Mega Man (video game)



"~Ending of the original Mega Man 1."

This page covers the original Mega Man (Rockman/ロックマン) series, generally referred to as the "Classic Series." When people think "Mega Man", they think of this version, which makes "Classic" Mega Man one of the two big faces of Capcom (alongside Ryu).

In the year 20XX, Dr. Thomas Light and Dr. Albert Wily -- scientists well known for their innovative contributions to the world of robotics -- create humanoid robots called Robot Masters, which the two programmed to assist in industrial work. Fed up with living under Light's shadow, Wily reprogrammed six of these Robot Masters and turned them into weapons of mass destruction to help him conquer the world. While gathering these Robot Masters, Wily ignored two housecleaning robots: the boyish Rock and his sister Roll. Feeling a strong sense of justice, Rock asked Dr. Light to convert him into a battle robot -- and the conversion gave the world a hero: Mega Man.

After the successful conversion, Mega Man traveled around the world to stop the rogue Robot Masters. Rock's ability to analyze how things work and duplicate them gave him the ability to acquire the weapons of the fallen Robot Masters. After defeating the six rogue robots, Mega Man stormed Wily's Skull Fortress and defeated him. Wily's persistence would lead him to attempt the same plan -- and defeat Mega Man -- eleven different times, none of which were successful.

While in its planning stages, Capcom planned on basing the original game on Astro Boy -- but when those plans fell through, the developers put Keiji Inafune in charge of creating brand new character designs.

The first game introduced attacks and strategies to platform gaming revolving around the concept of rock-paper-scissors: each weapon a player acquires might work well on one particular Robot Master, but horribly (or not at all) against another. Mega Man also introduced the concept of allowing players to choose what stage they wanted to tackle and in what order (before having to go through a linear gauntlet of Wily stages) -- a first for platform games. In spite of these two major innovations, the title failed to make an impact.

While the first game sold well enough, Capcom didn't want to give the Blue Bomber another chance, and it soon assigned the game's development team to other games. Not wanting to give up on the character, the development team begged the higher-ups for permission to make a sequel that would improve upon both the faults and the strengths of the first game. Capcom allowed the team to make a second game so long as they finished titles they were already assigned to. When Capcom released Mega Man 2, it became a monster hit (critically and financially). The more ambitious stage design, improved graphics, and even catchier music blew away gamers; for these (and other) reasons, numerous Mega Man fans think of 2 as the best game in the series -- a sentiment Keiji Inafune himself agrees with. Thanks to the sequel's incredible sales and warm critical reception, Capcom realized Mega Man could become a Cash Cow Franchise, and happily greenlit sequel after sequel.

Capcom has, to date, published ten main games in this series: six for the Nintendo Entertainment System (it re-released the first three as a 16-Bit compilation for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis), one for the Super Nintendo, one for the Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation, and two as downloadable games for the Nintendo Wii, Play Station 3, and Microsoft's Xbox 360. Capcom designed 9 and 10 as throwbacks to the NES titles; their graphics and audio simulated the system's 8-bit hardware, while the gameplay emulated the gameplay of the original NES games. The company also published a series of Mega Man games for the Game Boy (based mainly on the NES games) and another game for arcades; adding the various Gaiden Games elevates the "Classic" series into the largest continuity of the entire franchise.

Despite the sequels tending to feel similar to each other, the series as a whole remains enjoyable -- and very hard -- to this day.

The generally lighthearted, friendly atmosphere of the classic series tends to stick out like a sore thumb compared to its two Darker and Edgier Sequel Series, Mega Man X and Mega Man Zero.

All tropes specific to one of the main character should go in the Character Sheet.

Games in the Series:

 * Mega Man (NES)
 * Mega Man 2 (NES): Best-selling of the original games. Introduced E-Tanks and the password system.
 * Mega Man 3 (NES): Debut of Rush and Proto Man. Introduced the Slide move.
 * Mega Man 4 (NES): Debut of Eddie Fliptop. Introduced the Charged Shot.
 * Mega Man 5 (NES): Debut of Beat.
 * Mega Man 6 (NES): Introduced the Rush Adapter armors.
 * Mega Man 7 (SNES): Debut of Auto, Bass and Treble.
 * Mega Man 8 (Play Station, Sega Saturn): Made to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the franchise.
 * Mega Man 9 (Play Station 3, Xbox360 and Wii): Intentionally made in 8-bit style, as a throwback to the original 3 games. Also removed the Charge Shot (for Mega Man, anyways).
 * Mega Man 10 (Play Station 3, Xbox360 and Wii)
 * Mega Man: The Wily Wars (Mega Drive): An updated rerelease of the first three games, with Genesis-quality graphics and sound, as well as a save feature and an all-new "Wily Tower" game. Only released in Europe and Japan, although it did get a brief Sega Channel release in the states.
 * Mega Man: The Power Fighters (Arcade): Mega Man's Arcade debut, basically being a boss rush game. First game where Bass and Proto Man are playable.
 * Mega Man 2: The Power Battle (Arcade): Similar to the previous one. Only game where Duo is playable. Technical debut of Duo, by virtue of Early-Bird Cameo.
 * Mega Man & Bass (SNES, GBA): One of the last SNES games ever released. First main series game where Bass is playable. While the SNES version got stuck in Japan, it did get a GBA port in the US.
 * Mega Man Battle & Chase (PS 1): A racing game with Mega Man and co. Initially not released in the states, but was brought over via the Mega Man X Collection.
 * Rockman Complete Works (PS 1): A series which ported all six of the NES Mega Man titles to the PS 1, with remixed music and bonus content.
 * Mega Man Anniversary Collection (Play Station 2, Gamecube, Xbox): Brings together the first 8 games, plus the two arcade games.
 * Mega Man Universe (Cancelled)

Handheld Games:

 * Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge (Game Boy): Features four of the Robot Masters from the first NES game, and four from the second.
 * Mega Man II (Game Boy): Has the remaining four Robot Masters from 2 NES, and four from 3 NES. Not too well regarded by series fans, or even Keiji Inafune himself.
 * Mega Man III (Game Boy): Features the remaining 3 NES Robot Masters, and four from 4 NES. Also introduced the Charge Shot to the Game Boy line.
 * Mega Man IV (Game Boy): Features the remaining four 4 NES Robot Masters, and four from 5 NES. Introduces the purchasable upgrade mechanic, which later found its way into the main series with 7.
 * Mega Man V (Game Boy): In a complete break from the previous four games, has a completely original storyline and an all-new set of Robot Masters themed around the planets of the Sol System. Was the only game to feature the Mega Arm, which was effectively the same as the previous Charge Shot but with a boomerang effect.
 * Mega Man (Game Gear): A condensed version of 5, with elements of 4 and 2 mashed in.
 * Rockman & Forte: Challenger of the Future (Wonderswan): A sequel to Mega Man & Bass. Japan-only, due to the Wonderswan not making it to the states.
 * Rockman Battle & Fighters (Neo Geo Pocket Color): An 8-bit port of the two arcade games.
 * Mega Man Anniversary Collection (GBA) (Cancelled): A collection of the five Game Boy Mega Man games was planned, but was ultimately scrapped, presumably due to them losing the source codes to some of the games.
 * Mega Man Powered Up (PSP): An updated remake of the original game, with loads of bonus content thrown in that will take you months to chew through.

Spinoff Games:

 * Wily and Right's Rockboard: That's Paradise
 * Super Adventure Rockman (PS 1, Saturn): A FMV based game with shooter bits sandwiched in between. Was not released stateside, and Kenji himself disowned the game due to its excessively dark tone.
 * Mega Man (DOS): An early PC game starring Mega Man, infamous for its low quality, and otherwise unrelated to the original game.
 * Mega Man 3 (DOS): A follow up, curiously skipping 2. Like the previous game, it has gained infamy for its low quality and In Name Only nature to the actual Mega Man 3.
 * Mega Man Soccer (SNES)
 * Rockman Battle & Chase (PS 1)
 * Rockman Strategy
 * Rockman Gold Empire

This series is the Trope Namer for:

 * Magma Man

A-I
Said item (known as the Yashichi) also appears as a random recovery item that Rush can give to you in 8 if you use his Rush Call ability. Your chances of seeing it are very slim. And of course, let's not forget about The in itself is probably a nod; Those levels hold another, rather subtle, continuity nod to the Game Boy games. Enker's level is the only one not to give you an E-Tank. Now, who was the representative of the only GB Mega Man game not to have E-Tanks again? Despite a few violent and sad scenes which aren't much different than what you'd see in a typical 80's Shounen anime, SAR is still humorous and lighthearted enough to be true to the spirit of Rockman. Only in the original American manual (which has since been retconned) and the TV show. In the Japanese canon, they were rivals (albeit friendly ones at first), even in university. As it's located inside a museum of robots, it would make perfect sense for it to be nowhere near as dangerous as the original, which was meant to keep Mega Man from foiling Wily's plan to take over the world. It's All There in the Manual -- this is the fate of the various Robot Masters previously defeated (the manga prologue for 9 features the Robot Masters of 1 attempting to halt the rampage of the reprogrammed ones of 9).
 * Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: You have to pay Roll for items in the shop with screws rather than her loading you up with E and M Cans to help you out. Might be justified in that the screws could be used as a key component in building the items, though this doesn't explain why you need screws to put Roll in a different outfit or how you build taking Mega Man's helmet off or putting it back on with screws.
 * In 7, you can either find Auto's Hyperbolt and get some exclusive items from him (as well as lowering the cost of the items he was selling to begin with), or you can go find those same items yourself in certain locations. This is all pure Guide Dang It.
 * The Hyperbolt in question just happens to be Auto's missing headscrew.
 * In 10, you "make" the items rather than buying them, lending credence to the theory that screws are components of the items rather than just arbitrary currency.
 * In the same game, Proto Man and Bass have it worse than Mega Man. Not only do they have less items available in their respective shops, the items that are there are more expensive.
 * Well, Dr. Light WAS the man making Mega Man's materials. Notice how 10's items are cheaper than when Roll ran the shop in 9.
 * Airborne Mook: LOTS of them throughout the series. Many of them were very irritating too, especially those that rose out of Bottomless Pits in an attempt to knock an unsuspecting player in.
 * All-Natural Gem Polish: The levels with Jewel Man.
 * All There in the Manual: Many interesting facts about the Robot Masters are actually found in the manuals, or other outside materials. For example: Did you know Shadow Man from 3 is actually an alien robot that Dr. Wily found and used as a basis for the other Robot Masters? Or that he rides a giant robotic frog?
 * Always Someone Better: Dr. Light to Dr. Wily, which is the main reason he turned evil in the first place. Dr. Wily is the four years consecutive runner-up of the LIT Manual Design Contest. He has won the Silver prize at the worldwide engineering grand prix and was a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Physics. Guess who won all of these.
 * And Your Reward Is Clothes: In 9, there's an item in the shop represented by Roll's face that costs 200 screws. If you buy it, does that mean you get to play as her? Nope; she just changes to her outfit from 8 onwards, and her picture in the ending credits is changed by depicting her with her 8 look. That's it. A total waste of screws, but it's necessary for the "Valued Customer" achievement unlocked for buying all items available at the shop.
 * Animal Mecha: Every single weird flora and fauna apparently is made up of robots.
 * Animated Adaptation:
 * A cartoon that ran from 1994 to 1995.
 * Prior to that, classic Mega Man starred alongside other NES icons in the Massive Multiplayer Crossover cartoon Captain N: The Game Master, where they looked nothing like their illustrious namesakes.
 * Anime Hair:
 * Mega Man - Helmet = Hoo boy.
 * Proto Man takes it even further.
 * Terra, from the 5th Game Boy entry.
 * Animal Motifs: There's an entire category consisting of animal-based Robot Masters. These include Snake Man, Toad Man, Hornet Man, Sheep Man, and maybe Slash Man.
 * Anti-Villain: Dr. Mikhail Cossack when he made his debut in 4. The only reason he repurposed his eight Robot Masters to wreak havoc on the world was because Wily kidnapped his daughter Kalinka. He immediately became a trusted ally to our heroes after Proto Man saved Kalinka, and even created Mega Man's robo-bird Beat after Mega stopped Wily.
 * Arm Cannon: The Trope Codifier for the Type 1 ("Arm Becomes Gun") version among video games.
 * Art Evolution: The character designs in the official art were initially doughy before this trope kicked in and made them sleeker.
 * Attack of the 50 Foot Whatever: The Guts Tank from 2 and Gamma from 3.
 * Awesome but Impractical: Many of the weapons seem powerful or unique at first glance, but suffer from this.
 * 1 gave us Hyper Bomb: big boom, but hard to hit anything with unless you time it juuuuuust right.
 * 2 had Time Stopper. Once activated, the weapon would freeze time until its ammo ran out. Unfortunately, it could not be deactivated by any means once activated, and also prevented the player from pausing the game. Additionally, since Time Stopper is set to your current weapon, you can't directly attack enemies while time is stopped either. Even though Flash Man can. The Time Stopper is very useful in certain areas where you're not expected to use it too often. Try it on the Press enemies and Moles in Metal Man's stage or Wily Stage 2, or against Quick Man.
 * 2 also gives us the Atomic Fire. The precursor to the charged Mega Buster in 4, it allows you to shoot fireballs that can be charged to a larger and stronger shot. However, the uncharged shots are no stronger than your standard shots, and a full-charge can only be used three times before you have to start hunting for energy.
 * 3 had Spark Shot. Like the Ice Slasher from 1, it could paralyze enemies and make them unable to move. However, unlike the Ice Slasher, you could not change your weapon when you did this, making the attack pretty useless.
 * As GB/World 3 didn't have the technical problem of being unable to pause while weapon projectiles were still on-screen, its version of the Spark Shot was more useful there.
 * 3 also had Top Spin, which was wonky and often caused you to take damage even when hitting targets, but if you used it on the correct enemy, it was a One-Hit Kill.
 * 4 had the Ring Boomerang and Dust Crusher; the Ring Boomerang was useful, but short-ranged, and rarely did any major damage (and unlike the Quick Boomerang, it depleted weapon energy even when it came back). As for the Dust Crusher, its only function was...to throw gobs of junk. Granted, those gobs of junk did extra damage against the Cossack Catcher.
 * 5 had the Power Stone, three stones that would slowly spiral out from Mega Man. Unfortunately, you could have only three on screen at once, which meant a long time before you could use them again. They were also very inaccurate. Not to mention Charged Kick; trying to use it had a nasty tendency to cause you to either overshoot a jumping foe or take damage while sliding.
 * 6 had the Blizzard Attack, which did terrible damage, used up lots of energy, and fired too slowly to be effective.
 * 7 had the Spring Coil, which was hard to aim and didn't always feel useful.
 * 8 mostly averted this; of all the weapons in 8, only Rock Ball/Mega Ball seems difficult to use, no matter how cool it looks...even in the Fan Made 8-bit versions.
 * 9 brings us the absurdly odd weapon Concrete Shot -- nearly no range, nice damage against only some enemies but not all, and it shoots in an arc. It was more useful for platforming than fighting, as it creates a small temporary platform.
 * 10 had Sheep Man's weapon, Thunder Wool. At first, the move seemed like an interesting concept -- you fired out a cloud that rose up in front of you until it stopped, unleashing a lightning bolt that hit enemies repeatedly for massive damage. However, the weapon suffers from many flaws that make it next-to-useless. The ammo cost was high (it could be only used 7 times with a full power bar), it required you to time the attack just right for stationary enemies, and the cloud would be destroyed so long as it touched any enemy or the terrain, effectively wasting the attack.
 * Powered Up had the Oil Slider. You could only fire one blob at a time, which by itself did pathetic damage. On top of that, the board it creates when you ride it is difficult to control...meaning that you'd be colliding into enemies needlessly as you sped off.
 * Badass Biker: Nitro Man.
 * Badass Grandpa: Pump Man.
 * Bag of Spilling:
 * Rush loses his Powered Armor ability after 7, and Mega Man loses the ability to slide and charge shots in 9.
 * Also, all his weapons from previous games. Metal Blade would have been too good in later installments.
 * Base on Wheels: Dr. Wily had a few of these, present in the fourth Game Boy game (a giant tank) and The Power Fighters (a Humongous Mecha).
 * Battle Tops: Top Man can spin or toss tops, although Mega Man is only able to copy the spinning.
 * Bee-Bee Gun: 9 has Hornet Man and his weapon, the Hornet Chaser.
 * Benevolent Boss: Flash Man's CD in Mega Man & Bass describes him as this.
 * Big Bad: Dr. Wily.
 * Big Ol' Eyebrows: Dr. Wily, who lifts and lowers them both at the same time as a taunt.
 * Auto, too.
 * Bonus Boss:
 * Proto Man in 7.
 * Fake Man in 9.
 * the Mega Man Killers in 10.
 * The Saturn version of 8 has Cut Man (from 1) and Wood Man (from 2) as secret bosses.
 * Blind Idiot Translation: Mega Man Anniversary Collection brings back the Mission Control element from Rockman Complete Works...and completely butchers the dialogue.
 * Boss Dissonance: Can go either way.
 * Mega Man & Bass is a particularly extreme example. Mega Man generally shreds the bosses, but struggles through the levels. Bass generally breezes through the levels but has immense difficulty dealing with the bosses.
 * Boss Game: The two arcade games, The Power Battle and The Power Fighters, allow you to choose between Mega Man, Proto Man, and Bass (plus Duo in the second game), and battle Robot Masters from the main games. You could even do it co-op style with a second player.
 * Boss Rush: Present towards the end of Wily's fortress in each game with the Robot Masters. A few games also have another Boss Rush with a little twist (Doc Robot copies 2's Robot Masters in 3, and the Weapons Archive in 10 mimics 9 Robot Masters from 1 through 9. 1 has 2 Robot Masters fought in Wily 2 (with a large chunk of the level in between), and the other 4 get their rematches in Wily 4 back-to-back before you take on Wily himself. 1 is also the only game in the series where you don't get to choose which order you fight the Robot Masters in for the main Boss Rush.
 * Bottomless Pit: Plenty for everyone!
 * Bottomless Pit Rescue Service: In the latest games, using Beat as a one-time rescue is an option to purchase.
 * Brainwashed and Crazy: The primary symptom of late-stage Roboenza in 10.
 * Butt Monkey: A couple of the Robot Masters get portrayed as this in some media -- Clown Man from 8 is the most obvious one (described as such in the manual, even). In-game, arguably Wood Man, who manages to have more weaknesses than any other Robot Master (can be chopped down by the Metal Blade, burned down with the Atomic Fire, and his shield penetrated by Crash Bombs).
 * Most media also tends to portray Bubble Man (2) as one of the weakest and most ineffectual Robot Masters.
 * Quint (from GB/World 2) often ends up being the subject of mockery, due to his mode of transportation (a pogo stick -- which doubles as his weapon), the lack of challenge in his boss fight (yep, a pogo stick is just as ineffective as a weapon as you'd expect), and being green. It doesn't help that he's.
 * Call Back:
 * The plot of 1 revolved around Wily taking robots built by Dr. Light and turning them evil. The plot 9 involves Dr. Wily convincing robots built by Dr. Light to join with him, and then reprogramming them to turn evil.
 * In 10,
 * Calling Your Attacks: Present in 8.
 * Camp Gay: Aqua Man (not that one) in 8. Ain't nothing Ambiguously Gay about.
 * Cannon Fodder: Bubble Man, at least in the easy mode of 2.
 * Canon Dis Continuity: The PC Mega Man and Mega Man 3, if the official timelines are anything to go by. Of course, this is assuming they ever were Canon in the first place.
 * Capcom vs. Whatever: For some reason, Capcom saw Roll as the go-to girl in the recent crossovers, with her currently beating Rock in the number of game appearances.
 * Cardboard Prison: 7 starts with Wily being busted out of his imprisonment in the last game. He had, from the beginning, set up those 4 robot masters to break him out of prison if he was there for more than 6 months.
 * Cartoon Bomb: Bomb Man throws these.
 * Chain-Reaction Destruction: The ones most suspectible to go down with that style are various minibosses throughout the series.
 * Char Clone: Why, nice shades and red outfit you have there, Protoman. What's that, you're going to be the mysterious cool ace rival of Mega Man as well? We don't object.
 * Charged Attack: Of the hold variety.
 * Technically debuted in 2 as a buffer for the Atomic Fire you acquire after defeating Heat Man.
 * Was standardized as a part of Rock's regular arm cannon -- which was henceforth called the Mega/Rock Buster -- in 4, with further upgrades to shot size in 5 and 6.
 * With 9 and 10, however, the charge shot has been removed from the Mega Buster. In-story, it's because However, Keiji Inafune once stated that the charge shot made the game tasteless, since players would focus on that rather than the experimenting with weapons, so this may be him enforcing his preference. However, Mega Man Powered Up proved the games can include that feature as something to turn on or off by the player, making the removal pointless.
 * Pointless? How so? Everybody would keep the charged shot on unless they were intentionally trying to make things harder for themselves.
 * ~Chekhov's Gun~: In 10,
 * Chest Monster: Mega Man & Bass has rather literal versions of them, and 9 has those camoflametalls.
 * Chibi: Mega Man Powered Up, the PSP remake of the first game, renders every single character like this.
 * Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Dr. Cossack. He's Wily's setup as the Big Bad in 4, appears in the Manual for 5, and is never heard from again.
 * Clear Their Name:
 * Dr. Wily accuses Dr. Light of being behind the robotic rampage of 9. Mega Man takes exception to this.
 * In 5, Dr. Light gets kidnapped and it's set up to look like Proto Man did it.
 * Collision Damage: Well, duh, but this trope is one of the main reasons the Top Spin is so impractical. Unlike the Charge Kick, you can actually take damage trying to ram into enemies.
 * Comic Book Adaptation: From the same guys that do the Archie-Sonic comic. Blue must be a transending color.
 * Continuity Cameo: Tango and appear in Proto Man and Bass's respective shop scenes in 10.
 * Continuity Nod: During the ending sequence of 9, Mega Man has Rush replay for Wily the other nine times (counting Mega Man & Bass) Mega Man stopped him. In each picture, Mega Man's colors properly correspond with the best weapon (or one of, for the games where Wily had multiple weaknesses) to use against Wily in that particular game.
 * Also, in 10, there's And yes,  Unfortunately, they didn't include Mega Man & Bass, so you don't get treated to
 * would have been a nice compromise, since they appeared in both 8 and Mega Man & Bass.
 * The pinwheel item that spawns in Easy Mode in 10 to fully restore health and ammo is a nod to the same, much rarer item from 1.
 * is a nod to Reploid design conventions from the Mega Man Zero and Mega Man ZX series.
 * The entire point behind the Special Stages in 10 is to serve as continuity nods to the Game Boy games; specifically 1, 3, and 4, right down to level design. Most obviously, the bosses of the levels are the Mega Man Killers, Enker, Punk, and Ballade, and the music for their levels are even remixes of their themes (and Wily Base for Enker, who didn't actually have a theme). Fans are hoping they continue this with the Genesis Unit for 11 (even if it means Mega Man won't get a weapon out of the special stages).
 * Cool Pet:
 * Mega has Rush the robo-dog, Beat the robo-bird, and Tango the robo-cat, each of whom can help him in various ways. For example, Rush can turn into the Rush Jet, a skyboard that Mega can use for air travel, and in 6 and 7, he could turn into a special armor for Mega.
 * Don't forget Bass' own answer to Rush, Gospel/Treble.
 * And Reggae, Dr. Wily's bothersome bird.
 * And Tango is mentioned to actually gravitate more toward Roll than Rock.
 * Cranium Ride: Some levels in some games require you to use enemies as platforms.
 * Cutscene Incompetence: In 9, Wily claims Light collapsed sick. Proto Man teleports in and tells Mega Man . Mega Man ignores him, likely due to his programming. Proto Man teleports out,  fries Mega Man, then Proto Man teleports in, sighs, and teleports Mega Man out.
 * Darker and Edgier: In the first few games, Wily was taking over the world openly. But starting with 4, he started to frame people for his crimes, even kidnapping Dr. Cossack's daughter to force him to work for him. This culminated in 9, where he managed to get Dr. Light arrested.
 * Incidentally, 9 was also the game in which the government enforces expiration dates on robots. Wily promptly used this to his advantage for the aforementioned scheme.
 * In 10, See below.
 * In 7, Mega Man tried to KILL Wily in both the American and Japanese versions; the Japanese version had Wily remind him that robots couldn't harm humans, and he obediently powered down. In the American version, however, Wily gave his speech...and Mega Man declared he was "more than a robot! Die, Wily!"
 * Super Adventure Rockman embraces this trope more than the aforementioned games. It's actually been disowned by Inafune for this very reason.
 * And then there's Hitoshi Ariga's Pragmatic Adaptation of the games...
 * Darkest Hour:
 * Dead Character Walking: The third game has a unusual glitch where the player could die by jumping into a pit with the usual death sound effect, but could then use the second controller codes to jump out and continue playing normally while being unable to be killed, with the side effect that they can't use the Mega Buster anymore since the game considers it to be out of energy when your lifebar is empty. The health recover items would make Mega Man alive again, but while collecting one meant you could fire your default weapon again, it also meant you're now able to be killed normally again.
 * Deceptive Disciple: Wily and Light originally worked as partners, but Wily stole Light's designs (as well as six of Light's robots, only leaving behind the useless housekeeper robots).
 * Defeat Means Friendship: At the end of 9, the eight "evil" Robot Masters are returned to their original friendly programming and are shown hanging out and having fun with Mega Man and friends.
 * At the end of 10, Wily is defeated and it's discovered that he's sick. Mega Man takes him to a hospital to be cured, where Wily subsequently escapes yet again. But he leaves behind enough Roboenza cure to help all the robots in the world in thanks...
 * Defictionalization: In honor of 9's release, the famous E-Tank was turned into a real life energy drink.
 * And now you can drink your coffee from one!
 * This one is better though
 * Degraded Boss:
 * In 9, the second Dr. Wily stage features a giant shark so large it takes up three screens, necessitating a Sequential Boss battle. In the downloadable Special Stage, it shows up again, but this time as a mere midboss. Its tactics haven't changed, however.
 * The Green Devil of 8 returns as the Warmup Boss of Mega Man & Bass. This time, it stays on one part of the screen and has only one attack. The difficulty of this battle depends on which character the player's using, but it is still much weaker than its previous counterpart.
 * Development Gag:
 * The Robot Masters of 9 and 10 are primarily based on old fan submissions. Hornet Man, Tornado Man, Pump Man, Solar Man, and Blade Man are just the ones we know about.
 * Earlier than that, some submissions were used as the basis of characters in later games; Drill Man from 4 is based on a fan design that had originally evolved into Crash Man.
 * The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: In 9, in the cutscene showing, all of the Robot Masters are visible except for the one you defeated last. After all,.
 * Also in 9, if you bought the "Roll Costume", Roll's appearance in the credits will be changed accordingly. Not only is she wearing the new dress, but her hair is also better-drawn to reflect her updated design.
 * Similarly in 10, buying the "Hairstyle Book" will remove Mega Man's helmet in cutscenes as well.
 * Difficulty by Region:
 * 2's original outside-of-Japan releases featured Normal and Difficult difficulty-options. Difficult was the only difficulty setting in the Japanese version.
 * Changed in Anniversary Collection -- everyone got Normal and Easy mode.
 * Directionally Solid Platforms: Certain stage-specific hazards, like conveyor-powered platforms in Sheep Man's stage in 10.
 * Disc One Final Boss: 9 and 10 Lampshade Hanging this with the achievement unlocked for beating each of them:
 * Disney Death: Kinda.
 * The Ditz: Spark Man's memory sucks, much to the other robots' amusement.
 * Doppleganger Spin/~Me's A Crowd~: Gemini Man.
 * Downer Ending: Possibly the ending to 2. Although there's no text to narrate what's going on, you get the feeling Mega Man feels very alone and confused, needing to fight his own kind for "everlasting peace."
 * Downloadable Content:
 * Powered Up featured quite a bit, such as alternate costumes for Roll.
 * 9 has Proto Man Mode; Endless Attack Mode; the Special Stage which features a boss battle with ; Hero Mode, which re-arranges enemies in more difficult positions; and Superhero Mode, where every single screen features more enemies than probably necessary.
 * 10 continues what 9 offered, though with difficulty settings already available, it uses two additional Special Stages, and since Proto Man was already playable, Bass steps up to the plate as a downloadable character, although, unlike Proto Man mode in 9, Bass has his own story.
 * Down the Drain: At least one level per game is going to feature at least some portion where Mega Man is submerged. Since he is a robot, he doesn't have to worry about drowning; he instead has drastically improved jumps (with even more Spikes of Doom lining every possible surface, to keep you from abusing absurd jumps). Subverted Trope in 5 - the expected Kill It with Water Robot Master, Wave Man, doesn't feature any underwater portions at all.
 * Dramatic Thunder: Often featured on the Fortress map screens after the fanfare ends.
 * Drum Bathing: At the end of 9, Dr. Light bathes in a barrel, with a reformed Magmaman providing the heat.
 * Dual Boss: The series has quite a few of them. Most notably Gemini Man from 3, the Dual Devils from 9, and the firebird twins from Solar Man's stage in 10.
 * Dumb Muscle:
 * Frost Man.
 * Not Guts Man, however, despite popular opinion. That said, while Guts Man is no dummy, he's hardly a genius, and is much stronger than he is smart.
 * Early Installment Weirdness: The first game had several notable differences from the rest of the series:
 * There are only 6 robot masters instead of the usual 8 (due to limited memory).
 * A score display is present at the top of the screen (a leftover from when the game was originally designed to be in arcades).
 * E-tanks are non-existent.
 * The Life and Weapon Energy items look different from in all other games.
 * Mercy Invincibility does not protect you from Spikes of Doom.
 * The corridors before boss rooms contain enemies.
 * Wily's Fortress does not have a map.
 * The Robot Master rematches are sprinkled throughout the fortress stages rather than collected in a teleporter room (though this also happened in a couple of other games).
 * Fire Man's weakness is the ice weapon (later games usually had the ice boss weak to the fire weapon instead of the other way around).
 * Three of the weapons are thrown rather than being shot out of the Mega Buster (Bomb Man's, Cut Man's and Guts Man's weapons).
 * Most importantly, there is no password system (the entire game must be played in one sitting).
 * Easter Egg: If you try to use Freeze Man's own weapon against him,
 * Emergency Energy Tank: Trope Namer. The only numbered games in the classic series to not use them were 1 and 8. The developers behind 7 admitted they couldn't beat the final boss without using at least one. There are a few variations...
 * Energy Tank (E-Tank): Restores all of your Hit Points.
 * Weapon Tank (W-Tank): Restores all of the energy to a selected Special Weapon/Item.
 * Super Tank/Mystery Tank (S-Tank/M-Tank): Restores all of your HP and the energy of all your Special Weapons/Items. The M-Tank is only different from the S-Tank in that it turns all weak enemies on-screen into extra lives if your HP and all weapon/item energy is already at 100%; if you meet the HP/energy requirements but there are no weak enemies on-screen, you are automatically given a single extra life.
 * The End - or Is It?: The ending of 3 features the Wily Saucer in the sky, even after a sizable chunk of debris fell on Wily as his lair began to collapse, with Proto Man claiming he was too late.
 * Enhanced Remake: Powered Up, which retained the 2D gameplay but with 3D graphics, added two new Robot Masters and allowed you to play as all of the Robot Masters; before then was The Wily Wars, the Genesis collection of the first three games.
 * Evil Counterpart: Bass to Mega Man, Treble to Rush.
 * Evil Tower of Ominousness: Some of Wily's Skull Castles. In 10,
 * Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
 * Every robot master's name follows the formula: Their theme + (Wo)Man.
 * Their theme also references what kind of weapon they have, most of the time.
 * Guess what the Mega Man Killers were created to do?
 * Excited Episode Title: The subtitles of the Japanese versions of the sequels tend to feature an exclamation mark at the end of them! Sometimes even two!!
 * Expy:
 * Mega Man shares a lot of similarities to Astro Boy. No surprise, considering the development history of the first game. Inafune explains that Mega Man is actually composed of various Anime shows he has watched when he was young. For instance, Mega Man gains Rush, who transforms into various vehicles; a reference to Neo-Human Casshern's sidekick dog Friender. (Ironically, only Mega Man Volnutt would go on to meet Casshan, not the original Mega Man). That Aloof Big Brother Proto Man, complete with scarf and visor, is a reference to Racer X. Incidentally, both shows mentioned are from Tatsunoko Production.
 * Proto Man is also remarkably similar to Kikaider's Saburo: a badass, morally questionable robot brother with a yellow scarf who announces his presence by whistling.
 * In-Universe Example: Wily modeled several of the 2 robot masters after the first game's robots. Metal Man was based on Cut Man, Quick Man was based on Elec Man, and Heat Man was based on Fire Man. Whether or not Crash Man was based on Bomb Man is debatable.
 * Drill Man from 4 is explicitly based on Crash Man from 2 according to Word of God, though.
 * Cloud Man from 7 may be based on the cloud-riding Mook found in Air Man's stage in 2.
 * Magma Man from 9 was intentionally supposed to be based on Air Man, according to Word of God. The end result ended up looking more like Needle Man.
 * The characterization and plot as a whole bears several striking resemblance to Mazinger Z.
 * Exty Years From Now: The years labeled 200x to 8xxx. It's surmised that the classic is set sometime after 2001, but by 3 it changes to 20xx. So the ideal time line is as follows per fan thinking.
 * -->--1 = 2008
 * -->--2 = 2009
 * -->--3 = Early-2010
 * -->--4 = Later-2010
 * -->--5 = Early-2011
 * -->--6 = Mid-2011
 * -->--7 = 2012
 * -->--8 = Mid-2012
 * -->--9 = 2013
 * -->--10 = Late-2013
 * Fanfare:
 * Such as the ones heard on the Robot Master intro screen, the fortress map screen, and for beating a stage.
 * There's also a fanfare for beating the final boss present in all games except 9 (though even then, it would've recycled 2's fanfare).
 * Fan Film: Read about it here.
 * Fan Sequel: A few of them, including: Mega Man Rocks by Eric Ruth, Mega Man Unlimited by MegaphilX, Mega Man Time Tangent by Mexican Sunflower, Mega Man Maximum by ~hfnb2, and the Doujin game Rockmen R, which utilizes semi-16-bit graphics, Mega Man Triple Threat by Stealth and Liz-Sama, Mega Girl by baragon-kun, and the somewhat out of date Mega Man the CRORQ Chronicles by Jesse Brown. Also a few clone games, like Mega Mari featuring Touhou characters by Twilight Project an, Rosenkreuzstilette by [erka:es].
 * Fake Skill: Exploiting the pause button glitch in the original counts.
 * Fire, Ice, Lightning: Rather common in the series.
 * 1 had Elec Man, whose weapon beat Ice Man, whose weapon in turn beat Fire Man.
 * 7 had Freeze Man (ice), Cloud Man (electricity), and Turbo Man (fire).
 * 8 had Sword Man (fire), Frost Man (ice), and Clown Man (electricity). In both this case and the previous one, two of the three don't appear to have an elemental theme at first glance, oddly.
 * Mega Man & Bass had Dynamo Man (electricity), Cold Man (ice), and Burner Man (fire). Like in the original game, electricity beat ice, and ice beat fire.
 * 10 had Solar Man (fire), Chill Man (ice), and Sheep Man (electricity).
 * Foreshadowing: In 10,
 * This is probably true;
 * Proto Man certainly thinks this is the case.
 * Fragile Speedster: Quick Man of 2 is well, quick, but is one of the robot masters that take double damage from the Mega Buster.
 * Funny Schizophrenia: Ice Man in Powered Up and Search Man from 8. Justified in Search Man's case, as he has two heads and each head has a specific personality, with one being a commander and the other a private.
 * Future Badass:
 * Despite his Cool Shades, Quint averts this trope hard, as the former blue bomber's weaponry is completely removed in favor of a laughably useless jackhammer/pogo stick hybrid.
 * On the other hand, R(Rockman)-Shadow, the prototype that Quint was based on, plays this straight with his bigger array of weaponry (including a laser sword).
 * Future Me Scares Me: Quint who, according to his data card, has no problem with committing pseudo-suicide by killing his past self due to self loathing.
 * Pseuicide?
 * That CD data also claims that Quint dislikes "Time Paradox." Killing his past self is obviously complete bunk.
 * Game Breaking Bug: The floating platforms late in Snake Man's stage in 3 will occasionally catapult Mega Man off the edge of the screen to his death for no readily apparent reason.
 * Garden of Evil: Hornet Man's stage in 9.
 * Gender Neutral Writing: In 9, important items that move the plot are received upon defeating your fourth and eighth robot boss. There's a reference to the robot you just defeated via pronoun in each occasion. Since there's a female robot included in the roster this time around, and the text doesn't change whether or not she was the most recent boss defeated, they were careful to use the word "it" for the scene you get for retrieving the piece of scrap from the fourth boss. Not so with the memory circuit board scene (viewed upon beating the eighth boss), which uses "his" regardless.
 * Getting Crap Past the Radar: Bass says "Damn" at one point in 7. This was changed to "Darn" in the Anniversary Collection, though.
 * Giant Space Flea From Nowhere:
 * Glass Cannon:
 * Proto Man in his playable appearances in the arcade games, PU, 9, and 10, generally portrayed as having a stronger normal shot than Mega, and can block smaller firepower with his trademark shield, but takes more damage due to his faulty prototype power cell.
 * The extra damage (and knockback) is only in 9 and 10.
 * According to the Mega Man wiki, Splash Woman's Laser Trident deals the most damage of the Robot Masters in that game, but she's the only one to take double damage from the Mega Buster.
 * Go-Karting with Bowser: Battle And Chase and Soccer.
 * Not quite: Wily is planning to take over the world via Cart-Racing and Soccer.
 * Gotta Catch Them All: Mega Man & Bass had the titular characters retrieving robot data. Strangely enough, information on Dr. Light and Dr. Wily, who are human, can be found in the disks. Likely has to do with their importance in the history of robotics.
 * Graphics Induced Super Deformed: In-game Mega Man's proportions are different in NES and SNES and Playstation. And also different in cutscenes.
 * Graying Morality: The original Mega Man series is fairly Black And White. The sequel series get less and less so.
 * Hair Color Dissonance: Mega Man's hair is depicted as either black or dark brown. In closeup shots in the cutscenes for the 8-bit games, his hair is a bright blue, although this was generally done to make his hair more contrasting from black backgrounds.
 * Harder Than Hard: 10 introduces a hard mode after beating it. This may not seem like the right trope, but keep in mind this game has an easy mode, which makes normal mode the hard mode by default.
 * Hartman Hips: Being a mermaid and thus having no legs or feet does not prevent Splash Woman from having a nice pair of these.
 * Believe it or not, Magic Man has them too.
 * He Was Right There All Along: The Robot Master room at first seems empty, but then the Robot Master falls in and does his battle stance. In the first game, however, the Robot Masters just appear on the ground out of thin air, and 6 had theirs lowered slowly into the room while Dramatic Thunder occurs (and they don't make their battle stances, unlike in the other games). The non-8-bit games tend to give their Robot Masters more personal entrances, with 8 being the most elaborate. 10 generally has the usual 8-bit entrances, though Commando Man shakes the ground upon landing, and Nitro Man instead rides in from the left of the screen in motorcycle mode.
 * Hijacked By Dr. Wily: He has a better track record of this than Trope Namer Ganon . In any game where it looks like Dr. Wily isn't the final boss, Dr. Wily is the final boss EXCEPT
 * Played with in 9 -- while the storyline appears to finger Dr. Light as the villain, the good guys are all Genre Savvy enough to immediately realise that Wily is probably the actual bad guy.
 * Hitbox Dissonance: Apparent when Mega Man is jumping. Fortunately, it won't affect the game much.
 * Hoist by His Own Petard:
 * Metal Man in the second game can be killed in two hits with his own weapon. It takes One-Hit Kill in America's Normal mode.
 * In 10, . Also, see.
 * For the best example, however, see
 * Homage:
 * 10 ends with
 * Fans have pointed out that the whole of 10 can be counted as a Homage to the X series, from the plot and even to its box art.
 * At the same time, it pokes fun at the map screen diagrams by using them along with the space station. The line goes up and up and up the tower, the screen goes black, but the sound and the music are still going. Only about 10 seconds later does the screen of the space station appear and the line reach its mark.
 * Hopping Machine: Each game has its variation of the big one. Some games have also smaller ones.
 * Humiliation Conga: The ending of 9, where Wily gets to watch every single prior instance of him on his hands and knees begging for mercy in front of Mega Man.
 * An Ice Suit: Ice Man.
 * Improbable Weapon User: The more abstract Robot Masters, including Bubble Man, Top Man (who attacks with both giant tops, and by spinning), and Spring Man.
 * Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Mega Man is so pure that in the eighth game, when he was attacked by the Evil Energy, rather than become corrupted and insane like the robots before him, he fell into a coma.
 * Induced Hypochondria: King had convinced Burner Man that the latter will self-destruct unless he burns a forest every day.
 * Insufferable Genius: Gravity Man's a devoted researcher with an unsocial attitude.
 * Irony:
 * Crystal Man dislikes scientists. Considering that he was created by one, learning about this fact is Hilarious in Hindsight.
 * Sword Man apparently hates faulty swords, yet his sword literally has no edges.
 * It's All About Me: Gemini Man is stated to be a conceited narcissist who will even clone himself just to admire himself. Perhaps this was Wily's way of combating Cloning Blues.
 * Sword Man apparently hates faulty swords, yet his sword literally has no edges.
 * It's All About Me: Gemini Man is stated to be a conceited narcissist who will even clone himself just to admire himself. Perhaps this was Wily's way of combating Cloning Blues.

J-R
"(King chops Proto Man's legs off.)
 * Jerk Jock: Before people knew he was under the effect of Roboenza, Strike Man hospitalized a player he didn't like.
 * The Jimmy Hart Version: Pretty common as the production team consists of big music fans, but most notably Elec Man's stage BGM, which bears a strong resemblance to "Faithfully" by Journey.
 * Actually, some have pointed out that it bears a strong resemblance to at least three more pop songs, too.
 * Joke Character: The Robot Masters like Oil Man, Bubble Man, Top Man, Dust Man, Charge Man, Spring Man, Clown Man, and Strike Man certainly count.
 * Joke Weapon: One of the most widely agreed ones is Top Spin (3), although some would beg to disagree.
 * Kaizo Trap:
 * It's possible in the first game to get killed by a Robot Master's attack (Cut Man) after defeating him.
 * Don't beat 10's
 * In Mega Man & Bass, you can die after defeating the first fortress boss if you stand on the platform when it falls off.
 * Katanas Are Just Better: Blade Man's swords seem to be a mix of these and sabers (note the handles). It helps that he looks like a cross between a samurai and a ninja, and resides in an ancient castle. It is a western-style castle, though.
 * Leitmotif: Proto Man's arrival is always preceded by a brief whistle-sounder. Although much more downplayed, Mega Man is often musically represented by the title music from 2 in the spinoffs. Robot Masters featured in spinoffs tend to have their stage BGM from their respective games as their leitmotifs.
 * Levels Take Flight: Tengu Man's second stage and the third part of Wily's Castle, where you have to use the rush jet.
 * Light'Em Up: Bright Man.
 * Lightning Can Do Anything: Such as activating machines in 7.
 * Load-Bearing Boss: Dr. Wily's various bases have a habit of exploding or collapsing for no readily apparent reason after the final battle. On occasion we do see him activate the self-destruct (in 4) or something else explode with enough force to destroy the base (in V GB).
 * Logical Weakness: While not always true (and frequently tripped up by Robot Masters with more unusual abilities, like Snake Man), you can frequently figure out a boss's weakness based on their name and each weapon's name.
 * Mad Bomber:
 * Bomb Man, natch.
 * Really, any explosion-based robot master. Grenade Man is more into getting hit with his bombs than he is into attacking Mega Man, and Napalm Man is essentially made of missiles.
 * Malevolent Architecture: Wily's Skull Fortresses (along with the Fake Boss Fortresses found in some of the games) shamelessly embrace this trope by placing Spikes of Doom and Bottomless Pits up the wazoo, making you wonder if Wily has a teleportation device or other direct entry to the main room, or if he can brave death traps ten times as fast as Mega Man! Fan band The Megas humorously theorize in their playthrough of the second game that Wily's architects punch each other so they can gain Mercy Invincibility to place the numerous spikes Wily requests.
 * Malevolent Mugshot: Dr Wily's stylized logo that resembles his face is on various things.
 * The Game Boy entries go further with this, with a couple of his machines having his actual face on them.
 * Marathon Level: The Wily Fortress in any given game. If there's a password system, the farthest it often goes is the beginning of the Fortress. It gets particularly silly after the third game, where there were often two consecutive fortresses.
 * Mascot Mook: Mets.
 * Mission Control: Doctor Light.
 * An item in Mega Man & Bass puts Roll into this.
 * The Complete Works series (and by extension, the Anniversary Collection) features, in order: Dr. Light, Roll, Proto Man, Kalinka, Dr. Cossack, and finally, Dr. Light again.
 * Mission Pack Sequel: A usual point of contention.
 * Monster Clown: Clown Man.
 * Mook Maker:
 * Quite a few enemies throughout the series.
 * A few of the Robot Masters too, such as Splash Woman and her fish, Hornet Man and his hornets, Cold Man and his annoying cloud drone, etc.
 * Motor Mouth: Bright Man's bad point is talking too much.
 * Multiple Endings: In Mega Man & Bass, beating the game as Mega Man tells you King's final fate, while beating it as Bass details Wily's motivation on creating King and his plan on building a new version of King until Proto Man destroys said plan. In 10, the dialogue between your character and Dr. Wily changes depending on who you beat the game with.
 * My Name Is Question Marks: The robot who manages Proto Man's shop screen in 10. He looks suspiciously like Auto wearing a Met hat.
 * Mythical Motifs: Like the animal motifs you have Robot Masters like Centaur Man, Shade Man, Tengu Man, and Splash Woman.
 * Neat Freak:
 * Pump Man.
 * Also, Venus and Terra.
 * Nerf: The Shadow Blade in 3 is considered a nerf of the Metal Blade from its predecessor.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The plot of 3. He goes off to various mining planets to forcibly retrieve the power crystals, so they can power Wily and Light's new giant peacekepper robot, only for Wily to drop the act and steal it afterward.
 * Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot:
 * Shadow Man is a Ninja Robot.
 * Skull Man is a Skeleton Robot.
 * Napalm Man, Mars and Commando Man are Tank Goodness Robots.
 * Shade Man is a Vampire Tropes Robot.
 * Pirate Man is a Pirate Robot.
 * Splash Woman is a Mermaid Robot.
 * Also, Wily found a way to make zombie robots by just rebuilding some Mecha-Mooks to functionality rather than full status, leaving exposed wires and skeletal structures.
 * Nintendo Hard:
 * Widely considered to be one. But, believe it or not, that's only at first. After several days of playing, you will find yourself in comfort among all these piles of randomly flying robots, bottomless pits, and fast-reaction bosses (to the point where people who LP the games, most notably Clement J 642, frequently make them look like cakewalks). Not to mention that the "correct GET EQUIPPED sequence" makes boss battles a lot easier. But that's only after you get with it. Otherwise, expect broken controllers, TV sets, furniture, and even your pet cats and dogs.
 * But, if you have beaten the original series blindfonded, it's time for you to try the wonders of romhacking scene, Rockman Exile and Rockman No Constancy!
 * 9 and 10 takes this Up to Eleven with its achievements. How about the one for beating the game without continuing? Tough, but doable with enough patience and trial & error. How about the one for beating the game without dying? Nightmarish. But that's not the worst. How about clearing the game without taking any damage at all? Good luck with that one.
 * Let's put this way: Quick Man's stage is harder than the I Wanna Be the Guy room that homaged it.
 * Nobody Can Die: Sure, they can show a city under attack, but that's as far as they can get. Super Adventure Rockman averts this, though.
 * Not Just a Tournament: The plot of 6 involves a certain Mr. X, who is totally not a disguised Dr. Wily, organising a fighting tournament for robots with prizes for the laboratories developing them; Mega Man has to stop the eight finalist robots of the contest after Mr. X reprograms them to Take Over the World in his stead.
 * Numbered Sequels: Of course, but there was some weirdness abound. The Japanese versions all used arabic numbers, while the English versions of the first seven (and all five Game Boy games) used Roman numerals on the title screens. The confusion came along when Mega Man X was released for the Super NES. English gamers were confused and thought the X stood for 10, thus making the game 10, when there had been only five numbered sequels released at the time. Starting with the eighth game, however, and perhaps to avoid confusion, the English releases would use Arabic numbers on their title screens as well. The Angry Video Game Nerd mentioned the weirdness in his "Confusing Sequel Titles" video.
 * Obvious Beta: A rare case of an ACTUAL beta: someone got their hands on a "sample" version of 7 and posted videos of it on YouTube, the first being here. The game is quite clearly very incomplete in this version, though what is there is still fairly playable.
 * Soccer, up to and including the lack of an ending or credits. Even the English translation was rushed; one of the two stage selection screens refers to a "Rock Field" and a "Blues Field".
 * Ominous Floating Castle: In The Power Battle.
 * One-Winged Angel:
 * Wily loves this trope, though his version of it is a little different than most. Rather than transforming himself, he builds and uses increasingly complex and deadly battle mecha.
 * Especially notable that in every game from 4 onward, his final form is a small little pod, which is fought after battling a huge and intimidating mecha. But trust us, the final form is not a Clipped-Wing Angel.
 * Played more traditionally in 2, where Wily turns into an ALIEN!
 * Only a Flesh Wound: Mega Man & Bass features this exchange:

Mega Man: Proto Man!

Proto Man: It's just a scratch..."

"Ah, Mega Man. At last we meet. But now, you must deal with me, and ALL THE POWERS OF THE SUN!
 * Otaku:
 * Mega Man's friend Auto is described as an "invention nerd" in his database entry in Mega Man & Bass.
 * Also, Napalm Man is apparently a weapons/military otaku.
 * Our Mermaids Are Different: Splash Woman is a Robot Master (Mistress?) in a Mermaid form.
 * Our Vampires Are Different: Shade Man, a Robot Master vampire, that bites other robots to absorb their energy...who also likes to drink tomato juice.
 * Overly Long Gag:
 * Gloriously used in the ending of 9, making fun of Wily's Villain Decay.
 * 10 does another one:
 * Pacifist Run: One of the listed challenges in 9 and 10.
 * Panty Shot: Roll gets a rather pointless one in the ninth game after falling off the Rush Jet; pointless because she's rendered as a small 8-bit sprite.
 * Paper-Thin Disguise:
 * Mr. X, who suspiciously looks a lot like one Dr. Wily...
 * Also, see My Name Is Question Marks, for an even better example.
 * Pause Abuse: In the first few games, if you repeatedly press pause while your attack hits an enemy, the game records the damage of the attack every time you resumed, thus multiplying your attack.
 * Petal Power:
 * Hanabiran miniboss in 9.
 * Plant Man's shield in 6 is this.
 * Yeah, not really that hard...
 * Platform Hell: The official games definately have their Nintendo Hard moments, but the real prize for this goes to the numerous rom hacks of the classic games, which take this Up to Eleven at times. With some Bullet Hell thrown in for good measure.
 * Player Tic: Screen transition, especially while entering boss doors, causes players to jump or slide for some reason.
 * Power Copying: Formerly named "Mega Manning".
 * The Power of the Sun: Solar Man, obviously. There's no evidence that the miniature sun over his head does anything but be a giant ball of gassy fire, but might be due to how small it is.
 * The Power of the Sun: Solar Man, obviously. There's no evidence that the miniature sun over his head does anything but be a giant ball of gassy fire, but might be due to how small it is.

It should be noted that his stage is actually an artificial sun."

You can make the fight easier, if you know where to place the bombs. You can take down the left-most cannon's barrier and the upper left cannon with one bomb, and destroy the two right-most barriers with one as well. "Ariga: When I was playing 2, I always felt like Quick Man got some preferential treatment. On the stage select screen, his horns were allowed to go beyond the actual frame of the portrait, and when he appeared in-game, his horns would shine.
 * Pragmatic Adaptation: The Ruby Spears show and the Manga adaptation. Ruby Spears because the writers, unlike what most believe, clearly knew about the games and their plots, and the Manga for the art and attempts at expanding on the characters' personalities and some of the game's plots.
 * Precision-Guided Boomerang: The Rolling Cutter, Ring Boomerang, and Magic Card. Interestingly enough, the Quick Boomerang isn't an example, as it always moves in an exact path.
 * Press X to Not Die: "Jump. Jump. Slide. Slide."
 * Psycho Electro: Clown Man and maybe Spark Man. Presumably Elec Man and Plug Man when they're under Wily's rule.
 * Punny Name: Some of the enemies. Combined with Bilingual Bonus.
 * Puzzle Boss: Infamously, the Buebeam Trap in 2. You can only beat it with the Crash Bomb, and you have to do it without wasting a single shot or it will run out of energy. One of the hardest bosses in the series.
 * Quirky Boss Squad: The Robot Masters.
 * Real Time Weapon Change: 7, 8, and 10. The Complete Works series adds this to the first six games, though you still need to use the weapon menu to access items like the Magnet Beam or the Rush Marine in the first three.
 * Recycled Soundtrack: 9 reuses six different songs directly from 2.
 * Recycled Title: The English versions of the five Game Boy games were numbered, just like their NES counterparts. To differentiate them from the NES games, the fandom uses roman numerals to refer to games in the GB series (it's even done that way on That Other Wiki!). The Japanese releases Averted Trope this by titling the GB series Rockman World instead of just Rockman (Rockman World, Rockman World 2, Rockman World 3, etc.). The PC games Mega Man and 3 (for whatever reason that most likely defies logic, they skipped on "2") embrace this trope, but have no particular Fan Nicknames on grounds of never existing.
 * Red Eyes, Take Warning: Red is one of the three most common Robot Master eye colors, along with blue and green. Metal Man's are probably the most notable, because he's the only one whose eye color is visible in his in-game portrait.
 * Reflecting Laser: Gemini Laser.
 * Reprogrammed and Crazy: Dr. Wily reprogrammed the Robot Masters in 1, 6, and 9 to run amok. The prologue manga for 9 reveals that the Robot Masters from the first game were not scrapped, merely restored to their original programming (and even try to halt the rampage of the latter set).
 * Retraux: 9 and 10, both in the style of the old NES games, after the 32-bit style of 8 and Mega Man & Bass. They seem to actually run on the same engine (or the devs were just that dedicated), as the various TAS tricks still work.
 * Revenge of the Sequel: Dr. Wily's Revenge, the first Game Boy game, which has Wily send rebuilt Robot Masters from the NES versions of 1 and 2 after Mega Man.
 * Rings of Death: Ring Man from 4 throws Ring Boomerangs in battle. Also Saturn in V for the Game Boy.
 * The Rival:
 * Bass is this to Mega Man, created by Wily to fight fire with fire. However, he does end up ditching Wily after realizing that he does not need Wily to fight Mega whenever he wants. Although Bass is very hostile towards Mega Man -- mostly for having yet to best him in battle -- Rock does not return the sentiment. Bass also has a Cool Pet of his own, Treble the robo-wolf, with capabilities similar to Rush. As such, Rush and Treble are generally portrayed as rivals.
 * Oddly enough, Quick Man was designed with this in mind. It would explain a lot though.

Inafune: All of those things were intentional. We were trying to give him a special role in the game, as Mega Man's main rival. I guess you could compare him to Bass and Proto Man in the more recent games. We definitely gave him some preferential treatment, as we put in at least one and a half times more effort with him than we did with the other characters."

Played straight with his weapon, the Triple Blade -- it completely shreds all the Mecha-Mooks in the game (except trucks, floor thingies, and walking construction helmets). And it's only three regular swords...
 * Robot Kid: Roll is one, and Mega Man himself might also count (despite him being a "man".)
 * Robot Master: Dr. Light and Dr. Wily. They're (literal) robot masters that build robot masters.
 * Rock Beats Laser:
 * 9 has Galaxy Man, a UFO-like robot that Teleport Spams and creates black holes, and is easily the most futuristic-looking of the lot. He's weak to the Concrete Shot, the most primitive-looking of the 8 weapons in the game.
 * Also inverted, since Splash Woman's Laser Trident is Concrete Man's weakness.
 * Inverted in 10: Blade Man, the Robot Master who throws swords, is weak against the modern homing explosive Commando Bomb.
 * Rocket Punch:
 * Hard Man in 3.
 * Mega also gets one of his own in V for the Game Boy as a replacement for his standard Charged Attack, although it is never seen again.
 * The Rocket Punch weapon was brought back as the Charged Attack Rock has while fused with Rush in 7. It even has homing capabilities that time around!
 * Rule of Cool: Why does Wily's Machine in 10 have a pirate hat on it? One can only assume this is the reason.

S-Z

 * Scoring Points: Only in the first game. Completely useless since scoring a lot of points didn't give you an extra life, the game didn't keep track of High Scores, and getting a Game Over would reset your score back to 0! Perhaps the only reason the score counter was there was because the game was originally intended to be an arcade game.
 * Self-Deprecation: Needless to say, the opportunity to mock Wily's status as a villain and usual MO is not lost, for 9 and 10 (especially in the case of the former).
 * Sentry Gun: Numerous robots in this series take a form of a simple gun which fires at player.
 * Sequel Difficulty Drop: 10's easy mode. Ostensibly, 10 was supposed to be easier than 9 all-around.
 * And the price of every item severely dropped. You know how Beat cost 200 screws in 9? Now he costs 20.
 * Sequel Hook: Starting with 4, the series went into the habit of doing this (except for GB/World 2 and GB/World 3, which have . 6, on the other hand, ).
 * Shifting Sand Land:
 * Pharaoh Man's and Commando Man's stage. Pharaoh Man ditches his halfway through in favor of a tomb, though.
 * All Deserts Have Cacti: Averted. Neither level has cacti, which makes sense, since Pharaoh Man's level probably takes place in Egypt, and it's not unreasonable to assume that Commando Man is somewhere in the Middle East, what with his job as a Minesweeper.
 * Oil Man's level plays with this, by having Mettools disguised as cacti.
 * Shout-Out:
 * Heat Man looks like a man-sized Zippo lighter.
 * The good blue energy versus the evil purple energy in 8? Sounds kinda like Astro Boy again...
 * You remember Proto Man's CMOA from Mega Man & Bass? Turns out he took after Silent Chujo from a certain OVA that came out half a year earlier. Compare.
 * The Genesis Unit in the Wily Wars, Buster Rod G, Mega Water S, and Hyper Storm H, are pretty much robot versions of Son Goku, Sha Gojyo, and Cho Hakkai from Journey to the West.
 * Someone behind the music of the series is apparently a fan of Helloween, because not one, but two tracks from the 10 OST have the same titles as Helloween songs: Future World (the intro cutscene theme) and Silent Rain (the music to the first area of the first Wily Stage).
 * The news reporter at the beginning of 9 looks a lot like Chun-Li. Hey, wait a minute...
 * This series is known for its musical Theme Naming, right? Then you have a dog named Rush...
 * Shade Man's stage in 7 is essentially the robot version of the first stage of Ghosts N Goblins. Pressing certain buttons when selecting the stage will change the stage's BGM to that of the aformentioned Ghosts And Goblins stage.
 * The enemy Ragger from 7 looks and behaves similarly to Kirby's Sir Kibble.
 * Sheep Man to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. His stage music is even called "Cybersheep's Dream"
 * Skip of Innocence: In Powered Up!, Roll does this after saving the day.
 * Slasher Smile: Burner Man's smile is without a doubt the scariest thing in the entire series. It doesn't help that he's a strong candidate for That One Boss.
 * Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness: The games revel in both seriousness and silliness all over the place, especially with the Robot Master designs. Just look at 10, two of whose Robot Masters are Commando Man, a cool tank-like robot with huge guns for arms and a homing weapon, and...Sheep Man. The same can be said to Wily stage bosses, which range from rather goofy things like dispenser machines to very mechanical ones like Square Machine and Buebeam Trap.
 * The Smurfette Principle:
 * Splash Woman from 9 is the only female boss enemy to date.
 * In fact, there are only four female characters to date in the series, only one of which is human (Kalinka), and only one of which appeared in more than one game (Roll). The fourth one, Plum, only appears in the obscure spin-off Battle And Chase.
 * And only in the Japanese version; the scenes involving Plum were removed from the European and North American versions.
 * Space Jews: Most of the bosses in 6, but especially Flame Man. In the case of Yamato Man, it might be intentional.
 * Space Zone: Star Man's level in 5 uses the standard physics for Mega Man underwater levels (plus spikes everywhere). In 10, also counts.
 * Speed Run: Official time attacks are available in 9 and 10, with 10 going as far as to allow you to view replays by other players. Every weapon comes in handy at some point in these, even outside boss fights.
 * Spell My Name with an "S":
 * Light/Right/Wright.
 * Wily/Wiley/Willy.
 * Crash Man/Clash Man.
 * Also, would Splash Woman be a Robot Mistress? This has never been explained.
 * Spell My Name with a "The": The Mission Control dialogue in Aniversary Collection's English translation of the Complete Works games is really bad about this, especially with the earlier games.
 * Spike Balls of Doom: Bubble Man's stage (plus the 3rd Wily Stage) in 2 and Splash Woman's stage in 9 have got still versions. 9 also has moving spike balls which start to follow the player when approaching them too close or firing at them.
 * Spike Shooter: Needleman and his Needle Harrys in 3.
 * Spikes of Doom: While this is common to most of the franchise, 1 is notable for spikes killing you even while you had Mercy Invincibility. Mercy Invincibility protected you from them in subsequent games (along with ports of the original game), and some of them even feature items that guard you from instant spike deaths to various degrees.
 * Spin to Deflect Stuff: Besides the shield weapons, there are also a few robot masters who use this to reflect almost all attacks. 3 had Top Man, 6 had Blizzard Man, 8 had Clown Man, Mega Man & Bass had Pirate Man, 10 had Strike Man, III for the Game Boy (as well as 10) had Punk, and V for the Game Boy had Sunstar.
 * Spread Shot:
 * Air Shooter from 2 went in an upwards fashion.
 * Magma Bazooka from 9 combined this with Charged Attack.
 * Triple Blade from 10 could plow through a chain of weaker enemies.
 * Springs Springs Everywhere: Plant Man's stage and Knight Man's stage (although springs there are more like circles) and especially Spring Man's stage. In the latter, almost the entire level is full of springs.
 * Status Quo Is God: In the past 22 years, the only major plot advancements have been the introductions of Proto Man and Bass.
 * Stealth Pun:
 * Sheep Man is an electric-type robot. Lampshaded in his OST title: 'CYBERSHEEP'S DREAM'.
 * Likewise, Commando Man sports very visible underwear...so he's NOT going commando after all.
 * Strike Man is weak to Triple Blade.
 * 10 sure does have a lot of them, huh?
 * Ice Man in Powered Up cycles between a nervous soldier and an aggressive commander personality. In other words, he's bi-polar.
 * Stout Strength: Hard Man.
 * Strange Minds Think Alike: Blade Man, whether the official one from 10, a fanmade one, or the submission for a Nintendo Power Robot Master contest, tends to have purple as his dominant color. Then again, Blade Man from 10 was based off the contest submission. Not only that, but the Blade Man from the 3 PC game was also purple!
 * Strictly Formula: As the numbers of NES series games increased, this became obvious.
 * Stupid Statement Dance Mix: Some of Dr. Light's lines in the eighth game.
 * Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: This crops up a lot, even with Mega Man himself. Quite a few of the Robot Masters were built for mundane purposes (like tour guides and arctic exploration.) When Wily brainwashes them into his minions, they turn out to be much better equipped and deadlier than you'd expect for someone in their line of work. Mega Man himself was made as a lab assistant, and his system for handling tools helped him get new powers. Note that the robots built by Wily (which were made specifically for destruction) do not have this problem, although a lot of their gimmicks are really, really weird.
 * Super Title 64 Advance: The Japanese version of The Wily Wars is called Rockman Mega World. A double pun, since "Mega" is not only part of Rockman's overseas name, it is also a reference to the Mega Drive itself.
 * Supervillain Lair: Wily's Skull Fortress. Luckily for Wily, he's able to quickly build a new one after Mega destroys the last, but it always has to feature a giant skull -- Wily's emblem -- as part of its architecture. Somehow, the world's militaries never catch on to this architecture trademark; otherwise they would've nuked the place long before Mega Man would show up.
 * It gets ridiculous in 10, where the fortress
 * Tank Goodness:
 * Napalm Man is essentially a humanoid tank.
 * Commando Man is a more direct example of this.
 * Kakinbatank, an enemy found in 9's Wily fortress, is also on treads.
 * Of course, there are many more enemies and bosses like this as well, from Guts Tank to Mettonger Z.
 * Mars, like Napalm Man, is a humanoid tank. From SPACE.
 * Theme Naming: Mostly musical.
 * For example, Rock and Roll, Bass and Treble (known as Forte and Gospel in Japan), Blues (Proto Man's Japanese name). The first four Game Boy games featured a "Mega Man Killer" robot, the first called Enker, derived from "Enka" a style of Japanese folk music; the second, Quint; the third, Punk; and the fourth, Ballade.
 * The name "Rockman" is also a reference to the game's "rock-paper-scissors" concept.
 * In the fifth Game Boy game, the Stardroids are named after the planets of the solar system, with their version of the Yellow Devil being Dark Moon and their leader being called Terra. The ancient alien superweapon they are based on is called either Sunstar or Sun God depending on the translation.
 * Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Blade Man throws three swords at Mega Man as his regular attack. Five on hard.
 * Transforming Mecha: Rush, Tango, Treble, Turbo Man, Ground Man and Nitro Man. The various machines that Wily controls are also somewhat of an example, as they "peel" away into different forms that have different appearances and attacks as they take damage.
 * Trial and Error Gameplay:
 * Quick Man's level, and 9 as a whole.
 * This could extend to finding out which weapon beats what boss. Some boss weaknesses are counter-intuitive or otherwise inconsistent from game to game.
 * Tunnel King: Drill Man. Ground Man.
 * 2-D Space: Subverted at
 * Tyrannosaurus Rex: A robot version appears as a Mini Boss during Slash Man's stage in 7.
 * Unflinching Walk: Mega does this at the end of 7 as Wily's fortress is engulfed in flames.
 * Unobtainium: Ceratanium, the metal that was used for building Cut Man and Hard Man. After 3, no mention was made of it again until Zero 4.
 * Bassnium, a substance created accidentally by Dr. Wily, takes its place in the later series, used for building Bass, and later, Zero.
 * Unwinnable: The most famous examples are the Magnet Beam requirement and Buebeam Trap boss. Run out of weapon energy (or, in the Magnet Beam's case, fail to get the weapon), and you might as well just commit suicide.
 * Victor Gains Loser's Powers: Each time the blue bomber defeats a Robot Master, he gets the main attack that master had.
 * Victory Fakeout:
 * Four of the games lead you to believe that there's one less Wily Castle stage than there actually are (one of them in particular takes this Up to Eleven). Said games are.
 * In the fourth Game Boy Mega Man game, the final boss does this not once, but twice! At least he's generous enough to let the victory fanfare play out in its entirety both times.
 * Averted in . After beating and watching the credits,.
 * Villain Exit Stage Left:
 * In 1 (the remake, at least), Wily supposedly did a Heel Face Turn.
 * In 2, it's unknown what exactly happened to him (though in Bob and George, he feigns amnesia).
 * In 3, he apparently gets crushed by a cube of garbage, though his spaceship can be seen in the distance in the ending.
 * In 4 and 5, he escapes.
 * In 6, he's finally captured.
 * In 7, his 4 back-up robots break him out (he presumably constructs Slash Man et al. while Mega Man is fighting the Freeze Man crew), and in the end he escapes thanks to Mega Man's hesitation and Bass's rescue (less hesitation in the NA localization for some weird reason).
 * In 8, he escapes due to Mega Man being overtaken by the Evil Energy.
 * 9 has him escape after Mega Man gets shocked by a decoy Dr. Light robot.
 * In 10, he escapes from the hospital after coming down with the flu at the end (but not before a Pet the Dog moment).
 * Villains Want Mercy: Dr. Wily, in nearly every game.
 * Villain with Good Publicity: The billionaire Mr. X is one of these in 6, hosting a worldwide robot battling tournament with no problems before turning the robots in the final event into his own elite soldiers to Take Over the World, and he also has his headquarters in the middle of a bustling city even after his motives are clear. This is also what Wily is in 9 by duping the public via video recording into thinking that he's gone straight while Light has become the one wanting world domination;
 * The Virus:
 * The Evil Energy in 8, which takes the darkness inside a person's heart and drives that person insane. Not even robots are immune to this. Some have speculated that the Evil Energy provided a foundation for the Maverick Virus found in the Mega Man X series.
 * The plot of 10 is that robots are getting "roboenza", a virus that causes them to overheat, go crazy, and die. Roll ends up with it, positing Mega Man and Proto Man to go after the cure. Fan speculation pegs this as a proto-Maverick Virus.
 * Everyone thought Wily's reprogramming in 9 was a proto-Maverick Virus, so don't be surprised if it isn't in 10.
 * Amazingly enough, it seems to be true, as revealed by an official timeline in the Japanese Zero collection site. The Sigma Virus is a subspecies of Roboenza, and because of this incident, Dr. Light made sure to give X "perfect virus countermeasures".
 * Zero apparently uses Evil Energy as a power source, and it is part of what makes him so incredibly powerful (and potentially dangerous).
 * ~Walk, Don't Swim~: Mega Man is too heavy to swim. Averted in 8, however.
 * Wall Jump: Cut Man in Powered Up can perform this, although he can't climb up a single wall like Mega Man X or Zero.
 * Wasted Song:
 * In 3, you only hear a few seconds of the Wily Fortress fanfare before the screen fades to black, making the fanfare end sooner than it was supposed to. Too bad, since it's really epic and foreboding.
 * Same goes for Proto Man's Theme in the same game. You only hear about half of the song during the ending.
 * In 7, the Robot Museum stage music is barely heard at all, but considering it's a remix of the stage themes of Guts Man, Heat Man, and Snake Man, it's just something you gotta hear in full.
 * Weaksauce Weakness: It's usually the weakest or the hardest to use weapon in your arsenal that winds up being the final boss's weakness
 * Like in 2, where the alien can be harmed only with the Bubble Lead
 * In 3, where Wily can be defeated in one hit by the Top Spin.
 * Averted in 4, where the Pharoah Shot can hit him pretty much anywhere on the screen.
 * When Trees Attack: Played with in Wood Man, a robot with a tree motif for camouflage.
 * Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?: Sheep Man went from a sheepherding robot to working in the static resistance test division of a circuit board manufacturer, and he's already considering a job change. The reason? Sheep Man gets bored really easily.
 * The Worf Effect:
 * Happens to Proto Man in 'Mega Man '& Bass. Also, in a non-canon prequel manga, this happens to when they decide to deal with the Masters of 9''.
 * In the case of the latter, it's probably been a long time since their combat abilities were upgraded.
 * Worthy Opponent: Sword Man in 8. When you encounter him, he says, "Nothing Personal -- I have orders", and while you fight, he compliments your abilities.
 * Youkai:
 * Well, Tengu Man was based on one. (The Tengu, obviously.)
 * And Mega Water S from the Genesis Unit was based off a Kappa.
 * You Can't Thwart Stage One: While played with throughout this specific subseries, the fact that Mega Man is Three Laws Compliant and thus cannot ever finally put Wily down goes on to screw over the entire world countless times over.
 * Your Days Are Numbered: In 9, this is why the Robot Masters (and Mistress) rebel; they were all scheduled for decommission, so Wily convinced them to do a Face Heel Turn to avoid their government-mandated expiration date and a one-way trip to the junkyard.
 * Your Princess Is in Another Castle:
 * There's two castles in three of the games, those being.
 * Also, in the Game Boy games, Wily often flees to a second fortress, usually located in space.
 * The Wily Wars has a game compilation approach on this trope; as soon as you clear the remakes of 1-3, the "Wily Tower" subgame is unlocked on the game select.
 * You Have Researched Breathing: One of Bass's greatest advantages over Mega Man and Proto Man is the ability to aim his gun in directions other than directly in front of him.
 * Conversely, his greatest disadvantage over Mega Man is that he can't move while shooting.
 * Zerg Rush: Tellies/Telebombers spawn infinitely, are destroyed in one shot, and are often sent in groups of three. They are considered one of the most difficult enemies to deal with in 2 due to how their respawns are placed.
 * Zerg Rush: Tellies/Telebombers spawn infinitely, are destroyed in one shot, and are often sent in groups of three. They are considered one of the most difficult enemies to deal with in 2 due to how their respawns are placed.