Air man's ultimate weapon

147th: Air man's ultimate weapon Make a Good Mega Man Level 3

Air Man did it once, and he will do it again!

Overview Creator(s): Tarkan809 Composer(s): Takashi Tateishi Statistics Scores: 18 28 57 49 37 Total: 37.80 / 100 Rank: 147th Elements: 1 Enemies: Big Eye Fan Fiend Neo Metall Pipi Sniper Joe Gimmicks: Air Tiki Melody Response Door Sheep Block Sub-Bosses: Hot Dog Bosses: Air Dab Man

Theme Music Mega Man 2 - Air Man Boss: Mega Man 2 - Boss Stage Order Location: Tier 3 Previous: The Return of Veteran Z Next: I Hope I Lose: A Grand Tale

Air man's ultimate weapon is the 147th place entry in Make a Good Mega Man Level 3. The level primarily uses the same enemies and gimmicks from Air Man's stage, albeit with a different, predominantly green tileset.

Strategy

The level begins with a straightforward path containing a Neo Metall, a Sniper Joe, and a Big Eye, in that order. The next two screens feature additional Sniper Joes, although they are less of a threat than usual due to their attempting to jump backwards in an enclosed area. The next section is a horizontal walkway containing Fan Fiends and Pipis. After this is a miniboss fight against a Hot Dog, although simply standing at the left edge of the screen allows Mega Man to shoot it while avoiding its fire completely. Falling down leads to a screen of green Sheep Blocks over spikes.

The next area features a puzzle utilizing the Melody Response Cannon's buttons to open a door. Although the cannon is absent, and with it any damage penalty from getting the combination wrong, the low ceiling over the bottom two buttons may necessitate doing that, carefully jumping off the leftmost button, or using a utility. Another screen utilizing Sheep Blocks follows, this time utilizing all four colors and spikes. After this is a stretch of Air Tikis, and finally the boss gate.

The boss fight is against a modified version of Air Man, who reveals his ultimate weapon: he dabs, as he did once before. This causes him to use a glitchy attack pattern. First, he fires a random tornado pattern that disappears after a single frame. After 1-3 patterns of this, he begins to stop time and fire three strong energy waves in a row. These energy waves deal 7 damage each, enough to reduce Mega Man to a quarter of his health with a single time stop.

Judge Comments

Judge Comments
Mick Galbani  : 18 / 100
Design Fun Creativity Aesthetics Functionality 9 / 35 2 / 25 0 / 15 4 / 15 3 / 10 Well, one thing's for sure, this level is extremely green, and... not a whole lot else. There's a few kinda unique moments, if only because I've never seen a Passworder lock without the actual cannon-meaning it's absolutely no threat, but the level is primarily encounters with generic goons or Air Man's regular goons. Unfortunately, this is nothing we haven't seen before, and even when the level adds on Sheep Blocks, it continues to be unremarkable. Probably the only thing I need to remark on is the absurd amount of green-mainly because green spikes and green all-the-other-solids equals readability havoc. The boss, however, is borderline unplayable nonsense. His regular attack spawns and dies immediately, so he's basically just dabbing uselessly. But then every so often, he'll freeze time and fire large wind waves that tear off large pieces of your health bar, and if you happen to be grounded when he does this you're pretty much dead... with no warning. When the most prominent element of a level is this thoroughly broken? And it's got nothing else going for it? It needs to go back to the drawing board.
Shinryu  : 28 / 100
Design Fun Creativity Aesthetics Functionality 7 / 35 4 / 25 3 / 15 7 / 15 7 / 10 During the process of judging these levels, we were tasked with giving each a personal difficulty score. This one got a 3/5 from me, and the one (and only) reason it even got that high is due to the boss. As far as the stage itself goes, it's pretty short with not much to talk about, save for a few aspects. The color palette is certainly one, given how...overly green the tiles are. They don't look that bad when paired with the sky background, but the indoor segments are a bit harder to look past. That aside, the Melody Response Cannon (minus the cannon) part is probably the most notable section of the stage, but not for the right reasons. Two of the buttons aligned underneath a low platform, making it impossible to jump over said buttons without hitting them. It's a very tedious segment to an otherwise bland level. As implied before, however, the boss is what really pushes it over the edge. Air Man has a plethora of problems, with the most obvious being that his tornadoes don't spawn correctly. They flash in for a split second (and can actually damage you if you're standing in a spot where they briefly appear), then immediately go away while Air Man casually pushes you back. Then there's his "air wave" attack, which does enough damage to kill you in four hits. Thankfully, it's relatively easy to avoid...until he pulls out a version of it that stops time. There's no telegraph for when he's about to do this, which means if you get frozen while facing him on the ground, you'll be losing a ton of health (or depending on how much damage you've taken prior, all of it) with no way to retaliate. Thankfully, he's incredibly weak to the Spark Chaser...which can also easily trigger a soft-lock. If you kill Air Man while time is frozen (via Spark Chaser or by just timing your shots right), the time freezing effect doesn't go away, no matter how long you wait. All things considered, I think it's pretty safe to say this could have done with a lot more playtesting.
Pachy  : 57 / 100
Design Fun Creativity Aesthetics Functionality 15 / 35 15 / 25 12 / 15 7 / 15 8 / 10 Lookie, Airy Does the Funny. Green room green spike green ladder. Simon Says miniboss with no threat of failing other than the annoyance of needing to use special weapons to traverse through the buttons without triggering them. No checkpoint after that until right before the boss. I guess this is supposed to be making fun of MM1 and 2 level design? Ehh, the stage is short enough, I guess. The Air Man fight is silly, I guess; definitely rude when getting caught by that Flash Stopper attack the first time around, being stuck and not being able to deal with the onslaught is not good boss design. Also really weird that the tornados he summons show up for one frame and then despawn immediately, can't tell if it's intentional behavior.
Flashman85  : 49 / 100
Design Fun Creativity Aesthetics Functionality 20 / 35 9 / 25 3 / 15 9 / 15 8 / 10 With 176 levels to judge, I've tried to balance detail with brevity and limit myself to around 300 words per review. That adds up to more than 52,000 words...which is longer than The Great Gatsby. And those are just the words that made the final cut. I can't tell you how many times I've revised and completely rewritten these reviews. As long as a level's premise, atmosphere, challenges, and polish give me something worth writing about, I don't mind producing another 300-odd words. Here, I'm struggling. The level is playable. It meets my expectations for length, general layout, and other fundamental aspects of design. But when competing against 175 other levels, "playable" is only a starting point. Theming, novelty, fairness, purpose - that's what I'm looking for on every screen. Color-contrasting spikes of a uniform design, two-way ladder transitions, and a boss fight with stable programming would be nice, too. From the enemies to the music, none of the elements from Air Man's level in MM2 are used in a way that feels original. The button puzzle is awkward filler; it doesn't fit with the rest of the level, there's no risk or danger involved, and the low ceiling makes some button sequences impossible without using special weapons to get around the room. Sheep Man blocks are a rough surprise for players who haven't encountered them before, and it's a shame they're never combined with any enemies. Metalls and Joes are thoroughly exhausting in these stale configurations. Air Man jokes have run their course. At least the tileset is simple and clean; the boss chamber looks particularly good.
ACESpark  : 37 / 100
Design Fun Creativity Aesthetics Functionality 14 / 35 8 / 25 3 / 15 5 / 15 7 / 10 This stage doesn't have it easy bein' green. In fact, it rather hurts the eyes at some points. Also, fun fact - when instant death spikes should probably not be the same colour as the background to which they're on. Most of this stage is just oh so very basic. The most stock of stock asset enemies, a very badly placed mini-boss, and... Well, to top the stage off, we have what is the most pointless of pointless Simon Says Doors - said section is absurd to try and navigate, and the fact the checkpoint is BEFORE it rather than after it makes dying to the Air Tikis way more annoying than it had any right to be. And then... Air Man. I mean, his sprite looks good, but it's also not yours - it's straight from Boil Man's stage in MaGMML2. And honestly - what, the, bleedin' hell. Either he freezes time, in which case he throws attacks that knock off a whopping quarter of your health and you can't even slightly avoid it, cause, y'know, he's frozen time without a tell he was going to do so... Or his attacks refuse to spawn. Yeah, obviously, not a fan of any of this.

Notes

• Hidden in the Melody Response puzzle room, on the right side of the wall, is a cameo by level's creator. When spoken to, they offer an advance warning about Air Man's ultimate technique.
• As Spin Attaxx confirms in a comment under RoahmMythril's judge comment video for this stage, Air Man's tornado projectile objects are programmed in the Megamix Engine to disappear if no instance of the "devkit" Air Man object can be found. Since "Air Dab Man" has a wholly different object that the tornadoes were not programmed to recognize, they disappear as quickly as he generates them.