Not Delivering On Promises

171st: Not Delivering On Promises Make a Good Mega Man Level 3

They promised they'd put the wallpaper up today... what's taking them so long?

Overview Creator(s): Giga Otomia Composer(s): Masamichi Amano, Takashi Tateishi (originals) Giga Otomia (cover) Statistics Scores: 15 13 39 17 36 Total: 24 / 100 Rank: 171st Elements: 1 Collectables: Enemies: Batton Big Fish Big Telly Claw Croaker Fan Fiend Mechakkero Sniper Armor Sub-Bosses: Hot Dog Lantern Fish Bosses: Rockman No Constancy Quickman

Theme Music Quest Battle Mashup Boss: Mega Man 2 - Boss Stage Order Location: Tier 1 Previous: You Don't Know the Drill Next: A piece of cake, but with aesthetics

Not Delivering On Promises is the 171st place level in Make a Good Mega Man Level 3. It is a short level, sparse on detail, challenge, and checkpoints. The most notable aspect it has is that it gives every single Special Weapon infinite energy, making it trivially easy to complete even with copious enemy spam in its latter half.

Strategy

Because Special Weapons have infinite energy, destroying enemies should be extremely simple for Mega Man. However, the level contains no checkpoints whatsoever, so dying at any point will return Mega Man to the very start of the level.

After a single Sniper Armor is a section with platforms atop a bottomless pit, with a Fan Fiend blowing Mega Man backwards. Making the jump across the three-tile gap while the enemy's wind is blowing is almost impossible, so the safest thing to do is to either use the Magnet Beam to cross the gap, or destroy the Fan Fiend from a distance using the Spark Chaser. Atop a poorly-positioned Hot Dog is a sloped roof; by climbing up it, Mega Man can find an invisible ladder leading to a hidden room with the level's only Trickster Token.

The second half of the level contains a large pool of water, while Claws rain down from above. The screen can get clouded very quickly, so use of the Tornado Blow to quickly kill enemies is encouraged. A single Lantern Fish lies in the pool right next to a bottomless pit; defeating it from the front requires careful jumps to damage its lamp without also falling into the pit, so a safer option for dealing with it would be to cross to the other side with the Magnet Beam or Rush Jet and attack the Lantern Fish from behind. Very soon afterwards is the level's boss: a modified Quick Man based on his incarnation from Rockman No Constancy that shoots Heat Man's Atomic Fire instead of his usual Quick Boomerangs.

Judge Comments

Judge Comments
Mick Galbani  : 15 / 100
Design Fun Creativity Aesthetics Functionality 3 / 35 1 / 25 0 / 15 3 / 15 8 / 10 You know, if you promised me nothing, then how would you not deliver on promises that don't actually exist? :thinking: But then, I suppose there's some promises the level won't deliver on in the end anyway. Anyway, for the level itself. This level is short, has a lot of arbitrary design, infinite weapon energy for some reason, and... absolutely no checkpoints. It's definitely not an award winner, I wouldn't even call it fully functional. Still, there's things in here to note. The crab room was memorably silly, and the wispy Quick Man (which I know is from a romhack) was an okay twist on the old devkit boss. That's about all there is to say here, though.
Shinryu  : 13 / 100
Design Fun Creativity Aesthetics Functionality 1 / 35 1 / 25 1 / 15 1 / 15 9 / 10 Uhhhh... Yeah, I got next to nothing for this one. There's a lot of things I could ask "why?" to in this stage, such as: "Why are there no checkpoints anywhere in this level (even if it is incredibly short)?" "Why does this level give you infinite ammo for every weapon?" "Why is the token hidden via an invisible ladder?" Regardless of what the answers to those questions may be, the rest of this level's problems are all glaringly obvious. The only other semi-notable thing in this stage is the modified Quick Man fight at the end. Aside from the fact that he turns into a small flame while he's jumping (for some reason), his projectiles are a lot easier to avoid than vanilla Quick Man's are...provided you stay close to him. The farther away you are, the wider the spread on the flames (which can often put you in situations where it's near impossible to avoid taking damage). All things considered, I wouldn't be surprised if this level was intended to be a joke. Even by those standards, though, I wouldn't say it's particularly good.
Pachy  : 39 / 100
Design Fun Creativity Aesthetics Functionality 9 / 35 11 / 25 5 / 15 5 / 15 9 / 10 Promisen't Level only consists of a few screens with very basic platforming challenges, and enemy placements aren't all that inspiring either. It's also borrowing a portion of MM1 Fortress Stage 2 at one point which is... odd, to say the least. What's even odder is that all of your weapons are given infinite ammo. Other than one part with the horde of endless CRABS, the whole level is completely trivialized by the fact you can keep spamming Tornado Blow. The boss is just a lazy Quick Man edit. The lack of any checkpoints in the level makes getting to him a bit of a hassle, but the stage is extremely short and easy anyway. There is also this weird unmarked secret laying around, with uhh.. pretty broken rewards all around, that you can just keep grinding for once you know that they're there.
Flashman85  : 17 / 100
Design Fun Creativity Aesthetics Functionality 0 / 35 2 / 25 1 / 15 6 / 15 8 / 10 I imagine your list of promises when designing this level looked something like this: - I promise to not load a bunch of MM2 assets into a shotgun and fire wildly at the screen - I promise to show players how much I care about them by placing at least one checkpoint literally anywhere - I promise to communicate to players that they have infinite weapon energy *before* they get tired of dying repeatedly to challenges that are completely unmanageable with the buster - I promise to spare players from awkward screen transitions, aimless free scrolling, and bogus "challenges" such as looking for a token hidden in an unseen room accessible only by a tiny invisible ladder that is not telegraphed or hinted at in any way - I promise to not create a secondary secret room containing an outrageous reward requiring devteam intervention to maintain game balance - I promise that the boss will have *all* his sprites replaced with a cute little flame, and that his projectiles will be free of technical polish problems, thus ensuring he's taken seriously and not written off as a slapdash joke - I promise that creative devkit boss alterations, acceptable music selection, and compulsory functionality won't account for the majority of points this level receives Whatever the actual intent was here, please promise me that your next level will be just like this one.
ACESpark  : 36 / 100
Design Fun Creativity Aesthetics Functionality 6 / 35 10 / 25 5 / 15 5 / 15 10 / 10

Notes

• In the hidden Trickster Token room, an invisible ladder at the top of the screen leads to a hidden room containing a giant M-Tank and a giant bolt. When collected, they add nine of every tank and 9999 bolts, respectively; however, these will be confiscated by Fake Man upon exiting the level.
• This was the first level to be submitted to MaGMML3.