The End of Needle Man?!

39th: The End of Needle Man?! Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level

Some hardcore fans like to assume Needle Man actually died in the collapse of Wily Castle, considering Mega Man 3 the final "true" game of the Classic series, and ignoring everything from Mega Man 4 and beyond.

Overview Creator(s): sarysa Composer(s): Yasuaki Fujita Statistics Scores: 54 63 79 53 Total: 62.25 / 100 Rank: 39th Elements: 1 Box Items: Dachone Metall Swim Nitron Foot Holder Junk Block Enemies: Dachone Elec'n Hari Harry Metall DX (walk) Metall Swim Molier Mousubeil Nitron Gimmicks: Conveyor (MM6) Foot Holder Junk Block Needle Press Sub-Bosses: Spark Man Truck Joe Bosses: Gemini Man

Theme Music Mega Man 3 - Needle Man Boss: Mega Man 3 - Boss Stage Order Location: Tier 8 Previous: Footloose Next: One Night in Xanadu

"Who does Spark Man think he is, dumping his junk here? And what's with that digging? I swear, those punks are all trying to move in on my turf. Well I'll show them!"

―Needle's Log

The End of Needle Man?! is the 39th place entry in Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level. It is a level that mostly uses Foot Holders as its main gimmick, though all of them move on set paths and almost none of them are dangerous. The level follows a loose narrative of Needle Man being driven out of his own stage by two of his fellow Mega Man 3 Robot Masters. To that end, while it primarily uses Needle Man's tileset and aesthetic, it adds in tilesets from other Robot Master stages.

Strategy

Go left of the first screen for a hidden E-Tank on the other side of a pit patrolled by three Foot Holders. The level itself starts with two Hari Harries and a fleet of Foot Holders over a pit. While the latter move in set, predictable patterns, some of them fly much more quickly than others, making it hard to jump from one to the other without falling. As such, it's useful to have the Beat Rescue upgrade as a safety net, particularly for the more perilous Foot Holder areas. Two screens up is a short area with Dachones guarding a boss door, which is blocked by a stack of Junk Blocks carried by conveyors from a passage above. The floor inside the faux-boss corridor instantly self-destructs upon entering, sending Mega Man to a cavern below (with four harmless Moliers being the apparent cause). However, by using a set of Foot Holders, Mega Man can avoid fighting the Dachones and enter the Junk Block corridor, avoiding the floor trap and finding a hidden room with five large Bolts, an M-Tank, and a message from Needle Man.

As the stage takes on Napalm Man's tileset, beneath the Molier screen is a pool of water, which leads to a submerged cavern with spikes and Metall Swims, some of which have a darker palette (but no actual changes). Shortly afterwards is a fight against a Truck Joe, with a spiked ceiling and a small platform on top. With little room to fight the miniboss in, the safest option is to stay on the platform and attack with weapons that will hit the Truck Joe from above, such as the Homing Sniper or Salt Water. After defeating it, Mega Man reaches a checkpoint, and eventually climbs out of the water and back into Needle Man's stage, where an Elec'n ambushes him from above. Here, he can either fight a Dachone head on, or avoid it by taking a higher route with Needle Presses. A nighttime outdoor area appears, with stacks of Junk Blocks in the way while Nitrons fly by. Each stack comes in sets of twos; Junk Blocks constantly fall from the sky, with one landing on the rightmost stack, while the next is caught by a Foot Holder and dropped onto the left. To get over a very tall wall, Mega Man must stay on top of each stack and avoid getting pegged by a falling block.

Over the wall is another checkpoint, and a very large chasm with Foot Holders flying in diagonal lines over it. Getting to the other side requires precarious jumps from one Foot Holder to the next, which is often difficult thanks to their speed. Fortunately, the Rush Jet is more than capable of crossing the gap, and allows Mega Man to avoid a Dachone guarding the boss door at the end. The level appears to end in a battle against Spark Man (whose arena has falling Junk Blocks that self-destruct into Drill Boulder fragments), but after defeating him, the floor is destroyed and Mega Man lands in an area resembling Gemini Man's stage. A short underwater spike drop follows, with two paths to take: the left one is wider and easier to enter, but the narrower one on the right drops Mega Man on a platform with a Yashichi, 1-Up, and E-Tank. On the left is a slide gap leading to a small alcove with another Needle Log.

The rest of the level is very short but deceptively difficult, with long spike jumps under spiked ceilings, all while enemies like Metall Swim and Nitrons attack from the right. Two more Dachones appear right before the end, with the boss corridor containing yet another Needle Log. The true boss of the level is Gemini Man, who is not only battled underwater, but in an arena with a Foot Holder flying up and down. Unlike every other Foot Holder up to now, this one shoots every second or so. Standing on it isn't ideal, as Gemini Man can easily hit him on it with either his clone, his body, or his Gemini Laser. Once Gemini Man is defeated, part of the right wall is destroyed, and on the other side is a small room with Needle Man himself (as a harmless NPC) and the Energy Element resting behind him.

Judge Comments

Judge Comments
ParmaJon  : 54 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 20 / 35 6 / 15 10 / 10 12 / 25 6 / 15 This one is just super super unfocused. Switching between 4 completely different tilesets feels like a bit much. Gameplay-wise, the Foot Holders are the worst offense. They move so fast that sometimes it's hard to predict where they'll be. It just becomes frustrating and not a good challenge. A lot of the rest of the level is fine, but the part where you mixed the Foot Holders and the junk blocks to get up to the one platform was legit really good. It almost felt out of place since it was such a step up. The story also doesn't add a ton to the level, just to the general confusion. I think if you mixed Needle Man and the other Robot Masters' stages to make hybrids like they took over his base, it could've been a lot better instead of just alternating. I think you did that slightly, but doing it more would've made the narrative and the gameplay actually mesh into something much better. Good attempt, but it falls short.
PKWeegee  : 63 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 18 / 35 11 / 15 10 / 10 14 / 25 10 / 15 Seeing the first rooms...I was scared that this was going to be the whole level. Thank God it wasn't. Besides the first screens, and that one other Foot Holder section, the stage was enjoyable. Shame that those Foot Holder sections weighed it down. One part that stood out to me was the combination of junk blocks and Foot Holders, as the Foot Holder dropped junk blocks onto a stack. That was pretty neat. I've said Foot Holder too much, haven't I?
M-Jacq  : 79 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 24 / 35 15 / 15 10 / 10 16 / 25 14 / 15 You've all played Mega Man Maker, right? So you're all familiar with the kre8iv boss arena - e.g., the room where you fight Cut Man on a conveyor belt pushing you towards a row of fire pillars while a Teck shoots at you from above, or whatever. This contest has a lot of boss fights which aren't quite as convoluted, but still operate on the same principle: "can't make my own custom boss, but I can make my own custom boss *room*! That'll make my level stand out!" Well, this level has not one, but two kre8iv boss rooms, and let me tell you, I wish it didn't, because those rooms *suck* the fun out of their respective fights (and the stage as a whole). Fortunately, the rest of the level is very good. I initially was terrified of those Foot Holders, but they're actually used very well, with special care to not have them fire at you while you're timing your jumps, and with very clear "drop points" to leap from one to the other. There were also a lot of nice little split paths, and clever little "hidden" areas - I'm a big fan of that room with the trash conveyor in particular, because it really sells the idea that we're in some sort of... garbage factory, I think? In general this stage is really good at varying up the level architecture to tell a story, even without the text boxes explaining that Needle Man is being run out of his spike factory or whatever. So yes, great stage, but ugh, those boss fights. Not a fan.
Freems  : 53 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 16 / 35 8 / 15 10 / 10 11 / 25 8 / 15 Nothing infuriates me more than playing a level that seemed to be a rather decent length and then suddenly for absolutely no reason, "ehh, here's another tiny section with Gemini Man because why not". Absolutely pointless and just drags out a level for no good reason. It's all about self control. For the level itself, enemy placement was alright but nothing really stood out to me, the junk block gimmick was hardly relevant except in one situation where it was combined with a Foot Holder (which was nice). The fact that the Napalm Man caves were mostly underwater was a little strange from both an aesthetic standpoint as you really couldn't tell outside of entering and exiting, and how the underwater gimmick seemed to negate a few of the level's own designs (why was there a Foot Holder moving up and down to act as a platform when underwater physics means I can just jump up normally?) and jumping on Foot Holders zooming at 3000 miles per hour is... not a great time. Really, I just don't know why this level was so all over the place. The whole Napalm Man caves really didn't do much for the level at all when you could have been trying to think of more interesting uses of the Junk Blocks or even the Foot Holders besides "gotta go fast". More time on interesting setups like that, less time on surprise Gemini Man area.

Notes

• The level gets its name from Mega Man 3's Japanese subtitle, often translated as, "The End of Dr. Wily?!".
• A secret developer room can be accessed by jumping over the Energy Element at the end and using an invisible teleporter. Inside are various attempts at cut ideas for the level, such as Junk Blocks that could be broken by jumping into them a la Brick Blocks from Super Mario Bros..