Mega Man himself is selectable in both the Boss Gallery and Custom Arena menus. Attempting to 'fight' him in both cases results in the same "Five minutes later" skip card from the beginning of the game... only this time resulting in Zero's death. The Boss Gallery rates his difficulty as 15 stars (on a five star scale), and the Custom Arena even makes fun of this by instantly ramping the music to the highest level and offering a 3000 bolt reward if you include him alone in the lineup.
• Womb Level: The penultimate level of the Psycho route is In The Flesh, which takes place inside the body of an enormous whale.
• Yandere: Knives, a little girl with a knife on her head, who's so scary that, after giving Zero the cheat code to unlock Black Zero, he promptly teleports away and she gets so pissed that the game restarts.

Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level

• Anti-Frustration Features: Skip teleporters return from the main contests, allowing players to skip to the end of levels with glitchy and/or frustrating mechanics.
• Breakout Mook Character: Instead of Robot Masters, the NPCs are almost exclusively just basic enemies. All of the questgivers are this for having unique designs that stand out against their generic versions, as do the Box Cartel.
• Call-Back: M-Jacq's review of "Space Pipes" is exactly the same as Duvi0's review of "Mega Man World" from the first contest. There, Duvi0 was responding to the in-game message that "i hope i win" with "You probably did!!" Here, M-Jacq is responding to the creator's message that "I HOPE I LOSE!" with "You probably did."
• Developer's Foresight:
  • If the conditions of the certain sidequest challenges were met before meeting with the NPC in question, said NPC will acknowledge the fact and give the prize to the player.
  • Unlike in MaGMML2, every playable character has its own dialogue. Proto Man is written as a no-nonsense free spirit and gritty loner, while Bass is an arrogant and selfish jerkass.
  • Speaking of Proto Man and Bass, they can't eqiup any costumes.
• Dual Boss: Certain entries have you fighting two different official bosses at once, like Air Man and Wood Man or two Punks.
• King Mook: All of the members of the Box Cartel are enemies from the classic Mega Man series but beefed up into bosses (or in the case of Square Machine and Atetemino, harder bosses), and they all have identifying features to set them apart from other robots of their ilk.
• Marathon Level: Cartel Hideout 3, "Pandora's Parlor" may take roughly an hour on the first playthrough. The player has to face every single member of Box Cartel all over again, but with a twist: before each showdown, Mega Man has to get through "slot machine sections" which randomly generate 3 different rooms based on the mainline simulations. Not only that, but the final boss also has mini-levels during his fight between phases. Thankfully, you don't have to finish this monstrosity in one sitting - the game automatically keeps the progress after each encounter with a particular Box Cartel member.
• Mood Whiplash: "Mega Man Saves Canada from the Evil Clutches of" is a standard Mega Man level for the most part... and then you take the teleporter to the final stretch of the level. The music cuts out, there's a giant picture of a jester outside the boss room, and the boss itself, "The City of St. Petersburg" is a jester that dies in one hit, with nonsensical "dialog" in the corner of the screen.
• Nonstandard Game Over: After beating the game, you gain access to the captain's quarters of the SS Elroy. The captain makes note of the vat of flammable oil stored in the room — guess what happens if you hit it with Flame Mixer.
• One-Hit Kill: One of the upgrades, Smite, allows Mega Man to destroy every type of Metall with a single shot - and it doesn't matter with which weapon. It also works against Giant Metall Cannon and even Metall Daddy!
• Optional Boss:
  • The final sidequest, "Goody Two-Shoes", has you fighting the Shadow Impostor that you run into the at the beginning of the quest. Defeating it gives you access to the Beat Saber.
  • After beating the game, a room opens on the ship where you can get coordinates to fight Pirate Man, now with four health bars and the ability to steal your weapons and use them against you.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After beating the final boss, all of the Box Cartel members decide to gang up on Mega Man, and he teleports away while they try to beat him up. This leads to both the Cartel and the Fake Men squad assuming him to be dead.
• Shout-Out:
  • Master Reddorgold is essentially Gordon Ramsay in robot form.
  • A set of four NPCs from Tier 3 (Metall, Tosanaizer V, Shell'n, and Baccone) have pun-based names derived from the culinary competition host and judges of Chopped - Ted Allen, Chris Santos, Alex Guarnaschelli and Scott Conant respectively.
  • One of the kitchen guardians goes "STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM!" if he spots Mega Man.
• Spectacular Spinning: The Balance Stabilizer upgrade is a Joke Item that lets the player spin on the spot wherever they want. Including during cutscenes.
• Stealth-Based Mission: Focus for one of the sidequests. Mr. Bol'o of the Double Action Boutique wants to make a favorite dish of the famous Golden Chef, Master Reddorgold. However, it needs to be cooked with flames; thus Mega Man needs to secretly get past security of the kitchen and finish the dish using Flame Mixer. If the guards spot you, they simply kick you back to the beginning of the section.
• Stealth Pun: The game taking place on a cruise ship named "SS Elroy" is this as well as a Tuckerization to one of the game's programmers, Cruise Elroy.
• Stylistic Suck: Super Maks 64's level "Space Pipes" was submitted to the contest with the express purpose of trying to get last place, and it succeeded, due to its bizarre gravity gimmick ^note the one that appears in portions of Mega Man 9's third Wily stage, but applied to the entire level and (purposely) being submitted extremely late.
• The Mafia: The members of Box Cartel in a nutshell.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: The Balance Stabilizer gets used for exactly one practical purpose: allowing the player to win the Waste Race. The only other function it does is let the player spin on the spot.
• Turns Red: Blocky gets a second, much larger form just when you're about to beat him... but it doesn't restore his health, so a single shot with any weapon is enough to finish him off.
• Truer to the Text: The game tries to write Mega Man closer to how he is in canon, rather than the snarky, destruction-prone unfazed everyman he is in past MaGMML games. Same goes for Proto Man and Bass in their respective game modes.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: The first stage of Cartel Hideout, "Deep Sea Break-In", is a Shoot-em-Up instead of a usual platformer, with much more focus on navigating around level design obstacles compared to MaGMML2's similar first fortress stage.

---