Gate 303

I'll beam you out after I finish my soap opera.

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Gate 303 Make a Good Mega Man Level 3 Judge Application Levels

Behold! The title drop!

Overview Creator(s): ACESpark Composer(s): Andreas Viklund Statistics Elements: 1 Enemies: Crabbot Crazy Cannon Docron Lightning Lord Metall Mousubeil New Shield Attacker Pandeeta Pickelman Bull Returning Sniper Joe Twin Roader Gimmicks: Elec Block Guts Lift Key Barrier Sub-Bosses: Big Snakey Hot Dog Squidon Tama Bosses: Plant Man Gemini Man

Theme Music Daydreamer / Gate 303 - demomix Stage Order Previous: Space Crusade Next: Universe City V

"Gate 303 was designed to exist. I'm amazed people get as much out of the level as they do."

―ACESpark on Gate 303

Gate 303 is the fifth level in the MaGMML3 Judge Application Levels. As stated above, ACESpark designed it to be a completely unremarkable, uninteresting level; however, it contains a glaring oversight that significantly alters how players approached it, and judges who caught this were certainly noted for their astuteness during the judge-selection process. The first half of the level contains platforming challenges revolving around Guts Lifts suspended over Elec Blocks, and the second half contains a myriad of different enemies and midbosses, some of which hold keys that are required to unlock the titular gate at the end of the level.

Strategy

• In the second half of the level, the Pandeeta, Lightning Lord, Docron spawner, Hot Dog, and Big Snakey are the key-holding enemies. However, two of these enemies (the Pandeeta and the Docron spawner) will respawn when scrolled back onscreen after being destroyed, allowing the player to get infinite keys from a single enemy.

Judge Comments

Judge Applicants' Comments
Pachy  : 35 / 100
Well, it's a really short stage that ends with a very small boss gauntlet, with rather strange music choice. The theme of the level is straight-forward: Go through a session of elecbeam traps, shoot the miniboss guarding a key at the end of it, then proceed. At first I thought the approach of killing the miniboss right in front of the gate seems a bit strange (Maybe to prevent players from damage boosting everything?), then at the last session, random selected enemies start to drop keys too, to open the 5 gates at "Gate 303". This could have been a very neat concept if the player were to be assigned a task to scavenger hunt for the keys, but as the current stage goes, you only have to kill all the enemies on a linear path to get everything needed. Nothing much to say about the stage otherwise, a lot of the enemies don't really pose a threat (some even very happily scroll themselves off the screen), and it just seems like you wanted to fit every minibosses into one level. Try not to make your levels feel too linear, adding in more platforming and enemy challenges could also help spice up the player's experience.
Samario  : 58 / 100
This stage is really a good example of a stage that could have used a bit more playtesting. It has a fine gimmick in the combination of the Elec Man zapper and Guts lifts, as well as a seperate one in the section where you must collect 5 keys from enemies and midbosses in order to open the titular Gate 303 and access the boss. This all sounds fine, in theory. The main problem, and this is quite a severe one, is that enemies that hold keys *respawn*. Due to how keys work, this allows you to obtain an infinite amount of keys from a single enemy. This infinite key trick leads to other odd effects, such as the key hovering over Mega Man waiting to be collected if you already have 7 keys, as well as allowing you to skip Gemini Man completely as the Energy Element is within the room, but guarded by a key door. Plant Man cannot be skipped similarly as the boss doors lock. The only other minor issue is the unfitting midboss selection, which seems to be "all of them". It could have done with some edits of other midbosses to fit the theme.
M-Jacq  : 25 / 100
Good level design doesn’t require flashy gimmicks, which is good news for Gate 303, because its main gimmick boils down to “destroy enemies to progress.” Oh, there are some MM1 gimmicks in the first half of the level, but they’re used so sparingly that they may as well not even be there. Now, the thing that makes the level infuriating rather than merely “meh” is its boss fights. Now, I can forgive the lack of a boss corridor, meaning that when you die you respawn inside the first boss room. And I can ignore that putting two Robot Master fights one after the other without a health refill or checkpoint in between is a lazy way to add artificial difficulty. No, here’s what astonished me. In the room before that, with the five keys, one of the enemies that drops keys is a Docron Spawner… which can respawn. So you can just keep killing and respawning it to get an arbitrarily large number of keys, which you can use to skip the Gemini Man fight altogether. Uh… whoops? I’m kind of glad such a glaring oversight is in the stage, because otherwise I’d have very little to say here.
PK  : 49 / 100
I can see why you would want to use keys to lock the next part of the stage. But making that your main ,,gimmick’’ seems a bit weird, especially considering that you used some other gimmicks for no real reason, other than to have them there. The whole key thing isn’t really that bad for the first few screens, as the enemy with the key is close to the actual door. But for the last one, I can see it getting quite annoying if you choose to skip fighting enemies, just to realize that you need to backtrack to grab all the keys. Enemy selection in itself seems a bit weird, with a lot of enemies being used only once. In general, the stage feels quite short, so maybe only using one boss at the end except of 2, and replacing the second one with another level section might have been a better choice. Oh yeah, we get 2 devkit bosses here, with no real health regeneration between the 2. Plant Man also seems kinda unfit for the room you put him in, as he can easily corner you in the right hand side of the room. The 2 bosses add nothing original to the level, so you might as well not have had them there, or at the very least, only one.
Flashman85  : 46 / 100
This could have been a fun romp through a robot-ridden airport, with our hero on a scavenger hunt for the keys that unlock Gate 303, where an airplane or aviation-themed boss lies waiting. Instead, it's a well-meaning collection of rookie mistakes. The stage starts out well enough: pleasantly backgroundy music, unremarkably but competently used vanilla graphics, and a few simple challenges with a very gentle learning curve. I like the use of the Elec beams as a less punishing alternative to floor spikes (though it looks odd to have the beams overlap with the floor; either give them more space or hide them behind a higher-priority floor tile). Combining them with Guts platforms is a decent idea, and WAIT THAT'S A SOLID WALL NOT A BACKGROUND TILE OH THE ELECTRICITY IT HURTS. Suddenly, the exceedingly gentle learning curve is gone. It's never demonstrated that Guts platforms can pass through solid walls, so it's an even worse shock (literally and figuratively) when you're dumped off. It's not long before you're thrown into a tricky timing challenge involving sliding, falling a fair distance, and dodging Sniper Joe bullets—none of which has been required previously in the stage—while also avoiding an Elec beam trap. And I should mention that the Elec beams across the stage are inconsistent about whether they fire constantly or are on some kind of timer. One enemy after another is introduced in a way that assumes the player already knows how to handle these foes. Never seen a Shield Attacker? Too late; you got hit. What's a Pandeeta? It's that thing you almost fell on, which is now shooting you at unnecessarily close range. Worse yet, these enemies are never seen again. I can easily imagine an inexperienced player getting smacked around the entire stage, never truly understanding how to deal with all this pain. Fortunately, the stage is a wholly appropriate length, and checkpoint placement is good. The last area before the bosses is simultaneously the best and worst part of the level. On the one hand, it's a neat idea to have the player clear out every last bad guy in a large room to collect enough keys to proceed. On the other hand...the whole room is a mess, with enemies all over the place and no real structure to the challenges. Not to mention that the key doors come AFTER you get all the keys (a recurring theme here), which kind of defeats the purpose of having key doors. Although it is easy enough to avoid the enemies and then need to backtrack to get the keys, but that also feels like a waste. Tease the player with a locked door, THEN let them look for the key. At least there's a boss fight behind all those locked doors...except it's the same Plant Man fight we got in MM6. Devkit bosses are fine, but do SOMETHING to set them apart. Bringing in those Elec beams or Guts platforms might have been good. Cutting the second boss fight also would have been good; Gemini Man is pure padding, and the lack of a checkpoint at the start of his battle is a bit of an oversight. There's no thematic connection between Plant Man, Gemini Man, and the rest of the stage...though the stage doesn't really have much theming to begin with.

Trivia

• The first half of the stage was designed by ACESpark as the intro level for a cancelled fangame. Said fangame is also the source of the tileset for his Null and Void level in Make a Good Mega Man Level 2.