History ScrappyMechanic / MegaMan

* The [[VideoGame/MegaManDOS DOS versions]] have terrible controls. The space bar is used for shooting, but jumping is assigned to the J key. Escape is used to open the weapon menu, but F9 and F10 are used for pausing and quitting, respectively. Finally, 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). The entire control scheme is hell on a player’s fingers; they’re better off using DOSBox to remap the keys to more manageable positions.

** Getting the parts is a scrappy mechanic of itself; getting the ability to USE a lot of them stinks. You have to collect Nightmare Souls to boost your rank, which at certain levels increases the number of parts you can equip. To be able to use three or four parts, you have to collect over 5,000 and the maximum 9,999 souls respectively. The souls however only go for eight per Nightmare Virus (four if you don't grab it before it starts to shrink), 200 per each of the eight Investigators, or a grand total of 600 per [[BonusBoss Dynamo]] encounter if you use his weakness weapon on him. The grind is so tedious and frustrating that many just settle for two parts and a limited upgrade (which only requires 1,200 souls, which even if you go out your way to upgrade both X and Zero separately is very doable before hitting the endgame even if you never fight Dynamo).

* ''VideoGame/MegaMan1'': The lifts in Guts Man's zone play with the controls and can end up (more often than not) dumping the player into BottomlessPits, due to inconsistent timing.

** A specific Zero move, Sentsuizan, is more of an annoyance than a help, given that it's activated pressing UP + Z-Saber button, and it can't be cancelled until Zero lands on the ground again. While not usually a huge deal, the transfer gate in Infinity Mijinion's stage has a segment where the player must cross a massive BottomlessPit by hanging from wires while fighting enemies. Grabbing hold of the wires requires the player to hold up, but attacking while doing so will send Zero plummeting to his death immediately, forcing the player to awkwardly take their finger off the up button anytime they attack. This makes the section almost unplayable as Zero if the Sentsuizan has been obtained.

* The Game Boy variants, ''VideoGame/MegaMan7'', and ''VideoGame/MegaMan8'' force you to beat four of the robot masters first before you can go after the next four. ''VideoGame/MegaManAndBass'' takes this UpToEleven with an odd system that unlocks new stages depending on which ones you beat prior. Saying this mechanic is unpopular would be an understatement as it seriously cripples the ElementalRockPaperScissors theme the franchise is known best for. At least the ''Xtreme'' games on the Game Boy Color gave players an option to tackle any of the eight Mavericks on Extreme Mode after unlocking it.

* ''VideoGame/MegaMan8''

* ''Videogame/MegaManX3''

* ''VideoGame/MegaManXtreme2'':
** Unlike ''X5'' and later games where all characters get special weapons regardless of who defeated the Mavericks, here, it's either X or Zero who gets the weapon, not both. Now, this makes sense in the X and Zero mission modes, but not in Extreme Mode, where both X and Zero are available. Even worse, some power-ups require X and Zero to have proper weapons to acquire. Gave X or Zero the wrong weapon by accident? Too bad, the power-up that required the other character's weapon cannot be obtained.
** Also, X and Zero can buy upgrades from Iris with DNA Souls, with Zero being able to equip up to 3 upgrades and X equipping up to 4 of them...unless X has a full armor, in which case, he can only equip 2 upgrades, whilst Zero can equip 3 regardless if he has a full armor or not.

** Most of Zero's techniques (with the exceptions of Rising and Drill Crush) run off a Weapon Energy meter, which is unusual though not completely unheard of (examples from other games include Giga Attacks, [[VideoGame/MegaManX5 Twin Dream]], [[VideoGame/MegaManX6 Hyoroga]], and Special Weapons Zero shares with X like [[VideoGame/MegaManX5 Dark Hold]] and [[VideoGame/MegaManX6 Yammar Option]]). However, even when Zero's techniques ''do'' use weapon energy, they usually each have their own separate meter. Not so in Xtreme 2; Fish Fang, Fire Wave, Tri-Thunder, Earth Gaizer, Lightning, and Dash all run off ''the same meter'', making it difficult to use multiple techniques without running out of Weapon Energy.
** In Xtreme Mode, whenever X or Zero defeat a Maverick, only the Hunter who defeats the Maverick gets the special weapon or technique. This contrasts with the main series starting with ''VideoGame/MegaManX5'', which have always awarded each Hunter's Special Weapon or Technique upon a Maverick's defeat regardless of who defeated the Maverick, including retroactively in the case of Zero in ''[[VideoGame/MegaManX6 X6]]'' and X in ''[[VideoGame/MegaManX7 X7]]''. Making matters worse, Zero needs Drill Crush and Lightning to get his Arm and Body upgrades, respectively, so he has to be the one to defeat Tunnel Rhino and Wire Sponge if you want to get them. At the very least, you can use save data from a file where you started with one Hunter to unlock his special weapons or techniques in a second file where you start with the other.

* ''Mega Man Legends 2:''

* ''VideoGame/MegaManZero1''

* ''VideoGame/MegaManZero4''

** While the Charge Shot is larger, pierces defeated enemies and takes less time to charge than in ''VideoGame/MegaMan4'', getting hit while charging it will make you lose it. This means that if you're not good at avoiding attacks and don't have/can't use a Robot Master's weakness, the fight just got a lot harder.

** Although Yoku blocks don't appear at all in this game, a similarly disliked gimmick appears with the snowboard in Frost Man's stage and the first stage of Wily's Tower. Depending on who you ask, some consider it to be [[ReplacementScrappy even worse]]. In these sections, you ride on a snowboard at top speed, and you're accompanied by a flying drone that tells you to either "Jump! Jump!" or "Slide! Slide!" right before you need to do such. Though they start off simple, they pick up very quickly (sometimes putting enemies in the mix), and the margin for error continuously becomes more and more thin. There's even a segment in Frost Man's stage where you have to ignore a "Jump! Jump!" command in order to get a bolt. And the faster things get, the more the commands tend to interrupt themselves. There's a good reason why Wily Tower 1 is considered the ThatOneLevel of this game.

** E-Tanks are absent in ''8'' as well as ''VideoGame/MegaManAndBass''. What replaced them in function? The Rush Charger, where Rush flies over the screen, dropping weapon and energy refills. Not only is this completely determined by the RandomNumberGenerator but the powerups are dropped ''gradually'' during whatever fight or action you're in: if you're in a pinch, especially fighting a boss, this is at best going to seriously going to screw you over and at worst get you killed trying to leap for a health pickup.

* ''VideoGame/MegaManX6'': ''X6'' had a slew of bad mechanics due to a rushed development timeframe and no time being spent to iron out or properly integrate any of their ideas. Some are below:

** A specific Zero move, Sentsuizan, is more of an annoyance than a help, given that it's activated pressing UP + Z-Saber button, and it can't be cancelled until Zero lands on the ground again. BottomlessPits below you? Too bad.

* ''Videogame/MegaManX7'': The game continued the trend of terrible design decisions throughout the series' DorkAge. Three bad mechanics in particular all tie into each other to augment their own awfulness.
** The first and most obvious one is that ''X himself is not playable'' due to his TenMinuteRetirement until you either defeat all 8 Maverick bosses, or rescue enough Reploids that you would've played through most of the stages anyway.
** The second is that rescuing Reploids is back, and rather than only being killable by one specific enemy type, they made it even worse by how ''any'' enemy or hazard can now kill them.
** The third is that rescuing certain Reploids provide permanent power-ups that can be permanently allocated to one of the characters you brought into the level - power-ups that ''can't be banked for later use''. If you get them, you ''have'' to use them. This makes ''X's'' late appearance even worse, as unless you know specifically which reploids have those powerups so you can avoid them, X is almost certainly [[CantCatchUp never going to be able to catch up to Zero and Axl.]]

** The Skill level system. When you start the game, Zero can't do a triple slash combo with the Z-Saber or a fully charged shot with the buster. In order to get the weapons to their full potential, you must kill a lot of enemies with that weapon so that you can earn experience points to increase the weapon's level. That would be a good idea if the weapons didn't take forever to level up, since the amount of experience you earn from defeated enemies is determined by Zero's attack. For example, killing an enemy with one Z-Saber slash gives you one experience point, two slashes gives you two and so on. Oh, and if you want to have a chance against [[WakeUpCallBoss Aztec Falcon]], you better grind for experience points for your weapon to reach an acceptable level if you want to beat him. [[SarcasmMode Have fun!]] Thankfully, ''VideoGame/MegaManZero2'' reduces the amount of experience required for your weapons, and by ''VideoGame/MegaManZero3'' and ''VideoGame/MegaManZero4'', this system is scrapped entirely.

** E-Tanks are absent in ''8'' as well as ''VideoGame/MegaManAndBass''. What replaced them in function? The Rush Charger, where Rush flies over the screen, dropping weapon and energy refills. This is completely determined by the RandomNumberGenerator, which, if you're in a pinch, is seriously going to screw you over.

* ''Legends 2'' and its license system. The first game gives you a digger's license, which serves to [[RailRoading railroad]] you in the direction of the plot and is upgraded as the story progresses. The sequel decided to instead make you take a Digger's Exam: a [[TimedMission timed level]] with a ''very'' strict time limit with a weapon loadout that pushes you about as close to a NoGearLevel as the game can get, making for a [[NintendoHard mind-numbingly difficult run]]. Not only are the tests mandatory[[note]]While you can take them early, sooner or later you'll reach a mandatory-to-explore ruin that is above your grade[[/note]], but all the enemies in ''every'' ruin upgrade to [[UndergroundMonkey more powerful versions of themselves]] every time you pass an exam.