Mega Man / Scrappy Weapon

"Hitting enemies with this weapon is like trying to hit your friend across the classroom with a paper airplane. Even if it looks like you were close and can do it, no amount of time will allow you to accurately aim this thing to a target."

— Toortep on the Thunder Wool, "The WORST Weapon from EVERY Mega Man Game 1-11!! | Worst Mega Man Weapons"

The Mega Man franchise is famous for the titular robot's ability to amass tons of weapons after defeating Robot Masters and they can feel so satisfying to use. However, with at least 8 boss weapons per game, there's bound to be a few duds every now and then.

open/close all folders

Classic series

Mega Man

The Super Arm picks up blocks and tosses them around. The blocks do good damage, but most levels have only a few blocks to toss, making the weapon's usage very limited. Most notably, the second fight against Cut Man has no blocks whatsoever in his arena, meaning you can't use his weakness against him. Even in the first fight, he dies in two hits, but you have only two blocks to work with and they don't come back, so if you miss, you can't defeat him with his weakness. While the Super Arm isn't bad per se, it doesn't help that upon getting the Thunder Beam, it becomes outclassed due to the fact the Thunder Beam can break blocks the Super Arm can for a lower cost. Fortunately, Guts Man's playable appearance in Powered Up doesn't have to worry about these limitations, plus his ability to create blocks from thin air makes him a Game-Breaker.
The Hyper Bomb, however, is widely considered to be one of the worst Special Weapons of all time — while powerful and less limited in use than the Super Arm, it's also far less practical. The arc at which you throw it can be unreliable, and the bomb is far too slow to be of any use, as it won't explode until it has landed on solid ground, on which moment its explosive timer of two seconds starts to tick. Thus, it sees little to no use against anything other than the mostly immobile Guts Man. Powered Up fortunately improved on it by making the bomb explode on contact with enemies, and Bomb Man's playable appearance is capable of aiming his own bombs to circumvent their arching nature.

Mega Man 2

The effectiveness of the Bubble Lead against the final boss is one of the more infamous gags in the series. Due to a glitch in the game's damage tables, it bounces off the majority of enemies, especially ones you'd want to use it on, and does less damage than any other "ground-bound" weapon in the series. Even against Wily, it tends to be a chore to use, as its attack pattern makes it terrible at handling a flying opponent. At the very least, it does have another use in detecting the occasional fake floors in Wily Castle's fourth stage, and it works reliably against the other boss weak to it, Heat Man, as it ignores his Atomic Fire's flame pillars.
The Atomic Fire is an incredibly powerful weapon that can destroy most regular enemies in one hit and would be very useful... if a single fully charged blast from the Atomic Fire didn't take up an obscene amount of weapon energy (it consumes 10 units, leaving you with a pitiful maximum of two fully charged shots from a full energy bar). This makes the weapon completely useless in Wily's Castle, where your weapon energy doesn't replenish between stages. On top of this, the charge is slow and it's usually much better to defeat enemies with multiple shots of a weaker weapon. Its only real uses are to defeat Wood Man and the first form of the Wily Machine (two fully charged hits in both cases, unless you're playing on Normal in the English versions, then it only takes one).
The Crash Bomber does nowhere near as much damage as you'd expect a weapon with its name to do. Directly hitting an enemy does almost nothing, while missing them and waiting for the explosion has the same problem as the Hyper Bomb, due to the fact it takes too much time to explode.^note It's also pretty slow, and a glutton for energy (seven shots and you're out), which makes using it in boss fights a major pain — most infamously, the Boobeam Trap, which requires exactly seven shots to defeat (fire even one shot that you didn't need to and the fight is unwinnable).^note Pretty much the only thing it's useful against is destructible barriers. The Drill Bomb in 4 and the Chain Blast in 11 are seen as general improvements to it; the former has an insane damage output and low ammo cost, the latter sticks to enemies and can be fired multiple times to increase its damage output and radius, and both can be detonated on command, while the Crash Bomber can't.
The Time Stopper grants an awesome ability on paper, but it's overbalanced to the point of uselessness in practice. Once the Time Stopper gets triggered, it can't be turned off, and it just keeps draining until you lose the whole charge, giving it effectively one use. Worse, you also have no means of attack while the Stopper is active and you can't switch weapons, so if you run into an enemy you can't jump over, that's an entire charge wasted. It doesn't help that it forms part of one of the most infamous Morton's Forks in the series; in Quick Man's stage, either you use it to stop the Force Beams at the cost of enduring Quick Man in battle (and his speed means using the Crash Bomber isn't as good of an idea as it sounds), or you memorize the malevolent position of those frickin' laser beams with the added benefit of having Quick Man's weakness (and even then, it depletes only half of his energy, forcing you to use other weapons to kill him anyways). It looks even worse when one of the few other uses for it is essentially an exploit (it interrupts the arrival animation of the Frienders, the mini-bosses in Wood Man's stage, letting you bypass them). No matter what, you have a weapon you'll fire off at most twice or thrice in your entire playthrough. Notably, the Flash Stopper in Mega Man 4 is often seen as a "fixed" version — it stops time for less time, but doesn't drain in one go (allowing it to be used seven times), and you can use the Mega Buster while it's active (though you can't charge it).
The Leaf Shield started the sad trend in the series of shield weapons that fail to be reliable. While it does do a decent job of warding off weak enemies and can serve as a tolerable projectile, it doesn't block enemy projectiles, and more pointedly, flies off as soon as you press a moving direction, meaning that unless you're riding a moving platform, you can't move at all while using it. Combine that with it three units per use, and you have a weapon that's really only helpful for Item Farming in areas with Respawning Enemies or protecting you on said moving platforms. Even against Air Man, it can be surprisingly frustrating to use, because the thrown version of the shield is so large that it just bounces off Air Man's own projectiles, requiring you to get behind him and deliberately crash into him.

Mega Man 3

The Top Spin is an especially infamous example. Not only does it require Mega Man to touch opponents while using it in a game where Collision Damage is the norm, but this game is infamous for Mega Man's hurtbox being much larger than in any other titles, it can only be used while jumping, the weapon doesn't grant any invincibility to Mega Man, and —most notably— its damage mechanics are highly bugged; since striking an enemy in Mercy Invincibility counts as a hit, it can potentially drain in a single second while doing only a single hit of damage. On top of that, it's the weakness of both Shadow Man and Doc Heat Man (the former already being seen as one of the most frustrating fights in the Classic series due to his poorly-telegraphed attack patterns, the latter since it ignites itself after the hit, leading to contact damage anyways), and both are very susceptible to the above draining problem. It can see greater effect if you know how to use it, as it at least kills some small enemies in one shot for low cost, destroys some projectiles that block Buster shots (like the Hammer Joe's shot puts), and melts bosses that lack Mercy Invincibility, including the Final Boss, in one hit.
The Spark Shock is a huge downgrade from the Ice Slasher in 1. On hit, it creates a cloud of electricity that stuns whichever enemy it hit, but it deals no damage to anything besides certain bosses, there can't be more than two paralyzed enemies at a time (it can't be fired if that happens), you can't switch to another weapon until its effect wears off, and touching a stunned enemy still damages Mega Man. Because of this, the stun just briefly turns an enemy into a static damaging obstacle that you can't get rid of, so chances are that if you could get around them in that form, you could probably just jump over them without the Spark Shock. Worse still is that it doesn't even work on a lot of enemies! It does have twenty-eight uses, but when you're as ineffective as this, twenty-eight times zero is still zero. Mega Man III for the Game Boy fixed the weapon entirely by simply letting it function like the Ice Slasher — that is, you can stun any number of enemies at once and switch to damaging weapons to finish them off.
The Gemini Laser's gimmick is that, if it hits a surface, it bounces around the room until it hits something or fizzles out. It's certainly fun to watch, but you can't fire another shot or pause to switch weapons while one laser is bouncing around, and it's a Painfully Slow Projectile, effectively turning its intended strength into a weakness. Ricocheting shots to hit enemies while out of their range at weird angles sounds like an interesting idea, except that the Magnet Missile's homing properties, the Search Snake's crawling, and the Shadow Blade's multidirectional aiming all make this niche very crowded. While it can be used as a simple straightforward shooter, this means that, ironically, the best way to use the weapon is to try to make sure its gimmick never activates and fire it exclusively at point-blank range (even most of the enemies weak to it are slow immobile types). The idea of a bouncing weapon would eventually be executed far better by the Rebound Striker in 10 and the Bounce Ball in 11, both of which are much faster, lack the "one bullet at-a-time" limit, and have additional gimmicks on top of that.
The Hard Knuckle is similarly awkward of a weapon to use. There's a short delay before the fist actually flies out of Mega Man's arm, but that delay is noticeably slow enough to be a hindrance. It is able to have its vertical trajectory changed, but its movement is just as slow as a semi-trailer trying to make wide turns, so it is surprisingly difficult to properly aim it at targets, notably non-stationary ones. For a Rocket Punch, it actually dishes out less damage on average than you may think, and its subpar weapon energy economy means that taking down most enemies that aren't mini-bosses is actually inefficient as they can be taken out with the Magnet Missile, Shadow Blade, or even the aforementioned Gemini Laser just as quickly or even faster (Magnet Missile even has the same ammo consumption cost as the Hard Knuckle at 2 units each; it is a much more accurate and efficient killing tool). Even using it against some mini-bosses in the game results in you depleting about a third of your weapon energy to destroy them when something else could have done the trick for less ammo; possibly more if you miss your target or get hit during the delay before the fist is fired off.
The Rush Marine is frequently derided for not only being such a situational device (it can only be used underwater), but in this game it's completely redundant as the Rush Jet does the exact same thing, except you can use it out of water as well. It doesn't help that the Marine's energy consumes energy fast and you can't delay its consumption by simply not standing on Rush at all (since you're inside his cockpit), so it becomes risky to use in water sections with Bottomless Pits, like in Gemini Man's stage. 4 would severely Nerf the Rush Jet, allowing the Marine to not be obsolete, but this still wasn't enough. Naturally, none of the games after 4 have featured the Marine.
Wily Wars manages to make the Magnet Missile, a fairly decent weapon in the NES original, into one of these. Due to an error in its programming, Magnet Missile has a nasty tendency to home on enemy projectiles, usually resulting in it uselessly flying off into space when you're trying to hit an actual enemy/boss with it. This makes fighting bosses that are weak to it, like Hard Man and Doc Metal Man, exercises in frustration as you constantly try to fire at them only for the shots to careen into nothingness; especially damning since Magnet Missile only gets a maximum of 14 shots until it's fully depleted.

Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge

The Mirror Buster. You only get to use it in the final stage after taking down Enker, and it's not generally useful on the enemies to boot. It only works when certain projectiles are being fired at the shield Mega Man props up, and it's the only weapon that can damage the Wily Machine I's second phase, so don't waste it on random Sniper Joes. Its re-introduction in 10 is much better though, as it works against every projectile in the game that's not Wily Machine's giant missiles.

Mega Man 4

The Skull Barrier is generally seen as the one real dud among its weapon roster. While it does let you move with it, unlike the Leaf Shield, and has a reasonable amount of uses, it takes a massive hit in durability due to breaking after taking any damage at all, and it also can't be used as a projectile. Thus its poor offensive capabilities make it difficult to use in its designated boss battle — Dive Man can be caught in a pattern fairly easily by keeping your distance and out-shooting him, but the Skull Barrier requires you to get up in his face, at which he tries to ram you.

Mega Man II

The Sakugarne is a jackhammer weapon acquired from Quint. When used by Mega Man, he has to spawn in Sakugarne akin to Rush and hop on, where he will start hopping around and can jump higher with the jump button. While technically the weakness of the Wily Machine II, Mega Man has to land on its head and can still take damage while on Sakugarne (which also drains rather quickly to boot). You're better off just using the reliable Mega Buster to deal with Wily. The subsequent weapons gained from the Mega Man Killers, fortunately, have managed to avoid this reputation.

Mega Man 5

5 is generally seen as one of the lowest points for weapons in the Classic series. Not helping the problem is that the game's version of the charged Mega Buster is generally seen as one of its strongest incarnations, with great damage, a fast charge, a huge hitbox, and piercing properties on death, all of which make it infinitely preferable for dealing with most threats. The only weapons to completely escape this status is the Gyro Attack and Beat; the former deals similar damage to a charge shot to standard enemies, consumes low energy, has a good fire rate, and can change its trajectory by inputting a direction; the latter is an Always Accurate Attack with low weapon cost that's also famous for decimating bosses. As for the rest...
- The Power Stone is especially infamous among this game's bunch of weapons. It creates a trio of boulders that circles outward from Mega Man's position. Unfortunately, they are notoriously hard to aim correctly and move very slowly, to boot. Adding insult to injury is, once you fire one, you can't fire another until either the first one has run its course or you pause the game to despawn it. And worst of all, each projectile deals the same damage as an uncharged Buster shot. It says something when it's generally less of a hassle to kill Charge Man and Dark Man (who are weak to the Power Stone) with the Mega Buster and Beat, respectively.
- Charge Man's own weapon, the Charge Kick, has its own problems. It makes Mega Man's slide invincible and allows it to do damage, but it has the same problem as the Top Spin of being an attack that requires you to hit opponents with your own body in a game where you take damage when touching enemies normally. If you're not careful, you can undershoot your target and come to a stop either right before them or inside of them. On top of that, Wave Man (the boss who's weak to it) is probably the worst boss to be weak to it, as he loves calling up Water Waves that block your slide, ending it prematurely and causing you to inevitably take damage. These flaws were eventually ironed out with the Pile Driver in 11.
- The Water Wave deals good damage, and is meant to travel along the ground to take on enemies on lower platforms, but it can't be used while jumping, near edges, or on moving platforms, and similarly to the Bubble Lead and unlike the Search Snake, it can't travel uphill. In the time it takes to switch to it, fire it off, and hope it's decided to work today, you could just charge up the Mega Buster and be done with the enemy. At the very least, it does work against the two bosses weak to it, Star Man and Dark Man 1.
- The Star Crash is another "shield" weapon that, fortunately, does solve the Skull Barrier's problem of being unable to be used offensively, as it regained the Leaf Shield's ability to be thrown, and it's at the press of a button instead of when moving. However, it maintains the horrible durability and there is a catch to how much energy it uses; should you fire it as a projectile, it will consume two units per use, but if used as a shield —that is, colliding with an enemy with it active—, it consumes three units, effectively giving it four less uses. Its large hitbox compared to other shield weapons only further exacerbates the latter issue.
- The Crystal Eye fires off a large crystal ball that, when it strikes a wall, shatters into three tiny balls that bounce around to cause damage. The catch is that the large ball does damage on par with an uncharged Buster shot, and the small balls do the same damage. Filling the screen with tiny projectiles ricocheting all over the place sounds useful (the same idea was executed much better with 11's Bounce Ball), but the Crystal Eye doesn't let you fire a second shot while any of the projectiles are onscreen, so most of the time you just have two tiny balls bouncing far away from your target while you frantically wait for them to vanish or sigh and switch to a better weapon.
- The Gravity Hold, designed as a screen-nuke in mind, is far from an answer to the Rain Flush from 4. Whereas the former was a One-Hit Kill, the Gravity Screw deals godawful damage — the same as an uncharged Buster shot, and it still has a very high ammo consumption of four units (burning its charge in seven uses). Since it doesn't technically kill enemies but rather drags them offscreen, you can't even get power-ups from them! Essentially, its only use comes from being a faster way to defeat Gyro Man.
- The Napalm Bomb is slow, short-ranged, generally clunky, and doesn't do as much damage as you'd think. The bombs also don't actually detonate if they hit their target. A number of enemies in 5 have some kind of Mercy Invincibility, making the explosions less powerful in general.
This game's incarnation of the Rush Coil is completely different from the standard version: instead of popping a spring out of his back for Mega Man to jump on, Rush instead turns his legs into a spring and hops up while Mega Man is standing on him. While it's no less effective than the original Rush Coil, it consumes twice as much energy as the original Rush Coil (four units, giving you only seven uses per full gauge), having to manually jump off messes with players used to the long spring jump, and it can sometimes be finicky and hop without giving you the chance to stand on it. Thank the creator that this version of Rush Coil has not appeared in another game since.

Mega Man 6

6 fortunately seemed to learn from the mistakes of the last game, where every weapon was outclassed by the Mega Buster, and gave several of the Special Weapons a revamp to make them useful in more situations... and then there's the Plant Barrier, widely considered the worst shield weapon of all games and one of the worst weapons of all time as well. It takes the Skull Barrier's problems of bad offense and fragility (one hit or blocked projectile before it wears off), and then doubles its energy consumption, meaning it burns its energy in seven uses. This removes what was previously one of the Skull Barrier's few redeeming qualities, and needless to say, the Plant Barrier can be drained to nothing in seconds. To rub more salt in the wound, it doesn't even block some projectiles properly — this issue is further pronounced when you realize this includes Tomahawk Man's projectiles, the Feather Flechettes and the Silver Tomahawk. Fortunately, this was the last of the bad shield weapons in the series, with the future ones (Junk Shield, Jewel Satellite, Water Shield, and Acid Barrier) all managing to earn their place.
Beat was severely nerfed from its 5 incarnation. While he still reliably deals with enemies on demand, he no longer targets bosses. Essentially, the weapon's main selling point is now moot and you're left with a hard-hitting, yet painfully slow weapon that's outclassed by the Mega Buster (itself also nerfed from 5, though nowhere near as bad).

Mega Man V

The Deep Digger is remarkably similar to the Super Arm from 1 and suffers from many of the same issues. Despite it being more powerful and shooting a spread of damaging debris in the opposite direction of the block thrown, it still requires blocks to be found in stages, and only one boss in the entire game, Terra, is intentionally^note weak to it.
The Black Hole also finds itself being generally unused throughout a playthrough. It is a high-cost weapon that sucks in certain weaker enemies, killing them in one shot, which is certainly powerful; however, the projectiles it spirals out of it work similar to the Power Stone, meaning they can miss their intended target. Not only is it acquired in the latter half of the Stardroids, but the Stardroid weak to Black Hole (and the only one that takes damage from it) is the pushover Mercury. Fitting to the theme of a black hole, it sucks.
Tango, for as adorable as he is, can be described as a "diet Beat". Unlike the powerhouse Beat, he attacks enemies for egregious damage, and it only targets grounded enemies, so aerial ones are out of the picture. He also has the tendency to fall on pitfalls, ending his attack prematurely. Not helping his case is that energy gauges are much smaller than in the NES games (with nineteen units instead of the standard twenty-eight), and considering it starts draining its energy as soon as you call for his help, you're left with a weapon that burns its energy out very quickly for nothing.

Mega Man 7

Surprisingly enough, the Mega Buster falls into this trope for a notable reason — the weapon's charge shot was nerfed from its previous appearances, now dealing twice as much damage instead of three times as before, yet it retains its slow charge time. It still has the piercing properties of the previous games' charge shots, but the fact that most enemies fall faster to spamming Buster shots says a lot.
The Scorch Wheel gets a lot of grief, due to how slowly it comes out, the awkward angle it fires at, and its inability to be held for too long. The Noise Crush much better fills the role of a large-hitbox powerhouse, and the Junk Shield is much better for warding off enemies. Most bossed who are weak to it even have at least one other weakness, usually one that's easier to use against them. At the very least, it does have the ability to burn certain objects in certain stages, and it's also the preferred weapon to use against Burst Man (over the Freeze Cracker).
The Wild Coil is, similarly to the Bubble Lead, the game's "ineffective against anything not the final boss" weapon. It creates two springs on either side, which proceed to bounce around, hopefully damaging enemies. Most of the time, they just bounce into a Bottomless Pit, and when they don't, it's usually to hit an enemy at such close range that weapons like the Slash Claw would be better suited for the job. The weapon's damage is also quite low, and using it requires Mega Man to stand still for about half a second before it can fire. Even the weapon's ability to charge doesn't compensate for its issues.

Mega Man 8

This game lacks weaknesses for normal enemies, meaning that all but two of its weapons deal the same damage or less compared to the charged Mega Buster. This makes them largely identical outside of boss battles, stage gimmicks, and their hitboxes. Of the group, the ones to draw the shortest straw seem to be the Ice Wave (a ground-crawling weapon in a game where that only has three practical uses: against the Robot Master it's effective against, Tengu Man, whose constant flight also makes the weapon hard to use on him, to freeze lava in Sword Man's stage, and to defeat Gabyoalls) and the Water Balloon (completely unremarkable hitbox and doesn't interact with any stage gimmicks; it's effective against Wily Machine's first form but the Flash Bomb actually outperforms it).
The Mega Ball is a special weapon separate from the Robot Master weapons, and is given to you in the intro stage; interestingly, it manages to be this and a Game-Breaker at the same time, but it's offensively where it fails to stand out. The ball is horrendously hard and slow to aim, especially since you have to drop it and then move into it to kick it in a direction that may not even possibly hit anyone. Its power does not make up for it in the slightest, as none of the Robot Masters are weak to the ball — unloading all 20 balls onto a Robot Master doesn't even kill any of them. The only boss who can be meaningfully damaged by the Mega Ball is Atetemino, the boss from Wily Castle's first stage (though fortunately, aiming the ball at it is nowhere near as bad).

Mega Man & Bass

The Copy Vision creates a hologram that acts as a stationary turret, shooting forward for a few seconds. In a game where you're moving through a level, stationary turrets aren't really that useful unless you're in a one-screen room. It can lure certain attacks towards the hologram, namely the homing lightning orbs used by Dynamo Man. Unfortunately, the weapon's high ammo cost and general awkwardness to use don't do it any favors in an average playthrough. It doesn't help that the damage the turrets dish out is exactly the same as a Buster shot, which is a big reason for Dynamo Man being That One Boss — even with perfect placement, it barely dents his Regenerating Health.

Mega Man Powered Up

Whereas most of the Scrappy Special Weapons in this game were buffed (as explained above in 1) and the Game-Breaker ones received reasonable nerfs that don't deter their power, the two new Special Weapons from Time Man and Oil Man have received some flak.

The Time Slow, while letting you switch weapons during the time slowdown (which it lasts for a reasonable time like the Flash Stopper), can only be used twice per full gauge. In a way, this feels like a repeat of the Time Stopper from 2; while nowhere near as bad as the former, its very high cost essentially highly limits its use to just puzzle-solving as well as facing larger hordes of enemies. Sadly, Guts Man (the boss weak to it) becomes awkward to face despite the Time Slow's ability to make him flinch, as the slowdown actually increases his Mercy Invincibility, leaving you with little time to gun him down before the slowdown ends. Fortunately, the playable Time Man has the advantage of unlimited uses of this weapon (as a Charged Attack).
The Oil Slider, however, is the game's worst weapon. In addition to the limit of one oil blob at a time, these projectiles deal fairly poor damage, and if they don't hit an enemy, the oil has to "evaporate" or be used as a surfboard before another one can be used. Its surfboard form is how the Oil Slider is meant to be used, and it hits pretty hard, but the surfboard's hitbox is infamously unreliable; since it only renders the character's feet invulnerable, this can lead to instances where despite destroying an enemy, you still take damage. These issues make it a hassle to use the weapon against Elec Man (who's weak to it). Oil Man's playable version, unfortunately, doesn't have any Anti-Frustration Features or upsides to Mega Man's version of the Oil Slider either, which leads to his Low-Tier Letdown status compared to the other playable characters, despite his strengths at speedrunning.

Mega Man 10

In a game where every Special Weapon has a use however limited it may be (even the weapons listed below), and where three other Special Weapons can be acquired through DLC, the Thunder Wool just fails to stand out. It conjures up a cloud in front of you that floats up for a few seconds, then drops a lightning bolt. It is slow to fire, difficult to use properly let alone aim, and blows through all its ammo in seven shots. To make matters worse, the cloud can be destroyed if an enemy or projectile collides with it and it stops moving if it hits any terrain. This means it's awkward to place and you can't reliably use it at close range or in a tight corridor, since that pretty much guarantees that it'll disappear before it can fire off a bolt, thus wasting a ton of your ammo. Even against the Robot Master weak to it, Pump Man, it's unreliable to use — his habit of standing still and moving to predictable locations means you can drop clouds on him, but his Water Shield can still destroy the clouds in the same manner other enemies can. It should be no wonder as to why the weapon is considered to be one of the worst Special Weapons of all time. The only bosses that the weapon is more worth it firing are the Crab Puncher ^note and the Block Devil (the bolt does deal respectable damage to it when it's on ground level, and hits it twice for good measure).
Should you try to use it offensively, the Chill Spike can turn into this. The blob of ice fired from it arcs downward until it hits the ground or a wall, where it turns into a strip of icy spikes; only the spike strip can actually damage enemies, which is much easier said than done, and shielded enemies are capable of destroying it. This also has the side effect of making it nearly useless against airborne enemies. Not helping is the fact you can only have one Chill Spike on screen at a time. At least the weapon reliably gets rid of Sprinklans (the enemies that stick to the ground), and enemies hit by the spike strip will take absurd damage. It can also be used for support in the same manner the Ice Slasher from 1 works, by freezing enemies and switching weapons to finish them off, so it's not a completely useless weapon.
The Commando Bomb fires a missile that can be controlled with the directional stick/pad until it hits a surface, in which case it explodes into a spread of two shockwaves. The explosion itself deals just raw damage and immolates enemies without Mercy Invincibility, but the weapon suffers from two major issues; the missile itself is pitifully weak (it deals the same damage as the Buster if it hits its target instead of the explosion), and it can be awkward to control since you need to use the directional pad or stick to control its flight — this means you'll move while doing so, making it extremely dangerous to use in areas with Bottomless Pits or Spikes of Doom, limiting its use to enemies that hang on the ceiling or stationary ones. Fortunately, when it works, it deals ridiculous damage as mentioned above, and it's the only weapon capable of destroying barriers, giving it that unique utility.
Similarly to Beat in 6, the Screw Crusher has been severely nerfed in this game since its appearance in Mega Man III. While its weapon energy remains extremely high, its high damage was toned down significantly to a mere one point of damage, the same as the Buster. Its low-ranged high arc also makes it awkward to aim — firing the Mega Buster is much less awkward, as despite also dealing a single point of damage, it has better range. Its only use comes as the only weapon aside from the Bass Buster that's capable of negating the shields of Sniper Joes and Shield Attackers, and even then the Solar Blaze and the Ballade Cracker are better at dealing with such stuff due to their ability to pierce shields. Not helping matters is that the Screw Crusher is one of the three DLC Special Weapons.

Mega Man 11

As an offensive weapon, the Pile Driver has gotten this reaction a bit. It's certainly not bad, and nowhere near the level of the Top Spin or Charge Kick, but if not aimed well, Mega Man tends to take damage on occasions when the weapon hits but doesn't destroy an enemy, which while unlikely since the Pile Driver deals the most damage in a single hit out of any weapon in the game, is still a possibility. It's gained points for its use as a makeshift air dash though, allowing some otherwise difficult platforming sections to be bypassed with ease.
When it comes to Power Gear variants, the Bounce Ball is less impressive than the upgrades the other weapons get. All it does is produce three extra balls that fire behind Mega Man without adding extra damage. The Tundra Storm is more effective for hitting surrounding enemies, so outside of cramped spaces and the bosses weak to Bounce Ball (since both of them can quickly move behind you), it's better to just spam the base shot for less ammo consumption, especially considering the weapon's ammo-friendliness.

X Series

Mega Man X

The Rolling Shield is the worst weapon in the game. The boss who is meant to be vulnerable to it, Launch Octopus, is more vulnerable to the Boomerang Cutter, which severs his tentacles, reducing his firepower and preventing him from drawing you in; the Rolling Shield has no special effect on the boss, and though it does more damage than the Cutter, it's too cumbersome to be used effectively. Surprisingly enough, though, the Rolling Shield works well on Sigma's One-Winged Angel form and, when its full charge is used, for farming health and weapon energy (especially before Sigma).
While the charged versions vary on effectiveness, there are two stand-outs that make this list: Shotgun Ice and Fire Wave. Shotgun Ice just creates a Temporary Platform that seems to only exist so the player can get to the Heart Tank in Boomer Kuwanger's stage; Fire Wave, which due to the way the normal weapon works, requires you to burn ammo just to charge the damn thing^note, can disrupt you if you're trying to use the normal fire in long bursts, and the payoff - a ground-hugging fire projectile — isn't particularly impressive enough to make up for it.

Mega Man X3

After X2's all-powerful double charge shot, X3 severely nerfs it by introducing the cross-charge shot. The basic idea is that shooting the two charge shots in succession combines them into a massive wall of shots, but the startup on the wide shot is just painful, and sacrificing the extra damage from the second shot for wider range has far fewer uses than just firing two full-power charge shots right in an enemy's face, only now you'll have to wait a few frames to fire the second lest you accidentally overlap them.
Gravity Well acts like a Smart Bomb in theory, stunning and killing all enemies on the screen... if they're small-sized. Anything larger is completely immune to it, making it useless against the stuff you want to kill quickly, and all bosses bar Blast Hornet are immune to it. The charged version affects the same enemies except it now freezes X in place and its only good use is to activate a lift leading to the Armor capsule in Volt Catfish's stage.
Tornado Fang is like Spin Wheel from X2 in that hits an enemy for continuous damage, but it deals much less damage unless you have three drills out, and enemies can still keep attacking you while being hit. However, it's the lag time before your drills move that really puts this weapon down — other weapons can do the job much faster, and it's also outclassed by the game's other lag-before-moving weapon Frost Shield, which deals huge damage immediately on contact and also leaves behind a damaging spike.
Ray Splasher's charged version is nigh-worthless, a levitating orb that fires shots in random directions, rarely ever hits anything and can be destroyed by enemy bullets. Its basic shot is at least a lot better, being a spray shot that can deal serious close-range damage.

Mega Man X4

Lightning Web is underwhelming if you're using it as direct offense instead of an Utility Weapon. It has relatively low ammo, the main projectile itself deals less than a buster shot's worth of damage against most non-Giant Mooks, and it suffers from being unable to fire again until the non-damaging web wall dissipates, meaning that most large enemies can be beaten quicker with the X-Buster. The one durable enemy it one-shots without fail, King Poseidon, is found only in the stage you get Lightning Web from, and there's no reason to go back unless you need the Heart Tank. It's best to use Lightning Web only as an Improvised Wall to avoid enemies or reach areas, unless you're up against the bosses weak to it.
Double Cyclone shoots two wind orbs to the sides of X that curve upward, intended as an Anti-Air weapon. However, the coverage is highly situational as you won't be attacked from both sides often, the damage is weak, it gets stopped by terrain, larger enemies are completely immune to it, the animation causes X to freeze in place for a short while thus killing your mobility, and the game contains better weapons to deal with Airborne Mooks like Aiming Laser, Rising Fire, or your X-Buster. As an added insult to injury, using Double Cyclone against a certain boss weak to it only makes the fight harder by causing them to spawn irritating flunkies.

Mega Man X5

Zero's Z-Buster. It's nowhere near as powerful (or useful) as it was in X3. Zero could only use it on the ground while stationary and its damage output is nothing to write home about. It also has slow startup, because there's a short charging animation Zero performs just before he fires it. And as if the Z-Buster wasn't already pointless, it only travels a short distance before vanishing. From X4 onward, Zero has become the close-ranged, melee specialist as opposed to X's long-ranged gameplay, so giving him a long-ranged weapon that's so ridiculously flawed adds nothing to his arsenal. Obtaining the Buster by picking Zero for the intro stage also locks X out of the vastly more useful Fourth/Force Armor. The next game would address this by giving the Z-Buster to Zero once he joins you, ratcheting up its rate of fire, and making Zero's Buster shots noticeably more powerful to balance out the drawbacks, thus making it more of a Difficult, but Awesome weapon.
The W-Shredder (Spiral Pegasus's attack for Zero), for not only having low utility, but to an extent outright crippling Zero by making a far stronger attack "technique" (alternately hit dash and Attack rapidly to hit obnoxiously fast) unusable, since it is executed the same way, unlike the previous game's Shippuuga which required using the "Special" button instead of the basic attack. It's so bad, if you can get away with it you should just skip Pegasus entirely and launch the Shuttle without beating him if you're using Zero. This also means losing the Wing Spiral for X (Dynamo's weakness), by the way.

Mega Man X6

The Guard Shell barely defends from a specific sort of shots; shots that are not able to be defended by the shield (which include the attacks of Nightmare Viruses, the most common enemy in the game) will simply pass through as if it were never there. If the shot is blocked by the shield, the reflected shot will take a moment to charge up in which the enemy can simply move out of the way. Also, it is supposed to be Infinity Mijinion's weakness, but it barely does any damage to him and forces the player to rely on the boss doing specific moves to even work at all. Because of this, many consider the Yammark Option to be a better "weakness" to Mijinion than the actual weakness. However, it has a decent charged version and it becomes a Game-Breaker if a player knows how to exploit its Good Bad Bugs.
The Sentsuizan gets a lot of flak for one reason: its input Up+Attack can prove fatal for the player if they actually meant for Zero to grab on to a rope above a bed of spikes/bottomless pit, as it launches you into a dive attack that cannot be cancelled.

Mega Man X7

The Moving Wheel is basically the Spin Wheel from Mega Man X2, but the 3D gameplay makes it much harder to actually hit anything with it. Technically it's the weakness of Snipe Anteator, but it's very difficult to hit him with it, and when it actually does hit you'll find that it barely does more damage than a normal Buster shot.
The Explosion fires a large and powerful but short-ranged and slow shot. The idea seems to be to get up into an enemy's face and atomize them as it deals multiple hits during its slow movement. The problem is that it will use up the entire default weapon gauge with that one shot. And because of Mercy Invincibility, most bosses will only take damage from the first hit and the later hits from the same shot that are meant to make Explosion powerful will not register. The charged version is multiple shots in all directions, so it doesn't work around the main problem of the weapon. Axl gets some edge with Explosion as it gives him the G-Launcher as a rapid-fire Charge Shot cannon, but X has no such luck. In a game where one can switch characters on the fly, one aiming to get up into an enemy's face and attack them might as well switch to Zero and hack them apart with his Z-Saber.

Other

Mega Man Zero 4

The Tractor Shot, obtained from Mino Magnus. While ammunition is not a problem, the real problem comes in finding a proper use for this Ex Skill, because it can only charge by absorbing (specific) shots, while charging you cannot use any other weapon and has mediocre melee range while charging. And you can only have one Buster Ex Skill equipped at a time, with the other options being more effective at picking off enemies from a distance, and the stolen weapons or Saber causing more damage per second than this one would. Its only real use is against Randam Bandam (the boss of the third to last stage), who has an attack where it disappears and shoots at you from every single one of the panels in the background. By holding out the Tractor Shot you can absorb every shot, then send them back at it to chunk about an entire bar of life from it in one hit. Nice, but doesn't really compensate for being so useless as a Thunder attack, though.
The Ice Fang and Thunder Stab are also notable for being grossly incompetent against the bosses they have an elemental advantage over. Ice Fang fails because Mino Magnus is poised such that he will passively block it completely, and Pegasolta Eclair is constantly flying, so an attack which skims over the ground is of no practical use against him. Thunder Stab fails for pretty much identical reasons, Heat Genblem is invincible from the neck down (and leaves himself vulnerable for so long during his laser spin attack that it's pointless anyway) and Sol Titanion is constantly flying, rendering it moot. Even when the latter drops close to the ground to plant bombs, it's still grossly impractical because of its execution. It is a dashing stab, meaning that you're very liable to crash into anything you're trying to hit with it unless spaced perfectly. It can create electric balls that skim both forward and backward against terrain if you run it into a wall, but the fact still stands that it and Ice Fang are completely pointless against the bosses they should be effective against, making the loss of the Elemental Chips all the more painful and the brutally powerful Junk Set all the more appealing. The Flame Fang does not sit with its elemental peers, as it is capable of actually hitting Fenri Lunaedge and Tech Kraken competently (if you can get around the former's awkward body collision) and doing nasty damage when it does.

Mega Man Legends

The Shield Arm in the first game and its sequel is a contender for worst weapon in the entire franchise as it is not reliably able to defend you. It tends to only work on the smallest and least damaging of enemy attacks, meaning that at the cost of a useful secondary weapon you can now defend against attacks you could just as easily dodge and don't harm you that much even if they connect. Cool...? Adding insult to injury is you get the Shield Arm very late in each game, where if it was one of the first available in early parts of the game when health is low and the shots it can block are actually a threat it would be quite useful.

Mega Man Battle Network

Despite being more RPG than anything else, there is one answer to this trope: mini-bombs. Short of the platformer spinoff, Network Transmission, those things were the most useless things ever. They did poor damage compared to other options (only barely more than the much easier to use Cannon chip), any enemy past the starting area would generally be hard to hit because of the slow time from release to impact, getting only harder as the game went on, and they were always, always, in your starting folder. They don't even qualify as a crutch chip because the only enemy they could one-hit-kill, another chip that was much more useful could do as well. The chip had no reason to be kept as soon as you got better chips, especially when Lil'Bomb and Quake did the same thing but better and dropped from early-game viruses.

Scrappy Weapon / Mega Man