Video Game / Rockman 4 Minus ∞

"Ah, the wonders of 6502 assembly hacking. Where most people would prefer making Mega Man fan games in Flash or other similar platforms, there are people such as Puresabre [sic] and other Japanese hackers that rework their entire games with extensive reprogramming."

—YouTube comment by LuwiigiMaster

Rockman 4 Minus Infinity is a Rockman 4 ROM hack by a Japanese person who goes by PureSabe.

It keeps the same basic plot as its source material, while adding a number of new features, such as all-new levels, bosses, and music, as well as a modern save file system. It also contains plenty of Shout Outs to other games, including enemies from other Mega Man titles, and many level design homages. Most of this stems from its usage of assembly hacking, allowing for deeper customization than other ROM hacking tools

The game is complete, with version 1.00 being released in December 2014. This site contains lots of information on the game.

In October 2020, PureSabe would release a Spiritual Successor called Rockman 7 EP, again using assembly hacking to significantly revamp Rockman 7.

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Robot Masters:

• DCN-025: Bright Man, weak to Homing Control Ring Boomerang and Spark Manbow, gives Spark Manbow.
• DCN-026: Toad Man, weak to Pharaoh Shotgun and Toad Spell, gives Toad Spell.
• DCN-027: Drill Man, weak to Water Cutter and Hell Wheel, gives Drill Torpedo.
• DCN-028: Pharaoh Man, weak to Drill Torpedo, gives Pharaoh Shotgun.
• DCN-029: Ring Man, weak to Hell Wheel and Water Cutter, gives Homing Control Ring Boomerang.
• DCN-030: Dust Man, weak to Toad Spell and Drill Torpedo, gives the Recycle Inhaler.
• DCN-031: Dive Man, weak to Spark Manbow and Homing Control Ring Boomerang, gives the Water Cutter.
• DCN-032: Skull Man, weak to Recycle Inhaler and Drill Torpedo, gives the Hell Wheel.

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This game provides examples of:

• 11th-Hour Superpower: If you find yourself losing the final battle, Proto Man comes in to give you the Wily Buster and refill all your health. The Wily Buster shoots charged shots instantly and reduces all damage taken from the Petit Robot Masters.
• 100% Completion: Getting a hero score of 100.
  Proto Man: I have no advice. You are real hero! I hope you will not fight as Mega Man anymore. Do you think Dr. Wily give up? No answer needed.
• Abnormal Ammo: Spark Manbow lets Mega Man shoot light bulbs and Rush Cannon lets Mega Man shoot Rush at his foes.
• Actually a Doombot: Crash Man, Wave Man, and the Chimerabots are actually holograms. As are the Bait-and-Switch Boss and the True Final Boss. Mega Man figures out that they're holograms almost immediately, but that doesn't make them any less dangerous.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • All of the Robot Masters and other bosses in general have new attacks and abilities that they didn't have in the original series, but Toad Man takes the cake. He's much faster and more agile than he was before, can't be locked into a repetitive pattern anymore, and his special weapon can't be interrupted, with it turning Mega Man into a frog if not dodged.
  • Rush in the canon Mega Man games is a utility character, usually not being able to attack enemies himself. Here, Rush has two ways of dishing out huge damage. The Rush Cannon adaptor fires Rush as a projectile for a One-Hit Kill on most foes, while the Wish Star adaptor damages all enemies on screen, hitting even harder if Mega Man is low on HP.
• Adaptation Expansion: Adds numerous new enemies, mini-bosses, bosses, weapons, and even gameplay changes and new game modes. There's also some new story elements added, and the credits show how Dr. Wily escaped again, as well as an epilogue after that that shows there are no hard feelings between Light and Cossack.
• Adapted Out: The Metall Daddy and Tako Trash bosses from the original Mega Man 4 don't appear here.
• Advancing Boss of Doom: King Gojulus in Skull Man's stage, as well as Jumbig in some stages.
• Advancing Wall of Doom: In Dust Man's stage, you have to outrun a rather slow (or fast) wall.
• After Boss Recovery: Super Shadow Man drops a Yashichi after his death, which refills all your health and weapon energy.
• A.I. Breaker:
  • Using Recycle Inhaler to trap Snatch Man in an E-Tank works around his ability to dodge Rush Cannon. You can use this to One-Hit Kill the boss with it.
  • You can shoot and hold the HCR Boomerang during the Weapon Snatching section (the intermission) of the fight, Snatch Man will empty the HCR Boomerang's weapon energy instead of taking it away, you can use Rush Search to get energy (as long in full health) to get more weapon energy and shoot and hold the same weapon 3 more times. The result is phase 2 but Snatch Man using only the HCR weapon and Mega Man hasn't lost any weapon in the process, making it possible to go through Wily Stage 3 with all weapon intact.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: Wily Stage 3 is a maze that uses graphics from every previous level, fitting the whole Boss Rush theme.
• Always Accurate Attack: The Wishing Star Adapter. It covers the screen, but you only get one shot.
• And I Must Scream: The description for the Energy Splitter (obtained by sucking up Eddie) implies Eddie is still alive inside it.
  "You seem to hear something in this unit."
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Mega Man starts with three items and Rush Search, the three items being the Energy Charger, Energy Balancer, and the Exchanger. Changing difficulty related settings also allows you to start with the Shock Guard and Trampoline, while another setting removes the Energy Charger.
  • In Wily Stage 3, during the re-matches with the eight main Robot Masters, they won't dodge or counter Rush Cannon unlike in their initial fights.
  • If you lose at Wily Machine's second phase, the first phase will start with a single bar instead of the massive one.
  • Once you're hit by Optical Capsule's laser, all lasers that are on screen disappear (he still shots the rest of burst, though), fitting in with the Touhou Project-like pattern of them. This doesn't happen if Hard Mode is turned on, though.
  • Dying three times on the final Escape Sequence causes the spikes to turn green and only do one damage, in addition to giving you more time.
• Artificial Brilliance:
  • When initially fought, the eight main Robot Masters change their patterns to dodge Rush Cannon if you fire it at them. Some even turn it against you!
  • If you use Rush during the Snatch Man battle, he will confuse you for the doppelganger. Yes, you can end up healing the boss when you're low on health! To really rub it in, it still uses your weapon energy.
• Author Appeal:
  • PureSabe seems to be a big fan of Rockman World 5 and Mega Man X2. The Cossack bosses are based on the X-Hunters and the Charge Shot looks like the Charge Shot from X2. Some of the enemies and gimmicks from Rockman World 5 show up.
  • He also seems to like Shadow Man a lot, as the latter is fought several times throughout the game.
  • Also, Up n' Down, considering how every single RM stage has a variant of one.
  • Puresabe is a big fan of the F-Zero series, Gradius series, and Kirby, since he tends to reference both throughout many of his romhacks. In fact, he's done hacks for both series.
• Auto-Scrolling Level:
  • Sections of Skull Man's level, which has every kind of dynamic platform from the 8-bit Mega Man series.
  • Wily Stage 2's last half, which is a Homage to the Gradius series' High Speed Zone stages.
• Back Stab: In certain battles, Shadow Man will seemingly leap off-screen before performing this One-Hit Kill move.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss:
  • The Alien seems like it's going to be the final boss, like in Mega Man 2, but Mega Man is wise to this trick and destroys the projector, leading instead to a fight against the Petit Robot Masters.
  • Reaching the third Chimerabot in Wily Stage 4 without losing a life for the entire game has Super Shadow Man destroying it with a Diagonal Cut.
• Berserk Button: Pharaoh Man gets upset when Mega Man destroys the statues in his stage and later challenges him to a battle when Mega Man destroys the coffin in his room.
• Bewitched Amphibians: Toad Man's weapon does this to enemies (and power-ups!), and during the Boss Rush it acts as a One-Hit Kill against Toad Man himself (but you can choose not to kill him, and he'll show up in the ending still transformed as well). Its animation is a Shout-Out to Final Fantasy III.
• Blackout Basement: The first half of Bright Man's level. You can see the level in general, but not enemies and objects under or over you.
• Blinded by the Light: Spark Manbow has a secondary function. If you hold up when you press the fire button, Mega Man holds up a lightbulb and causes a bright flash of light to cover the screen, which makes enemies stand still for a few seconds.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: Although PureSabe did admit his bad English skills in the English readme file. The 0.02 and 0.97 releases lampshade this — the language select option has "Japanese" and "Engrish," with a real English release stated to be coming soon.
• Bottomless Pit Rescue Service: If you find and rescue Beat in Skull Man's stage and Cossack Stage 1, he does this for you at the cost of some of your HP for the rest of the stage.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: The Jumbig, which takes 127 Mega Buster shots to kill. He also pushes you back if you run into him, so you can't just abuse invincibility frames to bypass him. And he appears at least once in every level. And on top of that, he gains some additional projectile attacks when you start the fortress levels... On Hard Mode, they start with their upgrade from the beginning and then starts firing one hit kill spike balls in the Wily Castle stages!
• Boss Rush: While Wily Stage 3 is more of a Metroidvania, the Mechanical Arena unlocked by beating the game is a straighter version (a homage to the Arena in Kirby Super Star).
• Bragging Rights Reward: The ? Dagger you get by defeating Super Shadow Man. Considering said boss fight occurs at the tail end of the game, and to even see said boss fight you have to have no lives lost all the way up to that point, and you have to beat this ridiculously hard boss in a single life, the only thing obtaining this weapon proves is that you don't need the damn thing. However it helps greatly against the Optical Capsule on Hard, which is a blessing.
• Bullet Hell: Mothraya. Also Optical Capsule. On Hard Mode, Quint also becomes this.
• Call-Forward:
  • Drill Man's stage has Up n' Down enemies jumping through the ground, a reference to Ground Man's stage in Mega Man & Bass.
  • Pharaoh Man's stage contains destroy-able statues, which look the same as the ones in that same stage.
  • The Exchanger (which converts life energy into weapon energy if you have full health) is the same item you could buy in Mega Man 8.
• Charged Attack: The Mega Buster MI and Pharaoh Shotgun can be charged up for a more powerful attack.
• Chest Blaster: Dive Man's Water Cutter is fired out of his chest.
• Collision Damage: Played with against Snatch Man. If you collide into him, he takes damage too.
• Composite Character: The Chimerabots. The first is a mix of Cut Man and Elec Man, the second's Quick Man and Wood Man, and the third and final one is Needle Man and Gemini Man.
• Convection, Schmonvection:
  • Pharaoh Man's stage has two sections where Mega Man can be near the lava but gets damaged if he gets in it.
  • Averted in a section of Dust Man's level. Mega Man gets a temperature gauge that fills up slowly. If it reaches the top, Mega Man takes damage.
• Cores-and-Turrets Boss: The Serges Devil.
• Cosmetic Award: Proof of Omega, earned after beating Cockroach Omega.
• Credits Medley: Played With — the credits theme is a medley of three credits themes from the Kirby series, specifically Kirby Super Star, Block Ball, and Dream Course.
• Critical Hit: Happens on occasion. Get the Super Star from any Shadow Man encounter by finishing him off with a Recycle Inhaler, and the chances of this increases. His final appearance drops the ? Dagger, which makes every hit critical.
• Damsel in Distress: Mega Man has to break Kalinka out of a cage (guarded by a Copy Roll, of all things), in order to advance in Wily Stage 3.
• Dead Character Walking: A variation — if you die while using Hell Wheel, the wheel keeps going (along with the camera). In some points you can even get to the next screen this way (though you obviously can't do anything)!
• Demoted to Extra: Rush Marine only makes a cameo during a transitional point in Dive Man's stage. Rush Coil, meanwhile, makes no appearance at all.
• Descending Ceiling: Drill Man crashes the ceiling in his arena as his One-Hit Kill Desperation Attack.
• Detachment Combat: The Square Machine can split itself into parts and send itself at Mega Man to knock him off the small platforms he's fighting it on.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • The credits (which feature Fire Emblem like stats for the Robot Masters) also record the weapon you killed them with.
  • Mega Man has a unique sprite for standing on ledges.
  • In Pharaoh Man's stage, the "Reverse" Curse is pretty straightforward, it reverses all your controls, even going so far as to remap the menu to Select instead of Start.
  • In the fight with Pharaoh Man, he starts destroying the pyramid you're in. If you revisit the stage after beating him, the damage is still there.
  • All the Robot Masters change their patterns to avoid Rush Cannon if you fire it. Some actually find ways to kill you with it.
  • In Cossack Stage 4, if you attempt to use any of the Rush weapons when in the center of one of the towers where Rush already awaits to take you to the main tower, you will hear a buzz and a second Rush won't spawn.
  • If you die to the final boss (which takes quite a while, due to the Wily Buster reducing all damage to one), you respawn outside the boss door - only you keep the Wily Buster and the room is shown as it really is, rather than the Womb Level facade it had when you first enter.
• Diagonal Cut: This is how Super Shadow Man kills the third Chimerabot in Wily Stage 4.
• Difficulty Levels: As of v0.02, difficulty options are added — "Normal"^note MAIN: Norm; DAMAGE: x1.0; CRITICAL: On; ITEM DROP: Norm; FAIL-SAFE: Norm; E.GEN.: On, "Easy"^note MAIN: Norm; DAMAGE: x0.5; CRITICAL: On; ITEM DROP: More; FAIL-SAFE: Safe; E.GEN.: On, "Hard"^note MAIN: Hard; DAMAGE: x1.5; CRITICAL: On; ITEM DROP: None; FAIL-SAFE: Norm; E.GEN.: Off, and "Stable"^note MAIN: Norm; DAMAGE: x1.0; CRITICAL: Off; ITEM DROP: None; FAIL-SAFE: Norm; E.GEN.: On
• Doppelgänger Attack: Chimerabot #3 is a fusion of Needle Man and Gemini Man, and it uses Gemini Man's self-duplicating ability.
• Dual Boss:
  • Rong Rong Rong, Rang Rang Rang, and Rung Rung Rung in Ring Man's stage.
  • The Nightmare Suzy Minibosses in Cossack Castle Stage 4.
  • The third Chimerabot (a fusion of Gemini Man and Needle Man) in Wily Stage 4.
• End-Game Results Screen: The game calculates your "hero score" based on a number of factors (i.e. if you rescued Rush and Beat or sucked up Eddie with the Recycle Inhaler, or getting all the secret items), with Proto Man giving a comment based on what you did wrong (if you did anything wrong).
• Evil Knockoff: Snatchman in Wily Stage 2. If you beat him once, he steals 4 of your Robot Master Weapons with the help of Dr. Wily's Stealing System.
• Feed It with Fire: Dust Man, with anything except Toad Spell when he is using Recycle Inhaler.
• Flechette Storm: Super Shadow Man does.
• Forced Transformation: Toad Man's Toad Spell, when used by him, turns you into a defenseless frog from Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru. When used by you, it turns enemies (and items) into tiny, harmless toads.
• Foreshadowing: All the enemies in Wily Stage 1 are Joes, and so is its boss, Joe Ni-Nin Va All.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • In at least two cutscenes near the end of the game, Mega Man fires a charged shot without having to charge up first, the first time happening when he destroys Kalinka's cell and the second time happening when he shoots down the alien cave projector.
  • The Wish Star adaptor uses up its entire energy bar when used, even after rescuing Kalinka in Wily Stage 3 and she attaches a device to Rush that halves the usage costs of the Rush Search and Rush Cannon adaptors. Even if the player uses the Wish Star adaptor to defeat the Wily Machine, Mega Man is still able to immediately use it again afterwards to destroy Wily's escape pod.
• Gimmick Level: Lots of them.
  • Skull Man's stage has pretty much every moving platform from the NES games.
  • Ring Man uses a nerfed version of Quick Man's laser beams.
  • Bright Man has two: the first half of the stage is only lit on your X-axis position, while the second half uses red, blue and green disappearing blocks, which damage you should you be in them when they appear. There are also ladders and Spikes of Doom that function in this manner.
  • Pharaoh Man's stage contains the curses that do various things to you depending on where you're at in the pyramid. Oh, and the boss fights against him involve these curses too.
• Go for the Eye: Like all other Devil bosses, the Aqua Devil in Cossack Stage 3 is vulnerable to damage in its eye.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Wire Adapter. Unlike the original game, it's able to be aimed in more directions than just straight up.
• Happy Dance: Mega Man does one when he defeats Omega in The True Arena.
• High-Altitude Battle: Mega Man ends up in one against Mothraya while riding Rush.
• Hitbox Dissonance: Optical Capsule's lasers have rather weird hitbox and can pass through you without damaging you.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Toad Spell turns the debris Dust Man expels out of his Arm Cannon into toads. When he inhales it back in, he gets damaged instead.
  • Toad Man, in a homage to Mega Man 2, gets killed in one hit if you use Toad Spell on him. Probably because the Toad Spell cures the Toad status in the Final Fantasy games.
  • Spark Manbow affects Bright Man just as much when he uses it against Mega Man.
  • Dust Man and Bright Man can do this to the player, should they try to use Rush Cannon on them. The former inhales it and fires it back at you, while the latter freezes time and knocks you into the path of your own weapon.
• Hologram: Crash Man and Wave Man. The alien lair, as well as the Petit Robot Masters.
• Horse of a Different Color: In a homage to the Mega Man Power Battle/Fighters series, Shadow Man rides on a giant toad in Toad Man's stage, which is lifted straight from Power Fighters, even using the same sprites from the Neo Geo Pocket Color's Rockman Battle & Fighters Shadow Man battle.
• HP to One: The Shock Guard Upgrade turns the spikes from a one hit KO into these.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The ?Dagger, which you must reach Wily 4 and fight Super Shadow Man in one life (dying invalidates the condition and skips him) to obtain. It turns every hit into a Critical Hit, making the rest of the game a breeze.
• I Surrender, Suckers: Dr. Wily, of course. In this case, he even tricks Mega Man into looking in another direction before making his getaway.
• Inconsistent Dub: The English language setting uses the appropriate Dub Name Changes, though there are some inconsistencies:
  • After obtaining Terra's Spark Chaser in Cossack Stage 4, the pause screen will display "Earth", Terra's Japanese name, next to Spark Chaser.
  • In the cutscene after defeating Dr. Cossack, when Mega Man goes after Dr. Wily, his name is initialised as "R" (for Rockman).
  • Dr. Light is called "Dr. Right" in the intro to Wily Stage 3.
  • When Mega Man first speaks to Kalinka upon rescuing her in Wily Stage 3, his name is again initialised as "R" (for Rockman).
  • If Proto Man comes to give Mega Man the Wily Buster during the final battle, his name is displayed as "Blues."
• Inconveniently-Placed Conveyor Belt: Dust Man's stage and Wily Stage 2.
• Interface Screw: Pharaoh Man's stage has a curse and if Mega Man is inside the pyramid, he will be affected by it.
• Kaizo Trap: You can do this to Robot Masters. It's possible to get a last shot which hits after your death, and finish off Robot Master (the game behaves as if you lost, though); this also shows the fact that there can't be more than one death explosion on screen. The easiest weapon to pull it with is Toad spell, as it doesn't damage instantly.
• Killed Off for Real: When Shadow Man gets a Disney Villain Death in Cossack Stage 1, you can hear him exploding. Except he's not dead and comes back for a brutal boss battle in Wily Stage 4 if you do a full deathless run up to that point.
• King Mook: Joe Ni-Nin Va All in Wily Stage 1.
• Knockback: Normally averted, though the Jumbig can send you flying across the screen. It can send you flying into the next screen in Toad Man's level!
• Laser Hallway: There are two sections in Ring Man's stage, one at the beginning and one that the end, that revolve around outrunning damaging lasers ala Quick Man's stage in [1]. Said lasers are, however, not one-hit kills.
• Last Chance Hit Point: The Skull Amulet upgrade will drop Mega Man down to one hit point if hit with an attack that would otherwise have killed him. This doesn't work if he already is at one hit point though.
• Last Ditch Move: The Cossack bosses use one final attack when killed in Hard Mode. For example, the Aqua Devil fires out all of its segments in a rain of projectiles, while Dr. Cossack tries to suck Mega Man towards him for Collision Damage with elevating platforms.
• Lethal Lava Land: The second half of Pharaoh Man's has lava and fire enemies as hazards, including one section where said lava moves up and down.
• Living Statue: The Fire Man, Heat Man, and Flame Man statues near the end of Pharaoh Man's stage are alive, and will attack Mega Man.
• The Maze: Wily Stage 3, known as "Wily's Labyrinth", is a gigantic maze where Mega Man must find and defeat all 8 Robot Masters again.
• Mercy Invincibility: Its duration is greatly reduced. Super Shadow Man's attacks don't trigger it, which makes the fight that much harder.
• Mini-Boss:
  • Shadow Man in Toad Man, Bright Man, and Pharaoh Man's stages, as well as Cossack Stage 1.
  • Whopper and Rong Rong Rong, Rang Rang Rang, and Rung Rung Rung in Ring Man's stage, which is a homage to Lololo and Lalala from the Kirby game series.
  • Hogale and Enker in Dive Man's stage.
  • Quint and Kabatoncue in Drill Man's stage.
  • King Gajuras in Skull Man's stage.
  • Giant / Nightmare Suzy, Terra, Ballade, and Punk in Cossack Stage 4. They guard the generators powering the barrier leading to Dr. Cossack.
  • Gamarn and Gamadayu in Toad Man's stage.
• Multi-Mook Melee: The first half of Wily Stage 2. The True Arena has three of these in the form of "Wily's Army," "Wily's Navy," and "Wily's Airforce."
• Multiple Endings: The ending of the game has several permutations depending on your actions:
  • If you rescue Rush during the final level, Mega Man will use Rush Cannon on Wily's space ship upon escaping the castle. Otherwise, Mega Man will collide with the space ship instead, destroying it regardless.
  • Eddie, Rush, and Beat make appearances depending on if you used the Recycle Inhaler on the former and/or rescued the other two during the final level.
  • If you turned Toad Man into a toad during the rematch and spared him, he will appear in the first part of the credits, hopping alongside the train.
  • If you get the ? Dagger, Shadow Man will be seen on his kite in the background in the first part of the credits, eventually getting chased by Top Man.
  • Depending on what happened to Rush, Eddie, and Beat at the end of the game, they will appear either in color or grey in the "Presented by Capcom" screen.
• Multiple Life Bars: The final bosses, in particular.
  • The Wily Machine's first phase has one full health bar, where each hit point represents its own separate health bar. That adds up to 29 times 28, or 812 hit points. Fortunately, in The Mechanical Arena, it only has 224 hit points.
  • The Optical Capsule later on has two health bars, giving it 56 hit points.
  • And then the Petit Robot Masters, who each has their own lifebar, with the one last hit's currently shown. That adds up to 8 times 28, or 224 hit points.
  • Super Shadow Man has two life bars, with about 112 hit points.
• Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: Drill Man and Dive Man's stages have Mega Man temporarily get the Sakugarne and Mirror Buster respectfully. You won't be able to use the other weapons while you use them. Meanwhile, in the final Dr. Cossack stage, the Screw Crusher, Ballade Cracker, and Spark Chaser replace the Mega Buster for the rest of the stage, but collecting them is optional.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Beating the game after sucking up Eddie has Proto Man lamenting his loss in the End-Game Results Screen, then noting "Are you trembling?" This leads to a You Bastard! moment when he notices that he disappeared near Mega Man, and thus you saw his demise (not knowing YOU were the one that caused it).
• My Name Is ???: Cockroach Omega when you reach him in the True Arena.
• Mythology Gag: Has its own page.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast; Jumbig the Death Machine. How fitting.
• Nintendo Hard: While the special weapons are more powerful than in vanilla Mega Man 4, the stages are a lot longer and have much higher enemy density. The original game had Hard Levels, Easy Bosses, but this game's bosses are much trickier, with more difficult patterns that often have them fill the screen with projectiles.
• No-Damage Run: You need to avoid losing any lives to fight Super Shadow Man in Wily Stage 4.
• Non-Lethal Bottomless Pits: The Trampoline Upgrade turns every bottomless pit into these.
• Not His Sled: Three bosses from the original game — Cockroach Twins, Metool Daddy, and Tako Trash — are replaced with new bosses. Averted for the Cockroach Twins in The True Area in the form of Cockroach Omega. Nope, not the Messiah of Weil, but the dreaded enemy from Final Fantasy V in all of his glory.
• Oh, Crap!: Shadow Man gets this reaction after defeating him as Super Shadow Man when his smoke bomb that he used to cover his escape every other time fails to go off. To rub salt into the wound, it then does go off moments after he explodes.
• One Bullet at a Time: The Minimum curse in Pharaoh Man's stage.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • The Rush Cannon Adapter. However, a few of the Bosses can turn it against you.
  • If Dust Man sucks you up, he turns you into an E-Tank. If you don't break free, he kicks you into the incinerator.
  • Shadow Man in Pharaoh Man's stage has one.
  • Cast the Toad spell on Toad Man during the Boss Rush. He turns into an easily squished toad.
  • Use Spark Manbow's secondary ability on Bright Man to freeze him in place, and then fire a lightbulb at him. The explosion should kill him in one hit.
  • Shadow Man can do this. If you run into him during some of the battles against him, he'll most likely grab you, pull out a shuriken, and slice you in half with it. And he will do this as Super Shadow Man if don't react quickly enough.
  • Cockroach Omega's signature killing moves from Final Fantasy V. Some don't kill you, but remove you from the battle through, which also counts as having lost.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: The configuration menu in the 0.02 release allows you to play the game with only 1 hit point in Mega Man's life meter.
• One-Hit Polykill: Drill Torpedo and Water Cutter.
• Optional Boss: Wave Man in Dive Man's Stage and Crash Man in Drill Man's stage. Beat them and unlock the Wire and Balloon Adapters before the Cossack stages.
• Overly Long Name: Holdable Control Ring Boomerang. Shortened to "HCR Boomerang" in the "You Got..." screen.
• Painfully Slow Projectile: The Minimum curse inflicts this on you in Pharaoh Man's stage. Combined with One Bullet at a Time above, it really starts getting annoying.
• Poison Mushroom: The Skull Amulet originally made Hell Wheel really slow. Then the 0.01 release subverted it.
• Power-Up Magnet: Holdable Control Ring Boomerang can snatch items as a homage to Mega Man IV on the Game Boy.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Mega Man Killers from the Game Boy titles appear throughout the game, now joined by Quint and Terra.
• Ratchet Scrolling: In the final escape sequence.
• Real-Time Weapon Change: Using the A and B buttons on the second controller, you can change Mega Man's weapons.
• Recurring Boss: Shadow Man.
• Recurring Extra: Almost every stage in the game has at least one Up n' Down, usually with some unique gimmick to it.
• Reference Overdosed: As seen by the subsections dedicated to just the Shout-Outs and Mythology Gags in this game alone, Puresabe sure loves his references quite well.
• Reverse Shrapnel: Hell Wheel. It's a version of the Skull Shield (skull-like energy projectile shield) that homages Pokemon (Submission is known as Hell Wheel in Japan) and Kirby's Wheel ability.
• Ribcage Ridge: Skull Man's stage resuses the exact metallic ribcage tileset as the original, making it one as well. To make matters worse, it's also a Level in the Clouds
• Rings of Death: The Holdable Control Ring Boomerang, like in the original game, is a projectile ring. Unlike the original, it can stay in place if the B button is held to really rack up damage.
• Rubber-Band A.I.: The Advancing Wall of Doom in Dust Man's stage will always stay fully on-screen no matter how fast Mega Man is going, even being able to keep-pace with the Hell Wheel..
• Self-Destruct Mechanism: The last part of the whole game has the Wily Fortress exploding, forcing Mega Man to escape at high speed with Hell Wheel.
• Sequential Boss: Pharaoh Man (first time), Square Machine, Aqua Devil, Joe Ni-Nin Va All, and Snatch Man.
• Shock and Awe: Bright Man gains electric powers in this game, being able to shoot sparks.
• Shout-Out: See this page.
• Smart Bomb: Toad Man's weapon turns most enemies into easily-squished frogs, and heavily damages those immune to it. Hilariously, Toad Man isn't immune to his own weapon.
• Smoke Out: Shadow Man always uses a smoke bomb after beating him in a Robot Master stage to hide his method of escape. He attempts to do this after the secret final encounter with him, but it doesn't go off until moments after he explodes.
• SNK Boss: While most of the other Robot Master bosses fight close to Mega Man's level, Shadow Man's final appearance doesn't, having him move very fast and flood the screen with projectiles. As qzecwx put it:

  "Well damn. Puresabe put out all the stops here. 112 HP, no true weakness, invulnerability nullification everywhere, OHKOs, weapon energy drain, twenty-odd different attacks...!"

• Songs in the Key of Panic: When fighting the main 8 Robot Masters, the music speeds up when they enter their Pinch mode.
• Spread Shot:
  • Pharaoh Shotgun shoots in five different directions.
  • Drill Torpedo fires three drills; one straight ahead, one on the ceiling, and one on the floor.
• Sprint Shoes: Hell Wheel gives Mega Man the ability to run fast as a nod to Kirby's Wheel Ability.
• Superboss:
  • Super Shadow Man in Wily Stage 4 if you get the secret condition. The other Shadow Man encounters are relatively tame, but this fight is the hardest one in the entire story mode, with the boss having twenty-odd different attacks that deal huge damage, tons of HP, no real weakness, and several One-Hit Kill attacks.
  • Green Helmet, who only appears in The True Arena. This is a composite of all three variants of the Metool EX from the original Mega Man 4 with a full health bar.
  • Cockroach Omega, who makes its only appearance as the final opponent in The True Arena.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: Extra life and E-Tank drops are extremely common in this game. The final levels of the game give you lots of health and ammo, and there's a massive stash of items before the Wily Machine.
• Taking You with Me: Nearly every fortress boss on Hard performs a last-ditch attack after you inflict the finishing blow, with their life bar now acting as a rapidly draining timer while they do it.
• This Is a Drill: Drill Man uses drills as projectiles, like in the original game. His weapon, the Drill Torpedo, is another example, firing three drills at once.
• Timed Mission: The escape sequence gives the player one minute to escape the self destructing Wily Castle.
• Time Stands Still: If you hold up when you use the Spark Manbow, all the enemies on the screen except a few get frozen for a few seconds.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • All of the Robot Masters (especially Toad Man) are much more of a threat than in the original game.
  • Also, Shadow Man. The "final" fight against him is pathetically easy, but his "Super Shadow Man" appearance is much tougher.
  • Many of the game's Mini Bosses become this in Hard Mode; for example, Quint's Sakugarne now creates an earthquake when he hops on and lands with it, which hurts Mega Man if he's on the ground, and this same earthquake also causes a ton of rocks to drop from the ceiling, and the rocks it previously dug up before are now thrown much further across the room. To put it bluntly, an once pathetically easy Anti Climax Mini-Boss is now a ridiculously brutal Bullet Hell Mini-Boss.
• True Final Boss: Only encountered at the very of of The True Arena, it is Omega with all of the techniques from its home game.
• Turns Red: All of the Cossack Robot Masters have a more aggressive "Pinch" mode that activates when they reach critical health, complete with palette change and faster music, with Pharaoh Man notably taking this to extreme lengths. When you rematch them in Wily Stage 3, they are already in their Pinch mode behaviour, but retain their original palettes and music.
• Underwater Base: The second half of Dive Man's base takes place at such an incredibly deep depth, that the background for the outer part is pure darkness. In order to reach it, Mega Man is forced to use Rush's Marine Adapter.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: Cossack Stage 1's second half, which has you ride on the Balloon Adapter until Shadow Man ambushes you. After the Mini-Boss battle, you do some Sky Surfing with Rush.
• Unexplained Recovery: Shadow Man shows up and kills Chimerabot #3 to become the boss in that section if you get the secret condition, even though he died in a Cossack stage.
• Unlockable Content: As of version 0.02, clearing the game unlocks a Time Attack mode which allows you to Speedrun individual levels, an Audio Player, and The Mechanical Arena. Clearing the latter unlocks The Limited Arena where you're limited to either the Mega Buster or one of the eight weapons retrospectively (the game's merciful enough to give you some E-Tanks and restore health between fights). Clearing one of them unlocks My Arena in which you can customise its settings, and an Extra Configuration menu which practically allows you to edit your save file. ^note  although this function is dangerous; it even warns you to make a save state before trying to mess around with it.
  • Giving yourself Sakugarne reveals that it either one-shots everything, including bosses, or skips it to next phase / pattern if it isn't the last one; though it can glitch out the bosses, or even make them drop items. You can even kill Eddie, and destroy Drill Man's ground (which can lead you later into double KO) or the moving platforms that appear during one of the Cossack boss fights. It also collides with something that doesn't make sense, like bullets or weapon energy tanks. Mirror Buster, on other hand, glitches out bosses instantly. Also, both run on bosses HP bar, which provides hilarious and weird effect if entered the room with the item on.
• Victory Fakeout: Did you think the game was over when you defeated the Optical Capsule? Well, you still have a Womb Level, another boss, and an Escape Sequence to go through first.
• Video Game Caring Potential: In the rematch against Toad Man, you can turn him into a toad then spare him by not squishing him. He (as a toad) appears in the credits if you do this, and you get points added to your score.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Use Recycle Inhaler on Eddie and he turns into a Energy Splitter. However, do that and Eddie won't give you any warnings for Cossack Stage 1 and Wily Stage 2 or show up to give you any power-ups in the other stages. Proto Man will even lament his loss in the post-credits results screen.
    Proto Man: Your rookie... Eddy. It's regrettable about him. I've never expected that his core have not [been] found in the ruin of Wily's fortless. ...! Are you trembling? I see... As I heard that his signal disappeared near you, you saw his last moment... Didn't you? Don't mind, you had done best effort to him.
  • A lesser example can be done in Dive Man's stage; the Up n' Down enemy wears a scuba diving mask for its appearance there, but if you shoot it off, it will drown and explode. You have no reason to attack it, as it doesn't attempt to harm you and since it just floats at the top of the screen near spikes, you'd have to actively go out of your way to kill it.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Shadow Man, until he dies via Disney Villain Death. Quint escapes after he is defeated and never returns.
• Wall Jump: Toad Man.
• Weapons That Suck: Dust Man and Recycle Inhaler. Recycle Inhaler acts like Kirby's inhale ability and it turns enemies into power-ups.
• Where It All Began: You fight Pharaoh Man in the very first room / screen of his level.
• Wolfpack Boss: The final, final, final boss has you fighting mini versions of all 8 Robot Masters all at once. Oh, and you've lost all your weapons and E-Tanks, so have fun.
• Womb Level: The area after Optical Capsule is a fleshy, bony cavern full of slime-like enemies. As expected, it turns out to be an illusion.
• Wrap Around: There is a vertical example in a section of Toad Man's level, as a homage to Labyrinth Zone.
• Written Sound Effect: The credits track your deaths under "tiwns," which is supposed to be onomatopoeia for Mega Man's death sound.
• You Bastard!: Sucking up Eddie leaves Proto Man lamenting his demise in the End-Game Results Screen, then noticing something:
  "I see... As I heard that his signal disappeared near you, you saw his last moment... Didn't you?"

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