History ThatOneLevel / MegaMan

* Dark Mantis's stage, Pitch Black. Not only is it ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, the only way to collect half the items involves turning on the power, which requires you to first defeat Gigavolt Man-o-war ''and'' bring Axl along in order to copy one of the Guardroid enemies to get into the power room. Outside of that, there's also spotlights, which seal off exits if you're caught in them and summon more enemies.

* Elec Man's stage starts you off with a room full of Gabyoalls: enemies you can't kill with your primary weapon but only stun temporarily, that also move very quickly and unpredictably, charging you the moment you're on the same floor as them. Thanks to the way the platforms are placed (they're solid with a low ceiling and line up perfectly with each other, so that you have to jump off the ''very'' edge of each to make it to the next so you don't hit your head on the ceiling), you're almost guaranteed to take a few hits before getting out of the room, and newer players can struggle to even accomplish that. If you have the Hyper Bomb, Rolling Cutter, or are playing the stage again with the Thunder Beam, Once you've passed that point, you have the real meat of the stage, which is ladder-climbing. This is not a good thing to be the meat of a stage, as it locks Mega Man into slow, vertical movement where he's bordering on a sitting duck. It also leads to the stage having an almost completely vertical "tower"-like design, where missing a jump can lead to Mega Man falling through several screens, erasing prior progress. There's also a second fork where you can take the easier right path, only to end up stopped by a block in the ceiling [[YankTheDogsChain ''at the end'' and not the beginning]] of the pathway that forces you to use Elec Man's weapon ''and'' the Magnet Beam to pass. Add in the infamous placement of the Magnet Beam requiring you to have the Super Arm to obtain, and you have one poorly-regarded level: it, along with Guts Man and the Yellow Devil fight, formed the inspiration for the fan song and animation [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCBmT3g774g "I Won't Sleep Until I Clear It."]]

* Air Man's stage is a pain, too. For the first part of the level, you have to jump on Goblins/Air Tikis. When you are standing on one of them, the [[LedgeBats constantly spawning Petit Goblins]] combined with the drills coming out of the sides of its head means that jumping off unscathed is hard. What's worse, later in the level, you have to jump from one to another consecutively. Then there's those [[ShockAndAwe Kaminami Goros/Lightning Lords]] that you have to kill and then ride on their very small cloud platforms, and all those [[GoddamnedBats Pipis and their Copipis]]. Finally, there's a few big Fan Man enemies that push you away or suck you closer, forcing you to move to resist the current, and destroying one can send you slipping to your death.

* Heat Man's stage starts out easy and short but then becomes an absolute pain after the checkpoint, there's an EXTREMELY long PlatformHell of Yoku blocks, most of which is over BottomlessPits. There's first a bunch that appear above each other and are needed to climb walls and hop over pits while [[GoddamnedBats Tellys]] try to knock you into them. At two points in the very long last stretch, the next block appears directly over your head, forcing either a well-timed and prepared jump or a fall to your death, which really doesn't help when this level in particular has ''two different speeds'' at which blocks show up. You WILL die the first time you encounter this (since you can't see it coming when most of this section is hanging over a [[OneHitKill floor of lava and BottomlessPits), so you have to ''memorize its'' placement and the timing for when it appears[[note]]It comes after a section of blocks appearing at a slower rhythm for a while, then suddenly appears on a quicker beat to throw you off even more.[[/note]]. If you don't have the Item-2 acquired by defeating Air Man so you can fly under the entire thing, things can get ugly.[[note]]The memetic "Can't Beat Air Man" song starts its narrative from the player being frustrated at this part of the level, so he goes to fight Air Man to get the Item-2 so he can cheese this segment. But as we all know...[[/note]]

* Heat Man's stage can be very rough if you try to tackle it early on, because after the checkpoint, there's an EXTREMELY long PlatformHell of Yoku blocks, most of which is over BottomlessPits. At two points, the next one appears directly over your head, forcing either a pixel-perfect jump or a fall to your death. If you don't have the Item-2 acquired by defeating Air Man so you can fly under the entire thing, things can get ugly.[[note]]The memetic "Can't Beat Air Man" song starts its narrative from the player being frustrated at this part of the level, so he goes to fight Air Man to get the Item-2 so he can cheese this segment. But as we all know...[[/note]]
* Air Man's stage is a pain, too. For the first part of the level, you have to jump on Goblins/Air Tikis. When you are standing on one of them, the [[LedgeBats constantly spawning Petit Goblins]] combined with the drills coming out of the sides of its head means that jumping off unscathed is hard. What's worse, later in the level, you have to jump from one to another consecutively. Then there's those [[ShockAndAwe Kaminami Goros/Lightning Lords]] that you have to kill and then ride on their very small cloud platforms, and all those [[GoddamnedBats Pipis and their Copipis]].

* In the Doc Robot revisit of Needle Man's stage, right after killing Doc Air Man, you come across a long Rush Jet section with Parasyus and Yanbows coming from all sides trying to knock you off into the BottomlessPits. If you die during it, you have to start back at the beginning of the section, and if your energy is too low, you may have to GameOver to refill it.

* Elec Man's stage starts you off with a room full of Gabyoalls: enemies you can't kill with your primary weapon, that also move very quickly and unpredictably, charging you the moment you're on the same floor as them. Thanks to the way the platforms are placed, you're almost guaranteed to take a few hits before getting out of the room, and newer players can struggle to even accomplish that. Once you've passed that point, you have the real meat of the stage, which is ladder-climbing. This is not a good thing to be the meat of a stage, as it locks Mega Man into slow, vertical movement where he's bordering on a sitting duck. It also leads to the stage having an almost completely vertical "tower"-like design, where missing a jump can lead to Mega Man falling through several screens, erasing prior progress. Add in the infamous placement of the Magnet Beam requiring you to have the Super Arm to obtain, and you have one poorly-regarded level: it, along with Guts Man and the Yellow Devil fight, formed the inspiration for the fan song and animation [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCBmT3g774g "I Won't Sleep Until I Clear It."]]

* End Area 1, 3, and 4 are absolute hell to navigate. They consist mainly of labyrinthine passages that all look the same and have almost no landmarks (save the pagoda in the third area). On top of that, they're all notably larger than any area so far, and the third and fourth throw in ''one-way conveyors''. Additionally, End Area 1 has an ''invisible path'', which is the only way to get to BonusBoss [=LarkMan=].

* While the two snowboarding sections of Frost Man's stage can be tricky, they're nothing compared to the one that primarily makes up Wily Tower Stage 1. It's ''much'' faster, it has a much denser enemy population, and has lots of very tight jumps and slides to escape certain death, with your only assistance being the [[AnnoyingVideoGameHelper infamous cues]]. The last jump in particular is especially nasty, as it's so wide that you'll need to move forward a good distance in midair to avoid just barely missing it. It's a common strategy to use [[SmartBomb Astro Crush]] to let yourself hang in the air and avoid doing risky jumps, but it only has 4 uses (6 with the Energy Saver), and if you use it at the wrong time, you'll get squished at the left side of the screen by a wall. After the snowboarding, you still need to go through a precarious series of [[GrapplingHookPistol Thunder Claw]] swinging over a {{Bottomless Pit|s}} to get to the (not hard, but still annoying) GoddamnedBoss at the end, Atetemino. And if you die, [[CheckPointStarvation back to the very beginning]]!

* Elec Man's stage starts you off with a room full of Gabyoalls: enemies you can't kill with your primary weapon, that also move very quickly and unpredictably, charging you the moment you're on the same floor as them. Thanks to the way the platforms are placed, you're almost guaranteed to take a few hits before getting out of the room, and newer players can . Once you've passed that point, you have the real meat of the stage, which is ladder-climbing. This is not a good thing to be the meat of a stage, as it locks Mega Man into slow, vertical movement where he's bordering on a sitting duck. It also leads to the stage having an almost completely vertical "tower"-like design, where missing a jump can lead to Mega Man falling through several screens, erasing prior progress. Add in the infamous placement of the Magnet Beam requiring you to have the Super Arm to obtain, and you have one poorly-regarded level: it, along with Guts Man and the Yellow Devil fight, formed the inspiration for the fan song and animation [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCBmT3g774g "I Won't Sleep Until I Clear It."]]

* The second X-Hunter stage, while mercifully short, is nonetheless filled with absurdly long spike pits requiring precision use of the Crystal Hunter weapon, which seals enemies and allows them to be used as platforms. The terrible bit is that only so many enemies can spawn on-screen at any given time, and are literal GoddamnBats that both charge for X's position and can be easily missed by the comparatively slow-moving Crystal Hunter projectile. You may find yourself in a position where you can't edge the screen far enough over for any of the enemies to respawn, meaning a suicide on the spikes and restart of the entire level is your only option.

* Snipe Anteator's stage is arguably worse than Hyenard's. For one, the ''entire stage'' is 3D. The stage is crawling with DemonicSpiders in the form of samurai robots that shoot {{Sword Beam}}s [[HitboxDissonance with a way bigger hitbox than one would expect]]. You can only hurt them from behind, and you ''need'' Axl to take them down if you want to rescue all the Reploids, as they're able to go through walls you otherwise can't pass! The second half of the stage also has an annoying GravityScrew gimmick -- each time you flip gravity, [[InterfaceScrew your movement controls flip too]]. [[CameraScrew The camera being more zoomed in while you're upside-down helps absolutely nothing.]] And just like Hyenard above, [[ThatOneBoss Anteator himself is a massive headache]].

* Quick Man's stage is the page picture for a good reason. The signature gimmick of this level is two long vertical drops full of OneHitKill [[EnergyWeapon lasers]] known as Force Beams. While the first one isn't particularly bad and can even get you a bunch of power-ups if you go the right way, the second one is much longer and requires high amounts of precision, where even one mistake can cost you your life. Even afterward, you still have to deal with two Sniper Armors that you can accidentally spawn more of if you're not careful. You can use Flash Man's Time Stopper to freeze the Beams, but it only has one use, and once it's gone, you won't have any to use against [[ThatOneBoss Quick Man]] himself.

* Tornado Man's stage has two brutal segments where you have to navigate on spinning platforms that rotate Mega Man around vertically while running on a back-and-forth track over bottomless pits. Surviving requires not just precise timing, but paying close attention to both the position of the next spinning platform you're trying to jump onto and Mega Man's current position on the platform he's on. Fans of the series will no doubt have flashbacks to Guts Man's stage from ''Videogame/MegaMan1''.

* Tornado Man's stage has two brutal segments where you have to navigate on spinning platforms running on a back-and-forth track over bottomless pits that also rotate Mega Man around vertically. Surviving requires not just precise timing, but paying close attention to both the position of the other moving platform you're trying to jump onto and Mega Man's current position on the platform he's on. Fans of the series will no doubt have flashbacks to Guts Man's stage from ''Videogame/MegaMan1''.