Ancient Ziggurat

36th: Ancient Ziggurat Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level

We're not like that other ziggurat - we've got football-playing dinosaurs!

Overview Creator(s): Aria Genisi Composer(s): Kouji Murata, Ippo Yamada (originals) Mathew Valente (cover) Statistics Scores: 86 60 46 60 Total: 63 / 100 Rank: 36th Elements: 1 Box Items: Feeber Mousubeil Stegorus Fan Strike Man Soccer Ball Enemies: Cannopeller Feeber Mousubeil Stegorus Gimmicks: Fan Key Barrier Strike Man Soccer Ball Bosses: Honey Woman

Theme Music Mega Man V - Unused Track 2 Boss: Mega Man 9 - Boss Stage Order Location: Tier 8 Previous: Crashing in the Dark Next: Bunker 20XX

Ancient Ziggurat is the 36th place entry in Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level. Strongly resembling Wind Man's stage in both tileset and gimmick usage, it largely uses Fans as a way of climbing up walls and vertical areas. It also prominently features Stegorus as a recurring enemy/pseudo-miniboss, every instance of which is exceptionally tanky compared to the rest of the stage's enemies, though often Mega Man doesn't need to fight them.

During the Goody Two Shoes sidequest, Ancient Ziggurat is one of the levels that the Shadow Imposter vandalizes, and the fourth to be visited while tracking them down.

Strategy

Following a brief introduction to Mousubeils, Fans, and Feebers, the level features a vertical scrolling area that uses multiple Fans to push Mega Man higher upwards. Cannopellers attempt to knock him back down, but their shots are best dealt with using either the Flame Mixer or Charge Shots. At the top is a small sidepath on the left that leads to an E-Tank, before linking up with the main path (which is taken using a ladder). A Stegorus guards a Key Barrier and must be destroyed; while the Salt Water does a lot of damage, only the head is vulnerable, so a better tactic is to freeze it using the Spark Shock and kill it before it turns around. The screens afterwards use Strike Man Soccer Balls, as well as Mousubeils that crawl along the ceiling in addition to the floor. One soccer ball is constantly propelled by a Stegorus beneath it, and using it to jump over the latter is wiser than trying to fight it.

Down below is a room with another Stegorus, which rests on a higher ledge than Mega Man. With a Mousubeil and a Feeber also in the room, it's best to use the Rain Flush to clear the screen and hit the Stegorus even when its back is turned. A few screens later, the level's various hazards are positioned next to bottomless pits, making them more dangerous. If Mega Man chooses to cross over the Stegoruses using the bouncing soccer balls, he should be careful of their projectiles. Making it across in one piece leads to the final challenge of the level, which is another vertical climb using fans. Once again, Cannopellers are plentiful, so having either the Flame Mixer or Homing Sniper on standby is ideal to avoid falling to the bottom after being hit. At the very top of the tower is Honey Woman, whose arena has a fan on each side.

Shadow Imposter Graffiti

The graffiti can be found in plain sight, albeit tucked away in a small corner. In the room with the third Stegorus of the level, it is etched into the corner on the top of the screen, obscured by a Feeber. Reaching it requires either the Rush Coil or Rush Jet, as well as destroying the Feeber (and, ideally, the Stegorus as well). Throughout the level, a Type A Shadow Turret will slowly float after Mega Man, firing targeted shots at him every so often.

Judge Comments

Judge Comments
ParmaJon  : 86 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 29 / 35 13 / 15 9 / 10 23 / 25 12 / 15 Walking away from this level, the easy highlight was the soccer balls bouncing on the stegosaurus. The soccer balls were just great in general. I actually may like them in this level more than in Strike Man's stage, not gonna lie. Either way, wonderful use of them. Also, the mice. I don't think they're great in MM5, but using them as ceiling enemies with the soccer balls was super clever. Props to you. The rest of the level is good, but those parts really feel like a step up. Overall the level is consistent, the theming is nice, and the stegosauruses are only a little bit annoying. Good level.
PKWeegee  : 60 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 17 / 35 9 / 15 10 / 10 14 / 25 10 / 15 The only real complaint here is how annoying the Stegos are to fight. I preferred them when they were used as a way to make the soccer balls continually fly up and down. Let's see...the windy climbing sections were fine, but the last one felt like the first one, but a bit longer, not harder. Shame, because there was potential.
M-Jacq  : 46 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 14 / 35 9 / 15 9 / 10 10 / 25 4 / 15 Ain't no rule saying a stegosaurus can't play football! It's worth noting that I do these levels buster-only unless otherwise required, because this level uses a lot of Stegoruses (Stegori?), and they're all real annoying to take out with just the buster. Some of them are awkward to take out even without the buster - I'm thinking that one screen with all three enemy types together, where it's too high up for you to easily stand next to it with a Flame Mixer. (You can use Rain Flush, I guess, but that feels like cheating.) I did, for the most part, enjoy that section of the level where you had a set of rooms all one after the other with Mousubeils roving the ceilings, maybe more for aesthetic reasons than for gameplay ones, as they mostly served to tie all those challenges together. I also appreciated the secret path that you needed Rush Jet to access, and how the trouble there came from figuring out how to land on Rush with the fans pushing you away from him. But I mostly found this level frustrating, probably due to the awkward mix of fans that mess with your movement and enemies that shield themselves from your hits.
Freems  : 60 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 21 / 35 7 / 15 9 / 10 16 / 25 7 / 15 The level was the very simple, "gimmick 1, gimmick 2, now a little of both at the same time," which is fine. Though the fans were rather standard in usage. There was some creativity with stacking soccer balls and putting some of them on the dinosaur for this crazy moving platform (which while novel, is just a litttttle janky unfortunately) but outside of that it was your standard fare for the most part. The mice and Feebers were used well enough. Bubbles dropping on top of you while you have to deal with the mice on the ground level. Makes sense together and is cohesive! I guess the only real oddity I had was that the end tower section was very similar to the first in most regards (albeit being harder to read with all the same blue in the background) which sorta felt like an anticlimax at the end of the day. But there are far worse oddities out there.