Bile Fascination: Pretty much the only reason why people play either is to see if both really are that terrible.
Critical Backlash: Both games have been torn apart by critics and fans for being low-quality takes on the Mega Man gameplay style, but there is a large minority that believe that both games, while not great, are far more playable than many of the worst DOS games.
Volt Man is the most popular Robot Master from the first game, thanks to not falling as far into the creepy Non-Standard Character Design compared to Sonic Man and Dyna Man and standing out more in design.
Shark Man is by far the fan-favorite among the cast of The Robots are Revolting for his cool concept and unique design (at least compared to the rest of the cast), and was the only one to get a NetNavi counterpart in Mega Man Battle Network.
Despite just being a recurring enemy in The Robots are Revolting, Tox Man has garnered recognition for his interesting, almost Robot Master-like design. The presence of a Dummied Out sprite of a forklift being driven by a Tox Man (seemingly for a boss or midboss) has only made this stronger.
Older Than They Think: Both of these games are probably most infamous for their CGA/TGA video modes, which greatly degrades the graphics into four colors, those being black, white, cyan, and magenta. However, it is worth reminding that those were the default colors for CGAnote Tandy can support up to 16 colors with it being planned for the first game, but it was never finished and fell back onto its CGA compatibility.
Once Original, Now Common: While it's easy to mock the games for being a poor take on the Mega Man formula, it's important to remember that in 1990, most PCs simply couldn't handle the kind of fast screen-scrolling required by a game like Mega Man, so the games pulling off horizontal and vertical scrolling as well as they did was actually quite a technical feat at the time (for reference, the first game came out before the original Commander Keen). Stephen Rozner himself explained on The Gaming Historian's video on the Mega Man DOS games that DOS publishers at the time were more interested in getting games out as quickly as possible even if they were terrible. He charitably said that the DOS market was small and a lot of the games being released for it "weren't great" — a lot of people probably would argue that a lot of the games out there for DOS were actually much worse than these two, with only a few exceptions such as games made by id Software and Apogee Software (later 3D Realms). So in a market saturated by games that were much worse, the two Mega Man DOS games were surprisingly playable, and Rozner's studio would later prove their chops by making a surprisingly competent and playable port of Mega Man Xwithout the original source code, meaning they coded it entirely from scratch, with only the audiovisual elements to work with and their publisher pressuring them to get it out the door as quickly as possible.
The space bar is used for shooting, but jumping is assigned to the J key. Good luck getting your fingers in position.
Escape is used to open the weapon menu, but F9 and F10 are used for pausing and quitting, respectively. If you want to pause the game without opening the weapon menu, you better not get them mixed up.
The weapon menu itself doesn't use the arrow keys for selecting a weapon; instead, you have to press the letter key corresponding to the weapon (and E-Tanks in 3).
Worst of all, you can't change these controls unless you're using DOSBox. And even if you map the keys to controller buttons using DOSBox or controller-mapping software like Joy2Key, you still have to deal with the weapon menu.
Self-Fanservice: It's common practice among Mega Man fans to give the Robot Masters more appealing and unique designs, including making them more humanoid (such as by giving Dyna Man a human face behind his mask). One such example was by Snakepixel of Owlboy fame, completely overhauling the nine Robot Masters across the two games and renaming Wave Man, Blade Man, and Oil Man into Buoy Man, Knife Man, and Petrol Man respectively. (Torch Man was later renamed Braze Man when an official Torch Man was designed and unveiled in Mega Man 11).
That One Level: The intro stage. Not for any tricky platforming or anything (the entire level is flat), but because of the sole enemy: a robotic guard dog with an absurd amount of health and strong damage output, leaving running away from it the only option... except the thing can also jump incredibly far, meaning you're going to have to jump at just the right time to avoid damage, if that is even possible. And if you defeat it, it respawns almost immediately, defeating the purpose of trying to fight it.
Hilarious in Hindsight: The game is no stranger to using Robot Master names that would go on to be used in proper Capcom games, but Blade Man takes it to another level; not only does he share his name with a Mega Man 10 character, but both characters have a primarily purple color scheme and a Spread Shot at an upwards angle for their special weapon (though Triple Blade from 10 changes to a downwards angle if used in the air).
that DOS publishers at the time were more interested in getting games out as quickly as possible even if they were terrible. He charitably said that the DOS market was small and a lot of the games being released for it "weren't great" — a lot of people probably would argue that a lot of the games out there for DOS were actually much worse than these two, with only a few exceptions such as games made by id Software and Apogee Software (later 3D Realms). So in a market saturated by games that were much worse, the two Mega Man DOS games were surprisingly playable, and Rozner's studio would later prove their chops by making a surprisingly competent and playable port of Mega Man X without the original source code, meaning they coded it entirely from scratch, with only the audiovisual elements to work with and their publisher pressuring them to get it out the door as quickly as possible.