Hopping High Above Danger

85th: Hopping High Above Danger Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level

They're just jealous you have a grasshopper and they don't even have a horse.

Overview Creator(s): Lead Egg Composer(s): Woofle, Strife, Manami Matsumae (originals) 40Nix (cover) Statistics Scores: 62 45 29 32 Total: 42 / 100 Rank: 85th Elements: 1 Box Items: Boostun Colton Crazy Razy Battan Landmine Enemies: Boostun Colton Crazy Razy Gimmicks: Battan Landmine Reflect Block Sign (Mega Man 8) (Jump, Slide) Sub-Bosses: Kabatoncue Bosses: Bomb Man Other Information: Skippable

Theme Music Freedom Planet - Thermal Base 1 Boss: Mega Man - Boss Stage Order Location: Tier 3 Previous: Tower Next: Forest Castle

Hopping High Above Danger is the 85th place entry in Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level. In it, Mega Man must frequently ride Battans over rows of lethal spikes, and occasionally over pits and down spike drops; all while avoiding the attacks of airborne Boostuns that try to knock him off of the robotic grasshoppers. Another common hazard in the level are Landmines, which pose a threat via their random and unpredictable detonation count, and often lie over spikes and in tight passageways.

Strategy

The first few screens have Landmines littering the ground, forcing Mega Man to jump over them while Coltons shoot at him from a distance. These are followed by Boostuns that take off from high ledges, before Battans start to appear. While the aimed rockets a Boostun fires can be destroyed with any weapon, holding the Flame Mixer around Mega Man will almost completely shield him, while it can also fly upwards to attack the flying enemies directly. While riding Battans over hazards, Coltons will start attacking from behind Reflect Blocks, guarded from all weapons but for the Rain Flush; most of the time, though, using it is unnecessary. After the first checkpoint and aid from Eddie, Landmines start appearing as trap floors on top of spikes, forcing Mega Man to get off of them quickly. A large number of these mines lie in a spike pit in front of a Colton, which should be killed as quickly as possible before the mines all explode.

At the second checkpoint, Mega Man will emerge outdoors again. Here, stretched Landmines are found lying on top of Battans; to ride them, the mines must first be detonated. While Boostuns return, something else to watch out for is a blue ledge one Battan will jump near; it is impossible to return to the main path from up there without dying, thus Mega Man should not jump onto it. A short while later, Mega Man will come to a free-scrolling vertical section with Battans on spikes. To proceed, after jumping onto the third Battan, instead of trying to jump onto the Landmine on the left, jump up onto the Battan on the right. This Battan will hop closer to said Landmine, making the jump far more doable. Through another shutter is a checkpoint, another visit from Eddie, and a Battan NPC who explains that Battans will follow Mega Man through screen transitions as long as he stays on their backs, something that will be very important in the coming areas.

In the next room is a walled-off Kabatoncue, whose platform cannot be lowered thanks to a set of Reflect Blocks holding it up. As such, it can only be reached without Special Weapons by riding a Battan on Mega Man's side. Try not to fall off it, as Landmines litter the ground below, and stay on it even once the mini-boss is destroyed. By jumping over a column of spikes on the screen below, some power-ups including an E-Tank can be obtained. The rest of the stage, in contrast to what came before, mostly consists of Battan rides through spike-lined rooms; that said, one room instead has Landmines over spikes, with a Sign helpfully telling Mega Man to jump quickly (but carefully). As long as he puts his trust in the grasshoppers and keeps still during screen transitions, he should have no problem making it to the end. The boss of the level is Bomb Man, who is fought in an arena with a Battan and a trio of Landmines in the centre. The former can carry him as well as Mega Man, and can potentially make the battle harder and more chaotic than normal.

Skip Status

The judges voted to give Hopping High Above Danger a Skip Teleporter because of difficulties with the room right before the third checkpoint. In addition to its somewhat obtuse method of progression, it is very easy for a player to desync the Battans by accident by having them jump on top of each other in mid-air, and the free vertical scrolling in the room makes them prone to accidental despawning. Compounding this is an inability to reset the screen by backtracking, and dying puts the player back by a fairly large distance.

Judge Comments

Judge Comments
ParmaJon  : 62 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 26 / 35 9 / 15 5 / 10 13 / 25 9 / 15 Oh boy this level is kinda weird. The main thing is that the first half of the level is really good. You take the crickets, which I honestly find annoying as a gimmick, and make them really fun. Mixing them with the landmines makes for some really good sections. It starts out so fun and refreshing and energetic, that is until you hit the outside section. There, you start to see how the crickets can be bad. It's the first time where it becomes a challenge of "what am I supposed to be doing here?". The one cricket where you jump between to the second one is the first time it feels really unclear. Then the room before the miniboss is just...what? I have zero idea what the intended solution is and I got it by having two crickets climb vertically on top of eachother. This room made me realize how weird it is to have too many crickets interacting at once. Then you have a longish midboss, which on its own isn't bad, but putting it before a lengthy and challenging section is just not a good idea. Then the next section continues the trend of being vague. For example, since you use the cricket from earlier to transition to the next screen, I assumed you had to take it down with you from the midboss room. When you take it down, it gets in the way of the next cricket and can very quickly yeet you into spikes on the ceiling. You had a clear way these rooms should work, but they can be done in other ways, which makes them all the more confusing. I don't wanna call this level terrible because there are really neat ideas mixed in with some genuinely bad rooms. This can be fixed, but I'd erase most of the second half and reuse some of those ideas with better planning. It's also weird since the first half is so forgiving and fun, whereas the second half is really hard and confusing.
PKWeegee  : 45 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 10 / 35 12 / 15 8 / 10 5 / 25 10 / 15 The crickets just don't work for this precision platforming...that's the big problem this level has. Especially that one climb before you meet the first cricket NPC, it's just...no. The drop section was better, although I would have liked to see more of the "carrying over a cricket from the previous room" stuff.
M-Jacq  : 29 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 5 / 35 7 / 15 5 / 10 5 / 25 7 / 15 Hoo boy. You wanna know how much I hate crickets? There's a room in the middle of this level where the walls are made out of spikes and the only non-fatal terrain is a set of landmines. This was my favorite part of the level, because it was the screen with the fewest crickets. Why did everyone who got the Bright Man grasshopper in their box decide that they needed to stick them on top of endless floors of death spikes? By the standards of "endless rows of crickets bounce around Spiked Wall Man's innards" levels this isn't even especially egregious, and I still didn't like it. The crickets aren't the only problem here, either. Coltons and Crazy Razies are used more or less interchangeably as turrets in horizontal hallways, and it feels like luck whether you dodge them. There's probably not enough checkpoints given how much death abounds. Okay, I did like the screens at the very end where the crickets leaped past a wall of bullets, but that's a glorified cutscene. It was also kind of cute that you could ride the cricket as the victory fanfare played? But at its core, I really didn't care for this one. (P.S: If you're wondering why the functionality score is so low, a lot of the rooms in this level let you jump above the screen, skipping challenges entirely. But maybe I should give the level points, for giving you the option of... hopping high above danger! *rimshot*)
Freems  : 32 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 8 / 35 8 / 15 7 / 10 2 / 25 7 / 15 I think it's important to try and stay positive even if I sound like a grump half the time, but you my friend have given me a vendetta against crickets. Instant death up the wazoo, weird stretched out landmines that didn't add much, a level far too long for its own good, the lovely checkpoint before a miniboss and rooms where it's oh so easy to die. Your biggest mistake was relying on the crickets in such a tight space with spikes everywhere. It's just not going to work, it's not what those bugs were ever meant to do, and the level suffers terribly for it.

Trivia

• A hidden room containing an entrant message can be found in the boss corridor, beyond a fake wall to the left.