Part 14: Wily 1
Guess who isn't at his home computer today.
Stage Comments:
We've reached the entrance to the fortress, and boy, is this a cakewalk all of a sudden. After Top Fiends that are even less threatening than they were in their original stage, the underwater part introduces enemies that are really annoying and prone to hitting you...only for the game to forget them, because they'll never return. Huh. This is the only part that's a little trouble. Then the gifts start raining in, the first free E-Tank was just to whet your appetite. Hard Knuckle, the most damaging weapon, takes out the walls, and the goodies roll in. The following gauntlet of Hammer Joes is really annoying without resorting to special weapons, but really, why wouldn't you...? There's no way you're going to run out of weapon energy in this game's Wily stages. They even might take a bit of a toll on your health, but the tamest block puzzle since their invention (and it really is, except for Elec Man's second, maybe) harbors two big refills...that are more-or-less mandatory anyway. Huh. And...that was it. Double dose of weapon energy (seriously never conserve it ever, you can spam all you want) and the boss fight begins.
By the way, is this the only water stage ever that doesn't have spikes on the ceiling or what?
Boss Strategy:
Kamegoro Maker is almost literally a turtle maker, Kame means turtle at least; Goro, as the Wiki I linked tells me, is a baseball rebounding or something. As my fight probably shows you, this is pathetically easy. With a glint telegraphing them, little currents will appear and try and push you; dodging is easy, but completely unnecessary. They might hinder you a bit in the later stages of the fight and cause you to get hit, but it's no biggie. The machine at the top is invincible, it gets damage by you destroying its children. Still hurts you if you for some reason jump into it, though.
The turtles themselves always follow their bouncing path, easy to predict and usually easy to hit; with a bit of timing, you can Shadow Blade them out from under the Maker right as they spawn. Left alive, they'll shed their shells, which then become a floating obstacle that explodes after a while. Still not hard in the slightest, and can be destroyed.
Combine this with them being weak to almost everything...and you've got a very, very easy boss. If the eddies were damaging, this might be somewhat tough, like that, it's a joke.
Also woo Top Spin, bonus points for getting which music I used.
Enemies:
The Penpen we already saw being made from a mother unit in Gemini Man's stage make their return, and now they're drastically different; they'll swim up and down like the penguins in Ice Man's stage back in the day did, but coming closer, they'll zoom towards Mega Man with the determination of Kamikaze bombers. If they were used more often or more deviously, this'd be a real pain - in this stage, however, it doesn't matter. Dealing with them is a matter of luring and dodging, or Top Spinning; sadly, the water physics don't lend themselves very well to the Spin.
Music:
- Wily Stages 1 - It can only be described as a severe disappointment. The second game's Wily stage theme was just so overwhelmingly good that this one couldn't ever reach it, but it doesn't even come close. It's nowhere near bad, I just find it completely unremarkable.
Wily Stage Boss Battle Video picture is a final boss spoiler! - You know, having listened to some really good RPG examples recently, I wonder why Mega Man, of all series, tends to have such surpremely underwhelming boss tracks. It's okay and action-y and all, but certainly doesn't excite me like some stages tunes do.