History GameBreaker / MegaMan

* In ''Battle Network 5'', you could combine Dark Chips with [[PowerOfFriendship Soul Unison]] to produce "Chaos Unison". It gave you ''the Dark Chip as a free charge attack''. It's at least as buh-roken as it sounds. Chaos Toad Soul and Chaos Blues/Proto Soul are popular for getting perfect S-ranks on RandomEncounters - a 400 damage {{BFS}} or {{BFG}}. They only lasted for a turn, but that was generally more than enough.

*** Shadow Chaos. Its [=DarkChip=], [=DarkInvis=], makes you invulnerable to ANY attack and causes Mega to go berserk, not responding to your controls... but renders him able to use ANY chip or [[LimitBreak Program Advance]] you've used previously.

** The Air Hockey series of battle chips takes advantage of this perk the most. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a965t3iHCvE You know it's broken when even the BonusBoss easily falls to this]]. That's 3000+ damage in under 11 seconds with no Program Advance in sight.

* Battle Network 2 is notorious for the Darkness (literally named DarkMessiah in Japan) PA (Bass V3 X + [=AntiNavi=] X + Any Gospel chip X), where Gospel appears and uses his dark breath on the front and middle columns of the enemy's side of the field. If anything survived the initial onslaught, Bass would attack the back column. The kicker? Both attacks did 3000 damage each. The first attack alone is enough to kill the final boss himself in one hit.

* Battle Network 2 is notorious for the Darkness (literally named DarkMessiah in Japan) PA (Bass V3 X + AntiNavi X + Any Gospel chip X), where Gospel appears and uses his dark breath on the front and middle columns of the enemy's side of the field. If anything survived the initial onslaught, Bass would attack the back column. The kicker? Both attacks did 3000 damage each. '''More than the final boss himself'''.

* The "Rockman Complete Works", PS1 ports of the NES games, provided a feature using the Sony Pocketstation, a Japan only portable device, that featured mini games that allows the player to level up Rockman, and then add that data back into the main game. Stats boosts include more firepower, more health, and greater speed. While this feature was removed when the games were put into the "Megaman Anniversary Collection" this is a [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85j2Y9joBm8 sample of what could've been.]]

** Don't forget Recycle -- it, too, can, in the right hands, become a GameBreaker. How so? It will literally recycle ANY Navi chip that was used last. That includes fellow Giga Chip Bass (which deals a truckload of damage and [[UselessUsefulSpell normally requires a special panel to exist for it to work]]), even if the Dark Hole that's needed to use the actual chip is nowhere to be found. Let's also not forget that it can also recycle any of the OTHER Navichips, essentially letting you use the same Navi chip TWICE (which is especially bad for your opponent if you happen to use a multi-hitter that they're weak to -- like BubbleMan or PlantMan). Even better, it keeps any bonuses you had when you used the first chip - e.g. Atk+30s.
** Don't forget most of the Navi chips. Entire ''folders'' have been built around FlashMan, PlantMan and BubbleMan. The first ignores MercyInvincibility and stuns, the second pierces guards (Looking at you DrillMan), hits multiple times, and immobilizes the enemies, and the last hits an insane number of times (the final one hits around 20 times), with each hit possibly doing over 120 damage depending on how many Aqua +30s you attached.

** Don't forget Recycle -- it, too, can, in the right hands, become a GameBreaker. How so? It will literally recycle ANY Navichip that was used last. That includes fellow Giga Chip Bass (which deals a truckload of damage and [[UselessUsefulSpell normally requires a special panel to exist for it to work]]), even if the Dark Hole that's needed to use the actual chip is nowhere to be found. Let's also not forget that it can also recycle any of the OTHER Navichips, essentially letting you use the same Navichip TWICE (which is especially bad for your opponent if you happen to use a multi-hitter that they're weak to -- like Bubbleman or Plantman). Even better, it keeps any bonuses you had when you used the first chip - e.g. Atk+30s.
** Don't forget most of the Navichips. Entire ''folders'' have been built around Flashman, Plantman and Bubbleman. The first ignores MercyInvincibilty and stuns, the second pierces guards (Looking at you Drillman), hits multiple times, and immobilizes the enemies, and the last hits an insane number of times (the final one hits around 20 times), with each hit possibly doing over 120 damage depending on how many Aqua +30s you attached.

*** You don't have to use Hub.BAT with an elemental Style, but without a Style you're limited on what other programs you can use. The advantage you had with 3 over 2 is increased extendability on Mega Man's abilities from the Navi Customizer. In 2, you were limited to what the style offered you.
* Woodstyle, which heals the user while standing on Grass panels, the Undershirt program, which turns a lethal hit while above 1HP into just enough damage to leave you at 1HP, and [=SetGreen=], which made the battle stage start off as Grass panels. Against non-fire enemies and enemies who could not crack floor panels - which included the non-secret final boss - this was unbeatable and simple. (A perfect example of a trick that breaks the game itself into tiny pieces but will utterly destroy you in multiplayer, by the way.)

** Also, Bug Style itself can be a gamebreaker--occasionally, the negative effects of the style (Forced movement, HP loss, being unable to stand on middle tiles, and your buster glitching up) don't appear and instead you only get the positive effects (Buster Max, a Barrier at the start of battle, or having ten chips selectable at one time). At most, you can get one of the negative effects but all of the bonuses ''at the same time''. Nice.

*** First: you can not use Dark chips against the final boss, so good luck fighting him with reduced HP.

** Of course, using enough Dark chips means your base max HP will be reduced to 1... But you can easily place a pair of HP+500 programs in your Navi Customizer to counteract this, as customized HP can't be permanently lost from Dark chip usage.
* The light path perk in ''Battle Network 4'' is commonly considered to be the most broken passive effect in the entire series. Full Synchro, normally a status effect that is achieved through counter hits, doubles the attack power of your next battlechip. The light path perk gives you a rather high chance to enter Full Synchro with any successful attack, counter hit or not. This, when used along with chained multi-hit battlechips, can almost immediately destroy any boss that is not immune to being stunned. So broken that the perk was completely removed in the fifth game.
** The Air Hockey series of battlechips takes advantage of this perk the most. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a965t3iHCvE You know it's broken when even the BonusBoss easily falls to this]]. That's 3000+ damage in under 11 seconds with no Program Advance in sight.
* In ''Battle Network 5'', you could combine Dark Chips with [[PowerOfFriendship Soul Unison]] to produce "Chaos Soul Unison". It gave you ''the Dark Chip as a free charge attack''. It's at least as buh-roken as it sounds. Chaos Toad Soul and Chaos Blues/Proto Soul are popular for getting perfect S-ranks on RandomEncounters - a 400 damage {{BFS}} or {{BFG}}. They only lasted for a turn, but that was generally more than enough.
** The Chaos Soul Unison had another game-breaking exploit: When fully charged, the charge would rapidly cycle between purple and green. Releasing the charge when it was purple used the Dark Chip with no ill consequences, but releasing the charge on green makes it backfire on you. While they were supposed to have a 50/50 chance of backfiring on you, pausing would stop the cycling, and if it was purple, you could release the B button then resume, and it would successfully fire every time.
*** Chaos Shadow Soul. ITS [=DarkChip=], [=DarkInvis=], makes you invulnerable to ANY attack and causes Mega to go berserk, not responding to your controls... but renders him able to use ANY chip or [[LimitBreak Program Advance]] you've used previously.
*** Chaos Search Soul, especially when the enemy is area rowlocked. The target will instantly eat somewhere in the realm of 800-1200 damage as a result. The attack also completely cancels out the two most common forms of defense, [[MercyInvincibility Invis]] and Anti Damage! The only thing that will completely prevent taking damage from this is a Life Aura + Sanctuary combo, and everyone knows how hard that is to set up.
* Neo Variable Sword. A mega class chip that dealt 240 damage one square ahead of you, unless you input a special button combo ala most fighting games. Input the right one, and it became 2 hits of 240 to the two rows directly in front of you. Area Steal leaves your opponent with only 2 rows. Protosoul lets you charge up any sword chip for 2x damage.Combined, you can instantly kill any player in only 2 chips, both undodgable.

** In Battle Network 3, Variable Sword was an even bigger GameBreaker than its future counterpart. It only did 160 damage, but with the right button combo, this could be turned into four attacks, one in each element, which meant that if your opponent had any sort of elemental affinity, it would do an easy 800 damage (160 x 5) without boosts. And unlike Neo Variable Sword, this version was just was a standard chip, meaning that you could have up to four copies of it in your folder.

[[folder: Mega Man Legends ]]

** The Ground Crawler, again in [[MegaManLegends MML2]]. It's inexpensive to upgrade and MURDERS ground enemies. It even nails air enemies that dare get close enough.

* Gemini Noise, in the third game. It adds a paralysis effect to all sword cards. In multiplayer, it can be used to easily lock any enemy in stun for a long period of time, while dishing out lots of damage. Combine with the Bushido series, Spinblade series, and basically any other sword card aside from a couple for best effect. [[ItGotWorse It Gets Worse]] when you combine it with Wolf Noise, which buffs your sword card power.

** And eventually someone decided that PA were too damn good (one can argue rightfully so since almost everyone with a brain had a folder that whored them before the [=BN5=] games) so after the 4th game the PA system was changed to *USE ONE COPY OF A PA PER BATTLE* (instead of being able to form what was first 5 then 4 copies). The effect this had on the competitive scene was a near abandoning of the series after the BN4 games.

** and eventually someone decided that PA were too damn good( one can argue rightfully so since almost everyone with a brain had a folder that whored them. before the BN5 games. ) so after the 4th game the PA system was changed to *USE ONE COPY OF A PA PER BATTLE* (instead of being able to form what was first 5 then 4 copies ) the effect this had on the competitive scene was a near abandoning of the series after the BN4 games.

*** It should be noted, however, that the Ultimate Armor and Absolute Zero are more [[InfinityPlusOneSword infinity plus one forms]] rather than actual game breakers. Both require you to defeat a ridiculously hard BonusBoss for each one (The Mole Brothers for Absolute Zero, Rafflesia for Ultimate Armor X). The aforementioned SFM Fragment Alpha can only be obtained using [[TheThief Marino]]'s LimitBreak on the FinalBoss of the game.

*** It should be noted, however, that the Ultimate Armor and Absolute Zero are more [[InfinityPlusOneSword infinity plus one forms]] rather than actual game breakers. Both require you to defeat ridiculously a hard BonusBoss for each one (The Mole Brothers for Absolute Zero, Rafflesia for Ultimate Armor X). The aforementioned SFM Fragment Alpha can only be obtained using [[TheThief Marino]]'s LimitBreak on the FinalBoss of the game.

** A nice part load out for (normal)Zero in X6 is buster plus, saber plus, double barrier, shock buffer, and life recover. You get enhanced attack power, doubled defense, double the time you're invulnerable after getting hit, and basically a third subtank. I've actually gone through, and beaten the last stage with this setup.

** Rather unfortunately though, everything you might want to use this on (bosses) all have immunity frames,forcing you to have to wait 5 seconds every time you hit, since the game lags every time you do this. Though it works wonders against the final boss. But so does the Ultimate Armor.

** This advantage is somewhat negated by it being possible for Mega Man being able to have the Ballade Cracker by default, which is a gamebreaker in its own right. It's got Metal Blades' 8-direction brokenness, but in exchange for not going through things or rididculously low energy usage, it has an explosive blast radius around it. In it's original appearance, this was balanced by recieving it near the end of the game, but beat Ballade once in ''10'' (via Special Stage 3), and you permanently have it from the get go.

** The aforementioned Anniversary Collection featured an easy mode and the option to start with four extra lives. The extra lives is self-explanatory, but the easy mode provides better defense, stronger weapons, and less enemies in the NES games. MM7 has all the weapons at ''double power'' compared to normal settings.

* ''9'' gives us an entire ''slew'' of GameBreaker weapons: Jewel Man's Jewel Satellite is considered the best barrier weapon in the series, combining the best qualities of the Leaf Shield, Junk Shield and Star Crash with the ability to ''reflect your opponent's bullets back at them for damage''; Splash Woman's Laser Trident, which is the Metal Blade on steroids (unidirectional, though); Hornet Man's Hornet Chaser, a more versatile (and homing!) Grab Buster; and Galaxy Man's Black Hole Bomb, a controllable quantum singularity that ''eats virtually any enemy in the game in one sitting''. The lack of the Charged Shot and slide in the game is more than made up with by these babies.

*** Don't forget the best part about the Laser Trident: it's armor-piercing. This means you can fire through any enemy shields to damage them, except for Mets.
*** And not even the Mets are safe from your wrath thanks to the Black Hole Bomb and Tornado Man's Tornado Blow. You know it's broken when it can destroy a Mettaur even if ''it is hiding in its shell''.

** Actually, if you have Wi-Fi and some Brothers, the White Cards can be exploited to be just as bad. You can turn on their cards to either Multi-Noise or use the card roulette. Doing the latter will randomly select a White Card...or if you're lucky, '''you get their Giga card instead'''.

* ''5'' presents us with the debut of Beat. Granted getting him required finding all eight letters in the eight robot master stages (and thus only usable for the second half of the game on), Beat was notorious in the fifth installment of the series for being Megaman's version of [[SonicTheHedgehog Cream the Rabbit's]] Chao companion, Cheese. As long as you have weapon energy, Beat will chase down any enemy onscreen when summoned and instagib it. It doesn't stop there, Beat also works on ''bosses''; he even deals as much damage to them as a weapon a robot master ''has a weakness to''. In fact, Beat was so broken he even ''completely'' trivialized an otherwise very [[ThatOneBoss annoying]] encounter with [[spoiler: ''Wily'']]. It was so bad that Capcom changed his gameplay function [[DemotedToExtra to only rescuing Mega Man when he fell into BottomlessPits]] from ''7'' on. In ''6'', he was still game breaker, but he no longer hunted down Bosses for you.

* ''Xtreme 2'', a game for the Gameboy Color, had a part system like the one in ''X5''. X could equip up to four upgrade parts as long as he didn't have all his armor parts, if he did only two were possible. So as long as your were willing to give up the upgrade for the ''Street Fighter'' moves, ''much'' weaker than the console versions, you could skip the helmet, which was identical to the ''X1'' version. The best part loadout was Buster +1, Buster +2, Ultimate Buster, and Speed Shot, letting you forget the special weapons and just blast away with a high speed barrage of double-strength charge shots from the X buster.

{{Game Breaker}}s in the MegaMan series.

* ''MegaMan 2'' has the Metal Blades, the weapon you receive after defeating Metal Man (who is arguably one of the easier bosses to deal with when just using your default Mega-Buster weapon). Once you realize they can be fired in any direction (something the Mega-Buster can never do in any of the games), they often mow straight through swarms of smaller but still troublesome enemies and that you almost always have an abundance of weapon energy for it, the idea of using the default weapon at all pretty much goes straight out the window.

* ''MegaMan 3'''s variation of the Rush Jet, which, unlike other games, lets move freely in every direction. You can pretty much negate any set of BottomlessPits or Disappearing Blocks by using it. The worst thing about it is that energy is only drained if you're standing on it, and it follows you left and right even if you're jumping or on another platform entirely. This means you can cross large gaps with virtually no weapon energy loss.
* ''MegaMan 5'' presents us with the debut of Beat. Granted getting him required finding all eight letters in the eight robot master stages (and thus only usable for the second half of the game on), Beat was notorious in the fifth installment of the series for being Megaman's version of [[SonicTheHedgehog Cream the Rabbit's]] Chao companion, Cheese. As long as you have weapon energy, Beat will chase down any enemy onscreen when summoned and instagib it. It doesn't stop there, Beat also works on ''bosses''; he even deals as much damage to them as a weapon a robot master ''has a weakness to''. In fact, Beat was so broken he even ''completely'' trivialized an otherwise very [[ThatOneBoss annoying]] encounter with [[spoiler: ''Wily'']]. It was so bad that Capcom changed his gameplay function [[DemotedToExtra to only rescuing MegaMan when he fell into BottomlessPits]] from MegaMan 7 on. In six, he was still game breaker, but he no longer hunted down Bosses for you.
* ''MegaMan 6''' has the Jet Adapter (Rush Jet Adapter in some regions). Although you were only able to fly for a short amount of time, and could not slide, use special weapons, or charge your buster while using it, this armor made the platform-heavy sections (and several other areas) a joke, as it's easy to use and it recharges very quickly when you are on the ground or on a ladder. Given the nature of MegaMan [[NintendoHard games]], there's little reason to use the other form (or arugably normal Megaman) over it except for cases where sliding or a special weapon is absolutely necessary. Getting this item is one of the first things many players do (as the robot master who has it is one of the easiest of the set) when starting a new game.

* ''MegaMan 9'' gives us an entire ''slew'' of GameBreaker weapons: Jewel Man's Jewel Satellite is considered the best barrier weapon in the series, combining the best qualities of the Leaf Shield, Junk Shield and Star Crash with the ability to ''reflect your opponent's bullets back at them for damage''; Splash Woman's Laser Trident, which is the Metal Blade on steroids (unidirectional, though); Hornet Man's Hornet Chaser, a more versatile (and homing!) Grab Buster; and Galaxy Man's Black Hole Bomb, a controllable quantum singularity that ''eats virtually any enemy in the game in one sitting''. The lack of the Charged Shot and slide in the game is more than made up with by these babies.

* MegaMan 10 gives us Bass. He still has many of his powers from ''MegaMan & Bass'' except the double jump, he can't shoot through walls, and his shots are half as powerful as MegaMan's, but he can still fire in seven directions and has a rapid auto fire to boot, making a lot of bosses and damn near everything else [[ArmCannon cannon]] fodder. He also seems to take half the damage of MegaMan as well.

* It may be a ROM hack, MegaMan 4MI(Read: The Romhack that might as well be a completely new game) has [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntv4YE6_Fpw Rush Cannon and especially Hell Wheel]].

* In the earlier ''MegaManX'' games, X could find some well-hidden ''StreetFighter II''-inspired {{Easter Egg}}s that let him perform a one-hit kill attack, thus making the game a whole lot easier after finding them. However, the moves could only be used when X's health was completely full, so it balanced out. Examples of this are the Hadoken in ''MegaMan X'' and the Shoryuken in ''MegaMan X 2''.

* ''Megaman Xtreme 2'', a game for the Gameboy Color, had a part system like the one in ''X5''. X could equip up to four upgrade parts as long as he didn't have all his armor parts, if he did only two were possible. So as long as your were willing to give up the upgrade for the ''Street Fighter'' moves, ''much'' weaker than the console versions, you could skip the helmet, which was identical to the ''X1'' version. The best part loadout was Buster +1, Buster +2, Ultimate Buster, and Speed Shot, letting you forget the special weapons and just blast away with a high speed barrage of double-strength charge shots from the X buster.
* ''Megaman X6'' had, like some of its peers, a parts system. It also had an armor whose charged attack is a sword slash. ''Remember this.'' Some of the parts included one which would make all your attacks fully charged, typically draining your shot speed a bit. Another part would cause a charged shot to 'stick', doing some extra damage as it passed by an enemy. There may have been a third involved. Now, we have an armor on that has a charged sword attack, with no uncharged attacks available thanks to a part, and another part that makes charged shots stick... but the sword continues to hit the enemy. What this translates into is you basically break the game against anything without immunity frames that you can get close enough to to hit.

* ''MegaManX: Command Mission'' had Bait/Stealth Form, which allowed Axl to always be the target of any targeted attack and not take damage. Not a perfect lock, as attacks that hit the whole party would still be able to hit your other characters, but good enough to make many boss battles a lot easier.

*** You don't have to use Hub.BAT with an elemental Style, but without a Style you're limited on what other programs you can use. The advantage you had with 3 over 2 is increased extendability on MegaMan's abilities from the Navi Customizer. In 2, you were limited to what the style offered you.

* In ''Maverick Hunter X'', you get to play as Vile. He's got a few breakers up his sleeve, too. One example is the Stubborn Crawler which absolutely MURDERS anything on the ground and on a wall ''faster than you can blink''. In addition, not one, but ''TWO'' bosses are weak to it. Then there's the Parasite Sword, which can hit anywhere on the screen if you're positioned properly. It cannot be destroyed, and it's pretty powerful, too.