Who Put All These Robots Here? Let's Play Mega Man: Day in the Limelight 2

That was too easy. You need something Hard.

Hard Man



It's nice to see these guys show up in pairs or out of the player's reach. They were a fun idea for an enemy, and didn't get as much attention from the original game as I'd have liked.

It also one-shots the Mega Man clones and Wily's final form, and (more importantly) lets you do this-

Magneto Man!

The one in Magnet Man's spot!

More Hard Man? Sure, why not.



It is night time in the quarry, though we won't be able to tell for most of it.



Ladders right off the bat. Bah.



There's still a good few places where we can blow stuff up around here, so Crash Man is a respectable choice.



Huh, those shovel guys remove dirt they run over. This is new to me, but upon reflection, really obvious.



So here, we just have to burrow through that wall, but if we go topside, we get prizes.



Just be careful not to take too long, because this guy is not fun to have dumped on your head.



Ahead are some vehicles! Huh, it's like a full-scale construction crew moved in.



This is also where the Propeller Mets appear. They're actually easier to deal with than normal Mets, because they don't stick around.



Hm... no. No, I do not want what you are selling today.



All right. Hands up, those of you who think they know who the Robot Master here is.



Very good.



Guts Doc is virtually unchanged from the normal Guts Man fight, although the tremors when he lands do not stun you. However, the blocks he throws with the Super Arm are really hard to dodge.



Like Wood Man, fighting him is less about reacting to speedy attacks and more about taking him down before he wears you down.



He's weak to the Crash Bombs, which is good because they're very easy to hit him with.

As for strategies to stay safe, it's notable that Guts Doc has a blind spot right in front of him, where the Super Arm can't throw. It might sound crazy to get up close against the most iconic tough guy of the Robot Masters, but it's your safest bet.



Occasionally, he'll drop down a truck to throw at you. He only ever does this from far away, but if you're still close, it WILL hit you.



But after dealing the final blow, the Doc Robot escapes.



And then blasts the floor out from under Crash Man! It was a trap!



This leads us to a new area. Those platforms in the middle move up and down, while the machines spit rocks up.



There's also the flame dropper robots from Gemini Man's stage.



As with most of the stages, you have options here. Quick Man can handle the platforming easily and dodge most of the stuff, but one good hit can ruin his day. Wood Man can endure the attacks of everything here, but the jumps are harder. Heat, Flash, and Metal are all good middle-of-the-road options.



At the end is the Giant Metpack!

I do not know if that is its official name. BUT IT SHOULD BE.



It fires the standard 3-way shot, except bigger, and drops regular Mets down to rush us. As with most minibosses, Metal Man is a safe bet.



You can, however, skip the fight outright by going Crash Man and blowing your way through the wall behind it.



The area beyond is pretty pedestrian, all told.



Except for that ledge up there.



That ledge leads to SECRETS.



Walk over the top of the wall to get to this area.



The rock generators are no threat to Wood Man, but DAMN IT MAN, GET A BETTER JUMP.

Seriously, this is just embarassing.



There are also some Hammer Joes here, but Wood Man has little trouble with them either, as their attack only takes out one leaf, and the rocks don't destroy them at all.



I return triumphant.



This guy guards an E Tank, but is easily optional by falling below. I switch to Metal Man to try it, then realize I'm at full health and E Tanks anyway.



Speaking of full health, I want that.



Unsurprisingly, going for it drops you even further down.



As you progress, the room shakes, and giant boulders start falling down on you!



Oh, this is YOUR doing!



STAND AND FIGHT, THOU KNAVE!



Uh... that's different.



So, rather than taking on another Robot Master, Doc Robot continues to use Guts Man data to commandeer the Guts Dozer. It rolls towards you steadily, firing massive bouncing shots from the frontal cannon.



He has absolutely zero compunctions about chucking stuff at you with the Super Arm, as well.



Normally, you're meant to retreat constantly while dodging projectiles and firing shots when you get a chance, but if you can find the time to do so, the Time Stopper does work on him.



Due to the charge time, this can be a risky maneuver, but very much worth it if you pull it off. You can also fight it the conventional way, either with his weakness to the Flash Buster, or a more traditional fight with Metal or Heat Man.



And now, only Magnet Man's stage remains.

AT THIS POINT, THIS LP TAKES NO VOTES. I DICTATE ALL THAT YOU WILL SEE FROM THIS POINT ONWARDS! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Next Time: AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

The order we did this in worked out pretty well, huh? We got the ones where Doc Robot was 2 robot masters first, then we're getting the oddballs.

I vote for getting more shinies.

I am such a rebel.

I wonder what Elec Man's gimmick is going to be. I thought Time or Oil Man may have showed up, but that seems out of the question now. Oh well.

ohhh mannn the reward for finding all the shiny things is such a treat

PLEASE LOOK FORWARD TO IT, EVERYONE

That Guts Man two-stage fight was a pretty neat idea.

IN A WORLD WHERE NO ONE KNOWS HOW MAGNETS WORK, BECAUSE THEY HAVE ALL BEEN DESTROYED



ONE ANTHROPOMORPHIZED WIND TURBINE FIGHTS A GIANT PENGUIN THAT VENDS SMALLER PENGUINS

Okay but yeah. Welcome to the Michael Bay remake of Magnet Man's stage.



Air Man immediately leads it off by stealing an entire army of flying magnets to do his bidding.



This, of course, leads to a secret. Head over the left wall at the start to get here.



There are a bunch of Mets on precarious platforms, which Air Man deals with by blowing them into the abyss.



I mean yeah, I COULD alert them and get shot at once, but no.



This platform is where the last shiny is.



And then you come out here. Since heading left isn't something most would guess to do, this ledge here can help to clue people in, although the Met in the lower right is probably more noticeable for them.



Moving on. The redone version of this stage is pretty badly damaged, more so than most of the other stages even, but not so much early on.



Most of the magnets still work.



Man that's a lot of spikes.



These blocks appear and disappear very fast, so you'll want Quick Man for the next segment.



Protip: don't use the switch hotkeys up here, or you might accidentally go to Wood Man and fall onto the spikes. This is hilarious, but inadvisable.



You get a brief moment of respite under some more magnets, though!



This can be a bit tricky, but only if you're overly eager.

I offer no further explanation for this image.



Once you clear the disappearing magnet speed run nonsense, you find this.



It's not really DIFFICULT to avoid, but I don't trust magnets right now.



Case in point. Dodging a porcupine hellbent on your death is hard enough when you can jump.



That's the last threat before Doc Robot turns up, though.



Only one of the original six remains!



So, the Thunder Beam kind of really hurts. Thankfully, Elec Doc's rate of fire is as poor as ever, and he only fires when he goes to either end of the room, so you can have ample time to dodge.



If you're feeling flashy, Elec Doc is weak to the Quick Boomerang, unsurprisingly enough, but getting close enough to hit with it risks having less time to dodge a Thunder Beam.

This screenshot is weird because my screenshot key is right next to the "yo make this fullscreen bro" key.



And, like Guts Doc before him, Elec Doc flees once wounded too badly.



Now the stage really starts falling apart.



These electric barriers, as mentioned before, can be destroyed by the Bubble Lead.



These can not. They also can't be blocked by Leaf Shield, despite everything Spark Man's stage told you.



You have three major options. The first is to abuse the Time Stopper to get through without worrying about timing. The second is to use Quick Man to hurry past the ones that take longer to spark up. And the third is to use the Heat Wave to just bypass the whole thing.



Also, a few Robot Masters, most notably Wood and Air Man, are too big to fit through at all.



Unsurprisingly, I pick Heat Man to go through here. Also, remember those junk-dropping machines in Spark Man's stage?

They're back, and they can apparently stop a Heat Wave.



But they're not too bad, as long as you time yourself to go past them rather than THROUGH them.



Home stretch, so I just bust out Flash Man.



Oh no, the Atari E.T. pits!



Yes I know those aren't Ataris. Shut up. Anyway, Bubble Man is pretty useful here, and not just because Bubble Lead can identify floors.



There are also electric barriers and hopper bots.



This E Tank here is up on a ledge that's normally too high to jump on to. This is further complicated by not being able to see the platforms, but at least they don't put bottomless pits or anything.



Doesn't take too long to navigate, and before long we're at the final door.



HAVE AT Y-- oh.



Someone's found a use for all that random arcing electricity, I see.



So, what happens when you combine the conducting efficiency of Elec Man with the raw voltage of Spark Man? This boss fight. Super Elec Doc will fire massive sparks from the top of the room down at you.



After reaching their destination, they hover for a small amount of time before firing to either side, or vertically. Since they take up a good chunk of space, moving around the level can be difficult.



Like many other endgame bosses, your options are limited by the positioning in the fight. Being that high up restricts you to Robot Masters that can fire upwards, and Wood Man has the added bonus of blocking the secondary sparks from the new attack, at the cost of one leaf.



After taking enough punishment, Super Elec Doc fires a different spark.



It explodes, taking part of the floor with it and cutting down your mobility.

While he is weak to the Leaf Shield, Metal Man, and up to a point, Air Man are both viable options here. Heat Man CAN hit him, but very infrequently due to the properties of the Atomic Fire, so it's not worth the trouble. Wood, Metal, and Air form a kind of sliding scale for mobility over hitting power, which is kind of neat.



But I have his weakness, and BY CHEIBRIADOS I intend to use it!



There we go. Now, barring sprited versions of Time or Oil Man, that's all the Doc Robots forever!



Oh no, a flying saucer!



A nefarious eyebrow wiggle!



And the fortress of Dr. Wily himself!



But first, the reward for all twelve of the shinies.



This is the only non-Time Stopper weapon to require energy to fuel.



Amusingly, that energy can also fuel the Time Stopper, making this an indirect buff for Flash Man.



wait what



Yeah. Not only can we now enter the first of the Wily stages, but we have a Wily Saucer of our own!



The Wily Saucer can freely fly around in all eight directions, for starters.



The basic shot fires two sparks to either side, which function like Magnet Missiles, and change direction by 90 degrees when they detect an enemy.



You can also charge up a potent shockwave attack!



Finally, instead of jumping because duh, you can drop a trio of bombs.

Basically, the Wily Saucer is the most hilariously overpowered thing in the history of forever. It makes the original Metal Blade look weak.

Next Time: SCIENCE

I'm not ashamed to admit that I use the saucer to cheese parts of Willy's castle, since it has a bit of a difficulty spike.

But for some reason I never pressed the jump button and therefore didn't know it ALSO had bombs!

Wily's saucer is the best unlockable thing.

Verily. MM9 and 10 should have had it. I don't care if it's game breaking. Hard games need a way to break them, and the saucer is awesome.

The power of the Wily Saucer in the hands of the Just.

I.... I never thought I would see the day.

The Robot Masters should do the Wily's eyebrow wiggle before getting in it.

So all the shit in Doc Magnet's stage is sort of from the original!

Gird thy loins! Or something. Here's a castle.



For whom it does not concern: I won't be using the Wily Saucer for the castle stages. I mean, it's fun and all, but it also trivializees the hell out of everything. Which... actually, I can think of ONE place I might use it, now I think of it.



But that's not for a while. Right now, stompers and topbellies.



Hey cool, a thing I don't need.



Since we're well into the endgame, the castle has no compunctions about throwing obstacles at us that flat-out require one Robot Master or another.



They're also sending all the strongest enemies they have at us.



This wall is made of exploderous materials. Since those only come in 2x1 blocks, bombing the top means losing the top four segments.



Further on, there are bugs coming out of ladders!



Oh no, turtles!



And, um... what am I looking at here?

These water pumps send any robot on them upwards, like the flying magnets.



For some reason, I kept switching to Flash Man here, even though Crash Man is really one of the better choices. Metal Man also works.



Note that the pumps apply acceleration, not flat movement, to the Robot Master, so they won't instantly halt your descent if you fall into one.



Yeah I dunno what I was thinking, taking Flash Man here. Whoops!



FLYING SHOVELTRUCKS! WE ARE DOOMED!



These blocks actually appear from left to right, so you need to be fast to get across them.

Speaking of fast, what's with these blocks?



THEY HOP ON THE WATER, WHAT



I am leaving this crazy place RIGHT NOW



Seriously though, those bug things bounce on the top of the water and this makes them a much more dangerous threat. It also makes them really noisy.

Anyway, who's ready to venture into the Kingdom of Loathing?



Welcome to the first Wily Castle boss: a prize grabber claw.



That launches turtles!



The turtles zoom about the room in a wholly diagonal fashion, and lose their shells when damaged. Said shells then float up to the prize claw, which then reuses them as weapons.



I expect the turtles are none too happy about this.



After fighting a few green turtles, we get to the red turtles! Just like red variants of animals in REAL LIFE, these fellas spray deadly energy bullets at you.



Then we move onto the blue ones. Blue turtles, of course, are simply red turtles that move SO FAST that they undergo a Doppler shift.

...Wait, have I got that right?



Blue turtle shells are also more durable than others, so the claw dropper will juggle up to three of the suckers.



Finally, we encounter a limitless parade of gray turtles.



Gray turtle shells, for reasons I cannot explain, drop straight down when they are dislodged, exploding upon contact with the ground.



Anyway, while the watery climate might clue people towards using Bubble Man, there are many options for Robot Masters in this fight since the arena is plain and the turtles go all over. I, personally, prefer Wood Man here.



The Leaf Shield lets him punish turtles that get close to him, or he can launch it in any direction for a direct attack. On top of that, the water does his poor jump height a much-needed favor.

Once all the turtles are destroyed, the claw dropper smashes some pipes in the sides into a spiky shape and attempts to grab you!



It takes a good few hits to be destroyed, and until you do, it will try as hard as it can to spike-kill you, but it's actually not too hard.



And that's the first Wily stage! What happens in the next one? I DON'T REMEMBER!

Next Time: SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE

Wow, that turtle boss was changed from a complete pushover to a legitimate threat.

turtle boss is a pain in the ass. I found it is slow but effective to sit in the corner with Air Man for most of the fight.

One step closer to saving the world from Evil Einstein!



The stage opens up with conveyor belts!



There's also traps. To the right, lasers and conveyors, easily foiled as Wood Man. To the left, needle traps.



It comes as no surprise that the left path gives a better reward.



Okay, this is telegraphing Wood Man harder than an early Punch Out enemy.



Huh, what's that thing?



Ah, a death ray. Of course. Note that these don't actually kill you instantly on Normal, but they do on Hard. They still hurt like crazy.



Unsurprisingly, it destroys the Leaf Shield without a second thought.



The mundate trap sections aren't so mundane either, with enemies that take more than a few leaves to drop harassing you as you go.



Your best plan is to jam the traps with the Leaf Shield so you have time to dodge them. Since dragonflies don't stick around, you don't have to worry about the reload time, because even if you do hit, you might not hit enough.



Also, the traps don't fire all at once, so you can keep an eye on the pattern and use that to your benefit.



This is just mean, though.



At this point, we've got like six death rays back to back.



Here, you just want to drop all premise of the slow-but-steady approach and bust out Quick or Flash Man.



Oddly, the platforms beyond are positioned so Wood Man can still use them. This game is considerate at the weirdest times.

A bit further on, we find a tower of boxes.



Note that Quick Man is not punching that box out of the way. He just throws his Quick Boomerangs with a closed fist. It's probably very cool looking in higher than 8 bits.



I can use that!



Getting it with Flash Man is child's play, but this jump here followed by a gauntlet of bear traps is pretty much a giant "USE QUICK MAN YOU FOOL" sign.



As we get close, though, the box dissolves into flying blobs! WHAT TREACHERY IS THIS



The first part of this segment is fun, because it's built so that Quick Man can blaze through the bulk of it without getting so much as a scratch.



After that, you get into an area with too many of these blocks, and in too risky of configurations, to make this worthwhile.



Of course, some of the blocks are blobs. I think if you hit it before you move close, it reveals which ones are safe, but that requires patience I lack.



Keep running, whatever you are!



AIR MAN IS COMING FOR YOUR SQUISHY, SQUISHY ROBOFLESH



Surprising no one, it is the most tedious Mega Man boss this side of that one trap room in Mega Man 2.



For the three of you not in the know, the Yellow Devil's attack pattern involves two things. One is shooting at you from its sole eyeball, which is also its weak point. The Air Shooter does the most damage, but since Air Man is a bigger target, he's probably not the best choice for the other part of the pattern:



Dissolving into smaller blobs, which then launch across the room to reform the Yellow Devil on the other side.



However, a third of the way into the health bar, things change up.



These pillars of segments can be pushed back individually with your attacks.

This gives you a window to jump through and evade the attack. After a while, you have two halves of a Yellow Devil on either side.



Unsurprisingly, this makes it harder both by shifting the eyeball to a random side when it attacks, and sending blobs at you from both sides during the shift.



Survive this to the next phase, and the fragments that remain migrate to the corners of the room.



There is no shame in using E Tanks on this or any Yellow Devil fight. You have so few opportunities to hit the damn thing, after all. Long invincibility periods on bosses are generally my least favorite thing in Mega Man games, even more so than stuff like instant kill spikes or cannon fodder jumping out of pits.



Thankfully, the third phase dispenses with that, and the eyeball just shifts around in a Z pattern, firing at you once each time. It goes pretty quick, so you want to lead your shots so they hit the segment the eye is moving to, rather than where it currently is.



I do like this spin on the Yellow Devil, but in my book, any variant of a Yellow Devil is tedious. Anyhow, that's the next stage down. What happens next?

Next Time: WE MEET AGAIN, MY NEMESIS