Mega Man I: Fire Man's Stage Breakdown

Introduction:

    This stage is either the best or the second-best designed in the game, in my opinion. It isn't overly long or short, it keeps its threats both focused and varied, it is well-paced, and it doesn't end with another Big Eye. Call me petty if you want, but I despise that enemy and the way this game uses it and its big stupid telephone-shaped face. >:[

    It's not without flaw, but it's a strong offering and would, along with Bomb Man's stage, become a model for later games - and rightly so. Take special notice of the nice logical touches to the graphical design, by the way - the lava flow that begins just before Fire Man's room flows down the vertical area leading to it and into the reservoir which takes up the entire bottom of the stage. Though it's far from being 'realistic' in any strict sense of the term, you get the impression that the developers had a clear sense of place for this area unlike, say, my favorite punching bag Cut Man's stage. I'm sure glad I embarked on this analysis or I wouldn't have ever known how much I don't like that stage.

Part 1: Refrain

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Description:
    This is one of the major reasons I like this stage. Look at this: the developers have neatly folded this area on itself to increase its length without needless padding. In doing so they also accomplished three worthwhile things with elegant simplicity:

• They restricted the player's jumping capabilities, limiting his options for defeating the lower two Screw Bombers (here represented by the green dots); since jumping over the shots of the two mid-height ones is extremely difficult, he must instead time his shots to destroy them before they have a chance to fire. This is still not unfair because beginning underneath all the Screw Bombers gives him a chance to see their behavior clearly even if this is the first stage he is attempting.
• They made good use of the diagonal and vertical shots of the lower right Screw Bomber, since the player must run over its position before he can get a shot off on it.
• They forced the player to use ladders early on in threatening situations, which will become a major theme of the stage in later areas.

    This efficient and attractive design philosophy will mark the entire stage, with a few notable exceptions.

Part 2: Thema

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Description: 

    I love this section. Seriously. This is the sort of section that makes the Mega Man series great. With the exception of Tackle Fires popping up from the lava near the pillar marked 1, there are no threats but the Fire Pillars, which go up and down regularly. The first screen is designed specifically to stop a first-time player short and make him wait a moment, since jumping into the Fire Pillar will obviously knock him back into the lava and get him killed. This gives him a chance to observe the full behavior of the Tackle Fire enemy, which is a perfect match for the Fire Pillars as a hazard - they fly up from the lava in groups of three then drift back down from the top of the screen toward the player, posing a serious hazard if the player chooses that moment to jump and interfering with vertical movement while the Fire Pillar does the same for horizontal.

    All the jumps here are quite easy, and the timing for the Fire Pillar is simple. If the Tackle Fires come too close, the player can safely retreat to the previous screen, and only move forward when he is confident. It perfectly introduces the major hazards of this stage and gives the player a chance to observe them safely and get a handle on their behavior before tackling a forgiving but still real challenge, which is followed by a reprieve in the next two screens where he can choose to risk damage from more Fire Pillars for a couple of Small Life Energy drops at 2 before dealing with the double-threat at 3.

    But wait, there's more! The Big Life energy at 1 also hints toward a feature that will become important for sequences later in the stage, and also in Wily's Robot Factory! It's not a very good hint, but it's something - the top of the Fire Pillar at 1 is the closest thing to the tantalizing Big Life Energy at the top-left of the screen, and a clever player who has beaten Ice Man and experimented with his new Ice Slasher (and who wouldn't have?) to observe its freezing properties might very well try to freeze the Fire Pillar, upon doing which he would discover that it turns blue and becomes solid, forming a safe platform. So the developers worked a sneaky tutorial on an advanced(ish) mechanic into an already very densely and expertly designed tutorial screen while still keeping things so under the radar that most players don't even realize they're being taught.

    Yeah, I feel safe saying that this is probably the single best-designed screen in the entire game. I could probably write an entire blog entry solely about it...but there will be plenty of chances to do that for later, better games because this kind of dense, informative design quickly became a hallmark of the franchise. So, moving on.

Part 3: Episode

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Description:

    This screen is less good than the first screen of the last section, partly because this new hazard, the Fire Bolt, never appears again in the game and is also virtually identical to the Electric Arc from Elec Man's stage. Though, to be fair, the absence of ladders here does make them a little less annoying than their voltaic cousins, there are still some problems. To aid in illustrating these problems, I have labeled the three Fire Bolts in the game with completely random and non-allusive placeholder names.

    The previous screen places a large obstruction which the player must either go over or under to proceed. The former requires that he have either the Magnet Beam or Ice Slasher, and will deposit him on the platform from which Tom fires. From there, it is a simple matter to time a jump onto the platform which cuts off Dick, then back up to deal with Harry. The player has ample time to observe the timing and the placement of the platforms virtually guarantees that he will jump off Tom's firing block, which is important.

    On the other hand, going under the earlier obstruction will lead him to Dick's firing block. This is problematic because of one major difference between Fire Bolts and Electric Arcs: whereas Electric Arcs are totally harmless when not firing, Fire Bolts retain a tiny ignition flame directly to the right of their firing block which damages Mega Man if he touches it - a nice touch of realism, but problematic from a design perspective, since here it means that the player has no way to avoid taking damage from Dick because Tom's firing block prevents him from jumping.

    Fortunately, there is no real danger here unless the player is at very low health, since the platform below Dick will catch him, but punishing a player with unavoidable damage simply because he has not beaten either of two other stages yet goes against the non-linear philosophy the developers seemed to be striving for. Yes, as we will see, the game is not quite as baldly non-linear as it appears, but a plain damage-gate is poor form, and it and the two others that this stage features go a long way toward establishing this stage's reputation for punishing difficulty, which I do not feel it otherwise deserves. Okay, so maybe I named that one 'Dick' just a little allusively.

    Anyway, after dealing with either Dick and Tom or else just Tom, the player deals with the somewhat higher-stakes Harry; the player must land on the small block directly underneath Harry's bolt in order to clear the gap, but if he does not jump back up quickly enough he risk getting knocked back into the pit below. If he is lucky he may land on the safe ground around the pit and be able to jump back, but it's a slim chance, and even then he must still risk being hit again. It's not the worst death-trap in the game, but it's a nice little escalation for a hazard that we will immediately thereafter never ever see again. I like words.

Part 4: Variation

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Description:

    This area forms a nice counterpoint to the ascending area immediately prior, and serves to ramp down the tension just a bit before the stage becomes very intense. It is also the final area before the stage's checkpoint (which areas I have neglected to mention in the past four analyses because I couldn't think of anything interesting to say about them).

    The only hazards are the Fire Pillars at 1 and 2 and Tackle Fires coming up from the (seeming) hole at 3. The terrain makes it fairly simple to avoid them, but their real purpose is to remind the player of their respective behavior because things are about to get real very, very soon. They serve that role perfectly adequately, and the three Small Life Energy Drops placed in an easy-to-get nook provide a buffer to make it extra-easy to get through alive if you've gotten this far. The developers are coaxing the player forward, but it is really an example of Suspicious Video Game Generosity, as will become clear in the next section. This is not bad. Quite the opposite, in fact - it is some of the clearest and most sophisticated pacing we have seen in the game so far.

    By the way, that hole at 3 is fake. There is ground immediately below it, and even though it is in another horizontal section, the game registers it and it supports Mega Man. Needless to say, I never discovered this until very, very recently because as a child playing Mega Man I, who wants to risk death right before a checkpoint just to test something like that? The reason the developers left it was to provide graphical justification for the Tackle Fires, I assume.

Part 5: Crescendo

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Description:

    This section forms the climax of Fire Man's stage, and it does quite a few things very right. The first can be observed taking up most of the bottom of the screen: the lava.

    Unlike in every other Mega Man game, lava in Mega Man I is purely aesthetic; it has no collision programming and this screen is identical to any other mostly-pitfall area in the game...except for the way it looks. But the lava is an animated tile, and the flashing, bright-orange graphics signify 'danger' in a clear and obvious way, lending a far more palpable sense of risk and stakes to this section that it would have had had they left it out. This is an excellent use of the NES's advanced graphical capabilities to enhance player experience, and since (as I pointed out several posts ago) the Mega Man series eventually showed some of the most impressive 8-bit graphics the NES ever had, it's important to note that their efforts began right at the start of the series.

    As for the design behind the graphics, it's just as solid. The player begins this section hanging on a ladder with nothing under it but lava; having had half a stage to get used to the behavior of the Fire Pillars, the player must now drop from the ladder and move right to land on the narrow platform without going so far right as to hit the first pillar at 1, or risk being knocked back regardless. Many first-time players likely die here, but the stage is forgiving enough to restart the player on the safe spot of the second narrow platform, so as long as he has extra lives remaining he is spared at least one difficult jump.

   Tackle Fires begin coming up as soon as the player enters the area, making the jump from one narrow platform to the next triply difficult - not only must he aim his jumps precisely to land at the far left of each and time the next to avoid the Fire Pillar, but he must pay attention to the Tackle Fires falling more or less constantly from the sky - or flying up just in front of him. The wide gap between the platforms at 2 becomes extra-stressful thanks to this constant environmental hazard. After a repeat of 1 at 3, which is not a flaw because it comes quickly enough to stay fresh and frightening, the brief climax comes to an end - and remains fresh in the player's mind as an incentive to stay alive for the following sections.

    Oh, and in once more nice touch, the player gets a hint of the next area's hazard as he climbs up the ladder while gouts of flame spill from the chute to his immediate right. They are harmless here, but they serve the double purpose of explaining the lava flow and previewing the next screen. Can you tell I like this stage?

Part 6: Scherzo

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Description:

    And then they go and spoil it all by doing something stupid like this doo-doo.  >:[

    This is the second bit of inescapable damage in the stage. I say 'inescapable' because even though it is technically possible to skirt through the gouts of flame that fall past the player's path at 1 and 2, it requires such frame-perfect timing that it is virtually impossible - far too difficult to learn to do reliably without putting in more effort than it's worth (it's easier, or so it seems, on 2 than 1, even if the timing is theoretically the same, but still very hard). By using the Magnet Beam to jump straight up to the top ladder above 1, the player can avoid both firefalls, but rather than being a nice way to skip some challenge if you have it, it ends up being little more than a punishment for making it this far without it.

Part 7: Refrain

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Description: 

    This area serves to ramp down the action of the stage while still providing enough active challenge to maintain engagement for the duration. It recaps the very first section, but with different enemies - namely Spines and Killer Bullets. The Killer Bullets begin attacking the player as he climbs the staircase at 1, while the Spines patrol the horizontal passages. Unfortunately, this is the third area with nigh-unavoidable damage in the stage, since unless the player has some means of killing Spines the horizontal areas at 2 and 3 do not allow the player to safely clear them with a jump. The spine at 2 can be scrolled into oblivion, but the one coming from the right at 3 is impossible to avoid. This is problematic, but in the face of all the excellent design decisions made in the rest of the stage I am willing to forgive a few mistakes.

Part 8: Coda

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Description:

    This area is simple enough to need little explanation; it is a simple run-up to the boss door. Tackle Fires rise up from the holes near the start, but a player can easily avoid them by not stopping. The Big Weapon Energy at the top of the delicately balanced ladder to the left is a nice handout to any players who have made heavy use of the Ice Slasher during the stage, especially since Fire Man is among the hardest Robot Masters in the game to defeat without his weakness. The two Fire Pillars in front of the door are timed to make it fairly simple to run past them without taking damage, and since all collision detection stops once the player touches the gate, a short hop at the end makes it even simpler.

    Even as simple as it is, however, it makes for a far more satisfying and thematically appropriate end to the stage than just throwing a Big Eye into a room and calling it a day. Seriously, this stage and Bomb Man's stage feel much more complete and proper than the other four for that reason alone, even apart from their superior pacing and design.

Conclusion:

    Fire Man's stage is, in my opinion, either the best or the second best of the stages in Mega Man I. It has more focused and well-planned hazards than Bomb Man's stage, but also succumbs slightly more to malicious design. Both are well-paced, just long enough, and visually interesting, and both would become models for future stage designs - Bomb Man's is the archetypal 'starter stage', with its low difficulty level and steady, tutorial-filled pacing, while Fire Man's stage is the archetypal 'challenging stage' with its stressful hazards and compact but intense design. Of the two, my personal favorite is probably Fire Man's, since the platforming is overall more satisfying to an experienced player.

    None of this is taking into account the Robot Masters themselves, of course. But that comes later, after my final analysis of this stage and some much more in-depth examination of Mega Man and the game's mechanical and enemy design philosophy.

Thanks for reading,

The Undesigner

I'm Back!

Coming soon: Fire Man's stage, followed by some much more serious and in-depth analysis of Mega Man's movement and capabilities, their relation to stage design and enemy behaviors, and how the very first game both succeeded and failed in making full use of it all. Then, a quick pass-over of Wily's robot factory and the bosses therein, followed by moving on to the game that fixed Mega Man I's mistakes and cemented the formula the series would use for nine more games (including 9 and 10) with fairly little variance. During that time I will attempt to introduce some sophisticated new metrics that will (hopefully) reveal subtleties of Mega Man II's design. Mega Man I isn't enough of a masterpiece to warrant that kind of scrutiny; it's enough to use rough metrics here because the game isn't that detailed and serves mostly as an origin and draft for the rest of the series.

...

Yes, I am not, in fact, dead, nor have I forgotten about this blog or abandoned it. Between an upcoming move predicated upon my girlfriend's current location becoming dangerous, preparing for DragonCON (I will be making exactly one DC post with pictures), and trying to learn Java only to decide it's too much trouble and switch back to Game Maker Studio to whip up a simple platformer engine, something had to give, and it was this blog. I'm sorry to have disappointed all two of my readers. But updates will now resume, though I'm not going to make any promises about pacing.

Expect Fire Man's stage breakdown and analysis sometime before Tuesday. If I fail in that, it will likely have to wait until after DragonCON, since that begins on Wednesday. Our move starts immediately afterward, but once October rolls around I will have significantly more time and energy, which will (partly) go into this blog.

Two months. Holy crap.

Mega Man I: Ice Man's Stage Analysis

Stage Divisions

Difficulty Chart

    In keeping with the established 'theme' of Ice Man's stage, it seemed appropriate to split, for the first time, my difficulty analysis. The two lines represent, respectively, the stage's difficulty without and with the Magnet Beam (and attendant powerups). This is, so far, the first stage I have played that is made dramatically easier with the use of powerups - not counting the bosses, of course, which I will cover later - and as such, it serves as an important first in the series. Namely, the first 'expert gate' stage, of which practically every single game will have at least one.

    Other than that, the only remarkable thing here is just how hard Section 5 really is. Because of the way Foot Holders work, even if an expert player goes through it without making a mistake, he still might not make it through without the Magnet Beam if their movements don't allow him to progress. It's the defining flaw of the stage, and in a way of the game: a good idea held back by flawed execution stemming, it would seem, more from technological limitations and a lack of experience (since these ideas were unexplored until this point) rather than incompetence.

Hazard Population

    Notable here is Section 6, which has quite literally no hazards, following on the brutal and unprecedented gauntlet of Section 5. Other than that, the only remarkable feature here seems to be how, despite its considerable length in screen-by-screen terms, the stage looks rather small and short when broken down by analysis. There are fewer ideas at work in this stage than in many of the shorter ones in the game, and that is likely why it seems to breeze by in play - over half of the stage's length is taken by Sections 1 to 3, which have virtually no challenge and take very little time to complete.

    Next time, we move on to the last of the six Robot Master stages, Fire Man's Stage. From there, I'll move to some more in-depth discussions of different aspects of the game, starting with the six Robot Masters themselves, then synthesize some of all that information back together into a coherent picture of the game from a design perspective before moving on to the Wily Stages.

Thanks for reading,

The Undesigner

Another Quick Apology

Once more, I have spent so much time getting up to speed on my coding skills and also working on sprites that I have sadly neglected my blog. I apologize, and will work to have an update ready sometime next week, probably early. In the meantime, here is a sprite that I have accomplished. Or, a single animation for a sprite.

So, um, yeah. There's that.  ._."

Mega Man I: Ice Man's Stage Video Comparison

CORRECTION: I know there are three runs in the video, not two, as it states in the beginning text. This is because I was originally planning to show the death as part of the first run instead of dividing them, and forgot to change the text once I changed my mind. It isn't worth going back and rerendering and reposting the video now.

    Framed in light of the extreme difference in challenge depending on whether the player has the Magnet Beam or not, this stage forms the clearest example we've seen so far of the way the Mega Man games provide guidance to the player without forcing linearity. An expert player can, if he chooses, bull through this stage with nothing but the Mega Buster, and succeed. But a beginner player who finds this too challenging is free to explore other stages and collect powerups first to bring the game down to his level. It's an inelegant example, due to the frustrating nature of this stage's biggest challenge, but at its core the idea is sound, and the developers would promptly begin refining and perfecting it by the next game.

Mega Man I: Ice Man's Stage Breakdown

Introduction

   Yes, as you can see from the amount this image got shrunk to format it for this blog, this stage is pretty darn long. I think it's more than twice as long as Guts Man's Stage. It also has some of the most time-consuming areas in the game, with extremely difficult platforming in many areas - definitely a poor choice for first stage for a beginning player. Graphically it has as clear a logic of place as any stage in the game; it's pretty obviously meant to be some kind of arctic research station located on top of a frozen mountain or glacier of some kind. There's slippery ice, water (presumably salt, since it's not frozen), and the largest pit hazard section in the game right in the middle of everything. If it weren't for the Magnet Beam I'd place it as the worst stage in the game just for its sheer difficulty, but the ability to skip the more offensive platforming challenges allows even beginner players to get through so long as they come prepared.

Part 1: The Second-Longest Horizontal Stretch in the Game

Map

Description

    At least I think it is. I haven't actually counted screens, but a quick visual survey of every other stage in the game seems to confirm it. And due to the terrain, which though entirely linear and lacking any major obstacles still requires a fair amount of jumping and dodging, it actually takes longer to complete than the longest one (which we'll be seeing in Wily Stage 2). Let's take a look at some of the more salient features, shall we?

Breakdown

1. This flat starting area introduces this stage's (unique) special enemy: the Crazy Razy, which runs towards the player and fires single shots. If the player shoots its body three times, the head detaches and begins acting similarly to a Blader; if the player jumps slightly and hits the head first, the whole thing dies in one shot instead. It's the first example of an enemy with a sweet spot in the game (and, I think, the only normal enemy in this game that has one, unless you count the enemies with shields, and those focus more on timing than aiming). The design here is pretty good; the player sees the enemy first on flat terrain before encountering it in more difficult circumstances; of course, since this is the only place the player will ever see it, and it appears only a couple more times in Section 2, this is of limited interest. The Crazy Razy's running/flying speed and size make every appearance of one a Forced Encounter Challenge by default, since running past it is very risky.
2. The player encounters three more Crazy Razy enemies here, and then is done with them for the rest of the game. This section of the stage is fairly low-key and slow-paced, which might lull a player into a false sense of security - the exact opposite of the opening of Elec Man's stage. I'm honestly not sure if this is good or bad, nor could I venture to guess whether it was intentional or not on the developers' part.
3. This marks the first occurrence of water in the Mega Man series, and one of only two appearances in this game; and really, since the second (also in Wily Stage 2) features the NES series' only occurrence of moving water, it might as well be the only appearance. In this game, as opposed to every other game both in the original series and in every spin-off to date, water does not make Mega Man jump higher. It slows his movement ever so slightly - not really enough to affect gameplay significantly - and that's it. While running through this tidal pool-like area, the player must deal with Spines in the lower sections between the upraised pillars while Pengs fly constantly from the left. Pengs are essentially a less challenging version of Killer Bullets; they move in a slightly slower sine-wave pattern (I think), and they do not explode when shot. The closest thing to this section in any other stage is in Part 3 of Bomb Man's stage, where the player faces Beaks and Killer Bullets; but that section is more challenging due to the pit hazards and more difficult enemies. Still, it's the most challenging bit of this Section, and a beginner player is likely to take a hit or two, which is okay, because...
4. ...the developers placed a conciliatory Big Life Energy here. You know what, I think they were trying to lull the player into a false sense of security. A beginner player will likely appreciate this very easy Big Life Energy, guarded by a mere two Octopus Batteries (made only slightly more threatening by the slippery floor). If that was their plan, though, they revealed their hand pretty quickly, because the difficulty ramps up sharply after this screen, and doesn't drop again.

Part 2: Yoku Yoku Panic!

Map

Description

    This is the first time I have found a need to break my general rule of dividing sections by horizontal and vertical scrolling; the bottom screen here is the start of a horizontal area, but it so clearly belongs with the room above that I have separated it entirely from the rest of that area. This is the second and last appearance of Appearing Blocks (also called 'Yoku Blocks', hence the reference above) in Mega Man I; it's rather strange that the developers never tried to provide any further escalation on this interesting and innovative hazard, especially considering how frequently they used it in future games. Mind you, these are very tricky sections, but the only real hazard is a spine that patrols the water at the bottom of each section - high challenge, but low pressure. I'm not sure this is a bad thing, though; it certainly takes a while to get it right and even an expert player is likely to take a hit or two, since dodging Spines is damnably hard thanks to their variations in speed, and yet few players are likely to die here, at least very often. The respawn area is in the top room of this section, as well, so a player who does succumb won't have much to redo. Of course...since the next part is possibly the hardest section in the game (the ending boss-rush excepted), almost any player is likely to have to do this more than once in a run of this stage. So, it cuts both ways.

Breakdown

  
    The first of two screens features a simple series of seven Appearing Blocks. I mentioned in my Elec Man's stage breakdown that four was the typical number, and it is, but it's not universal. In any case, as with the Appearing Blocks in Elec Man's stage, here there are no groups of more than one block. Each block appears in order, with up to two on-screen at a time, and then the sequence repeats. What sets this apart from the set in Elec Man's stage is the relative difficulty of their placement. Notice how the 2-3 and the 4-5 transitions serve more as fake-outs than anything else; the jumps are possible (I did them in my footage), but they're quite tricky, and it's actually easier to simply skip from 1 to 3 and then either from 3 to 5 or from 4 to 6. The player is thus given a sort of Equivalent Path Choice, only played out in the sequence of Appearing Blocks instead of normal stage design. It's a remarkably clever use of what was already a fairly clever hazard, and one of the many signs that the team responsible for this game really cared about their work.

    Of course, the Spine patrolling the water at the bottom is also one of the many signs that the team responsible for this game really hated the player. Though in all fairness, any player not skilled enough to reach the top without taking significant damage shouldn't be playing this stage before beating Elec Man's anyway, so there's that.

    I complained earlier about the lack of escalation in the developers' use of the Appearing Blocks, but honestly, this is pretty escalated. Just look at it. Once more there are seven groups, but here the setup is more complicated by entire orders of magnitude. The first four form a more-or-less duplicated left-to-right sequence across, one on top of the other; the top set is unreachable from the bottom, however, and so what the player must do is start at the bottom set. He can, if he chooses, begin at the bottom 4, but that will place him in the path of the Spine in the water (of course, he can exploit the game's limitations to scroll the Spine out of existence too, as I do in my demo, but that's cheating and only a scoundrel would do so). Wherever he starts, after the bottom 4, he must then backtrack along 5, 6, and 7...but then comes the trickery. The top 1 is a dead-end, nothing but a fake-out. The jump from 1 to 2 is impossible across the top. Thus, the player is forced to do what before was optional, and jump just as 7 disappears onto the upper 2, and then immediately from there up to the top 3. From there it's just a simple jump across to the top 4 and onto the ledge. Quite a bit to manage for a new hazard, and most players take many, many tries to get it right.

    Unless, of course, they just use the Magnet Beam to skip the whole thing. Mega Man is usually pretty good about that sort of thing - it's one of the reasons the game has such broad appeal.

Part 3: And It All Comes Tumbling Down

Map

Description

   Here it is. This is why people hate this stage, and I can't really argue - it's a good reason to hate it. This is one of two areas in Mega Man I to feature the Foot Holder enemy, which is unique among Mega Man I enemies in providing a platform for Mega Man to stand on as it flies about, periodically shooting two shots directly to the left and right. The two massive pit hazards frame the action with a particularly merciless and sudden High Pressure Challenge, and the 1-Up at the end is nothing but a taunt - it is almost impossible to drop into the narrow passage where it rests.

Breakdown

    This section is hard. If the player approaches it without the Magnet Beam, it is arguably the hardest bit of platforming the game has to offer - maybe the hardest bit in the entire NES series. The only place that comes even close would be the rail-platform section in Wily Stage 4, and that's much shorter, and also more predictable.

    See, the thing is, Foot Holders move randomly. They fly horizontally and diagonally, changing their left-right movement at regular intervals but their horizontal movement unpredictably. Firing shots also seems to be random; or if it isn't, it's too dependent on circumstances to be predictable in practical terms. So jumping from one Foot Holder to the next becomes as much a matter of luck as of skill - will it choose to head up at the last moment, denying the player his landing, or will it suddenly fire, knocking him helplessly into the gaping pit below? Of course, sitting still and waiting for the perfect jump is equally risky, since a stray shot might come at any moment with precisely the same result. Not to mention that sitting still and waiting for the perfect jump could take literally any amount of time.

Ah ha ha ha, and you thought I was kidding. No, seriously. I meant any amount

of time. It's absolutely ridiculous.

    To compound matters, the relative lack of background design makes it hard at times to gauge the absolute motion of each Foot Holder; if two are moving right at the same time, it is easy to mistake them for moving left at the same time, and the difference in jumping difficulty is very severe between the two, since their movement does not augment Mega Man's.

    Even with the Magnet Beam, there is a strong chance of dying here, if a shot should come at the wrong moment or the player hesitate just a quarter-second too long in lining up his next beam platform. It's much, much easier than going blind, yes, but still risky. Ice Man's stage is arguably the hardest in the game; Fire Man's probably comes close, but I would still argue that it is easier.

    Because their movement is random, there's no point in having diagrams; nothing remains consistent from one run-through to another, besides the high probability of death.

Part 4: A Quick Respite

Map

Description

    Hardly any is needed; this is pretty self-explanatory. If the player, upon dropping into this area, reacts quickly enough, he is able to collect some Small Weapon and Life Energy drops as an apology for the previous section. There are no hazards here; the stage is basically over.

Part 5: Another Big Eye

Map

Description

    Once more, none needed. This is another regulation Big Eye ending, the fourth of four. Thank goodness, Fire Man's stage is the other one without one.

    Next time, video footage and Ice Man's stage analysis! Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading, 

The Undesigner

Mega Man: Elec Man Stage Analysis AND Critique

Part 1: Analysis

Stage Divisions

They're oddly organized, yeah, but look how rectangular I managed to make it!

    Right off the bat, we can see there's a lot more variety here than in Cut Man's stage, both absolutely and screen-for-screen. Despite several of the stage's flaws (which I will outline here), this one fact goes a long way towards making it more entertaining than Cut Man's. In the post on Cut Man's stage, I said there were two stages worse than it, and this was one of them, but after having played and analyzed it further I may retract that. It has some notable flaws, but on the whole it's pretty strong, especially considering how many different ideas the developers were trying out here.

Difficulty Chart

    I had problems with this one. Elec Man's stage has relatively few individual points of high difficulty; the stage tends, from my observations of beginning players, to draw most of its challenge from a number of individually low-pressure challenges which, if not handled consistently, lead to death by a thousand cuts, especially considering the near-total lack of enemies that can be safely farmed for Life Energy drops (Watchers are dangerous, so farming them is risky, and Spines cannot be killed without a Special Weapon, the most practical of which is the Rolling Cutter, which the player will need to face Elec Man safely). The only high-pressure challenges in the stage are the two horizontal Sections, 5 and 9, and the total lack of any active threats renders them relatively tame despite the presence of an instant-death pit hazard. So I tried to reflect in this chart the areas where the player is most likely to take some damage, with the understanding that while each individual area is relatively easy taken in isolation, when taken as a series the player needs to pay some pretty serious attention in order to make it to the end.

    Honestly, it's not a bad idea; the designers used pacing and the game's mechanics with what may very well have been a careful selection of threats to create the sense of a marathon stage in a fairly small area. The player is forced to play the long game, as it were, exercising more caution than seems necessary because each little loss will add up without much chance for recovery. In that light even the rather frustrating Big Eye at the end makes a kind of sense from the standpoint of the slightly malicious design theory that prevailed in that time: it provides a surprise test to see if the player has been careful enough. "You must have this much health left to proceed." I don't think it worked quite right, but the idea is sound and the stage definitely had a lot of thought put into it - perhaps more than any other we've looked at so far. The basic problem with the stage is really just that in practice it ends up being frustrating, which I think is why players tend not to react terribly positively to the stage.

    Of course, there are some flaws in the execution, too. The Big Eye at the end is a piece of malicious design that would soon be eliminated from the series. The overall pacing is still a bit spotty, with a lull in challenge in the middle that breaks the sense of escalation. And the very first room is terribly designed; it's tricky even for an expert player and totally ruins the sense of flow and freedom from which the game's controls derive much of their pleasure right from the start. As a warning of what the stage is going to be, it does fine, but I have in mind one specific change that could have been made, within the limits of the stage's already-chosen mechanics, to make it better.

Hazard Population

    And the stage manages to do all of the above with no more hazard types than the brief Guts Man's stage! This diagram shows the integration the developers achieved with Elec Man's stage; almost every hazard is encountered more than once. However, it's important to note that some of this integration is also illusory - for example, in Section 6, the Spines and Electric Arcs are not both going to be encountered in any one playthrough because of the divided nature of the stage. Still, it's a nice change from the two stages we looked at earlier - the stage presents a more or less clear logic of progression and switches things up often enough to stay interesting; no obstacle overstays its welcome, as we saw in Cut Man's stage.

Part II: Suggestions for Improvement

    This section is experimental. I doubt I'll be doing it for every stage, and probably not even for many, but I was too strongly tempted by the strong ideas swimming under the surface of Elec Man's stage. These are obviously only 'suggestions' in the most distant sense of the term; the game is more than 25 years old now and I have no plans on making a ROM hack of it, or ever playing one. All I'm doing is seeing if the concept that I have teased out of the stage design through my analysis can be strengthened by a few minor changes. Not a full re-design (way too much effort for no real reward), just some minor changes. Call it a 'dry test' of my methodology, to see if I can get practical results out of this project. And, of course, none of these suggestions are intended as personal criticisms of the team that made the game. Hindsight simplifies everything, especially over 25 years of distance, and I'm an idle philosopher considering the matter in the abstract at my leisure, while the developers were technicians in a fast-paced, for-profit industry working with new, difficult hardware on a strict deadline.

    Anyway, here goes:

Suggestion 1: Provide an alternate route on the first screen.

    This seems so obvious now; and, to their credit, the developers used techniques similar to this in later games, especially after Utility Items became more varied and central to the gameplay. Here, all I have done is shift the area of play left a bit to eliminate some wasted space and place a ladder on the right side of the screen, blocked by a Super Arm Block. This setup preserves the developers' intention (as speculated by me) to give beginning players a warning that this is not the best stage to do first, but it also does two other things as well.

    First, it provides players who are approaching the stage later in the game with a superior way to eliminate the annoyance of dealing with the Spines (especially since the only practical Special Weapon to use on them is the Rolling Cutter, which is essential for defeating the boss), and in doing so preserves for them the sense of flow that is so essential for maintaining the player's enjoyment of the game's mechanics.

    Second, if the player is trying this stage before beating Guts Man, it sends a clear message right from the start that the Super Arm might be a good thing to have in this stage - even more clearly than the beginning of Cut Man's stage before; players who do not make it all the way to the Magnet Beam would thus have some nice conveyance to go beat Guts Man before coming back even if the haven't seen the Magnet Beam hiding behind all those blocks yet.

Suggestion 2: Build Up to the Big Eye at the End

    At first I thought I was going to suggest eliminating it entirely, and that would certainly be what a modern developer would do, since frustrating the player through malicious design tends to be frowned upon now. But I want the stage's basic concept to stay the same, and since the final test is important to that, I would keep the Big Eye. The real problem with it is that the player has no real warning of it, other than the fact that there has been a Big Eye in 3 out of 4 stages so far. So, instead of leaving Sections 5 and 9 totally blank, throw a Big Eye in each of them. The horizontal platforms at the start are more than long enough to allow a player sufficient time to kill them without a serious threat, and placing one at the open-air top of each enclosed vertical area would condition a player to expect one, making the escalation of having to face the last one in a much smaller area precisely that - an escalation, and not a nasty surprise.

Suggestion 3: Fix the Guts Block Dead-End

    Yeah, you knew this was coming. I would not eliminate the Guts Block dead-end entirely, though. It's got one good thing going for it - it gives the developers a chance to force the player to use his newly acquired Magnet Beam if he got it, while letting players coming to the stage without the Super Arm proceed normally. I would just place the Guts Block at the beginning of the dead-end instead of the end, and make sure at least one screen of the divided area had Watchers to provide the player with fodder for Weapon Energy drops. Then the Magnet Beam challenge could be free to take up a whole screen, and the player could be given an optional power-up, like a 1-Up, instead of a face full of Flea.

Conclusion

    Well, that wasn't so bad, was it? I am honestly a bit surprised. I remembered disliking Elec Man's stage intensely, and I still can't exactly say it's my favorite, but it seems that Elec Man's stage is really a very strong design idea marred by two or three poor design choices, which in hindsight might easily have been fixed, and were generally avoided in later games. I look forward to comparing it with the very similar Crash Man's stage later, especially since it includes a very similar split-stage design near the end.

Thanks for reading,

The Undesigner