One Night in Xanadu

38th: One Night in Xanadu Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level

It's fun to visit, but you wouldn't want to live here.

Overview Creator(s): Smedis2 Composer(s): Hiroyuki Yanada, SEGA Statistics Scores: 62 82 46 60 Total: 62.50 / 100 Rank: 38th Elements: 1 Box Items: Batton Cutting Wheel Hothead Hanabiran Clock Arm Room Low Gravity Enemies: Batton Big Eye Bikky Cutting Wheel Fatool Hothead Sniper Armor Gimmicks: Hanabiran Clock Arm Key Barrier Room Low Gravity Bosses: Saturn

Theme Music Jack Bros. - Temple of Nightmare Boss: Holosseum - Garrison Stage Order Location: Tier 8 Previous: The End of Needle Man?! Next: Crashing in the Dark

"Today isn't your lucky day. You've crash landed on Xanadu, the most dangerous planet in the solar system. The locals here don't take well to outsiders, so be on your guard! Try to find a way back home..."

―Sign, explaining the level's premise

One Night in Xanadu is the 38th place entry in Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level. Set on an alien planet, the level features unique resprites of Hotheads, which are now smaller and float in the air on clouds. Cutting Wheels are given an equally alien look, but remain stationary obstacles as opposed to active chasers as they are in most levels. The major obstacle of the level aside from its reskinned enemies are Hanabiran Clock Arms of varying length, acting as ever-present rotating traps. Halfway through the level, the gravity is permanently lowered via Room Low Gravity, granting Mega Man higher jumps.

Strategy

On the whole, the level is straightforward and rather easy, with most of the enemies having little HP and instant death being rare. The Hotheads are the most dangerous enemy to deal with, since they can damage Mega Man no matter how far away he is from them, and they are still comparatively bulky. Shortly after a set of platforms over blue death spikes is a long vertical drop; at the bottom, the gravity is lower, and remains so for the rest of the level. Also found here are green spikes; unlike blue spikes, these only deal 7 damage on contact. Resting Battons become easily camouflaged against the black, empty background of the caverns, thus Mega Man should be careful not to accidentally walk into one. A small two-block high passage with a pair of short, fast clock arms can be tricky to go through without taking damage, but it can be avoided entirely by jumping onto a fake ceiling above it. Shortly afterwards, a seemingly inaccessible E-Tank is seen resting on blue spikes. However, the spikes are fake, and behave like a solid floor; the green spikes directly in front of them, however, will inflict damage.

The rest of the level consists of simple ladder climbing while avoiding enemies and hazards, but the end of it is notable for having a wall that is nine blocks high, and even with the lower gravity, Mega Man cannot jump high enough to climb it. Instead, Mega Man must use either the Rush Coil or the Concrete Shot to give himself a boost. Alternatively, if he can afford to, he can take damage from a nearby set of green spikes, then use them as a platform while his invincibility frames are active. The level culminates in a battle with Saturn, who has a room with low gravity, two green spike rows in the upper corners, and a pair of green spikes in the bottom centre. These latter two spikes significantly increase the fight's difficulty, since they're located right under Saturn's blind spot during his time-stopping spread shot attack, preventing Mega Man from standing there. However, the shots and Saturn himself can still be avoided during the attack by standing on the middle block on either side of the spikes.

Judge Comments

Judge Comments
ParmaJon  : 62 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 23 / 35 7 / 15 9 / 10 13 / 25 10 / 15 Oh my God I love the resprite of the fire guy. The whole level is fine. The difficulty ramp up is pretty fair and is for the most part good. The vertical room near the end and a few rooms before it got a bit too spike-happy, and that paired with an unforgiving checkpoint made the latter half of the level a drag. Some of the jumps right near the end are incredibly awkward and nonintuitive. I got through them after dying in dumb ways once or twice, but it's still just a bizarre challenge that I don't get the intended solution for. Using Rush Jet felt like a workaround, not the solution. Otherwise, throughout the level the fire enemies were sometimes a bit too hard to dodge. Same with the flower wheels, usually they were okay but there were an instance or two where they just felt too tight even for that part of the level. The functionality dock is because several challenges are skippable in the low gravity section by jumping over the ceiling and skipping things. Minor, but it exists. The text was a bit too wordy for my taste, but it didn't really affect much. I just felt like it could say the same thing with less words and it would've been easier to digest than these long sentences. Overall a good level, but it had its weak spots. Another round of testing and editing probably would've fixed most of this level's issues.
PKWeegee  : 82 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 29 / 35 15 / 15 10 / 10 18 / 25 10 / 15 I can tell that a lot of care went into the visuals in this stage, even if some of the retextured enemies look a bit...eh. I do really enjoy that the rotating flowers were used for something besides a stupid miniboss for once. Not every section with them seemed too fair, but they weren't that bad. Although there was one jump near the end where I'm pretty sure you can't advance without Rush, or Concrete Shot. Not sure what's up with that.
M-Jacq  : 46 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 5 / 35 14 / 15 6 / 10 9 / 25 12 / 15 Xanadu doesn't look or feel like a Mega Man level, which is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because it avoids taking place in a generic laboratory as Mega Man levels are wont to do. This really does look and play like a sojourn on a spacy and thoroughly alien planet. (Except for the Battons, which I was disappointed to see weren't reskinned.) But that "spaciness" is also the level's largest problem - it often feels like the assets were placed down for aesthetic value rather than because they played well. The level's not really difficult, with most enemies placed where they pose no threat. The platforming felt kind of random too - most notably, there's a wall that's nine tiles tall, when you can only jump eight tiles high without utilities. I somewhat wish you put as much effort into the playability here as you did the atmospherics... but at the same time, I think the appeal of this level is that it DOESN'T feel "designed." Which I'd be okay with, if that didn't detract from the play experience - but the real weakness of this level is that it doesn't feel playtested either. This probably could have used a couple more iterations, to get the right balance of spacy abstracted scenery and enjoyable platforming.
Freems  : 60 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 19 / 35 9 / 15 9 / 10 13 / 25 10 / 15 Who knew that space was just full of flower clock things? Let's start off by saying that for the most part, I enjoyed how that gimmick was used. It's an interesting one considering it's only real use in canon Mega Man is the Hornet Man miniboss, but it acting the way it did provided a somewhat unique challenge. The custom enemy skins also gave the level some nice flavor (and a good excuse to put Hotheads in the air), although the stationary Cutting Wheels hardly posed a threat... well, ever, and were pretty easy to get by. The last section's required use of special weapons to barely make a jump is something that I also cannot tell was intentional or not, but it definitely kills the flow near the end when everything else can be done buster only with no problem. I'm also going to point out how adding spikes, even if they're not instakill, in the middle of a boss arena doesn't automatically make a boss more engaging, especially when Saturn's guaranteed safe spot on his time freeze move is right below him... where the spikes are. I think there were some good ideas here, it just ended up lacking refinement.

Notes

• Each of the three box enemies have their HP values modified: Battons have 5 HP, Hotheads have 6, and Cutting Wheels have 2.
• An invisible ladder exists at the top of the screen near the narrow corridor with two short clock arms; climbing it leads to a secret room with a teleporter guarded by a squashed and stretched Fatool (dubbed "Wide Fatool" in the Kickboxing Club) with 150 HP. The teleporter leads to an inescapable trap screen filled with Big Eye-type enemies, with "NO" written in the centre.