Mega Man 2 Robot Master Battle Royale
The FORBIDDEN Death Battle Prediction Blog Episode 29
Original Fight 17
Mega Man 2 Robot Master Battle Royale
Ah, Mega Man 2 for the good ol’ grey nintendo, back in the days when it was just called a nintendo, not NES or nintendo entertainment system. Open the hatch, put your cartridge in like a piece of bread in a toaster, press down like you’re tucking it into bed, and watch the electronic dreams on the tv screen…
Memories.
Mega Man 2 regularly tops lists of best NES games of all time and for good reason. It ironed out the kinks of Mega Man and perfected a formula that would go on to produce four more games on the NES, two on the SNES, and two retro throwbacks on modern consoles. Personally, I feel it’s a little overrated. Mega Man 3 is my favorite. It introduced the slide, Rush, and Proto Man. But I can understand why people dig Mega Man 2 so much. It’s simple, the levels are well-balanced, and it has, you know, difficulty settings.
I think that’s why a lot of people like it the most to be honest. It’s one of the few Mega Man games they can beat.
The story is this–Dr. Wily is back, but this time instead of corrupting Mega Man’s robot brothers to help him take over the world, he’s built his own robots. These new robot masters aren’t like the old ones. The ones in the first game were built by Dr. Light for peaceful purposes in mind. But these guys are made for the sole purpose of sending Mega Man to the scrap heap.
But of these eight robot masters, who is the most powerful?
Who would win if we put them all in the same room and had them battle?
Let’s find out!
Robot Master Weakness Compilation
The Rules
The eight robot masters are placed in a giant version of your standard cube-shaped boss room. That means none of the robot masters have any benefits that come from their respective boss rooms. Bubbleman doesn’t get to flood the arena and place spiked balls on the ceiling and Metalman doesn’t get his conveyor belt. They fight in a purely neutral arena.
Since they were created by the same “father” and work together on the same team, it is assumed that they know about each other and their respective strengths and weaknesses.
Metalman, DWN-009
The first of the Wily Numbers and his design should make it very obvious what Wily intended him and his brother robot masters to do. He’s based on Cutman and is better than Cutman in all ways. Basically, he’s Cutman’s god.
He can create and throw circular blades made of ceramic titanium, a fictional metal that’s also what Woodman’s leaves are made out of. It’s also shown up in other Capcom games. In the Marvel vs Capcom series, Mecha Zangief’s body and Shadow Lady’s drill are made of ceramic titanium.
Metalman fights by standing in a corner and leaping around his opponent. He shoots three metal blades while he’s airborne, and shooting them somehow makes him defy gravity and float a little bit which leaves him vulnerable so long as the shots aren’t deflected by his metal blades.
I like him. He radiates crazy slasher energy. He’s got glowing red eyes, Dr. Light calls him “the dentist of the future,” and if you don’t open fire on him as soon as the fight starts he’ll just stand still for a bit and stare at you like Jason.
And, you know, he slashes. A lot.
From the standpoint of Mega Man, his weapon is easily the best in the game. A weapon that can be shot in eight directions, goes through the floor and some walls, and takes only a little ammo per shot? Yes, please!
Metalman vs Weapons
For most robot masters, hitting them with their own weapon either doesn’t hurt them or heals them. Metalman is the exception. His metal blades scrap him dealing a huge twenty-eight units of damage to him. It kills him in one shot on normal difficulty.
His standard weakness is the quick boomerang which deals eight units of damage to him. He can also be harmed by atomic fire for 2:6:8 units of damage. He is immune to all other weapons.
Airman, DWN-010
Perhaps the most infamous of the Mega Man 2 robot masters, Airman combines offense and defense with his air shooter and fan. He fights by creating physics-defying miniature tornados that hang in the air until he blows them toward the opponent with his fan. His fan also pushes opponents in the direction his fan blows…even if they’re behind him. His tornados block shots, so when you’re fighting him you have to be careful to shoot past the tornados and dodge them.
To defeat Airman, you must become like Airman. You must master offense and defense. This, along with him having a decent counter to his weakness, has given Airman a reputation as a scrub killer.
I bet you thought the leaf shield would shoot through the tornadoes, right?
Wrong.
You either hit him with the leaf shield when he’s right next to you or not at all.
Airman fights by blowing you against the wall and shooting out tornadoes with his air shooter that he then blows across the screen. Then he jumps towards you, blows you to the other wall, and repeats until you’re dead.
Airman vs Weapons
Airman takes four units of damage from quick boomerang, 4:12:12 from atomic fire, and his big weakness is leaf shield which deals 16 damage to him by clogging his fans. Leaf shield can quickly destroy Airman if it’s activated next to him, though his air shooter is able to block it if it’s fired at him. He is immune to all other weapons.
Bubbleman, DWN-011
The Volnutt of the team, Bubbleman is specialized for aquatic combat at the cost of only being able to hop on land. Poor dude often gets made fun of by the other robot masters.
He shoots bolts of water from his arm cannon and his special weapon, bubble lead, from the snorkel-looking object on his forehead. Bubble lead creates three slow moving, bouncing bubbles that somehow damage things.
Maybe they’re acid inside a thin membrane? Break the membrane, get splashed with acid? I’m just guessing here.
Bubbleman fights Mega Man in an underwater boss room. He fires three bubbles then charges forth shooting water bolts hoping that you’ll be overwhelmed by the attack…though it isn’t really hard to dodge at all.
For a weak dude, he’s got guts. I like him.
Bubbleman vs Weapons
Bubbleman is healed from bubble lead, takes four units of damage from crash bomber and quick boomerang, and his big weakness is metal blade which hits him for eight units. He is immune to all other weapons.
Quickman, DWN-012
Mega Man vs Quick Man Flash Animation. Anyone Remember Newgrounds?
Dr. Wily used Elecman as a model for the team’s speedster. Quickman is your typical impulsive speedster. He’s cocky, headstrong, and likes competing. While he is indeed fast, especially in adaptations, he has a bad habit of getting caught on corners. Dude needs to get better at turning.
His weapon is the quick boomerang, and while Mega Man uses it as a kind of loop weapon where boomerangs are rapidly sent out from and back to his arm cannon, Quickman uses quick boomerang a little differently. He shoots out three boomerangs (which sometimes look like one because they overlap) that hang in midair before darting at Mega Man. While his boomerangs do their thing, he tries to bodyslam Mega Man at high speed. So when you fight him, you have to remember to watch him and his boomerangs at the same time.
These boomerangs are, surprisingly, not made out of ceramic titanium like Metalman’s metal blades are. It is not known why this is. Maybe Wily went over budget with the dragon and Guts Dozer?
Quickman vs Weapons
Quickman takes four units of damage from the air shooter, eight from crash bomber, and 4:12:20 from atomic fire. His big weakness is the time stopper. While the other robot masters are immune to its effects due to devices Wily gave them, he is not only frozen by it but takes damage while he’s frozen. Why he wasn’t able to get immunity is unknown. Maybe Wily feared his power and his attitude so left out the immunity device in case he ever turned?
Or maybe Wily just kind of sucks at making robots. I mean he does keep losing to the same robot again and again and again…
Crashman, DWN-013
Based on Gutsman and Bombman, Crashman is a slow but heavily armored and powerful robot master. He’s bipolar and clumsy, perhaps stemming from his hands being made out of bombs.
Wily is not a kind father.
Crashman’s weapon is the crash bomber, a time bomb that sticks to objects or opponents. Think of it like the great ancestor to Halo’s sticky bomb.
Crashman is, in my opinion, the easiest boss to beat. He fights by jumping up and throwing a crash bomb down at his opponent while running around trying to deal collision damage. The problem is, he’s kind of slow, and so long as you’re patient you aren’t going to have any problems beating him.
Crashman vs Weapons
Crashman takes two units of damage from quick boomerang and bubble lead and 2:6:12 from atomic fire. His big weakness is air shooter which deals twenty units of damage to him. He is immune to all other weapons.
Flashman, DWN-014
The leader of the robot masters (bet you didn’t know that!). He’s the serious one, but while he often grumbles about his fellow robot masters, he does care for them.
Why are the robot masters always so nice? It makes me feel so bad blowing them up…
Flashman is one of Wily’s favorite robots as he’s a huge improvement on Timeman, an early creation of Dr. Light who can slow time. Flashman blows Timeman out of the water with his time stopper weapon which stops time completely.
For Mega Man, the time stopper is a one-shot weapon. You activate it and time freezes until the ammo of the weapon is drained. You can’t toggle it on and off. Once it’s on, it’s on until the ammo is depleted. Mega Man also can’t attack while using the time stopper. The time stopper works differently for Flashman. When he activates it, his opponent freezes as time stops but Flashman also stops moving to unleash a barrage from his secondary weapon, a rapid-fire version of Mega Man’s buster.
Flashman sounds powerful as hell…but Dr. Wily installed devices in the rest of the robot masters that make them immune to the time stopper. Quickman is the sole exception. Flashman also isn’t very accurate. If you jump while fighting him he’s likely to miss you…with a time stopper…and a machine gun…
Yeah. That’s…pretty bad aim…
Flashman vs Weapons
If you’re stupid enough to try the time stopper on Flashman, he heals. And since you can’t turn it off until the ammo runs out, it heals him to max health. What were you thinking?
Flashman takes four units of damage from bubble lead, six from crash bomber, and eight from metal blades. He takes 4:12:12 from atomic fire.
Heatman, DWN-015
Heatman would be the coolest robot themed after a zippo if Gold Lightan didn’t exist.
A laid-back, lazy robot who bucks the stereotype of people with fire powers being hotheads, Heatman is, surprisingly, not modeled on Fireman.
Heatman’s power is atomic fire, which works very differently for him than it does for Mega Man. For Mega Man, it’s essentially the charge shot before the charge shot (You couldn’t charge the mega buster until 4). For Heatman, it allows him to do several tricks with fire. He can shoot three globs of fire like a catapult. He can raise his body temperature to an incredible 12,000 degrees celsius (this is hotter than the photosphere of the sun which is 5,800 degrees fahrenheit) to temporarily create a heat shield that blocks all damage. He can even turn his body into a bolt of fire and charge forward. I call it the heat dash.
His fire globs can cover a large area and with two ways to be invincible he’s hard to put down. Even his weaknesses don’t work on him when he’s got his heat shield raised.
Perhaps owing to his incredible power, Heatman can damage all the robot masters except for Bubbleman. Apparently, Heatman suffers from Johnny Storm syndrome where he can produce stellar heat but the moment an ice cube crosses his path he folds.
Heatman vs Weapons
Heatman is the only robot master who heals not only from his own weapon but from another weapon as well–the crash bomber. It seems that any form of fire or explosion heals him. Metal blade deals two units of damage to him, quick boomerang and air shooter four, and his big weakness bubble lead deals twelve damage. All other weapons do nothing to him.
Woodman, DWN-016
A Comfy Video On The History Of Hinoki Wood
The kind one of the team, he legitimately cares about his fellow robot masters and the weird robot animal minions that populate his stage. A fan of the great outdoors, he’d rather be hiking and mountaineering than taking over the world.
He is made primarily of wood, specifically hinoki cypress, a high quality wood traditionally used in Japan to build palaces, temples, and noh theaters.
But do you know what they didn’t use hinoki cypress to build? Boats and forts.
Come on Wily. Not hickory? Not even oak? Dude…
Despite appearances, Woodman is not entirely made out of wood. He’s got a thin transparent coating of metal to protect him from attacks.
Why the hell Dr. Wily didn’t just make him entirely out of this metal coating is unknown. Who can fathom the mind of a mad scientist whose schemes to conquer the world go into the double digits?
Woodman’s weapon, leaf shield, is an electromagnetic combat system that allows him to levitate and control razor sharp leaves made out of ceramic titanium just like Metalman’s blades. In a fight, he attacks in two ways at once. He surrounds himself in a shield of leaves which blocks shots while shooting leaves toward the ceiling. These leaves fall down on the opponent while he fires his leaf shield as a projectile. Then he takes a threatening hop toward the opponent and repeats.
Woodman cannot move while he has his shield up and Mega Man can’t move either when using leaf shield. The idea of being able to move while you have a shield on would come with Skull Man and his skull shield in Mega Man 4.
Dr. Wily has a strange fondness for Woodman despite being a, let’s be honest here, a less than optimized combat machine. But then again, it is rather impressive from a design standpoint that he made a functional combat robot that’s mostly cypress.
Dr. Light never made a robot out of wood, that’s all I’m saying.
Woodman vs Weapons
Woodman is healed by leaf shield. He takes four units of damage from metal blades and crash bomber and 2:6:28 from atomic fire, his biggest weakness as he’s highly flammable, but any attacks that hit his leaf shield bounces off. However, he has a bad habit of throwing his shield and leaving himself vulnerable. He is immune to all other weapons.
So Who Wins?
Given his reputation for quickness, especially in adaptations, Quickman would probably blitz his brothers…if Flashman wasn’t there.
The first two to go the scrap heap are going to be Quickman and Flashman. Flashman’s weapon doesn’t work on any robot master besides Quickman, which leaves him with just his (rather inaccurate) machine gun while Quickman can’t help but get frozen in place and take damage. They’re both sitting ducks and the other robot masters will quickly gang up on them.
Bubbleman and Crashman will be the next two to go. They have the bad luck of being weak to the weapons of the ranged spammers Metalman and Airman and having bad mobility in a firefight.
Bubbleman suffers the most of all the robot masters fighting in a neutral arena. He’s a fish out of water and has awful mobility on land. He can’t do his “shoot bubbles then charge at the opponent” move without water. Crashman, despite fighting with bombs, isn’t a ranged fighter by any stretch. He likes to get up close to his opponents, jump, and throw a bomb down at them. That’s a liability when Airman is going to be blasting from the other side of the arena.
Now we have a final four–Airman, Metalman, Woodman, and Heatman.
Woodman is going to be the first to go, and though he’ll likely try and target Airman, it’s doubtful he’ll be able to get to him before Metalman and Heatman get to him. Woodman has a bad habit of shooting his shield and leaving himself vulnerable. It’s also very likely that Heatman in his heat dash form could bypass the shield and kill Woodman just with one touch.
Heatman is next. He’s vulnerable to Airman and Metalman and while his flame shield and heat dash make him invulnerable, he can’t do them forever. Given the number of projectiles Airman and Metalman are going to be throwing around, eventually Heatman is going to get taken down.
That leaves Airman and Metalman, and since they’re both immune to each other’s weapons and don’t have secondary weapons like other robot masters it’s a draw, right?
No, actually.
They would still be able to fight each other hand-to-hand, in which case Airman would have an advantage because of his size. Airman can also take advantage of Metalman’s unique weakness to his own metal blades. By this stage in the fight, the arena is going to be filled with metal blades. There’s no reason Airman couldn’t pick one up and either use it to cut Metalman down in melee or launch it at him by using his fan.
It gives an entirely new meaning to razor winds, doesn’t it?
Airman had a couple of advantages that helped him win. His air shots not only cover a large area but they provide excellent protection from attacks. He can also do something no other robot master can do–control the movements of the other robot masters. With his fan, he can push them back. He can choose who gets in close proximity to who. He can even rescue robot masters that can’t harm him so they can harm the ones that can.
The robot masters Airman has to worry about are Quickman, who quickly dies, Heatman, and Woodman. Woodman invites himself to be a target every time he drops his shield and is way too much of an easy kill for Heatman who just has to graze him with his heat dash to immolate him. To effectively use the leaf shield on Airman, Woodman would have to get close to him which isn’t happening with the fan blowing him back. The fan would also take care of Woodman’s falling leaves along with high air shots. Unless Woodman’s timing is very good, Airman
Strangely, it’s not really Woodman Airman has to fear. It’s Heatman. Heatman’s attacks don’t deal as much damage to Airman as Woodman, but they do hurt him and they’re far more likely to connect. His atomic fire can get through his air shots and he can close the gap with his heat dash. And once it’s closed he can turn on the heat shield and cook Airman on the same principle that makes the leaf shield at close range so dangerous to Airman. But Heatman has to look out for Metalman, and it’s not like Airman can’t fight back against him. His air shots will damage him and when he’s not dashing the fan will push him back.
I guess you really can’t beat Airman…
This is a great analysis which I completely agree with apart from the final battle between Metal and Air. Even though their special weapons can’t damage each other, I doubt that would negate the possibility of Metal clogging up Air’s fan with his blades. This would take away Air’s ability to push Metal back and his blades.
Metal is also much more mobile which would allow him to hit Air and possible kill him before Air has the chance to throw a metal blade back at him.
Something to note is that Quick Man doesn’t get completely fucked over by Time Stopper. Flash Man’s usage of the Time Stopper only freeze the opponent for one second and should only take about 2 units of health. Since Flash Man would be the second to die (as Bubble Man can only hop on land) Quick Man would still have a lot of health left if Air Man and Crash Man don’t get to him before Flash Man dies.