A Critical Look at Mega Man 6 Stages: Dr. Wily Stage 1

Glass Knuckle

February 12, 2015

With a choice of flight or being able to kill Mets and grab the extra life in the second block, this is a good area for both armors, though it’s a shame we couldn’t break through the last tower to entirely avoid switching to Jet Mega Man. The highlight here is the highest Met at the end, as it can be tough to aim at with Jet and gets backup from a Fire Telly, giving it one of the best positions a normal Met can have, for what that’s worth. The Met hiding behind a block is good too, waiting to shoot anyone who tries to break that first.

Having shielded enemies to punch is always nice, and the small area we’re given makes their shots more dangerous than usual. As with some previous appearances, I’m not going to say Cannopeller is a bad choice here. It fits a vertical section well and is complemented nicely by the fans. We’ve just seen too much of it by now.

I do like having the obligatory spike drop broken up this way though. The flipping platform is also a great choice, as it makes the majority of the area we can fall onto safe, but only for a moment.

The secret path in the wall here is tough to reach, as the player won’t be able to stop in time if they haven’t already started flying on the previous screen. As we reach the bottom, the game finally asks us to show some mastery of the Jet armor with two ledges that need to be flown under. The small differences between spikes go a long way toward making the second one feel tougher without actually changing much.

Nothing new here. We’ve had worse encounters with Ben K, Squidon is so close to the ceiling that some of his missiles get lost off-screen, and Cannon Joe was too busy staring at the boss door to notice us in time.

On the other path, we have to work a bit for these goodies. The floor by the E Tank is fake, as is the floor under that, so it’s easy to miss our chance at it. We also need to fly into the wall for the weapon refills. Even if a player does miss all that, they’re at least rewarded with skipping the second half of the spike drop in relative safety.

Mechazaurus is a fantastic boss for this game, in that he works well with every form of Mega Man. He can only be hit in the eyes, but constantly makes platforms for us to climb (which are safe to the touch, despite the spikes), and spits fireballs at various angles. We can try to use the platforms and hit him with charge shots or Yamato Spear, use Jet Mega Man to avoid the platforms at the cost of damage output, or punch the platforms right back into his chest for one damage each. Although we can’t reach his face with a punch, we can use the middle charge with good timing for three damage if we want to end it faster. Power Mega Man comes out on top here, as standing where Mega Man is in the third image is perfectly safe, and we can still hit the platforms.

We’re getting to the point where stages start losing focus to the bosses, and the most I can say for this one is that it fit a couple good enemy configurations in there and made us put a little more effort into our flying. That boss can handle carrying the stage though. It’s nice to see how many of these are getting unique interactions with Power, and attacking it with Jet or normal Mega Man is fun, too.