Mega Man 1/YMMV

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• Anticlimax Boss: Both phases of the Wily Machine battle are almost insultingly easy after the hellish boss rush that comes before, not to mention how hard the game is in general. He only has one method of attacking in both phases, and both are easily dodged (phase 2 less so, but still quite easy).
• Breather Boss:
  • If you choose to fight a different Robot Master first, Cut Man is this. The traits that make him an ideal Warmup Boss such as his predictable movements, predictable attack pattern, and slow Rolling Cutter projectile can make him a much-needed breather after the likes of Elec Man or Fire Man.
  • The same goes for Bomb Man, who's just as predictable as Cut Man with his Hyper Bomb attack being even slower and less threatening than the Rolling Cutters.
• Breather Level:
  • Much like Cut Man himself, Cut Man's stage is a very straightforward and traditional level that wouldn't be out of place in the first world of a Mario game. Bomb Man's stage is a little tougher since there are more death spikes and constantly-spawning Killer Bullets to worry about, but it's still pretty easy.
  • The third Wily stage comes after a few levels with tons of instant death and annoying bosses, and is a straightforward trek through a sewer system where the only obstacles are easy enemies and a boss that's a lot simpler than the Yellow Devil and Copy Robot.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • If you want to make a Mega Man veteran shudder, say these two words: Big Eye. The great grandaddies of the "Annoyingly durable, freakishly powerful bouncing enemy" archetype present in nearly every game, Big Eyes deal a colossal amount of damage (enough to three-shot a full-health Mega Man) with their jumping attacks and take forever to kill. You can easily run under them when they jump... except they jump in two different patterns: a high jump that you can run under, and a short hop that you can't, and there's no tell for what jump they'll do until they're already in the air. It's annoyingly common to take a huge amount of unavoidable damage from a Big Eye because the stupid bastard just wouldn't jump high enough for you to avoid. It says a lot that even in harder Mega Man fangames and ROMhacks, most developers make them easier to deal with by giving them obvious tells and patterns.
  • Footholders, those flying platform enemies in Ice Man's stage. Their collision detection is inconsistent and spotty, meaning that you will sometimes inexplicably take damage when jumping on one and fall right through it. They will also pelt you with bullets that often deal juuuuuust enough knockback damage to drop you into a death pit, and have an annoying habit of de-synching with each other. These things will kill you more than every obstacle in the stage and possibly even Ice Man himself combined.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Guts Man and Cut Man are the game's most popular Robot Masters and get a lot of exposure in spinoffs and later games in the series. Their designs are simplistic, but cool and iconic, and it helps that they were a fun and lovable Evil Duo in the Ruby-Spears cartoon.
• Game Breaker:
  • The Thunder Beam is ridiculous, and can easily be compared to the Metal Blade in sheer terms of usefulness. You fire three beams at once in a plus-shaped pattern (minus a backwards-firing beam) which gives you a ton of coverage, and they hit for massive amounts of damage. Each shot uses very little ammo, so once you get it? Feel free to use it as a Buster replacement!
  • The Magnet Beam breaks a lot of annoying platforming challenges in half. Struggling with the Footholder sections in Ice Man's stage and Wily 1, or the Guts Lifts in Guts Man's stage? Just slap down a beam of hard light, jump onto it, and laugh while you run past them!
• Goddamned Bats: Bladers, spastic helicopter enemies that move slowly until they come close, where they'll suddenly rush you with barely enough time for you to react. In Wily Stage 2, they'll do all that they can to drop you into the bottomless pits below.
  • Ditto for Fleas, which are awkward to hit thanks to their small size and the speed of their jumps.
  • Flying Shells, especially in Bomb Man's stage. They can only be hit whenever they attack, and they shoot an eight bullet spreadshot that can be tricky to dodge. Even worse, they respawn almost instantly when defeated, and in Bomb Man's stage, they appear en masse while you maneuver over death spikes, and you WILL die if you touch them since mercy invincibility won't save you!
• Goddamned Boss: If you think the Yellow Devil is easy, you'll view it as this instead of That One Boss. Its attack pattern is very learnable and it never deviates from it, but the battle still takes forever because it only shows its weak spot for the briefest of moments. If you're not using the Pause Glitch to trivialize a brutal boss fight, you're using it to trivialize a boring one.
• Good Bad Bugs: The famous "Pause Trick" glitch, which allows you to rapidly pause the game while an attack like the Elec Beam is passing through an enemy, allowing them to take multiple bits of damage from the same shot. With it, the infamous Yellow Devil goes from a major threat (or tedious slog) to a total joke.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The ending narration's encouraging words of "Fight, Mega Man! For everlasting peace!" did not age well. Dr. Wily's actions in this game would cause a butterfly effect (and that's when the old bastard wasn't ruining things himself) triggering the events causing all the death and destruction in the X, Zero, and ZX series, culminating in humanity's total extinction by the time of the Legends games. To say the dream of everlasting peace was unobtainable is a hell of an understatement.
• Polished Port: The Wily Wars remake gives us better graphics and more importantly, the option to save your progress! Even though some would argue that the new music is a downgrade, it's an acceptable loss if it means not having to beat this game in one sitting anymore.
• Scrappy Weapon: The Hyper Bomb and Super Arm are weird examples of this trope: neither of them are bad in theory, but the execution really screws them over. The Hyper Bomb hits ridiculously hard and has an impressive blast radius, but unless you're fighting a stationary enemy, a slow enemy, or one that's trapped on a small platform, they'll more often than not get safely out of the way because of how stupidly long it takes for them to detonate, and you can't force them to go off yourself. The Super Arm, meanwhile, turns crushes certain blocks up into a fast-moving, wide-ranged spreadshot of powerful rock projectiles... with the downside being that you can only use it on certain blocks, and they're very hard to come by.
• "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny: This game's a fun and solid experience in its own right, but there are many annoying aspects such as its lack of a save function, frustrating death spike mechanics, and Mega Man's own movement screwing over the player. Because of this, it can be hard for newcomers and even series veterans to appreciate it when compared to the more polished sequels.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: This game kickstarted the trend of level themes in Mega Man games sounding suspiciously like classic rock tunes with Elec Man's stage. Just listen to it and try to deny how similar it sounds to Faithfully by Journey.
• That One Boss:
  • Yellow Devil, Yellow Devil, YELLOW DEVIL. Many gamers throughout the years have never been able to conquer this infamously tough boss without exploiting the "Pause Trick" glitch.
  • Elec Man and Fire Man become this if you fight them without their weaknesses. Elec Man is a total spaz who hops around the arena like a monkey on crack, and his Elec Beam can kill you in just three hits. Fire Man on the other hand simply fires an overwhelming barrage of Fire Storms. They're just as fast and unpredictable as Elec Man's Thunder Beams, and they'll even drop damaging flames on the ground to screw you over even further.
  • Ice Man isn't easy as well. While he does attack in a pattern, you need precise timing to dodge his Ice Slashers, or else you may as well kiss a third of your health goodbye.
• That One Level:
  • Iceman's stage, because of those goddamned Footholders. Near the end, you have to cross huge distances over bottomless pits while hoping and praying that these finnicky living platforms won't randomly fuck you over, and it's very likely that they will. Thankfully, the Magnet Beam makes it a joke! Unfortunately, you get it from Elec Man's stage... and if you want to grab your first go around, you have to beat Guts Man's stage before that.
  • As mentioned above, Guts Man's stage has its own problematic platforms to worry about. The opening stretch has you ride Guts Lifts across bottomless pits, with the lifts occasionally falling slack. If you don't jump the second before they drop you, you fall like a stone to your death. Luckily, they're only in the beginning of the stage, and things get easier once you've gotten past them.
  • Wily Stage 4 is another one, mainly for having an incredibly tough boss rush with Bomb Man, Fire Man, Ice Man, and Guts Man right before Dr. Wily with no way to heal yourself in between battles and no checkpoints in between the Robot Masters. Thankfully, the small area in between Guts Man's and Dr. Wily's rooms counts as a checkpoint, and Wily is so easy that he more than makes up for the previous bosses.