Video Game / Mega Man Maker

Hello there! You're here to create your own levels, I assume? Then you've come to the right place! I've used this editor to create my award-winning stages for years!

— Dr. Wily

Mega Man Maker (originally known as Mega Maker, until the Version 1.1 update — the "Man" was added to the title due to trademark issues) is a Mega Man level maker designed in the style of (and named after) Super Mario Maker. The game has been in development since September 2016, but on July 15th, it received an official release as Mega Maker following a worldwide preview the prior week, with more versions offering extra content coming soon. Players in this game can create their own levels and upload them to the server. The game and its most current updates can be downloaded here.

On September 9, 2017, the team celebrated Cirno Day, based on Cirno herself from Touhou Project by updating the game version to 1.0.9. In this update, Cirno's weapon, the Perfect Freeze, is added in along with a new enemy called Croakers. A SiIvaGunner-styled music track based on Mega Man 5's Wily stage music mixed with her theme was also added.

On October 24th of the same year, Version 1.1 was released which was essentially a major overhaul for the game, mainly its UI, which has been completely reworked, and the addition of new weapons (such as all the Mega Man and Mega Man Powered Up weapons — minus Super Arm, which wouldn't be added until 1.7), new enemies, and even two new bosses (Ice Man and Time Man).

Version 1.2 was released on December 17, 2017, which apart from bringing more of what the above version added, most of which came from Mega Man 2 and 3, is notable for adding keys which work the same as they did in Super Mario Maker, and weapon capsules that allow you to unlock weapons mid-stage.

Version 1.3 was released on March 23, 2018, this time adding the ability to play as Proto Man and Bass, as well as switch between them. It also added some more assets from Mega Man 4 and 5. More things from Mega Man 6 were appearing.

In Version 1.4, more elements from Mega Man 6 were implemented, elements from Mega Man 7 (as well as Spring Man and Shade Man) were introduced, and the Wily Challenge mode was introduced into the game, essentially functioning as a rush of levels that you play sequentially with a limited amount of lives to take down Dr. Wily's castle. This version was released on July 25, 2018.

After a long wait, Version 1.5 was released to the public on March 26, 2019. The update added loads of elements from Mega Man 8 and 9 (but mostly the latter) as well as new tilesets and backgrounds for the remaining games, and on a more surprising note, the ability to officially have multiple bosses in a stage, including features such as dropping an item upon death or having to beat all the bosses in the stage to finish the level, opening up tons of new potential for stages.

Later on, Version 1.6 became available on February 22, 2020. This update brought tons of content from Mega Man 10 and 11 (plus several weapons from the Game Boy titles) to the table, along with other additional graphical elements from past games. It also allowed online multiplayer level editing: up to 8 players can work together while building a single level.

Unlike any other previous updates before it, Version 1.7 (released on January 10, 2021) does not focus on bringing content from yet-to-be-represented Mega Man titles. Instead, it expands the library of assets from all 11 numbered games (while also bringing in music from Mega Man: The Wily Wars), alongside introducing Roll as a new playable character. It is the last major update where creator WreckingPrograms is directing or participating in a major role due to his personal consideration of achieving all he wanted in the game and his wish to move onto another projects. Since then, game programmer Luigi and server administrator Goldstorm are assigned as new project co-managers.

Version 1.8 had proven itself to be a massive update. After almost 2 years of hard work and multitude of setbacks, it finally arrived on November 25, 2022. Aside from introducing aesthetical assets, weapons and gimmicks from Mega Man & Bass, it does the same with all five Game Boy titles. The biggest surprise comes in form of long-rumored Wily Fortress bosses taken from the entire NES saga. The update also significantly improves the experience when it comes to constructing - and playing - larger levels by means of reducing loading times. The server underwent the same optimization procedure.

July 3, 2023 saw the arrival of 1.8.4 patch. Several new assets were brought to the table, along with previously teased enemies like Kamikamin and Feeber. Many quality-of-life improvements were implemented (different colors for Arrows, overabundance of rain no longer slows the game down to a crawl, etc.). 8 variations of Lava serve as major and long-requested additions. Another surprise came from WreckingPrograms himself, who has returned to his Mega Man Maker duties as a manager of the project, replacing Goldstorm (who has retired since the arrival of this patch).

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Build your tropes here!

• 1-Up: Players have infinite lives, hence why 1-ups just refill the life gauge like the E-Tank, or the giant life pickups from Mega Man 7.
  • This is played straight during the Wily Challenge: limited amount of lives can be increased by 1-ups collected within the stages. Since Version 1.5, the 1-up both fully heals and gives a life in Wily Challenge mode.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: Several assets' descriptions use this with impressive results.
  Dark Man 3 Tile 2: These topaz tiles took time to tabulate to the total.
  Punk BG2: Pretty purple pipes, patterned profoundly. Presumably Punk's property.
• Advancing Boss of Doom: Players can set any of the aggressive and mobile bosses to be invincible to the main armaments (Mega/Proto/Bass Buster, Roll Swing), give characters no other means of attack, and then either set a goal at the end of an obstacle course, make it mandatory to trick the boss into falling into a pit, or have a collectable weapon that can harm the boss directly.
• Advancing Wall of Doom: As of Version 1.6, the Fire Wall gimmick from Torch Man's stage will destroy the player character and most enemies in one hit.
• Antepiece: In the tutorial, Dr. Wily and Dr. Light advise to introduce a gimmick in a safe way first before testing the player with it. It's generally considered bad practice among the community to introduce a new gimmick in the level in a room with too many enemies, or - even worse - with One-Hit Kill hazards in it ^note Seasoned level builders never take another player's knowledge of a level object for granted since there are so many things to work with in Mega Man Maker and you can never tell if the person playing is a veteran of the series or a newcomer with little knowledge of the level hazards and gimmicks.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • See 1-Up entry above.
  • Players must beat their own creations to avoid the uploading of Unwinnable by Design levels, but even then this is downplayed. Previously-made levels from earlier versions that required glitches to complete have been patched for a long time (although they can be reported).
  • Upon completing (or failing) the Wily Challenges, players can download any levels they've experienced (just in case they've came across one they really liked).
  • If the character happens to start a level on top of spikes, their temporary invincibility kicks in to allow the player to get off them quickly.
• Anti-Trolling Features:
  • Players are able to download levels in order to "study" it and learn about their building process... and also to see if some "developer paths" were inserted in case they've came across a seemingly impossible segment.
• Aquatic Mook: Certain enemies are amusingly ineffective if set outside water bodies.
• Art Shift: The custom-made character icons/avatars (Mega, Proto, Roll, Light, Wily, the MM1/PU, 7, 8, Mega Man & Bass, 11 Robot Masters, King, Stardroids, Mega Man Killers, Quint, Wily Fortress bosses, and Bond Man) made specifically for Mega Man Maker are noticeably done with far greater detail than the mugshots pulled straight from MM2 to MM6 and MM9 to MM10.
• Ascended Extra: Dr. Wily himself goes from simply being a part of the game's tutorial to returning as a proper boss, complete with several of his Wily Machines in Version 1.8.
• Ascended Glitch: The team behind Mega Man Maker often "officializes" the most known, relatively harmless (and fun), non-game breaking, glitches in form of new assets or features:
  • Teleporters usually are made of 2 points that the player can travel between. It's possible to delete one of them in order to create a one-way destination. Word of God states that the developers decided to keep the glitch because it's "a pretty cool bug."
  • Leaf Shield was not supposed to follow the player character if they were in motion when using it and continue in that direction, but it was liked and WreckingPrograms chose to leave it.
  • In addition, the 1.0.4 patch officially made the double jump bug with the Charge Kick weapon possible, as the player character will now flash and make a brief sound to indicate the possibility of a double jump.
  • Prior to Version 1.5, there's a glitch that allows two or more bosses to be placed in the same room. It later became an official feature.
  • In 1.7.5 patch, the sticky ceiling glitch became the Magnetic Ceiling. It came with conveyor and On/Off variants.
  • Bokazurah Blocks from Mega Man 9 can be passed through if placed on one side of a screen transition and not the other, which level creators can use as a sort of one-way door. Teetering on the fine line between "feature" and "bug" due to seemingly being a product of how level objects are loaded, but still glitch-like enough to be one.
• Ascended Meme:
  • Heat Ladder was a meme for Mega Man Maker's fandom, and it was eventually added in 1.5.
  • The flavor text for MM3 Wily 1 Water in Mega Man Maker is "This revolutionary water tile makes illegal mods obsolete." It referenced Fanduber, the infamous troll of the Mega Man Maker Forums, and his infamous distaste of game mods, which he once believed were "illegar"^note the infamous typo was corrected in the ingame description of the tile, even though the game maker WreckingPrograms were okay with them. The incident is not even brought up on the official Wiki for some reason.
  • The Music Changer item was a meme for a while, before finally being added in Version 1.7.
  • The possibilities of adding Wily Fortress bosses (Yellow Devil, Boobeam Trap, Kamegoro Maker, and the like) had been discussed for a long time... and it had been finally done by Version 1.8.
  • Many players were expecting the addition of Lava for a long time. 1.8.4 patch finally took care of it; it's possible to use many skins of lava from different Mega Man titles.
• Attack Reflector:
  • The Jewel Satellite is one of the weapon options that the player can use.
  • The Shine (or Reflector) is this, as the player characters can shield themselves to reflect enemy projectiles.
  • Thunder Claw can push Grenade Man's Flash Bombs back at him. Otherwise, however, it does not apply.
  • Proto Man's shield can also reflect enemy projectiles, but he needs to jump and not shoot in order to do this. This reflection allows Proto Man to destroy Weapon Blocks by reflecting an enemy attack on them if he has equipped the corresponding weapon.
  • Mirror Buster creates energy from the projectiles it catches and sends it back.
• Audience Surrogate: In the tutorial, Dr. Wily represents people happy to create a hard level, while Dr. Light represents people that prefer fair levels.
• Author Avatar: Levels created by the game's development team and beta testers use their own custom avatars instead of the pre-built avatars. These range from Original Characters to Fox from Super Smash Bros. to Pokémon.
• Author Appeal:
  • There are two weapons inspired on Super Smash Bros. because WreckingPrograms is a fan of that franchise. Since beta testers PKWeegee and MrKyurem's are fans of Cirno, a character from Touhou, 1.0.9 included the Perfect Freeze as an allusion to that character and a second Mega Man 5 Wily Castle theme that combines the original theme with Cirno's theme. Version 1.7 sees the addition of another weapon inspired by Smash Bros. in the form of Command Selection.
  • Being a fan of Team Fortress 2 himself, Luigi worked on yet another cameo addition - Uber Chain, which was inspired by the Medic class of players. It is available since Version 1.8.
• Automatic Level: Just like in Super Mario Maker, this type of courses can be made - the players don't have to do anything but watch.
• Autosave: The game will create a backup every now and then to prevent losing the levels in case the editor crashes - or anything similar happens. Before Version 1.8's arrival, players creating larger levels could easily notice this when the game stuttered a bit (or a lot).
• Awesome, but Impractical: Crash Bomber is one of the more powerful special weapons in the game being able to destroy the tougher enemies with ease, and even the bigger ones can take at best two or three of those. However, only one projectile can be on-screen at a time, which includes its lengthy explosion animation, and it doesn't ignore Mercy Invincibility of bosses. It can also be deflected by enemy shields - and its ammo pool is rather low.
• Balance Buff: Several weapons were buffed so that they can become a bit more useful than their debut games:
  • Hyper Bomb is not very useful in Mega Man, as it takes a while to explode when not making contact and the blast radius is small. In this game, it retains the delayed time to explode, but the blast radius now becomes bigger and goes four-ways like the bombs in Bomberman, and also damages enemies or Hyper Bomb blocks upon contact.
  • Super Arm from Mega Man had very limited use since the players need to find specific blocks in order for it to work. This game makes it much more useful by incorporating Guts Man's ability from Mega Man Powered Up to generate up to five Guts Blocks.
  • Air Shooter from Mega Man 2 uses less ammo.
  • Hard Knuckle from Mega Man 3 is faster, easier to aim and will keep bouncing, constantly punching, an enemy until it moves away or is destroyed. Even bosses.
  • Gemini Laser from Mega Man 3 is also faster and two can be fired as well. It also doesn't slow the game to a crawl either.
  • Top Spin from Mega Man 3 can be used to kill weaker enemies without fear of Collision Damage and to bounce on top of tougher ones.
  • Charge Kick from Mega Man 5 can be used mid-air and enables players to perform a double jump at its end when the player flashes.
  • Water Wave from Mega Man 5 can be used underwater becoming a medium-range water cannon.
  • Blizzard Attack from Mega Man 6 is much faster and can freeze fire obstacles that weren't present in its game of origin.
  • Wind Storm from Mega Man 6 can be used to be used as a makeshift spring that allows player to jump very high. If used at the correct distance from walls it allows a very fast wall jump.
  • Danger Wrap from Mega Man 7 is more versatile this time since the list of enemies it can encase is bigger.
  • Thunder Claw from Mega Man 8 has a much more subtle one: it's far easier to catch the Thunder Claw Poles since even its "chain" will latch onto them instead of only the claw itself.
  • Flame Sword from Mega Man 8 suffers from the inverse: although still highly damaging (fit for a melee weapon), it no longer can erase enemy projectiles like in its game of origin.
  • Commando Bomb from Mega Man 10 is much more versatile: it can turn around infinite number of times (especially in the opposite directions) for quick adjustments.
  • Thunder Wool from Mega Man 10 has much wider range when the thunder strikes the ground, and its wool/cloud won't fade away if it hits an enemy.
  • Break Dash from Mega Man V grants the player brief Mercy Invincibility period in order to avoid Collision Damage more efficiently. It's also useful for crossing instant-kill obstacles.
  • Most shield weapons had something added to differentiate them from each other to prevent them from being mere Palette Swap. See Utility Weapon entries for more details.
• Balance, Power, Skill, Gimmick:
  • Mega Man is the Balance character. He won't be as strong as Proto Man with Proto Strike or Roll, nor he will have the agility of Bass, but he's still nimble if he has his slide - and he can also hold different types of charge shots. Everything tends to keep him in the middle ground between power, speed and mobility.
  • Proto Man has his shield - and he can naturally slide and charge his buster shot (no option to disable those for him). He's the only character who has access to the Proto Strike (a regular buster shot with the strength of a charge shot); however, he can also take double damage to counterbalance such strength, putting him into the Power category.
  • Roll by default has a much shorter range melee attack thanks to her Roll Swing, but she can deal more damage quicker with her combos. She also has access to a very useful Dodge Roll that can give her toggable invincibility, setting her as a Skill character.
  • Bass has the highest mobility, thanks to his dashing which increases horizontal jumps' length. Optional double jump helps in reaching higher places that Mega, Proto and Roll cannot conventionally. Bass is also the only one who can naturally aim his buster, but his overall power is low - it's very easy to get hit several times if the player is careless, putting him into the Gimmick category.
• Benevolent Architecture: Well-designed levels give players a fair chance to proceed or fight enemies back using its terrain to their advantage.
• Blackout Basement:
  • Hologran enemies and a special tile from Mega Man 7 can cause the screen to go dark hiding dangers like bottomless pits and spikes.
  • Moving Light gimmick from Mega Man & Bass allows to light up certain parts of given screens.
• Battle Theme Music: The Music Changer tool allows players to change tunes at certain parts of levels. Bosses can have different boss themes from other games - not necessarily the original ones.
• Boring, but Practical: Just like in their original games, the Buster weapons are this: they don't have any quirks or special properties, but often is all the players need to clear anything short of a pure Gimmick Level. Roll Swing acts as their melee counterpart; although it has much shorter range, it can ignore Mercy Invincibility on enemies - and is fast enough to use nonetheless.
• Bottomless Magazines: Any weapon placed in the first slot of the menu will have infinite ammo... minus the Nothing weapon that is exactly what it says. This can also be used to make a level that completely averts it with all of the given weapons having limited ammo.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy: Some boss fights require players to force bosses to harm themselves, usually though bottomless pits, crushing or the fire wall.
• Boss Arena Urgency: Boss fights can be set atop timed bomb platforms over bottomless pits, among other things.
• Boss Dissonance: Mega Man Maker is prone to have Easy Levels, Hard Bosses, as much as it has to have Hard Levels, Easy Bosses - depending on how the boss arena was built, as well as how mean the level creator was feeling.
• Boss-Only Level: Players can make these with any sort of boss room design they like, even adding multiple screens akin to Burner Man's encounter.
• Boss Rush: As of 1.5, players can now create their own boss rush in whatever way they like. It usually comes in three variants:
  • The traditional and more widely common "teleporter room" which allows to choose the order of bosses freely.
  • The arbitrary "gauntlet": boss encounters are interspersed between platforming sections of the level (or immediately going one after another) in the similar vein to Mega Man and Mega Man & Bass.
  • The chaotic "free for all": multiple bosses placed in the single room. ^note Several Robot Masters - Freeze Man, Spring Man, Wood Man, Time Man, Ring Man and Pluto in particular - put an interesting spin on this. Due to their AI patterns, multiple "copies" of the same bosses will overlap with one another and sync up their actions, thus giving the players a neat way to fight a single boss with multiple life bars rather comfortably.
• Broomstick Quarterstaff: Roll's default weapon. While it looks as silly as anyone would expect, it's very powerful by virtue of representing Zero's Z-Saber.
• Bullet Hell: An absurd amount of shooting (bombing) enemies can be placed on a single screen at once: all of them release numerous projectiles that can be hard (or impossible) to avoid. Using Shine, Jewel Satellite or any other protective armaments, however, can nullify them or deflect them back and damage the attackers.
• Cap:
  • The player can only have 9 E-Tanks, plus a single M-Tank.
  • There are 12 slots for weapons.
  • As of Version 1.8, the number of levels players can upload online had been increased to 420. This cap doesn't apply to levels that are offline and/or downloaded, however, and they can always be shared manually through other means. Previously, the limits were 10, 20, 30, 50, 75 and 100.
  • Since the release of Version 1.7, the Keys underwent a drastic change: the initial count of 7 Keys was changed to a whopping 99 (and that's not counting possible color options). As for the Key Doors, they can consume up to 9 Keys of the particular color.
  • Following the multiple bosses feature, while it is technically possible to put more than 10 bosses in the same screen, the played level will not recognize the 11th boss. The overall count limit for bosses in the same level is 200.
  • There cannot be more than 8 players in an online building room.
• Charged Attack:
  • Players can choose between three versions of the charged Mega Buster shot: Mega Man 4, Mega Man 5, and Mega Man 6. The drawback of losing the charge when hit isn't coded on for the latter two, therefore the one from Mega Man 5 is the best - mainly because it has the largest hitbox.
  • Atomic Fire and Pharaoh Shot, already chargeable weapons, appear here, as do the Power Adapter, Super Adapter, Wild Coil, Noise Crush, Magma Bazooka and Break Dash.
  • Proto Man can charge his buster by default, unless the "Proto Strike" is activated.
  • Roll can charge her Roll Swing attack, when "Charge Broom" option is selected.
• Character Select Forcing: Can be enforced with use of the character capsules, allowing for certain sections of the levels to be beaten only with either Mega Man, Proto Man, Roll or Bass.
• Checkpoint: They're implemented as flags players must touch to enable, like in Powered Up. Unlike in Super Mario Maker, creators can place more than two.
• Checkpoint Starvation: A common source of Fake Difficulty. Can be done on purpose by level creators, but a lot of times it happens as a result of cluelessness from builders who became maybe too accustomed to difficult parts of their creations and now deem it "easy", or simply forgot that they could try it quickly without having to run through the entire map.
• Chest Monster:
  • Anti-Eddies will spring up when characters get close to certain items - and will run off with them if players don't deal with them fast enough.
  • Version 1.8.4 brings Kamikamin - a.k.a. the treasure chest enemy from MM&B. The harmless variety houses items, while the enemy counterparts actively hunt the player after being shot. If they latch onto the character, they have to be shaken off.
• Close-Range Combatant: Unlike her brothers (and Bass), Roll uses her broom (Roll Swing) as her default weapon, and thus relies on being within melee range of her enemies in order to attack. She makes up with a combo game, a rolling dodge that (optionally) makes her invincible, and ability to ignore Mercy Invincibility or any protection from enemies that would resist most ranged weapons. Nevertheless, players can choose to give her any sort of ranged weapons, however.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • Footholders can have their color changed in order to define whether they will shoot or not. Red ones do not shoot, green ones do. This was absent in Mega Man.
  • Force Beams have three colors: red ones are instantaneously lethal, yellow ones inflict 7 points of damage out of 28, and green ones drain the life bar.
  • Colors are important for Astro Gates and Astro Buttons. An Astro Button can affect an Astro Gate of the same color. The Astro Reset Button is gray to make it clearer that it resets the Astro Gates to their original positions. The color variations for these assets were greatly expanded upon in Version 1.8.
  • Mecha Pitchans can attack differently depending on their color: red ones throw balls in a set arc, while blue ones throw homing balls.
  • Sheep Blocks and Sheep Spikes can be set up to 8 different color and graphic variations to make them dissapear in various sequences.
  • Chemical Solution has 4 color-coded conditions: 1-3 (blue, yellow, and red respectively) behave like regular water, while the 4th one is a green acidic substance which inflicts damage upon contact.
  • Keys and Key Doors are given color variations as well after the corresponding announcement for Version 1.7.
  • On/Off Switches/Blocks/Ladders/Spikes/Targets are blue and red respectively.
  • Proto Man receives different colorations for Mega Man & Bass weaponry, similar to how the original game does the same to Bass.
  • Coloring of the Targets also matters. These objects of many shades can give Keys of the assigned colors, while shooting the grey ones might serve as another way to end the level.
• Continuing is Painful: If the player dies in a map where special weapons are available, they don't refill on death - which can leave them to deal with a tough situation using only their default weapons (or whatever is in the first slot and has infinite ammo).
• Convenient Weakness Placement: Ever since the introduction of Weapon Capsules, one can simply hand the weapon at the boss corridor before the fight. Or in a spot where it'd be very easy to reach anyway.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: Bosses can be made to have no weaknesses and, depending on what weapon is provided, will remove 1 to 4 bars of health.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • It's very easy to forget certain characters have small quirks and differences in their "slide" abilities. To elaborate:
    • Both Mega Man and Proto Man must have at least 2-tiles wide spaces to stand up, or they'll get stuck. They can slide over 1-tile wide gaps.
    • Bass cannot slide under 1-tile gaps, unless he's equipped with Charge Kick.
    • Roll's Dodge Roll ability will fall in 1-tile wide gaps, unlike Mega Man and Proto Man's slide.
  • Wave Burner is a force to be reckoned with on land. In the water, however, it can only push enemies away.
    • Water Wave, however, works on the opposite principle (minus the "pushing away" part).
  • Break Dash also doubles as a regular Buster-type of weapon whenever it's not charged. In this state, it doesn't consume the ammo energy, effectively replacing the usual Busters.
  • Several weapons can be aimed up or down to change the distance of the shot (MM10's Thunder Wool, MMV's Salt Water).
• Deadly Walls: Builders can create segments full of spiked walls either to make things more difficult, or merely for intimidation value.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Normally all it does is kick the players to the start of the level (or the nearest checkpoint). Averted in Wily Challenges due to the fact that they have limited number of lives; the aforementioned Checkpoint Starvation might be in play, as well.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Some weapons like the Bass Buster or Needle Cannon function as this - they have below-average type of damage, but can deal a lot of hits in a small time frame.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Players can make every enemy from the Game Boy Mega Man games black-and-white if they so desire.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Every single asset in the editor has its own description. These include the various backgrounds and terrain tilesets, and given that the Mega Man series has its fair share of Cut and Paste Environments, much lampshading is a guarantee.
  • Metal Man is the only gravity-affected enemy that resists conveyor belts, always walking opposite the belt's direction so that he stays in place — a carryover from Mega Man 2.
  • Spring Man retains his oddity of becoming magnetized and invincible when struck by an electric attack, carried over from Mega Man 7. Even Spark Man's shots can cause this.
    • Two more easter eggs carried over from 7: Freeze Man will continuously taunt the player character after his introduction and not start fighting until the latter makes the first move. Additionally, if the first weapon slot is taken up by an ice weapon and Freeze Man is shot with it, the game will stop briefly as he poses at the screen, before healing and resuming the fight.
  • Oil can normally be ignited by any type of fire attack, after which it burns forever - and kills reckless players in one hit... unless the Water Wave or Rain Flush are equipped, which extinguish it.
  • Chemical Solution can be affected by water-based weaponry, which reduces its condition. In contrast, Rain Flush, being acidic rain, amplifies its condition.
  • Mega Man Maker adds victory animations when ending a level, which change depending on what character had been selected, what kind of Adapter Mega Man is equipped with, and even whether the character is sliding through a tunnel, climbing a ladder, or still in mid-air by the time the animation starts.
    • Bass normally cannot go through one-tile tunnels: he dashes instead of performing a slide. However, if Mega/Proto Man or Roll happens to slide (dodge roll) into a Bass Capsule while going through a tunnel, Bass will retain sliding controls - albeit while dashing, until he exits. If Bass uses the Charge Kick, he can slide as other characters do, and he can go through tight terrain. If the players happen to end the level while Bass is stuck inside one of these, he gets an exclusive victory animation: A Facepalm.
  • Mega Man 4 features a game-breaking glitch when the players use the Rain Flush on Dr. Wily as he's escaping Wily Machine #4: his escape pod gets destroyed, and the game softlocks. With Wily Machine #4 being added in 1.8, utilizing the Rain Flush in the same manner still "kills" Dr. Wily. Thankfully, this doesn't cause a softlock, and it will still clear the level. (Assuming if Wily Machine #4 was set as the "final" boss, that is.)
    • Adding to the above, there's another way to "kill" Wily. After he hops out of Wily Capsule #6, the player has several seconds of movement. If Black Hole Bomb is among the available weapons, it can be used to suck the good doctor into the void.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • The double jump from the Charge Kick is somewhat hard to perform, as players need to jump just as Mega Man flashes near the end of the kick. The timing of the flash is small, and there's a bit of space required for the Charge Kick to work. With that said, once anyone masters it, the trick can add extra vertical height to the jumps, allowing the players to get through some tricky platforms and gaps.
  • There must be good precision to make use of the Wind Storm to mimic Wall Jump. The player has to be somewhat distant from the wall and must fire the weapon in specific spots.
  • Pile Driver has a knockback effect when the player dashes into an enemy or a wall. In tight vertical spots, this knockback can be used repeatedly to gain some height.
  • Roll Swing, Roll's default weapon, is one of the few pure melee weapons in the game and requires players to get close to enemies to deal damage - which is very risky against some enemies and certain bosses, but it will ignore protections like shields from Sniper Joes, as well as even bypass bosses' Mercy Invincibility on combos, allowing Roll to deal with them much faster than any of the Buster-wielding characters could ever hope to.
• Double Jump:
  • Bass has an optional Double Jump as he had in Mega Man & Bass. It's optional and disabled by default due to its omission in Mega Man 10.
  • Charge Kick can allow a Double Jump during an air slide. This can be effectively made into Triple Jump if Bass is the one utilizing Charge Kick.
• Dual Boss: Thanks to Version 1.5 allowing builders to place multiple bosses at once, they can put two bosses in one room for a challenge. They can even have more than two in the same room, though it would be overkill for anyone else.
• Easter Egg: When booting up the title screen on Version 1.0, there's a chance that it will display the Japanese text. This Easter egg is present until Version 1.1, where it no longer shows up. This is due to the name change of the game.
  • Starting with Version 1.7.4, an 8-bit rendition of the title theme from 30XX (an indie video game project WreckingPrograms has worked on before rejoining the Mega Man Maker) can be accessed for usage in the Level Builder. The player has to simply type in 30XX at the very first title screen.
  • Starting with Version 1.8.0, an 8-bit rendition of Megalovania can be used in the Level Builder. The exact method involves the usage of text editing: after opening MMLV files with Notepad, any value on the line "1nX" (X means the number of the boss placed in the level) must be set to 69.
• Easy Level Trick: Some of the more sly creators can insert "developer exits" in levels that are meant to be full of precise jumps and tricks.
• Equipment-Based Progression: Weapon Blocks/Shields can only be broken by a specific weapon which can force players to use them to progress.
• Eternal Engine: One of the easier types of levels to create, given the nature of the game and the many, many metal tiles - especially combined with conveyor belts and other machinery level objects.
• Excuse Plot: Not that it should be expected from a level builder, but the Tutorial still gives something resembling one. Dr. Wily basically gives access to his level building tool and tries to encourage everyone into making the meanest levels possible for Mega Man and company.
• Facepalm: Bass' victory animation during his slide is this, although players have to use Charge Kick and perfectly time it to see it in normal gameplay.
• Fake Difficulty: Like in Super Mario Maker, quite a few levels suffer from enemy and trap placement being not simply difficult, but also clueless. Some levels, like maze levels for example, have this issue brought up to eleven as enemies are set on the edge of screen transitions that players get forced to trip on while backtracking around. Nastier builders can camouflage spikes behind backgrounds of the same color, too.
• Fake Longevity: Might be result of a poorly designed level full of pixel perfect jumps and/or Trial-and-Error Gameplay which can be made a whole lot worse through Checkpoint Starvation.
• Flavor Text: Version 1.1 added flavor text to all the items that can be used in the level editor, and some even include Shout Outs. See some examples below.
• Forced Meme: The former Malaysian forum troll Fanduber tried to make an Nightmare Sequence from an episode of Hamtaro an meme, to the point that he trolled others with that picture in Mega Man Maker Forums and even several Fanduber-controlled channels once posted the clip on YouTube. It didn't succeeded. Here's the scene in question.
• Gimmick Level: Some levels can revolve around a certain weapon that the player characters must use to progress or a notable stage hazard that is used throughout the level.
• Glass Cannon: If both of Proto Man's abilities turned off (Double Damage and Proto Strike), then he is this. He can shoot charge shots without the need to hold down a button, allowing him to deal twice the damage of a normal shot. In return, however, he takes twice as much damage from almost any attack.
• God Mode: Normally, Uber Chain's energy bar is filled up by striking enemies. Activating this weapon provides the player with invincibility for 10 seconds; this period can be prolonged by engaging in further melee combat. If Uber Chain is placed in the first weapon slot, however, the character becomes invincible until the entire level is complete.
• Goomba Springboard: Unlike Mega Man 3, the Top Spin weapon can be used to bounce safely off enemies and damage them in the process also while gaining more height than a normal jump.
• Grandfather Clause: To modify some objects, new versions have been created while the old ones are left unused in order to have as much backwards compatibility as possible.
• Gusty Glade: Rain and Rain Flush can be used to alter the jump velocity allowing players to cross larger gaps, or hamper their progress. Fan Fiends and Yaffu enemies as well as Oni Wind Generators can also do the same and can be all put together to create a very hectic platforming experience.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Inverted. While Roll has access to ranged weapons like anyone else, her primary attack is swinging her broom.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Super Arm creates blocks for players to throw, but recklessness (especially when spawning blocks after jumping) might get them crushed by the same block they've created.
  • Especially possible in scenarios with weapon-based platforms placed over instant-kill obstacles or bottomless pits. Any reckless shots hitting those platforms would send the players to their doom.
• Holiday Mode: The title screen will display a Christmas tree with presents surrouding it in the background, if the game is being played in the period between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.
• Idle Animation: A very simple one: characters will blink, except for Proto Man due to his visored Cool Helmet.
• Ignorant About Fire: Fire can interact with more level objects than other elements, but can also bring a lot of trouble to unsuspecting players. They can melt Chill Platforms, ignite Oil Puddles, blast Fuse Boxes, or set fire to Napalm all by accident.
• Inconveniently-Placed Conveyor Belt: Right out of Mega Man 2. Version 1.8 allows to adjust them by direction and speed. Dynamo Conveyors from Mega Man & Bass, however, pick up the speed as long as the players stand on them.
• Instant-Win Condition: Party Balls, Energy Elements, and, if set by the level creator, Targets (if all are destroyed, either in a single section or throughout the entire level), will grant victory to the player even if there are still bosses alive on-screen.
• Instructive Level Design: Most types of mapping are encouraging the builders to do this, because the common players will fall into Guide Dang It! territory thanks to people who aren't at all familiar with basic level design aspects: enemies' placements, level objects, gimmicks - or by not knowing special properties added to the myriad of weapons.
• It Only Works Once: Checkpoints prior to Version 1.4 could only be used once without restarting or losing. One could not return to another checkpoint to save the stats, or to have it as the last checkpoint to retry the level.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: Losing all lifes in the Wily Challenge will turn into a proper Game Over screen, coupled with a small quote at the bottom.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: invokedThe caption of the background of MM2 Wily Stage 1 states: "Hopefully not as overused as the theme of this stage".
• Joke Boss:
  • "Beached Bubble Man": If Bubble Man is on completely dry land, he will fall to the ground and start sobbing and not be able to move, only throwing the occasional fast-rolling (but still easy-to-dodge) Bubble Lead.
  • Downplayed with "Beached Splash Woman" since Version 1.7: Once she's on dry land, she has a completely different attack pattern where she will either rain Laser Tridents on the player from above or shoot at them directly, making her much more of a threat than Bubble Man out of water. However, she still won't be able to move, also making her a sitting duck for attacks.
• Kaizo Trap: Awfully possible since it takes a couple of seconds after defeating a boss for the game to consider the level cleared. For instance, a boss arena could be set on a field of timed bombs over a bottomless pit. After the boss falls, if the player character doesn't have enough footing before the level clear jingle kicks in - too bad.
• Kill It with Fire: The description for the Gockroach S mentions that anyone should "kill [it] with fire!" Likewise, the description for its nest says that the players are going to have a bigger flamethrower to get rid of them.
• Level Editor: The core aspect of the game.
• Level Goal: Levels can be made without a boss at the end by placing a weapon orb from Mega Man or the Party Ball from Mega Man 8 and Mega Man Powered Up. Same also applies to the grey-colored Targets spread throughout the courses.
• Level in Boss Clothing: Forcing the player to fight one (or more) boss(es) while traveling across the level is a very popular way to build maps. Alternatively, the boss arena can be built in such way that the player must watch out for additional enemies, hazards or precarious footing, as much as they have to worry about the boss(es).
• Loads and Loads of Loading: The bigger the level, the longer it takes to load. Same also applies to the autosave within the editor: it can freeze for several seconds (or even minutes if the course in question is a lengthy metroidvania). Version 1.8 significantly rectifies this issue.
• Malevolent Architecture: Encouraged by Dr. Wily in the Tutorial, and depending on what kind of level builders the players are, they can make the courses as difficult as possible, ensuring to give casual fans every disadvantage possible.
• Marathon Level: Some maps can be truly gargantuan in size, especially those of the Metroidvania style, and take a long time to finish - with some reported cases varying between 20 minutes to over 1 hour.
• Meaningless Lives: Normally, 1-ups only refill the health meter - but in Wily Challenge they actually count.
• Megamix Game: Mega Man Maker contains many, many, many assets from 1 to 11, and even spin-offs like Powered Up, The Wily Wars, Mega Man & Bass, as well as five Game Boy titles. This huge collection allows players to create or re-create/imagine levels as they desire.
• Mercy Invincibility: Happens after taking a hit from damage sources.
  • Centaur Flash will give it to the player, on top of stopping time for a moment.
  • Break Dash grants it after every usage.
• Metroidvania: An item that unlocked weapons mid-level was a highly requested feature from fans of this genre who had to make do with maze levels and Sonic-like multi-layered adventures. It took some time, but they got it.
• Mooks, but no Bosses: Some levels don't have bosses at all, instead they have Energy Elements, Party Balls or grey-colored Targets to end them.
• Move in the Frozen Time: Bosses immune or not weak to either Time Stopper or Flash Stopper can still move as normal.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Mega Man and Proto Man's aerial victory pose alludes to Mega Man's pose in Mega Man 3's Weapon Get screen.
  • Roll's standard attacks with her broom mimic Zero's attacks with his Z-Saber, right down to the three-slash combo and the rolling slash.
• Nintendo Hard: Many levels are made like this.
• No-Sell: Bosses can have immunity to a single weapon. Spring Man in particular is immune to the Thunder Beam unless it is set as his weakness. Shooting him with that under normal conditions makes him generate an invincible magnetic field which, peharps unintentionally, only the Thunder Claw can pierce.
• Nostalgia Level:
  • One of the included example levels is a recreation of the first Wily Castle stage from Mega Man 2, except with enemies that weren't present in Mega Man Maker substituted for different ones and the Magnet Beam in Mega Man's arsenal, as Mega Man Maker lacked the three Items before the Version 1.2. The boss of the stage, Pharaoh Man, is even utilised in a creative way to emulate the Mecha Dragon battle from the original.
  • Recreating stages from other franchises or even obstacle courses from reality shows is, of course, a common practice among players.
• Not the Intended Use: Bound to happen with the plethora of stuff available and the near infinite combination of obstacles, enemies and boss immunities/weaknesses. Many of maps that are of the Gimmick Level type love to twist and subvert how certain weapons and objects interact with each other too.
  • Aesthetically speaking, there's some creative use for level objects like, for example, Crash Lifts to make it look like it's attaching platforms to the ceiling instead of just having them just dangling mid-air. MMLV Editor program (separate from the Mega Man Maker itself) is also a huge help when the autotiler seems to mess some stuff up.
• Notice This: Sometimes level builders will make creative use of tiles, enemies, level objects or pick ups to get the player's attention to a particular spot - or as an attempt to warn them of something ahead.
• Ocular Gushers: Bubble Man devolves into this if he is placed on dry land.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • Will happen if the player character touches spikes, ignited oil or napalm (at least both without the Skull Shield active), gets crushed by rising platforms, touches the red Force Beams, touches the Magma Beams, gets squished by any variety of Push Blocks, or is too late to move out of the way of the walls made out of timed On/Off blocks.
  • Metal Man will be immediately defeated if he touches a reflected Metal Blade initially fired by him, even if he is set to be immune to said weapon. Alternatively, if set to be weak to it, he will still be defeated in one shot. This is a nod to his infamous weakness to the weapon, being destroyed easily by it in one shot (on Normal difficulty) or two (on Difficult and the Japanese Rockman 2 version).
  • The Fire Wall will destroy almost all enemies, all bosses, and the player character - unless it is frozen.
  • Bosses can be killed via crushing or plummeting in bottomless pits regardless of how many immunities they've been given. Sometimes, these are the only ways to kill them.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Possible with implementation of Health Modifiers. These assets can be set up to a single HP; this allows the builders to create levels based solely on survival and avoiding incoming shots.
• Pacifist Run: Can be enforced on players by not giving them any weapons at all. Proto Man may circumvent this by reflecting enemy projectiles back to them.
• Perpetual Beta: The game has received updates since its initial release. It is intended to remain in development to add more elements from the Mega Man classic series or from the team.
• Platform Hell:
  • As to be expected, there are many hardcore platforming levels entirely designed around the usage of mobility options like Top Spin, Charge Kick, Mega Ball, Nado, Tengu Blade, Break Dash, Uber Chain, or even the Shine. Same also goes towards the Jet and Super Adapters, because they enhance Mega Man's air mobility.
  • Levels with spikes loaded everywhere, or full of bottomless pits, where one error means death.
  • Dr. Wily even suggests that anyone should add as many of the former objects as possible in the tutorial to give Mega Man a difficult time.
    Dr. Wily: And between you and me, make sure to place as many death spikes as possible! Anything to give that Mega Man a hard time!
• Power Copying: Downplayed. Players can make bosses give them Special Weapons - which don't have to be their own original weapons (or even the logical ones).
• Poison Mushroom: The "Weapon Remover" takes away a specific weapon. Players are usually forced to pick it in order to prevent them from having any option that would make a part of the map too easy. Alternatively, this tools is used to force them to swap the provided arsenal as well.
• Power Up Letdown: Oil and napalm can transform fire weapons into liabilities, since those will ignite the obstacles and make them lethal. Unless the players can douse them with water-type weaponry, that is.
• Power-Up Magnet:
  • Ring Boomerang has the item-gathering properties from Mega Man IV, which was also present in Rockman Minus Infinity.
  • Hornet Chaser can collect items much like it does in Mega Man 9.
  • Magic Card can grab items even vertically, just like in Mega Man & Bass.
• Pun:
  • The description for Katonbyon says that it's "a bugger", which makes sense since it's a robot insect.
  • The Mega Man 6 Fan is described as "your biggest one".
• Promoted to Playable: Roll is fully playable and has her own distinct default weapon, slide ability and special animal companions (Tango and Beat).
• Puzzle Boss: More complex boss fights will have the player to solve puzzles or find a way to deal with the boss which has immunities to their current weapons.
• Random Number God:
  • Command Selection allows the player to pick from 4 different weapons at any time. Repeated usage always picks random weapons to choose from, along with 2 additional spells called Heal and Kamikazee.
  • Uber Chain's Critical Hits work on the same principle. They serve as a great way to fill up the weapon bar faster, as well as prolong the invincibility period.
• Respawning Enemies: As it is expected. Putting enemies on screen edges can cause them to spontaneously despawn and cause Collision Damage, however.
• Retraux: Everything is done to visiually resemble the NES style of 8-bit gaming.
  • Every asset coming from Game Boy series is colorized to match the aforementioned style. However, the enemies can be reverted back to the monochrome aesthetic the original Game Boy is most famous for.
• Rise to the Challenge: Can be set up with Fire Wall travelling vertically to the top.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty:
  • Since the Wily Challenge uses random user-created levels, it is possible to find courses with diverse difficulty. Because each of them is randomly picked, there's no telling what the next stage has in store for the players. It becomes worse when the difficulty is set to Hard and the length to Long. Thankfully, the levels can be skipped, but the penalty for is a single life.
  • This can happen in any level, if the person building it isn't careful. Especially when spikes and bottomless pits get involved.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • Try using Thunder Beam on Spring Man; he likes electricity. As of version 1.5, Thunder Claw instead will damage him despite activating his special ability, though.
  • Oil and napalm tempts the player to let fire fall over it.
• Scrappy Weapon: invoked The flavor text of the Item-3 implies that it is not a very useful item in comparison to the other two items.
  "Throw out a platform that bounces and scales walls. Good for... uh... wait..."
• Shock and Awe: Thunder Beam from the original Mega Man, as well as Spark Man from Mega Man 3. Anyone may not want to try electrifying Spring Man, though...^Explanation In 7, if Spring Man is hit with Thunder Bolt, Cloud Man's weapon, he becomes magnetic and attracts the player character towards himself. This is carried over into Maker, albeit with any electric weapon, and even electric themed objects, such as fuse lasers.
• Shout-Out:
  • In the original release, the two weapons in the "Other" category included Meta Knight's Mach Tornado and Fox's Reflector (renamed "Shine"), both straight out of Super Smash Bros. and complete with their original sound effects, though were later converted into 8-bit sound effects. The two weapons above would later be joined by Perfect Freeze in 1.0.9.
    • Speaking of "Other" category, the Uber Chain from Version 1.8 is an obvious shoutout to the Medic class from Team Fortress 2. It even changes colors from red-to-blue and vice versa, harkening to the source game's Red Team and Blue Team match-ups.
  • As of Version 1.1, many tooltips on tiles and backgrounds have various shoutouts to other series.
    • Toad Tile's description reads: "Mossy Bricks which smells vaguely like pizza."
    • Drill Man's tiles have 2 shoutouts: on the normal tile, the tooltip says that it's "a surprise for sure, but a welcome one," and that anyone can pierce the heavens with Drill Man's Spikes.
    • Plant Man's background tooltip references Guns N' Roses' Welcome to the Jungle, although it gets cut short by the description limit.
    • If players decide to give Mega Man no weapons, they'll be greeted with Willy Wonka's famous "You get nothing" speech from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
    • The first Mr. X background says that anyone should "watch out so the moon doesn't crash down."
    • The Shade Man tiles mention that they're "fitting for a dark atmosphere filled with ghosts and goblins." It is also a reference to an easter egg in Mega Man 7, featuring the Ghosts N' Goblins theme replacing the standard stage's theme if it's accessed with a special button combination.
    • On the topic of Shade Man, the second Shade Man background references the Gilliam Knight's gimmick from Mega Man 7.^note (These were enemies that moved around and looked like jousting knights, but upon the moon appearing, they turned into wolves.)
      "A dark horizon that sets the perfect atmosphere to turn knights into werewolves."
    • Surumaker's flavor text alludes to SpongeBob SquarePants, more specifically, Squidward's tense relationship with SpongeBob and Patrick Star.
    • The fourth Magma Man background’s description references The Simpsons.^note (Specifically, the memetic “Steamed Hams” scene.)
      "Steam from pipes? At this time of the year, localized entirely in this BG?"
    • Drill Man's second background: "Large pipes used for transportation of various minerals and plumbers."
    • Dr. Cossack's second background: "A generic fortress texture with a snow halation window."
    • Napalm Man's third background: "These tanks are actually out of fuel. No using them as a ride armor."
    • Dark Man 1's fourth background: "These bricks bring up memories of a green dino and his island."
    • Mr. X 1's second background: "The previous BG but without the moon. No need to collect 880 of them."
    • Mr. X 2's second background: "Spaaaceeeee"
    • Hornet Man's first background: "Not the beeeeeeees."
    • Plug Man's second background: "You can plug in stuff up to the power of 1.21 gigawatts."
    • Snake Man tile: "Use these tiles to create a tunnel, and you'll rule."
    • Wily ladder 21 (which is red): "One of the spiciest color choices, looking like hot chili peppers."
    • Slash Man spike: "Hey Lois! Remember when that dinosaur impaled me in Slash Man's stage?"
    • Burst Man spike: "This spike wants to be the very best, like no one ever was."
    • Tornado Man spike: "Not again! The death bringers of the Flying Battery Zone!"
    • Commando Man's first background: "Rumor has it some bus driver is crossing this desert to this day."
    • Mega Man 10 Wily 4 background 4: "A simple chamber. But whose? Guess you could call it a chamber of secrets."
    • Mega Man 10 Endless background 12: "Stack enough J and L Tetrominoes and you get this. No line clears though."
    • Mega Man 10 Endless background 14: "I'm gonna reach for the staaaaaars... Although they look pretty faaaaaar..."
    • Mega Man 10 Endless background 20: "What is perspective? A miserable little pile of secrets."
    • Other fangames are even referenced, as evident by Mega Man 10 Endless tile 27, alluding to it appearing in Dust Man's stage in Mega Man 4 Voyage.
      "Something about this tileset reminds me of ash trays."
    • Even some of the enemies have shoutouts. The description for the Mega Man 10 Sola O enemy calls it a "Sunflora wannabe".
• Show, Don't Tell: Cleverly designed levels can tell even small "stories" with this in mind. This is also a way to foreshadow dangers and hazards with, or without, aid of Antepiece.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Ice Man's tiles, the second tiles for Cossack 1, the alternate Mega Man 6 Wily 2 tiles, as well as Freeze Man's tiles are slippery, but the Cossack 1 and Blizzard Man's are not. The game even lampshades this with their tooltip.
  "Apparently some people think this [tile] has ice physics. It doesn't."
• Stealth Run: Searchy enemies can force players into doing this lest the enemies will trigger, or deactivate, platforms/ladders/spikes that will doom the player.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Nothing stops builders from putting somber music in a saccharine-looking level, and vice-versa. Or putting Mega Man 1 boss theme when fighting much later Robot Masters, etc.
• Special Edition Title: On Christmas, the main title image is a Christmas tree.
  • Several Endless backgrounds' descriptions from Mega Man 10 take a jab at their own source game, calling it Red Sun Edition and Blue Moon Edition.
• Spikes of Doom: It wouldn't be Mega Man without 'em. Any player that isn't a complete newcomer will be very wary of these things, which come in all sorts of flavors: pointy, spherical, trident, wooden and even bent. There's no shortage of ways to make players' lives difficult - tough jumps, spikes on the lowered ceilings, classic spike drops^note long falling sessions where the player has to avoid spikes having only the brief vertical screen scrolling to react, or even instant-kill obstacles in boss rooms.
• Stone Wall: One of the two Super Smash Bros. weapons is the Shine (or Reflector); a shield-based weapon that allows players to reflect nearly any projectile back onto the attackers. It can be held as long as players want, while mashing the shoot button in mid-air is enough to get extended air time. This weapon outclasses the canon shield weaponry such as the Leaf Shield, Skull Barrier, Star Crash and Water Shield in (almost) every way. The downsides are that players cannot move whenever Shine is active (except falling by gravity, but it resets when the button is pressed), it doesn't protect them from collision-based enemies, and attacking enemies that don't throw long-range projectiles with Shine requires to get up close to them, risking collision damage.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: Varies depending on how mean the level builder feels, but as a rule of thumb be ready for a boss fight or a tough segment when the free health and weapon refills are seen.
• Take That!:
  • The flavor text for MM3 Wily 1 Water (Wily Water 2 in the editor) states that it makes "illegal mods" obsolete. This is a reference to an incident in which a forum troll offered to hunt down "illegar" mods, even though the development team is okay with them, while also alluding to how it makes the Transparent Water mod unnecessary.
  • The flavor text of one of Wily Spikes mocks "modern art".
  • The sneak peek confirming the Commando Bomb does a reference to a puzzle in Mega Man X5 to obtain a part of the Gaea Armor in Dark Necrobat's stage. To show how frustrating the challenge is, Proto Man just moves on to shoot the Party Ball with the Proto Buster. The purpose of this jab was also to compare the Gemini Laser to the changes of the Commando Bomb.
  • The Fire Wall's announcement mocks some firewall software's tendency to damage files while searching threats.
• Throw the Mook at Them: A variant here. Danger Wrap allows characters to encase smaller enemies and push them into other ones.
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay: Levels can have enemies that suddenly appear to knock characters off platforms, often into spikes or bottomless pits. While some examples wouldn't be out of place in official games - and savvy players may be able to detect them, this is usually something that generally isn't viewed in positive light. Worst examples are demanding players to do leap of faiths and "spike drops" that leave little to no room for mistakes.
  • Badly placed spikes, bottomless pits, near screen transitions can cause this. An unsuspecting player can walk into them with absolutely no way to see they'll bump into them. The same goes for anything that would harm the player as well.
• Toggling Setpiece Puzzle: On/Off Switches, which are shaped like orbs. Builders can put them so they have to be hit to activate or they can be put to toggle through an automatic timer. The toggleable elements include blocks, spikes, ladders, and Targets; they're accordingly color-coded (red and blue, with the former ones being active by default).
• Tornado Move: Aside from the Air Shooter, Wind Storm, Tornado Hold and Tornado Blow, there is also the Nado - an attack that makes the character spin in a tornado.
• Tradesnark™: When announcing the Fire Wall from Mega Man 11, WreckingPrograms put a TM in the name of that gimmick to make jokes around the two meanings of "fire wall".
• Unexpected Shmup Level: Levels featuring primarily Rush (Proto) Jet, Jet Adapter, Treble Boost or Flappy Beat become this. Tougher versions limit their energy akin to fuel to keep players on their toes and ready to pick up weapon energy, lest they run out and end up plummeting to their doom.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: Due to the game receiving many updates, any levels that rely on now-patched glitches or features that were changed are now this. Hope anyone doesn't stumble upon these kinds of levels in the Wily Challenge.
• Unwinnable by Design: Can happen to anyone - from new players to even veterans - due to lack of knowledge/testing, overisight or sheer accident^note This is one of the reasons players are often encouraged to intentionally fail parts of their own levels, in order to see if they didn't overlook something that can end up frustrating others .
  • While such shenanigans are (very) frowned upon, one could set up levels with softlocking traps - like a path filled with goal orbs that leads to a spike pit with a checkpoint over it.
  • A downplayed example is getting the player into a pit or a place they can't escape forcing them to go back to the last checkpoint.
  • In some maps characters may need a special weapon to progress, but they can get into a part of the level where the builder forgot backtracking is impossible... Oops. Bigger maps often do this by accident.
  • Another way, most likely accidental or by oversight, is to force players to use a special weapon to proceed, but not offer any Energy Weapon pick ups or even enemies to give them a chance to refill, especially if they die, thus softlocking them.
• Utility Weapon: Many weapons were reworked and given new properties that could turn them into this.
  • The purpose of Item blocks is to invoke this with the selected item.
  • The Oil Slider is useful to surf over water, cross a stage, circumvent conveyor belts in the opposite direction, and give the opportunity of a second jump to jump higher at the expense of the oil surface used.
  • The Rain Flush can be used to increase the jump distance.
  • The Wind Storm can be used as a trampoline to jump much higher than usual, even over spikes. If used with the correct distancing near walls, it can allow the makeshift "wall climbing".
  • The Water Wave may cool down ignited oil, provided the oil is not tied to a Fire Beam or inside the water. It also affects acid by reducing its toxicity level.
  • The Mega Ball can be used to jump over stacks of 4 blocks and spike floors. With proper timing, they even allow to just fly all over the place. While standing next to a wall, players don't even need to time each shot.
  • The Pile Driver, despite being a powerful weapon, also works as an air-dashing tool that can destroy Cracked Blocks. It also comes with a perk to be utilized several times in a row, allowing the player to cross large pits with ease.
  • The Super Arm can create blocks as well as just pick them up, letting it block off enemies or create temporary platforms.
  • Any fire weapon can be used to melt Ice Walls (level objects), light fuses from TNT blocks or set fire to oil puddles.
  • Several shield weapons have been reworked into doing something more than "deal damage when touched upon":
    • The Skull Barrier gives the player immunity against the dreaded One-Hit Kill spikes.
    • The Star Crash gives the player the ability to jump as if they were in Low-G.
    • The Plant Barrier turns projectiles and destroyed enemies into small energy capsules.
    • The Water Shield can douse oil puddles on fire (not underwater) and lower the toxicity of Chemical Solutions, like the Water Wave.
• Victory Pose: All available characters have different poses for when they complete a level. In a interesting case of Developer's Foresight, there are poses for characters if they are stuck in sliding animation, jumping (usually via springs) or on ladders.
• Video Game Dashing:
  • The Charge Kick is changed to also work as an air dash in a homage to the ROM hacks Rockman 5 Air Sliding and Rockman 4 Burst Chaser x Air Sliding.
  • Pile Driver provides this as well, whether be it on land or in the air.
  • Whenever the slide, Dodge Roll or conventional dashing is performed, Tengu Blade acts as a mobility enhancer, allowing the player to perform longer jumps and cut through enemies.
  • Break Dash is of the "charged" category, coupled with a regular buster for long-range encounters.
• Visual Pun: Roll has the ability to roll to dodge attacks.
• Yet Another Stupid Death: There's a myriad of ways players can kill themselves that might make them feel very dumb:
  • Using fire weapons near very flammable oil puddles (or napalm) is a quick way to deep-fry the character.
  • Again on fire weapons: using them recklessly can melt nearby ice platforms.
  • Still on fire weapons: igniting explosive platforms (with very visible fuses) and screwing themselves over.
  • Anyone should be mindful of using ground/fullscreen hitting weapons while standing on breakable platforms, or platforms that can be only broken using those exact weapons. Players may do it while above spikes or bottomless pits.
  • Characters can end up dropping a very visible block and crushing themselves. Even worse if they do so with the Super Arm.
• You Don't Look Like You: The sprites for Roll and Beat in this game bear little resemblance to their sprites from the NES saga, as well as 9th and 10th games.
• Zero-Effort Boss:
  • Bubble Man, if he is placed on dry land, is nigh this. Aside from crying, he never moves and only occasionally throws a solitary Bubble Lead projectile that doesn't even bounce. Averted in the case of his arena only being semi-flooded, as he simply drops back into the water and resumes attacking.
    Bubble Man Flavor Text: Swims towards you, firing spurts and Bubble Leads. Said to be defective on land.
  • Authors often set bosses to get instantly killed in some way as a gag.
  • Averted with Splash Woman. When she first arrives, she'll land on the ground and grumble, but she still attacks, using her singing to summon a hail of tridents and shooting at the players on the ground. She doesn't move, but makes up for it with those attacks.

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