Mega Man (Classic) / Game Breaker

The Mega Man franchise is famous for the titular robot's ability to amass tons of weapons after defeating bosses, and their weapons can feel so satisfying to use. However, despite at least eight boss weapons per game, there's a few weapons in the Classic series that just take power creep to the extreme.

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Mainline series

Mega Man

This game's weapons that form the Fire, Ice, Lightning trio are all highly powerful in their own right.

The Fire Storm contends with the Thunder Beam for the most effective weapon in the game. Each shot has a fairly large hitbox and travels at a reliable straight path, then a short-lived flaming shield orbits Mega Man and is strong enough to kill some non-boss enemies outright if they collide with you (and does multiple hits against opponents with short Mercy Invincibility). The weapon also deals at least double damage to more than half of the bosses in the game. It's these perks that turn the first form of the Wily Machine into a cakewalk, as its aforementioned lack of Mercy Invincibility means it goes down in seconds just from touching the flaming shield. And on top of all that? The Fire Storm consumes one unit per shot!
The Thunder Beam is the other major contender for most effective weapon in the game. In addition to also consuming one unit per shot, it's versatile at hitting enemies above, below, and in front of you all at once, has an overall larger hitbox on the frontal shot, and is much easier to land numerous hits in one shot, especially when using the Pause Glitch. It's this glitch that can also make the otherwise-difficult Yellow Devil an Anti-Climax Boss, as even a single shot can rip through its health or even outright one-shot it.
The Ice Slasher isn't as obscene as the other two examples above, but it's very useful nonetheless. Its projectiles don't damage enemies but rather freezes them in place (including in mid-air), and unlike some future Special Weapons that render enemies immobile, you can switch to other weapons to finish them off. Helping its case is the fact that, like the Fire Storm, the Ice Slasher's projectile is a reliable straight shot. As straightforward as it is, the Ice Slasher does its job, and it does it exceptionally well.

Mega Man 2

The Metal Blade is not only the best weapon in 2, but unarguably THE best weapon in the entire franchise that isn't purposefully an Infinity +1 Sword. Each blade can be fired in any direction — something the Mega Buster can never do in any of the games — mow straight through swarms of smaller but still troublesome enemies (which is also useful for farming items from them), and they consume so little energy (four shots per unit, for a total of 114 shots) that you'll almost never run out; and due to a glitch that gives any weapons that has more than one shot for each unit infinite ammo, you can simply fire three blades, pause, and unpause. Moreover, half of the Robot Masters take increased damage from this weapon!^* Its downside is that a few of the game's enemies are still invulnerable to it, and many of the game's hardest bosses^* are immune to it. However, after defeating Metal Man — whose stage isn't too hard and is one of the easier bosses to deal with with just the Mega Buster — the idea of ever switching out from the Metal Blade back to the Mega Buster pretty much goes straight out the window. A sizable potion of players thus consider it a Self-Imposed Challenge to not use the Metal Blade at all on a playthrough, because it's that good.

Mega Man 3

The Rush Jet, while normally a simple transport method that can skip over large sections if used carefully, has a perk in its debut game that no other games had: it can move freely in any direction. You can skip over nearly any set of Bottomless Pits or disappearing blocks by using it. While some of the game's puzzles were intended with its multidirectional movement in mind, the catalyst is that, due to a glitch, its energy only drains 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. In fact, in stages like Needle Man's Doc Robot stage, the wide horizontal gap sections can be crossed this way, completely skipping the necessity of using the weapon capsules that would fuel the jet and let you cross said gaps; especially if these were picked up before, as they're are not restored if you lose a life. Just hop up and down repeatedly as you're flying, and that's one big problem out of the way immediately.
3 had a lot of tricks that could count here, though most were removed for the Anniversary Collection. Just by going to the password screen and dialling in A6, either color, you start a new game with nine E-Tanks (this code has stayed in the newer versions). There are also glitches for getting Rush Jet and Marine early. And that's without mentioning the Controller 2 tricks.

Mega Man 4

Flash Stopper is a massive improvement over Time Stopper, fixing most of, if not all the problems the latter had. While its time-stopping effect is shorter-lived, you're no longer passive while it's active, allowing you to effectively use the buster. Besides, one use does not deplete all energy, instead using a generous four energy units, allowing for seven uses and thus more versatile usage. And for one more perk, it allows Mega Man to shoot through shielded enemies while active due to, again, a glitch. A much more abusable time-stopping weapon means that while only Pharoah Man is weak to it, you can turn the minibosses in this game into a joke, namely stopping Moby in Dive Man's stage from spawning and taking Whopper's (from Ring Man's stage) main strength away.
Rain Flush is the first screen-clearing weapon in the series, and it set very high expectations for its successors to live up to. A capsule is fired into the sky, unleashing rain that will typically one-shot most non-bosses/minibosses, can penetrate shielded enemies and takes out enemy projectiles out of the player's range (namely the missiles from the Kabatoncue mini-bosses in Ring Man's stage). It's relatively expensive (using four units per shot, for only seven uses), but this weakness is mitigable. It's also the first weapon most people will obtain, since it comes from the most common choice for a starting point, Toad Man.
The Pharaoh Shot is a fireball that can be thrown in six directions, similarly to the Metal Blade from 2 though without the ability to throw it up or down; nevertheless, this is still very respectable coverage. The real deal comes from its charge shot variant — it charges up quickly and is also very powerful, destroying a large amount of enemies and even some bosses with ease (it's also the only effective weapon against the Wily Capsule). However, it's — once again — thanks to a glitch that it truly shines; the fireball that charges up over your head is able to hit enemies — either if it deals damage or if the shot is deflected — as long as you keep the button held down, and while the shot disappears, you can still fire a full-sized shot, managing two attacks with a single charge. By pausing and unpausing, however, another fireball can be charged over your head if you hold the button. This allows the Pharaoh Shot to never run out of ammo and essentially grant a double charge shot. While attacking some enemies this way can be difficult at times, there's no denying it melts the game's difficulty into nothing.

Mega Man 5

This game's incarnation of the Mega Buster is quite possibly the most broken it has ever been for one reason: the Charge Shot. While 4's Charge Shot was pretty powerful as well, a few other weapons could either match it or outperform its power (like the Pharaoh Shot or Rain Flush). This one though? The shot is much larger, it charges up faster, it accelerates to top speed immediately, and the shot is still unimpeded if enemies with less than 3 HP are hit by it. While you lose the charge if you're hit (unlike with 4's incarnation), this is a relatively small price to pay when you can simply charge up energy, then unleash it followed by a rain of normal shots to rip through even the strongest enemies.
This game marks the debut of Beat. As long as you have weapon energy, Beat will chase down any enemy onscreen when summoned and destroy it for a cost proportional to the enemy's HP. It doesn't stop there though, as Beat also works on bosses; in fact, all three versions of Dark Man take as much damage from Beat as a Charge Shot, which is more that their Special Weapon weaknesses. Beat also works as the Wily Capsule's weakness, trivializing an otherwise very very annoying encounter into simply dodging its shots, and due to a glitch, Beat may even locate where Wily will appear before he even attacks. Granted, getting Beat requires finding all eight letters in the eight Robot Master stages, but once you manage that, have fun! It was so bad, 6 actually nerfed Beat severely by causing him to no longer target bosses, and subsequent games from 7 and on would change his function to only rescuing Mega Man when he fell into Bottomless Pits.

Mega Man 6

The Rush Jet Adaptor lets Mega Man temporarily fly as long as the jump button is held, and recharges its energy quickly while on the ground. You're only able to fly for a short amount of time, and can't slide, use special weapons, or charge your buster while using it, but this armor trivializes the platform-heavy sections (and several other areas) by itself. Given the nature of the games, this thing is a godsend. Getting this item is one of the first things many players do when starting a new game, as the Robot Master who has it, Plant Man, is one of the easiest of the set.
When it comes to actual Special Weapons, the Flame Blast stands out the most. It's a fireball that becomes a pillar of flame once it touches the ground or wall. Excluding any weaknesses, each shot deals four points of damage to every enemy in the game, be it as a fireball or the fire pillar. It does have the problem of firing at an arc, but it still travels enough distance to where it can reliably hit enemies in front of you. The best part? It's ammo-friendly, with each shot only consuming a single energy unit.

Mega Man 7

The Super Adapter. If you liked 6's adapters, this one is both of them in one. Each charged shot deals much more damage than the (nerfed) regular Charge Shot, and it can even be upgraded as well to home in on enemies. Much like the Jet and Power Adapters from 6, however, you're not able to slide with it. Though even so, once you get this bad boy (which is as early as the first four bosses in), you'll rarely want to take it off.
The Junk Shield, despite its name, is the very first "shield" weapon that's considered good, and arguably the second best shield weapon in the Classic series. Each use of the weapon takes a pretty high three units, but the weapon protects Mega Man with a large junk barrier that repeteadly hits enemies for very high damage (as much as a Super Adapter shot), easily decimating through hordes of weak enemies and making it usable for Item Farming. While it can be disengaged to fire projectiles that deal double that damage, you'll still want to never do so in account of how many hits a shield can soak up, and these projectiles actually decrease in power the more enemies that were previously hit. The Junk Shield's most notable issue is, ironically, its inability to provide projectile protection; nevertheless, it remains a very powerful weapon in its own right.

Mega Man 8

The Mega Ball manages to be this and a Scrappy Weapon at the same time, with its secondary function being its selling point. By pressing and holding the jump button and landing on the ball, it explodes and Mega Man is propelled upwards with a bit more height than the normal jump. However, the ball does not have to be on the ground to do this. With practice, you can fire the Mega Ball in mid-air and land on it, still in mid-air, resulting in a double jump (or triple jump, if you can chain it and still have weapon energy). This trick completely trivializes many platforming sections in the game. The best thing about the Mega Ball is that it's given to you for free during the halfway point of the introduction stage.
The Arrow Shot upgrade for the Mega Buster can kill nearly any stage enemy in one hit, shielded or not — and the plasma spread after it hits something can damage enemies behind your first target. The Laser Shot can hit anything as well, and while it has less power, it also charges ridiculously fast.
The Tornado Hold is a small fan that creates a wind pillar that damages enemies rapidly. It also protects you against most enemy projectiles, and also works as an elevator when you step into it, which lets you reach secret areas, retrieve items, and bypass many tricky parts of levels. It's especially effective against flying enemies, including Bass when you fight him in Dr. Wily's fortress.

Mega Man 9

This installment gives us an entire slew of great weapons, but Jewel Man's Jewel Satellite takes the cake by a landslide. The shield you deploy is capable of reflecting shots back, making enemies that rely on More Dakka such as Sniper Joes a complete joke. It also stays up until dismissed or until it collides into a strong enough enemy — while it does deal a paltry two points of damage, any enemy with two HP or lower is destroyed while the shield simply stays up. It even plays a nice role in Item Farming if used against certain enemies that shoot projectiles that leave pickups when destroyed. As with most shield weapons, its most notable weakness is its high cost — four units per usage, for a total of seven uses — but even that is a small price to pay. And if you find the Energy Balancer? Forget about it. The Jewel Sattellite is thus considered not only the best weapon in the game, but also the best shield weapon in the Classic series and one of the best weapons in the franchise overall.
The Laser Trident, while not to the level of the Jewel Satellite, is still a very useful weapon in its own right. The bullets you shoot travel very fast, deal two points of damage, pierce through enemies unaffected, and destroy barriers. Essentially, it works similarly to the Charge Shot from the earlier games but without the need to charge and the ability to fire it twice instead of waiting, making it spammable and a significant upgrade to the severely nerfed Mega Buster. The icing on the cake? It consumes one unit per two shots (for a total of 56 uses), giving it reasonably high ammo. These traits can thus make it a good alternative to the Mega Buster as a "primary weapon."

Mega Man 10

The Triple Blade. While each projectile deals twice as much damage as a Buster shot, its triple spread shot makes it easier to hit enemies above or below Mega Man (depending on whether he's in grounded or in the air, respectively). Two shots can land on the same enemy, allowing the weapon to shred anything in close range when spammed. It also has a low ammo cost of one unit per use, making its maintenance a relatively easy task. It's common for players to switch to this as their "primary weapon", and it can be obtained from Blade Man, who can be a bit annoying at first but is one of the more manageable Robot Masters of the bunch.
The Water Shield can be described as a nerfed version of 7's Junk Shield, but even that is still relatively powerful by virtue of just how many projectiles it spawns upon use. Each of its eight water droplets can block enemy shots and deal twice a Buster shot's damage while not deactivating the shield, making it just as much of a potent weapon for facing hordes of smaller enemies as 7's Junk Shield and 9's Jewel Satellite. As with most "shield" weapons in the series, however, its power comes at a price — its ammo is depleted in seven uses. Once you acquire the Energy Balancer, however, have fun.
The Ballade Cracker is every bit as useful as it was in IV. A weapon that is ammo-friendly (two shots per unit, for a total of 56 uses), can be aimed in seven directions, has a large area of impact thanks to its explosion, the explosion lasts a surprisingly long time, and it deals a fair amount of damage to everything? Yes please! Essentially, it works as a slower yet stronger version of the Bass Buster. It does have some weaknesses, such as only Mega Man being able to use it, being impossible to use in closed stairways, and that no bosses outside from Enker are vulnerable to it, but even the latter point is a blessing in disguise as it makes for an alternative to the Mega Buster as a "primary weapon." However, what pushes it further over the edge is that, unlike in IV where it was received near the end of the game, it's possible to beat Ballade via the Special Stage 3 before playing the game, letting you permanently have it from the get-go.
Bass still has many of his powers from Mega Man & Bass. His default weapon, the Bass Buster, can't shoot through walls, and his shots are half as powerful as Mega Man's, but more than makes up for it with its ability to rapid-fire in seven directions. It is almost hilariously broken when used against the mini-bosses and even several of the Wily Castle bosses — just stand below the boss's weak point, aim upwards and open fire, and watch as bosses that were a major pain against Mega Man or Proto Man go down in virtually no time at all. Bass' dash also works like Proto Man's slide, letting him dodge out of the way of attacks that would be much harder for Mega Man to avoid, and it allows Bass to even perform a long jump with a lot of control over it. The only power Bass didn't retain in the transition from & Bass is his Double Jump, but that's of no issue when it's clear that most of the levels in 10 weren't designed with Bass in mind.

Mega Man 11

The Pile Driver is a decent, yet powerful weapon by itself, but it's when used for utility and not as a weapon where it shines. Unlike other Dash Attack weapons in the series, it can be used midair, allowing you to get past jumping obstacles as it pushes you forward. This can make Wily Stage 1 less of a headache.
The Speed Gear makes the Power Gear redundant by comparison. The time slowdown not only makes platforming sections much easier, but it also allows Mega Man to shred through anything without invincibility frames by rapid firing the Mega Buster up against them. Even against Robot Masters, you're much better off using the Speed Gear since it lets you avoid their attacks and sneak in damage without any trouble. The Speed Gear Booster upgrade also lets you move and attack at normal speed while in Speed Gear mode, which removes a lot of difficulty from Torch Man's stage and others while making it even easier to spam-attack enemies to death.
Power Gear-boosted special weapons can be this:
- A fully charged Mega Buster will destroy every enemy (including shielded ones) and everything in its path. It will do massive damage to mini-bosses and bosses. The downside is that you will have to let the gears cooldown; if you are in non-critical areas where enemies will continuously barrage you or in a timed area, you can simply wait and repeat again.
- The Block Dropper is like summoning an avalanche in midair.
- The Acid Barrier has stronger shots (they deal twice the damage of a Buster shot), the barrier lasts longer, and shoots projectiles at targets automatically if one makes contact with it.
- The Tundra Storm turns into a screen nuke.
- The Pile Driver becomes even faster and stronger, allowing for much easier section-skipping.
The "Rush Jet air trick." Simultaneously pressing the Rush Jet button and holding jump allows you to land on the immediate Rush jet in mid-air. Levels that require upwards progress like Bounce Man's stage become a shortcut breeze and levels that have a ton of jumping and pits like Wily Stage 1 a much easier level to handle.
The Auto-Charge Chip auto-charges the Mega Buster. Once installed, set the auto-fire to the fire button from the options menu. Use Speed Gear and most enemies and mini-bosses can be easily shredded by a close range Buster Barrage.
The Screw Catcher increases the chance of enemies dropping screws by 30%. The downside is that the game must be played on Saturday, unless the player messes with the system clock.

Game Boy/Rockman World games

Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge

The Ice Slasher is back with a vengeance, being by far the most valuable weapon in your arsenal. Already a powerful weapon against enemies, it can also be used on otherwise invincible hazards such as the Super Cutters, which completely eliminates the need to do the fast jumps and dodges otherwise required to fight enemies where Super Cutters are present.

Mega Man II

Remember the Metal Blade and the fly-anywhere version of Rush Jet, already two of the most infamous examples of the most powerful Mega Man weapons? Now imagine what they would be like if you put both in the exact same game, and then made them even more powerful. Not only does nearly every single thing stated above apply, but the Metal Blade's blades cut through enemies they didn't originally cut through in this game^Example and the Rush Jet uses energy even slower than in 3. And Dr. Wily thinks he has the slightest chance of winning...

Mega Man III

The Screw Crusher. While its arching trajectory can be a little awkward, it deals massive amounts of damage and uses very little energy — in fact, even when taking into account the Game Boy series having lower energy gauges compared to the NES games (with nineteen units, compared to the original twenty-eight), it can be used 152 times; that's more than the Metal Blade in 2! On the other hand, the Screw Crusher is the last weapon you get in the game, and the only weapon that can harm the Wily Machine's final form, forcing you to conserve at least some energy for the final battle.

Other

Rockman Complete Works, a series of 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 Mega Man, and then add that data back into the main game. Stat boosts include more firepower, more health, and greater speed. While this feature was removed when the games were put into the Anniversary Collection, this is a sample of what could've been.
The aforementioned Anniversary Collection featured an Easy Mode and the option to start any game with four extra lives. The extra lives is self-explanatory, and it makes a power-up in 8 pointless, but the Easy Mode provides better defense, stronger weapons, and less enemies in the NES games. 7 has all the weapons at double power compared to normal settings. Sadly, this doesn't affect 8 or the two arcade games.

Super Adventure Rockman

The 'Proto Shield (Proto Man's shield) is undoubtedly the most helpful item, reducing all received damage from enemies to a mere 1%. As most fights tend to have enemies launch a variety of strong attacks at once that'll drop Mega Man's health heavily, the Proto Shield greatly bolsters defense and pairs nicely with the Charge Shot.

Rom Hacks

Rockman 4 Minus ∞:
- Hell Wheel allows you to speed through the stages and in earlier versions it could kill almost every enemy. Use this in Wily Stage 2 and the whole first half (except for the Jumbigs) is an entire joke. Many people doing playthroughs tend to use this ability.
- Recycle Inhaler can destroy almost every enemy in one hit and it makes powerful items. In raocow's words, it'll DUST THEM UP!
- Water Cutter is basically a way faster version of the already overpowered Metal Blade and has near infinite ammo.
- The ?Dagger, which turns every hit into a Critical Hit. A worthy reward for beating Super Shadow Man.
Rockman 7 EP: Self-Burning is PureSabe's follow-up to Hell Wheel, and manages to be even stronger. It turns Mega Man's whole body into a rapid-damaging hitbox and makes him immune to contact damage while active, protecting him from a lot of enemies and mini-bosses. It has great environmental uses as well, letting Mega Man walk through lava, light up rooms, and boil underwater enemies. To top it off, it uses energy only when activated instead of draining it continuously, allowing it to be kept on throughout entire stages. Its only disadvantages are not protecting against bullets and being the boss weapon of the fairly tough Turbo Man.

Game Breaker / Mega Man (Classic)