Down the Drain

81st: Down the Drain Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level

Beware of drain blockages.

Overview Creator(s): TheBladeRoden Composer(s): Ippo Yamada, Minae Fujii Statistics Scores: 71 54 25 38 Total: 47 / 100 Rank: 81st Elements: 1 Box Items: Biribaree Fan Fiend Metall K1000 Bokazurah Venus Waterfall Enemies: Biribaree Fan Fiend Metall K1000 Gimmicks: Bokazurah Key Barrier Venus Waterfall Bosses: Toad Man Other Information: Skippable 17 Minutes Late

Theme Music Mega Man 9 - Hornet Dance Boss: Mega Man 4 - Boss Stage Order Location: Tier 3 Previous: The Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Room Next: Deep Dark Temple

"[sounds of choking on Venus Waterfalls]"

―Scott Bacconant, Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level

Down the Drain is the 81st place entry in Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level. It is a level that makes extensive use of Fan Fiends that blow Mega Man around, and Bokazurahs that are needed to clear away bricks blocking the path ahead. It is also the first level (going from last place to first place) to use Venus Waterfalls, a gimmick infamous during submissions for its buggy and glitchy behaviour. While the gimmick was recoded to be more stable during MaG48HMML's development, the revised version would completely nullify the player's collision detection if a Fan Fiend was onscreen; thus, the original janky version of Venus Waterfalls was kept for this level, as it would otherwise be unbeatable.

Strategy

The level starts with a Metall K1000 next to a Venus Waterfall, which forces Mega Man to be washed off to the screen below. The rest of the level's box assets are introduced almost all at once, with Bokazurah blocks needing to be removed while Fan Fiends blow Mega Man around. Following this is an outdoors section with Venus Waterfalls washing down onto the stage at set intervals. Touching one as it's pouring down will push Mega Man into the ground and off the bottom of the screen (if he doesn't get stuck), so try to avoid them. Enemies on lower elevations can be easily killed with the Rain Flush, Homing Sniper, or Beat to avoid the risk of coming close to a waterfall. After a few more Bokazurah puzzles and waterfall evading is the first checkpoint.

Use the Flame Mixer while falling down to the next screen, as a pair of Metall K1000s try to ambush Mega Man with their spreadshots, and he will fall right next to them in between a pair of Venus Waterfalls. After destroying the Biribaree standing atop the bricks on the left, avoid the waterfalls and use the Bokazurah to clear them away. Below another Bokazurah room is an enlarged Metall K1000, which has 10 HP and drops a key for a Key Barrier. Beyond it is another outdoor area with pits, enemies, and Venus Waterfalls. After fighting his way through, Mega Man will come across a long stretch of ground with Fan Fiends blowing towards the right. Don't destroy them, as they are needed to get through the area quickly before multiple Venus Waterfalls come pouring down from above. Although there are spikes in the ground, most of them actually lack collision and won't kill on contact, making it easier to rush through to the other side.

After being washed down by a waterfall, Mega Man will arrive in a room with Bokazurahs on either side, while a pair of Fan Fiends blow him towards the left. Shooting either Bokazurah will free both a Fan Fiend and a Biribaree as its shots clear space, so be ready to deal with them. Hidden within the bricks are spike balls, so try to stay within the two centre tiles for safety. At the very end is the boss door, with a giant Metall K1000s and two normal ones ready to attack from the left. Run into the boss door as quickly as possible, and encounter the boss, Toad Man. His arena contains a Venus Waterfall in the centre and a Bokazurah on the right, while two layers of bricks stand above a bed of spikes. To avoid triggering the Bokazurah and eroding the ground, avoid shooting multiple times while Toad Man stands in front of it, lest a shot passes through his iframes and hits it. Mega Man should also stay as far away from the centre waterfall as possible.

Skip Status

Because the level was forced to use the older, buggier version of the Venus Waterfall gimmick, Down the Drain was given a Skip Teleporter by the devteam due to the ease with which a player can get stuck in the level terrain with no way out.

Judge Comments

Judge Comments
ParmaJon  : 71 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 26 / 35 10 / 15 9 / 10 19 / 25 7 / 15 THE GIANT TRAIN METS ARE SO DORKY I LOVE THEM. When I started this level, I saw the gimmicks and was frankly, terrified. You greatly surpassed my expectations. I'm not a huge fan of either gimmick, BUT this level pulls them off really well. These gimmicks can make rooms a slog, but you made interesting enough rooms that it felt good regardless of that. That doesn't mean some rooms don't feel slow and boring the 3rd or 4th time you do them, but figuring them out was a real joy. I think an extra checkpoint would help this level a bit. Otherwise, the floating waterfalls don't look great, and it's sorta confusing trying to tell where the waterfalls will fall. Either way, solid and fun level and I'm glad I played it.
PKWeegee  : 54 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 13 / 35 9 / 15 10 / 10 11 / 25 11 / 15 I wish I could like it more, but I just can't, really. The constant threat of instant death with the waterfalls looming ahead, coupled with the fact that the air dudes can catch you off guard if you want to make a jump...yeah, there's a lot of frustrating things in here. So, personally, this one goes down the drain for me.
M-Jacq  : 25 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 5 / 35 8 / 15 3 / 10 1 / 25 8 / 15 Well, the title is pretty apt. Part of me was tempted to give this level a zero in everything, but that would be extremely unfair - the level *looks* fine, there certainly were genuine attempts to make unique challenges with the assigned gimmicks, and besides, this isn't some zero-effort troll level. But my god, did this level annoy the living daylights out of me. One problem here is that the Venus Waterfalls are extremely, extremely glitchy, in a way they just aren't with the other levels that used them. Sometimes they clip you through a screen instead of killing you; sometimes they kill you when they should be harmless; sometimes they get you stuck in the wall entirely and force you to press 2. Sometimes they even persist between screens and make it impossible to progress. They interact very strangely with ladders and Bozakurah blocks and Fan Boys - and naturally, at least two of these things will be on screen with them at any given time. But ultimately, my problem with this level is that it seems like it was not designed at all for players like me that play through the game buster-only. Early on in the level is a screen where you have to take out a Biribaree on a narrow platform while a Fan Boy is blowing you away, in order to get a proper vantage point to kill the Fan Boy so that you can jump further than two tiles and progress. Naturally, this is over bottomless pits and with waterfalls. I spent fifteen minutes on this section before concluding that it was, if not literally impossible buster-only, so frustrating to do "legit" that it may as well be. If you get through this section, you are greeted to a "fun" room where you are expected to do three short edge hops in a row, while a Fan Boy blows you left and a waterfall rages. What fun - not. (Naturally, the checkpoint is on the other side of this challenge.) I *guess* some of these challenges are interesting? There's an interesting screen where you have to make the enemies "rain down" from the screen above in order for Bokazurah to clear your path, and I suppose the section where you Canabalt your way past the massive row of waterfalls with the help of some Fan Boys is kind of cute. (It would be cuter without the random spike at the end, which is decidedly not cool.) They were *not* enough to save the level, though.
Freems  : 38 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 10 / 35 8 / 15 5 / 10 8 / 25 7 / 15 Sometimes an important thing you need to ask yourself is you can do something, but should you? You can use a Fan Fiend to outrun a lot of Venus waterfalls with increasingly spooky spike jumps but should it be in your level when your checkpoint is quite some time ago, in rooms that involve a lot of waiting for the blocks to be destroyed? Should you hide spikes in blocks that you need to destroy anyway? Should you drop the player in on a couple of trains that you're absolutely not avoiding because you're falling right into the pile? The answer to all of these should probably be no (though the Fan Fiend one WAS a novel idea, I'll give you that, it just didn't feel great in execution), and while I appreciate the puzzleish elements on display, it was kinda marred by waiting for waterfalls rather than actual real puzzle solving. That and the waterfalls themselves sometimes did a terrible job at actually killing me, causing a few problems now and then. I can tell good ideas were at play here, but it couldn't really come together in the end.

Notes

• In older versions of MaG48HMML, the sign explaining the issues with the Venus Waterfalls was placed in the Skip Teleporter room. It was later moved outside to the start of the level, as many players didn't read it.
• As the bugs with the Venus Waterfall object were endemic to the gimmick itself and not the fault of the creator, the level wasn't given a Functionality penalty (though both M-Jacq and Freems gave it middling Functionality scores).
• Down the Drain was 17 minutes late after its 48 hour deadline, but its final score was too low for the -17 score cap to affect it.