Welcome back to Save State. I caught some kind of crazy flu bug that had me completely laid out for four days straight, too weak to eat or move. I effectively became Exhausted Man, voted least likely to succeed of Mega Man’s robot masters. While glued to the bed, in periodic states of lucidity, I started playing the Mega Man Legacy Collection after I realized I never actually beat the first NES Mega Man game, having only played and beaten its remake Mega Man Powered Up on the PSP, so this column will chronicle what I can remember of how I felt while playing the very first Mega Man title.

Mega Man One starts with no pomp, no circumstance, and you’re almost immediately thrown onto a selection screen where you get to pick which of the six robot masters you’d like to break first. This is a jump-and-shoot title with non-linear game progression since players can choose the order in which they would like to tackle the stages. Due to not being forced to play levels in a predetermined order, it’s up to players to pick the levels that best suit their skill at the time because navigating obstacles and enemies can be made easier with the different special weapons that can be acquired from the bosses in this.

Remembering what little I could from my futile attempts to beat Mega Man One during childhood, I picked Bomb Man as my first target as I recall him having an incredibly easy attack pattern, making him an ideal first challenge. Bomb Man’s stage starts off with small, exploding bomb enemies who leap out of pits and then break into four smaller, more annoying explosives. After getting hit by literally every single one of them, I found my way to Bomb Man’s chamber with very little health and managed to beat him without taking so much as a single hit.

After Bomb Man comes Guts Man, since Bomb Man’s weapon is effectively only useful on Guts Man and enemies that are totally stationary. This stage features some moving platforms over a bottomless pit that will drop you at specific points, so you need to time your jumps with their movement to make it across. The moving platforms section doesn’t last long, but it was a nice challenge I was able to clear on the first try, which was interesting since I remember having more trouble with that as a kid. I actually had way more trouble dealing with the pickaxe tossing Hammer Bros who showed up later in the stage, for some arbitrary reason.

Upon meeting Guts Man in his chamber, I threw a bomb at him and he immediately stunned me by stomping on the ground and chucked a rock into my face. I couldn’t figure out the timing to avoid his stuns at all, so I effectively damage boosted through him and used my bombs to take him out in a measly three hits. I had a good feeling at this point that I’d need to actually learn when to jump to avoid being stunned, or I’d struggle during the boss rush later.

Guts Man’s Super Arm weapon lets you pick up and toss specific blocks at various points of Mega Man One, which is important for acquiring a specific weapon hidden in Elec Man’s stage that’s so valuable because you literally can’t beat the game without it. Cut Man is weak to the Super Arm though, so that informed my next level choice. Cut Man’s stage starts off with some flying enemies who slowly approach you but quickly zip around in an arc under your feet to hit you once they get close. The rest of the stage involves slowly climbing up ladders and avoiding either turrets or eyeball enemies that only move in two directions, making them very easy to avoid or destroy. Cut Man himself goes down in only two successful hits from the Super Arm, giving access to the Rolling Cutter with no issues at all.

What beats electricity? Why, scissors, of course! If you don’t believe me, try sticking scissors in an electrical socket (do not do this). Elec Man is weak to Cut Man’s weapon, so that stage was what I picked next. This stage is a series of long, vertical shafts with aggravating enemy placement, and on top of that, you have to do this level twice if you beat Elec Man before Guts Man because you need the Super Arm to acquire the Magnet Beam, a helpful weapon that doesn’t deal damage, but instead makes platforms for you to stand on for a couple of seconds.

I don’t remember much about Elec Man’s stage other than being annoyed basically the entire time. Once I reached the boss room, I spammed Rolling Cutter on him so he wouldn’t get a lot of chances to hit me with his Thunder Beam. Seeing as how it’s just science that ice is weak to thunder, I picked Ice Man as the next stage to tackle. I actually forgot the boss order by this point, but figured I had a 50/50 chance to get it right. That apparently consumed all of my luck, seeing as how it was my second day calling off work in a row due to the flu.

Ice Man’s stage is actually one of the better designed ones, in my opinion. It starts off with some enemies who toss snowballs at you, introduces flying penguin enemies with predictable travel arcs, and it has a fun segment where you’re able to jump along flying platforms that periodically shoot from their sides, which can cause you some trouble when jumping from one platform to another. You can skip big portions of this by using the Magnet Beam from Elec Man’s stage, though I completely forgot what the Magnet Beam did at this point of the game (I thought it was like item number three from Mega Man Two, which lets you climb vertical shafts. Oops!). I remember Ice Man’s level better than his fight; it only took a few Elec Beams to put him on ice.

Fire Man’s level is another one that I think is on the stronger side compared to other stages in Mega Man One like Elec and Guts Man. There are tall fire pillars that pop up all over the place that can be frozen with the Ice Slasher weapon should you decide to use it that way, but it’s not really necessary in Fire Man’s level. There are also enemies who spring up from the lava at the bottom of the screen who float down and harass you, but they’re very manageable because their movement is very predictable. But with Fire Man’s boss fight, on the other hand, I didn’t understand how to avoid taking damage from his relentless attack spamming, so I won but barely scraped by in this fight. I was definitely not looking forward to the Fire Man rematch during the boss rush later in the title.

After clearing all six robot masters, you can access the Wily stages. Due to the fact that you needed to have acquired all of the boss weapons to get here, the Wily levels open up with some of the tougher enemies in Mega Man One and several obstacles that require you to use things like the Ice Slasher to freeze some fire pillars so you can make your way into Wily’s base. The end of the first Wily level is where you’ll need to have found the Magnet Beam in order to bypass a large, vertical passageway by creating your own platforms with which to ascend. After that, it’s time for the worst boss in the game, and it’s the original reason why I never beat Mega Man One as a kid with an NES: the Yellow Devil.

The Yellow Devil is a masterclass in challenging boss fights. This boss flies in from off the side of the screen, with all 20 pieces that comprise its body effectively being its own attack. This phase of the boss constituting itself lasts for a whopping nine seconds. And once its eye appears, it takes one shot at you, is vulnerable to damage for about one second, and then moves to the opposite side of the screen again. The boss repeats this process every ten seconds until it is dead. If you hate game developers who put immunity phases into their titles, just know that they likely did so because of flashbacks from this singular boss fight.

It takes seven full shots with Thunder Beam to beat Yellow Devil.  The boss fight itself lasts longer than anything else in the title at around 70-80 seconds, and defeating this thing means that you spent over a minute doing nothing but dodging. The good news is that the Yellow Devil’s movement/attack pattern is static and not randomized, so it’s easy enough to pick up. But if you’re anything like me, you’ll likely lose a life or two for the first time in Mega Man One right here. Yellow Devil is a home console version of those “quarter eater” bosses we used to encounter in arcades, designed by someone whose parents didn’t love them enough.

Due to the fact that I could never beat Yellow Devil as a kid, I never actually knew that Mega Man One’s boss rush was split into two parts. Wily stage two throws Cut Man and Elec Man at you, as well as a copy of Mega Man himself as the final boss of that level. Wily stage three is a relatively simple level with a boss that starts slowly but becomes significantly faster and more aggressive with each part of it you destroy. There are four giant blocks in the room you can toss at the boss to instantly destroy a single piece of it, and those are probably best used against the faster iterations that appear towards the end of the fight.

Wily stage four is the most challenging one, pitting you against Bomb Man, Fire Man, Ice Man, Guts Man, and finally Dr. Wily in order. None of these bosses drop any health pickups, so you’ve got to be able to take all of these guys out in a single life. Bomb Man is incredibly easy, but I was dreading reaching Fire Man again due to his unrelenting attack spam. Interestingly, I wound up entering a pattern against Fire Man where he didn’t hit me once- apparently he’s hard coded to shoot when you shoot (or I imagine if you get too close), so shooting, jumping, and pressing forward just a bit forces him into a loop where he only attacks once, making him substantially easier to beat this second time around.

Ice and Guts Man dropped like flies, and Wily’s attack patterns weren’t much to write home about either. His first phase requires you to shoot Elec Beam at the gun on his ship, which shoots exclusively in an upward arc. Wily’s projectile can be easily dodged by just taking a step backwards, or if you’re too close to the edge of the screen, you can stand under the gun and continue shooting with Elec Beam. Once the first phase is beaten, the windshield on Wily’s ship breaks and he fires a beam that shoots in a spiraling trajectory, but it misses like crazy, often coming nowhere close to actually touching the player. Beating Wily causes his ship to explode.

It was fun to go back and revisit the title that started it all with Mega Man- as a kid, the first of these I ever played was Mega Man Five, which then led to me renting Mega Man Two, Three, Four, and so on. The first of this series always eluded me until I played its PSP remake, Mega Man Powered Up, but it wasn’t until 2025 that I actually sat down and struggled my way through it. Immediately after beating Mega Man One, I wound up moving on to the second Mega Man and enjoyed it significantly more (outside of Wily Castle 4’s boss), but that’ll be a story for another time because it’s time to bring this entry of Save State to a close.

Thanks for listening to me gush while talking about a game that is a whopping 37 years old! See you again in two weeks when I find another old, indie, or old indie title to endlessly chatter about, whether you want me to or not.