Mega Man The Wily Wars is a remake of the first 3 Mega Man NES games onto the Sega Mega Drive, akin to Super Mario All Stars. The standout feature of this game was the addition of a new campaign Wily Tower, which allows you to choose 8 of the weapons from all 3 games. This is great but Wily Tower is pretty short and I’ve always wanted to be able to transfer the weapons into the other games rather than just Wily Tower. It seems that I wasn’t alone in this thought since Weapon Master is a rom hack that does just that. I dropped everything to give it a go but I felt a little overwhelmed at the ability to switch between 24 weapons on the fly. I wanted to limit myself to 8 and then I had the idea to give myself a random weapon after every robot master. Hence this randomiser playthrough. It’s not a true randomiser since I’m gonna be doing all the randomising myself just using dice but this still seemed like a fun fresh way to experience this game so I wanted to show it off. First off is which game in the collection I would be playing. You’d think I would choose this randomly or play through all 3 but I’m just gonna stick to Mega Man 1. I just played through Mega Man 2 the other day so I don’t really want to play that again already and one of the things I was most excited about for this rom hack was the ability to use Rush in the earlier games so Mega Man 3 doesn’t make sense for that. I’m also gonna choose the level order myself rather than randomly. Obviously I won’t be getting the robot masters’ weapons but I still have to consider how difficult each stage and boss is so I felt like that was enough to make informed decisions on the stage order and that would be more fun than just going in a random order.
Speaking of Rush I decided to start with Elec Man because in his stage you get the Magnet Beam which is the closest equivalent to Rush that Mega Man 1 has. You need either the Thunder Beam or the Strong Arm to get the Magnet Beam but since there was a small chance I would get either of those in the randomiser I decided that I’ll just give myself Rush when I beat the stage, like how you get Rush from just beating specific stages in the later games. This meant I would have to beat Elec Man with just the Mega Buster but I felt like that was doable… I was wrong. Getting through his stage was simple enough but when I got to the boss he was just insane! He’s so fast and his attack does so much damage! He doesn’t really have a pattern to learn, or at least I couldn’t figure out what it was. I could barely get him down to half health before I would get killed. Eventually I gave up. This might seem like it would ruin the randomiser since there’s only a 1/24 chance I would get his weakness but the damage values are shared between some weapons so some weapons from Mega Man 2 or 3 could end up being his weakness as well. I have no clue what those are but for now Rush will have to wait as I move onto Cut Man’s stage.
This stage reminded me how botched the music is in The Wily Wars. It’s not bad music but it’s just sad hearing these amazing soundtracks in such flaccid renditions. Despite that I managed to get through Cut Man’s stage without any trouble and I actually managed to beat the boss in this stage on my first try. Cut Man did more damage than I was expecting but the game’s slowdown helped me get my bearings. I’m not sure if the damage values are different to the NES versions or if I’m just misremembering how tough the bosses are in the original version but now is the fun part, getting my first random weapon. I’ll roll a D6 dice first to decide which game I’ll take my weapon from (1 or 2 for Mega Man 1, 3 or 4 for Mega Man 2 or 5 or 6 for Mega Man 3) and then I’ll roll a D8 to decide which robot masters’ weapon I’ll obtain, going from the top and moving clockwise. I rolled a 2 so we’re sticking to Mega Man 1 weapons (Maybe I will get Elec Man’s weakness). Since Mega Man 1 only has 6 robot masters (and therefore 6 weapons) I rolled another D6 and I got Fire Man’s weapon. This is one of the best weapons in Mega Man 1’s roster and it’s Bomb Man’s weakness! This lays out the clear path of going to Bomb Man next but I actually forgot what his weakness was so I went to Guts Man instead, remembering him as a boss that was manageable with just the buster.
The Fire Storm was even more useful in this stage than I thought it would be when I discovered that it was able to pierce the shields of the construction bot enemies. I kept going through the stage until I got to Guts Man and my gut feeling on him being easy was right since I did a pretty poor job of fighting him and I still managed to win on my first try, even if I only had a slither of health left. I excitedly rolled my dice again only to be disappointed when I got the Flash Stopper. This weapon freezes time but drains all of it’s energy from a single use so it’s not especially useful. I moved onto Bomb Man, not because I remembered that I had his weakness but because I remembered thinking that he was another one of the weaker robot masters in this game.
The Fire Storm proved useful again since it spawns a ring of fire around you, acting as a makeshift shield, which worked well against the many flying enemies of this level. I never saw a use for the Flash Stopper in the stage so I tried it to see if it would be one of Bomb man’s weaknesses. It wasn’t. That’s when I remembered what Bomb Man’s weakness actually was and I breezed through the fight. Another joy of this stage was seeing that Bomb Man’s Genesis remix was actually pretty good. This positive momentum continued into my dice roll where I scored the Metal Blades! This is the most broken weapon in the game, possibly the whole series so I was ecstatic that I got my hands on it. You can shoot them rapidly, in any direction and they have more ammo then you’ll know what to do with. So far I’m ⅔ for useful weapons so my luck has been pretty good I would say.
It only took until the first screen of Fire Man’s stage for me to find a situation perfect for the Metal Blades to destroy. You start the stage at the bottom, where you climb some ladders to reach enemies that shoot projectiles across the whole screen. Unless you have the Metal Blades cause then you just shoot up and destroy all the enemies before they even know that you’re there. I pretty much used the Metal Blades for the whole stage, until the end when I encountered those annoying floor enemies that zoom to you when you touch the ground and can’t be hit by your Mega Buster. The Fire Storm is able to destroy them though so I used that until I got to the boss. I tried all 3 of my weapons on Fire Man but none were his weakness. This wasn’t an issue though because I was able to take him out with the buster. I rolled Wood Man’s Leaf Shield which is okay. It’s nice to have a proper shield weapon but you have to stand still when you have the Leaf Shield up so it’s not useful in a ton of situations.
Now it was time for my rematch with Elec Man. Going through his stage was a cakewalk with the Metal Blades to take care of any flying enemies and the Fire Storm to deal with grounded ones. I get to be on auto-pilot during the stage, just hoping that one of my weapons can deal with Elec Man. I get there, I switch to Metal Blades and… it cuts him to pieces! It makes sense really since like Cut Man’s weapon (Elec Man’s normal weakness) big ass saws can cut electrical cables. It also makes sense that for such an easy stage and boss experience I was rewarded with a weak weapon, the Atomic Fire from Mega Man 2. I’m getting tired of the Mega Man 2 weapons now. Can I have something from Mega Man 3? At least now I get to use Rush, better yet I get to use the broken Rush from Mega Man 3 where you can bunny hop to preserve energy.
I loved getting to rush through the stage with Rush. I used him at every chance I could, rather than just the annoying part with the flying platforms that shoot at you. Ice Man himself was actually a lot harder than I thought he would be. The game’s slowdown made dodging his attacks pretty annoying and he does way more damage than I thought. I’m pretty sure the boss damage values must be different in Wily Wars since lots of the bosses are dealing more damage than I feel like they should be. None of my weapons were weaknesses of Ice Man so I had to tough it out and beat him with just the buster. After a few tries I did it and got my final weapon, the Rolling Cutter, another pretty decent weapon, although nothing compared to the Fire Storm or the Metal Blades.
Finally it’s time for the Wily stages. With Rush I was able to navigate stage hazards no problem. Yellow Devil seemed like he would be scary but the Metal Blades is one of his weaknesses and it’s rapid firing meant that I could get two hits off each time he opened his eye weak spot. That along with the slowdown made this the easiest Yellow Devil fight I’ve ever done. Next up is the Copy Robot which I do have the weakness (Fire Storm) for but I much prefer using just the Mega Buster for this fight. You’re fighting a clone of Mega Man so of course you should be using Mega Man’s default weapon! The water machine boss is also one I’m comfortable dealing with buster only. Rush proves handy again not just for getting past the conveyor belts but for easily grabbing the Yashichi to refill all my weapon ammo and health. Then comes one of the most annoying parts of the game, especially in this challenge. You have to fight Bomb Man, Fire Man, Ice Man and Guts Man again back to back with no checkpoints in between. This is tricky when you have all their weaknesses let alone when you don’t. I managed to persevere though and moved onto Wily himself. Despite being the final boss this was much easier. His first phase is weak to the Fire Storm so I made quick work of that and for the second phase I first tried the Metal Blades which weren’t his weakness but being able to rapid fire more then did the job and I cut down Wily without taking much damage myself.
With that the Weapon Master Randomiser was complete. I enjoyed myself but I don’t think I’ll be playing the game like this again nor do I really recommend doing this yourself. Going through the stages is fun but the Wily Castle expects you to have all the normal weapons so it can get frustrating when you don’t allow yourself to use them. I relied a lot on the Fire Storm and Metal Blades so I don’t think I would’ve had a fun time in the Castle stages if I didn’t roll those weapons. Maybe a variation of this challenge where you also get the normal weapons when you enter Wily Castle or one where you choose which weapons of the three games you acquire could be fun though. Regardless this was a good excuse to replay Mega Man, which is always a fun time!
– Mark
References:
Mega Man The Wily Wars (GEN, 1994)
Super Mario All Stars (SNES, 1993)
Mega Man (NES, 1987)
Mega Man 2 (NES, 1989)
Mega Man 3 (NES, 1990)
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