History YMMV / MegaMan1

* AntiClimaxBoss: Wily Machine 1, which is surprisingly easy compared to [[BossRush the level you had to go through]].

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: This game had incredible graphics, gameplay, and level design for its day, but more than a few fans feel it is highly outdated and that many games in the series have done everything this game did and better, including ''Mega Man X'', ''Mega Man Zero'' and to a lesser extent ''ZX'', due to more gameplay elements and more concrete story elements. However, this is hardly unanimous.

* GameBreaker: [[GameBreaker/MegaMan Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.]]

** Cut Man was popular enough to make it into the Saturn version of ''VideoGame/MegaMan8'' as a BonusBoss. He also appeared in ''VideoGame/MegaManX8'' as ''his original 8-bit self'' (presumably as a hologram) in Optic Sunflower's stage if you have a ''Videogame/MegaManXCommandMission'' Save File on your Memory Card.

* NeverLiveItDown: The [[http://tinyimg.io/i/HtpTX4a.jpg infamously poor US cover]] is an endless source of amusement for every ''Mega Man'' fan. Capcom has since [[AscendedMeme acknowledged its memetic status]] years later, nicknamed him as "Bad Box Art Mega Man," and included him in games like ''VideoGame/MegaManZX Advent'' and ''VideoGame/StreetFighterXTekken''.

* ThatOneLevel: Ice Man's stage, if you're doing it without the Magnet Beam. The first set of annoyances are jumping on disappearing blocks over Gabyoalls, which can only be destroyed with Special Weapons and are low to the ground. Then you have to cross over a large pit with Foot Holders. Not only do they have an unpredictable pattern, but they shoot sideways randomly. If you get hit, not only do you have a high chance of being knocked off, but you can fall right through them. Even if you have the Magnet Beam, the game has a quirk where the top of the screen overflows to the bottom very shortly. If you climb too high, the game thinks you've fallen into a pit. Ice Man's stage is also infamous for the teleporting blocks which, while not fatal, are definitely tedious to navigate.

* GameplayDerailment: The Pause Trick glitch is such an effective way of dealing with enemies and bosses (particularly the Yellow Devil) that it pretty much throws the games otherwise brutal difficulty out the window, at least in terms of combat. Unusually, it became an ''officially-sanctioned'' way of playing the game, as they purposefully leave the glitch intact in modern rereleases and even expect you to use it to get an achievement in the games ''Legacy Collection'' rerelease.

%% Elec Man, whose weapon is ''powerful enough to kill you in three hits from full health!'' God help you if you fight him without the Rolling Cutter...[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFwM036mdkc not that you can't make him into a complete joke regardless]], but even then one needs good timing.
%% Thanks to what would appear to be shoddy programming, Fire Man can be this to players who keep their distance and shoot a lot. While he [[LongRangeFighter tries to get away from you and fire only when far enough away/when Mega Man fires]], he ends up firing an ''insane'' amount of Fire Storm blasts once he gains enough distance. [[labelnote:*]]This spam-happy quirk of his was removed in both ''VideoGame/MegaManDrWilysRevenge'' and the ''Wily Wars'' touch-up, indicating it was probably never intentional.[[/labelnote]] The uninformed/trigger-happy end up getting the impression that the only way to beat him is to spam the Ice Slasher and try to kill him before he kills them.
%% Ice Man can also kill you in three hits, and will likely do so if you didn't bring the Thunder Beam with you and you aren't used to the timing of jumping through his attack pattern. He's also very durable without the Thunder Beam, with only the Hyper Bomb (Which takes a long time to burst and Ice Man might jump out of the way before then) and the Rolling Cutter (which requires getting close to him, and since he only needs three hits to kill you, keeping your distance is usually the best option) doing more than 1 HP of damage.
%% There's also the Mega Man clone at the end of Wily Stage 2. It's got the same abilities as the player, except it ALSO deals significant contact damage, and can't be easily cheesed with the pause trick.

%% Guts Man's stage and those damn moving platforms which keep flipping down over [[BottomlessPits a wide chasm]]. There's barely any room for error with these, as if you don't jump at the exact moment, you'll fall. Fortunately the rest of the stage is easily manageable.
%% Elec Man's stage is a long vertical climbing stage, with the first part being the worst of it. The first room is a set of tricky jumps, followed by climbing up a long ladder while avoiding packs of [[GodDamnBats Watchers]]. If you get hit at any point, you will fall down over half a screen before the game lets you catch the ladder. And once you get to the top, you have to hop over on disappearing blocks, which, if you do miss one, you can fall all the way back to the base of the ladder and do it all over again. You'll also ''have to'' do this again if you don't pick up the Magnet Beam (which requires you to defeat Guts Man).
%% The beginning of Wily Stage 1, where you have to fight through '''three Big Eyes'''. It gets worse after that; not only is there a room with Foot Holders and spikes on both the ceiling and floor, they have a tendency to go up to the ceiling when you're on them. There's also a room where the Magnet Beam is ''[[AbilityRequiredToProceed required]]''. Thankfully, there's infinitely respawning weapon refill capsules just before that room in case you run out, and you have the [[FreezeRay Ice Slasher]] which can freeze the Big Eyes in midair.
%% The final major platforming section of Wily Stage 2 requires dodging the Bombombombs from Bomb Man's stage, which explode and drop four fragments that also explode. They don't leave a lot of room to not get hurt, either.
%% Wily Stage 4. You have to [[BossRush fight Bomb Man, Fire Man, Ice Man, and Guts Man all in a row]], and if you die, you go back to the start. Not only that, but there's no health pickups between matches. The only help is you can get the Yashichi just before the boss rush, which refills health and weapons. There's also those platforms from Guts Man's stage over some spikes too.

** As Cut Man and Bomb Man are easy, so too are their stages, which are the easiest of the six Robot Master stages. They don't have any infuriating gimmicks or particularly tough spots like you'll find in Guts Man or Ice Man's stage.

** Disregarding his [[ThatOneBoss difficult boss fight]], Elec Man is also fairly well-liked due to his design and effective weapon. He's even Keiji Inafune's favorite Robot Master.

* GameBreaker:
** The Fire Storm is quite possibly the most effective weapon in the game, thanks to a fairly large ammo pool, a fairly large hitbox with a reliable straight shot in a game where most weapons focus on arcs, a short-lived flaming shield which is enough to kill most non-boss enemies outright if they collide with you (and does multiple hits against opponents with short MercyInvincibility, to the point where the first stage of Wily Machine 1 can go down in seconds just from touching it), and does at least double damage to more than half of the bosses in the game (including half of the Robot Masters, the Yellow Devil, and the first stage of the aforementioned FinalBoss).
** The Thunder Beam is the other major contender for most effective weapon in the game due to its versatility in hitting enemies above, below, and in front of you all at once, has an overall larger hitbox on the frontal shot, is equally effective against regular enemies, and is much easier to land numerous hits in one shot with using the pause glitch. A good player can easily use it to destroy the Yellow Devil in one cycle.

* ScrappyWeapon:
** The Hyper Bomb, while powerful with a decent explosion radius, suffers from a severe delay that only starts to tick down when the thing comes to a complete stop. By the time it does explode, odds are the target will have moved out of range, and since it doesn't explode on contact like Bomb Man's version did, it flat-out can't be used on certain bosses. The ''Wily Wars'' port rectified this slightly by having the Hyper Bomb explode as soon as it came to a complete stop, but even still, other Special Weapons do a more efficient job unless one is fighting Guts Man.
** The Super Arm is crippled due to its reliance on external ammunition in the form of specific blocks, which can't be generated by Mega Man and aren't available in many stages, making it completely useless in such situations (and just like the Hyper Bomb, this means ''very'' few enemies and bosses can be damaged with it). Said blocks don't respawn until the stage is restarted, by the way, so if you missed Cut Man with one block, you're not going to beat him with just the Super Arm.

* ThatOneBoss:
** Elec Man, whose weapon is ''powerful enough to kill you in three hits from full health!'' God help you if you fight him without the Rolling Cutter...[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFwM036mdkc not that you can't make him into a complete joke regardless]], but even then one needs good timing.
** Thanks to what would appear to be shoddy programming, Fire Man can be this to players who keep their distance and shoot a lot. While he [[LongRangeFighter tries to get away from you and fire only when far enough away/when Mega Man fires]], he ends up firing an ''insane'' amount of Fire Storm blasts once he gains enough distance. [[labelnote:*]]This spam-happy quirk of his was removed in both ''VideoGame/MegaManDrWilysRevenge'' and the ''Wily Wars'' touch-up, indicating it was probably never intentional.[[/labelnote]] The uninformed/trigger-happy end up getting the impression that the only way to beat him is to spam the Ice Slasher and try to kill him before he kills them.
** Ice Man can also kill you in three hits, and will likely do so if you didn't bring the Thunder Beam with you and you aren't used to the timing of jumping through his attack pattern. He's also very durable without the Thunder Beam, with only the Hyper Bomb (Which takes a long time to burst and Ice Man might jump out of the way before then) and the Rolling Cutter (which requires getting close to him, and since he only needs three hits to kill you, keeping your distance is usually the best option) doing more than 1 HP of damage.
** The Yellow Devil, a boss so tough that the [[GoodBadBugs Pause Trick]] mentioned above is considered a totally genuine, guilt-free strategy for beating it. Its method of attack is simply to move across the room in blobs, which move fast, hit hard, and require several perfectly-timed jumps to dodge, so even if you know the pattern, it's still a tough fight. Oh, and its one weak spot, the eye which occasionally appears, is a small target that sometimes pops up too high to even hit with the normal Mega Buster, dragging the already grueling fight on even longer. On top of that, the Thunder Beam, its weakness, has a somewhat wonky attack pattern, meaning that it can sometimes flat-out ''miss'' the eye, even head-on! Ironically, while the ''Wily Wars'' iteration made the game harder, the game makes the Yellow Devil ''easier'', as it suffers slowdown during the fight, making it easier to dodge its pieces.[[note]]The version on the Sega Genesis Mini fixes the slowdown, so that won't help you if you play ''The Wily Wars'' on it.[[/note]]
** There's also the Mega Man clone at the end of Wily Stage 2. It's got the same abilities as the player, except it ALSO deals significant contact damage, and can't be easily cheesed with the pause trick.
* ThatOneLevel: It's probably easier to list the levels that ''aren't'' that one level.
** Guts Man's stage and those damn moving platforms which keep flipping down over [[BottomlessPits a wide chasm]]. There's barely any room for error with these, as if you don't jump at the exact moment, you'll fall. Fortunately the rest of the stage is easily manageable.
** Elec Man's stage is a long vertical climbing stage, with the first part being the worst of it. The first room is a set of tricky jumps, followed by climbing up a long ladder while avoiding packs of [[GodDamnBats Watchers]]. If you get hit at any point, you will fall down over half a screen before the game lets you catch the ladder. And once you get to the top, you have to hop over on disappearing blocks, which, if you do miss one, you can fall all the way back to the base of the ladder and do it all over again. You'll also ''have to'' do this again if you don't pick up the Magnet Beam (which requires you to defeat Guts Man).
** Ice Man's stage, if you're doing it without the Magnet Beam. The first set of annoyances are jumping on disappearing blocks over Gabyoalls, which can only be destroyed with Special Weapons and are low to the ground. Then you have to cross over a large pit with Foot Holders. Not only do they have an unpredictable pattern, but they shoot sideways randomly. If you get hit, not only do you have a high chance of being knocked off, but you can fall right through them. Even if you have the Magnet Beam, the game has a quirk where the top of the screen overflows to the bottom very shortly. If you climb too high, the game thinks you've fallen into a pit. Ice Man's stage is also infamous for the teleporting blocks which, while not fatal, are definitely tedious to navigate.
** The beginning of Wily Stage 1, where you have to fight through '''three Big Eyes'''. It gets worse after that; not only is there a room with Foot Holders and spikes on both the ceiling and floor, they have a tendency to go up to the ceiling when you're on them. There's also a room where the Magnet Beam is ''[[AbilityRequiredToProceed required]]''. Thankfully, there's infinitely respawning weapon refill capsules just before that room in case you run out, and you have the [[FreezeRay Ice Slasher]] which can freeze the Big Eyes in midair.
** The final major platforming section of Wily Stage 2 requires dodging the Bombombombs from Bomb Man's stage, which explode and drop four fragments that also explode. They don't leave a lot of room to not get hurt, either.
** Wily Stage 4. You have to [[BossRush fight Bomb Man, Fire Man, Ice Man, and Guts Man all in a row]], and if you die, you go back to the start. Not only that, but there's no health pickups between matches. The only help is you can get the Yashichi just before the boss rush, which refills health and weapons. There's also those platforms from Guts Man's stage over some spikes too.

** Fire Man for players who fight at close range. It's entirely possible to brute force him with the Mega Buster by holding the direction he's standing and ButtonMashing, provided you start with full health, as you'll outdamage him by a slim margin. Fighting from a distance, however? See ThatOneBoss below.

** Ice Man can also kill you in three hits, and will likely do so if you didn't bring the Thunder Beam with you and you aren't used to the timing of jumping through his attack pattern. He's also very durable without the Thunder Beam, with only the Hyper Bomb (see ScrappyWeapon above) and the Rolling Cutter (which requires getting close to him, and since he only needs three hits to kill you, keeping your distance is usually the best option) doing more than 1 HP of damage.

** Elec Man's theme is this to either Music/{{Journey}}'s "Faithfully" or Music/{{REM}}'s obscure song "All the Right Friends".

** Guts Man's stage and those damn moving platforms which keep flipping down over [[BottomlessPits a wide chasm]].
** Elec Man's stage is a long vertical climbing stage, with the first part being the worst of it. The first room is a set of tricky jumps, followed by climbing up a long ladder while avoiding packs of [[GodDamnBats Watchers]]. If you get hit at any point, you will fall down over half a screen before the game lets you catch the ladder. And once you get to the top, you have to hop over on disappearing blocks, which, if you do miss one, you can fall all the way back to the base of the ladder and do it all over again. You'll also ''have to'' do this again if you don't pick up the Magnet Beam.

** Wily Stage 4. You have to [[BossRush fight Bomb Man, Fire Man, Ice Man, and Guts Man all in a row]], and if you die, you go back to the start. Not only that, but there's no health pickups between matches. The only help is you can get the Yashichi just before the boss rush, which refills health and weapons.

* EnsembleDarkhorse:

** The beginning of Wily Stage 1, where you have to fight through '''three Big Eyes'''. It gets worse after that; not only is there a room with Foot Holders and spikes on both the ceiling and floor, they have a tendency to go up to the ceiling when you're on them. There's also a room where the Magnet Beam is ''[[AbilitiyRequiredToProceed required]]''. Thankfully, there's infinitely respawning weapon refill capsules just before that room in case you run out, and you have the [[FreezeRay Ice Slasher]] which can freeze the Big Eyes in midair.

** Fire Man is this for players who fight at close range. It's entirely possible to brute force him with the Mega Buster by holding the direction he's standing and ButtonMashing, provided you start with full health, as you'll outdamage him by a slim margin. Fighting from a distance, however? See ThatOneBoss below.

** The famous "Pause Trick". Since enemy MercyInvincibility fades while the game is paused, pausing the game while a projectile such as the Thunder Beam is passing through an enemy will cause that enemy to take another hit from that same projectile as soon as the game is unpaused (and the process can be repeated multiple times). This is often used by gamers to beat the [[ThatOneBoss Yellow]] [[GoddamnedBoss Devil]], but can be applied to other bosses. In fact, in order to get the Gold Medal in the Boss Challenge against him in ''Mega Man Legacy Collection'', you must abuse this glitch.

* PolishedPort: The remake contained in ''Mega Man: The Wily Wars'', which beefed up the graphics, remixed the music, and added a save feature.

** Thanks to what would appear to be shoddy programming, Fire Man can be this to players who keep their distance and shoot a lot. While he [[LongRangeFighter tries to get away from you and fire only when far enough away/when Mega Man fires]], he ends up firing an ''insane'' amount of Fire Storm blasts once he gains enough distance. [[labelnote:*]]This spam-happy quirk of his was removed in both ''VideoGame/MegaManDrWilysRevenge'' and the ''Wily Wars'' touch-up, indicating it was probably never intentional.[[/labelnote]] The uninformed[=/=]trigger-happy end up getting the impression that the only way to beat him is to spam the Ice Slasher and try to kill him before he kills them.

** The beginning of Wily Stage 1, where you have to fight through '''three Big Eyes'''. It gets worse after that; not only is there a room with Foot Holders and spikes on both the ceiling and floor, they have a tendency to go up to the ceiling when you're on them. There's also a room where the Magnet Beam is ''required''. Thankfully, there's infinitely respawning weapon refill capsules just before that room in case you run out, and you have the [[FreezeRay Ice Slasher]] which can freeze the Big Eyes in midair.

* VindicatedByHistory: While the game only sold modestly in Japan and outright flopped in the US, the first ''Mega Man'' became much more recognized and eventually iconic after the rip-roaring success of [[VideoGame/MegaMan2 its sequel]] established ''Mega Man'' as a major franchise.

** Cut Man was popular enough to make it into the Saturn version of ''VideoGame/MegaMan8'' as a BonusBoss.
*** He also appeared in ''VideoGame/MegaManX8'' as ''his original 8-bit self'' (presumably as a hologram) in Optic Sunflower's stage if you have a ''Videogame/MegaManXCommandMission'' Save File on your Memory Card.

** The famous "Pause Trick". Since enemy MercyInvincibility fades while the game is paused, pausing the game while a projectile such as the Thunder Beam is passing through an enemy will cause that enemy to take another hit from that same projectile as soon as the game is unpaused (and the process can be repeated multiple times). This is often used by gamers to beat the [[ThatOneBoss Yellow]] [[GoddamnedBoss Devil]], but can be applied to other bosses.
*** In fact, in order to get the Gold Medal in the Boss Challenge against him in ''Mega Man Legacy Collection'', you must abuse this glitch.

** Cut Man and Bomb Man. Cut Man's attacks are sluggish and easily dodged, and Bomb Man is more likely to kill you through CollisionDamage than he is with his bombs. Both Robot Masters (especially Cut Man) aren't well-protected against the Mega Buster, either.
*** In fact, Cut Man was considered so easy as to be a complete joke. It's even believed by many that his [[TheChewToy status]] in the Ruby Spears cartoon is a result of his reputation for being so easy to beat.

*** Even doing it '''with''' the Magnet Beam, there's still the fact that if they manage to shoot you, you'll fall through your beam and die.

** The Yellow Devil, a boss so tough that the [[GoodBadBugs Pause Trick]] mentioned above is considered a totally genuine, guilt-free strategy for beating it. Its method of attack is simply to move across the room in blobs, which move fast, hit hard, and require several perfectly-timed jumps to dodge, so even if you know the pattern, it's still a tough fight. Oh, and its one weak spot, the eye which occasionally appears, is a small target that sometimes pops up too high to even hit with the normal Mega Buster, dragging the already grueling fight on even longer. Ironically, while the ''Wily Wars'' iteration made the game harder, the game makes the Yellow Devil ''easier'', as it suffers slowdown during the fight, making it easier to dodge its pieces.[[note]]The version on the Sega Genesis Mini fixes the slowdown, so that won't help you if you play ''The Wily Wars'' on it.[[/note]]