To make a good video game you need to play a lot of games. Mega Man games are some of the best games on the planet. So I’m gonna beat every single Robot Master from every single Mega Man game and rank them all here. I’m also beating every boss with the mega buster alone, no master weapons allowed. In games where you can choose between Bass, Mega Man and Proto Man I’m choosing Mega Man. Despite taking double damage, I find the fights as Proto Man way easier. The mobility the slide provides allows you to easily evade things that can be challenging to evade as Mega Man.

I’ll start with Mega Man 10 (but I’ll collect all these articles together at the end):

Solar Man

Difficulty: A+

Pray to the gods of random number generation because most mega buster only battles with this guy are unwinnable. He jumps between six positions on five platforms, whereas it’s quite easy to detect when he’s doing a short jump, when he’s jumping three to five spots away it’s hard to tell the difference. By the time you’ve realised he’s jumping to the left-most platform instead of the one to the right of it you’re too late, there’s a very good chance you’ll be hit. Six hits and you’re dead. Yet it’s so hard to shoot him because most of the time he’s on the ground he brings up a shield, and when you shoot that shield you charge his shot up making it twice the size and even more difficult to avoid. During the majority of his jumps he fires one or two shots towards the ground and when they hit the ground they split apart and go in both directions horizontally. When he fires two shots towards the ground it’s so difficult to avoid, you’re going to be hit most of the time. If he does this six times in your match, your probability of winning is near zero. Due to how difficult it is to tell the distance of his long jumps a good strategy might be to stay near him. You can always react to the short jump and move out of the way of his body. However he might choose to jump over you and to the platform beside you and fire a shot down into your head that is almost impossible to avoid. If he fires two shots to the ground while jumping over you, no matter what platform he jumps to, there’s a very good chance you won’t be able to avoid one of the six projectiles this creates. An alternative strategy is to stay in the middle platform since it’s wider than the others. Most times you won’t have time to react quickly enough to get off the platform to avoid his body but you might be able to get far enough along the platform to be able to avoid his descent, but then you’ll need to get off the platform as quickly as possible as he’ll put his shield out towards you and it’s so large it will hit you. It takes so long to kill him due to how long he spends shielding, you have to develop excellent timing so that you can shoot him on his way down from his jumps. The length of time it takes to defeat him together with the number of unavoidable attacks he makes leads to this being the hardest robot master fight in the game by far.

Nitro Man

Difficult: B-

I love a robot master with a line down the middle of his energy bar. There are a few in the entire series and in this case, it really fits the racing aesthetic. This master has three phases. One involves turning into a motorcycle and driving back and forth. It’s very easy to jump over him and pump him full of shots while he’s doing this. Another involves him driving up the wall and then firing two wheels at the floor at a 70 degree angle. Each of them hits the floor about 15% of the distance from the wall, bounces towards the middle of the arena, and then moves along the ground towards the opposite wall. Stand next to one of them and let it bounce over you. While this happens Nitro Man will jump to the floor and fire a similar shot towards you. When these wheels reach the walls they ascend them and when they reach the ceiling they fall down right to where Mega Man is standing. This will happen while he’s back in phase one making it slightly more challenging to dodge both his body and the wheel shots but most of the time it’s not too hard. The final phase basically involves him leaving his motorcycle form temporarily and firing one or two wheel shots, adding to whatever wheel shots already exist in the stage. Like his other wheel shots, they move along the ground, go up the wall and then drop down targeting your position. This is the only behaviour that can create troubles as it might lead to four of his shots on the screen making it more challenging to avoid his body and the other shots. Occasionally it’ll be almost impossible to avoid his body and the shots but you can improve your chances by moving horizontally about the arena as much as possible.

Chill Man

Difficulty: C+

He skates around the ice and shoots at you, the first shot is always a low shot which covers the ground in ice for a short time and damages you if you touch it. The second shot is always a higher shot. Never jump after he fires the first shot as the second shot will hit you. Never be close to him when he fires as either shot will most likely hit you. You’ll spend most of the match jumping over his head and then trying to run as far away from him as possible before he shoots you. When you manage to get away from him you can take advantage of the skiddy ice to slide away from him while facing in the opposite direction and firing at him. Occasionally it’ll be almost impossible to dodge his shots and when they hit you they freeze you making it fairly likely he’ll be able to hit you a second time. This match would be quite difficult if it wasn’t easy to pump his body full of shots in a short time.

Pump Man

Difficulty: C

You can’t avoid getting hit by his projectiles in this battle but you can do a lot to improve your chances and you can dodge 100% of his jumps with fairly good timing. The master does 1-4 jumps, about half are short hops, the other half are long jumps. After this he fires 9 curving projectiles that span the screen. Then repeat. That’s it. The problem is, the short hop is impossible to avoid from mid distance. You have to be so far away he can’t reach you, or really close so you can react to it and walk under him. That would be no problem except the projectiles have the opposite problem, the closer you are the harder they are to avoid. When the master does a short hop from close range followed by the projectiles you have almost no chance of avoiding the projectiles. If you try to stay far away at all times, the master might jump right next to you, and then do a short hop, now you’re likely to get hit by the projectiles again. If the master manages to jump on top of you, and then follows that up with a short hop, you’re almost definitely gonna be hit twice as you won’t have enough time after the hit-stun to avoid the short hop. Maybe he’ll even do a second short hop, leading to a third unavoidable hit: half your energy gone in a few seconds. The best strategy is to try to stay as close to him as possible at all times and then run like hell if you see him jump up to fire the projectiles. Half the time the projectiles are gonna hit you but they do less damage than the master’s body so you’ll be more likely to stay alive long enough to kill him. You can also shoot the projectiles off him while he is jumping, try to do this as much as possible. Less projectiles equals less chance of getting hit, although unless the projectiles you shoot off him are in the lower four positions it won’t help. The main reason this match isn’t rated more difficulty is due to how easy it is to stand next to him and pump him with shots. From the right distance you can even shoot him while he’s shielded without getting hit: your hurt-box doesn’t touch his hitbox but your mega buster arm extends into his shield where it can’t be blocked. You can kill him so quickly that it’s very unlikely for him to be able to wear you out otherwise this match might be harder.

Side note: I love the way he pumps his own head. Although it looks really… wrong. Masturbatory or something.

Sheep Man

Difficulty: D

I beat him on my second attempt (my first with full energy), his patterns are very easy to learn. When the clouds come up you might be lucky enough to be in a position where they won’t even hit you. If you can’t then timing your jump to hit the ground blast around where the lightning strikes is pretty easy. As long as you are weary of the last lightning strike, which sends lightning out across the whole floor in both directions, you can usually beat him without taking damage. The only thing that is sometimes difficult to avoid is when he shoots the quick curving lazer. It takes a few frames to recognise whether it’s the high-arching or low-arching shot. Since the high-arching shot is much slower it’s fairly easy to duck under but the low-arching shot is so quick it’s hard to react to and jump over. Coupled with the precise timing needed to jump over that shot it can be a challenge. He’ll probably only have time to fire off about 2 or 3 in the match so you’ll be fine. One thing to be cautious of, but easily avoided, is when you see two clouds near each other, do not stand under them. If they fire their blasts one after the other then as you jump the first ground blast you have a good chance of landing on the second one.

Strike Man

Difficulty: C

He fires one of two shots, either jumping in the air and firing diagonally down or firing a shot right across the floor. When the shot hits the wall it bounces and continues to bounce about the arena until it bounces of the final wall, glows a bit, and defies physics to bounce towards Mega Man no matter where he is standing. While the ball is bouncing around the robot master does two jumps which both travel about 25% of the distance along the arena. You’ll need to keep moving to avoid the physics-defying bounce so you can’t just stay in the right location to duck under his body or the ball will definitely hit you. I’m pretty sure it’s possible to avoid any damage but certain positions make it much harder to dodge both the master together with his ball e.g. if you get stuck against a side and he throws a ground shot towards you.

Blade Man

Difficulty: D+

It took me a while to learn this guy’s routines but once you do it’s fairly easy to take him out without taking a hit. When he jumps on the wall above you, if you do a short hop out in front of him and fall back below him it’ll trick him into throwing his blades across the screen where they can’t hit you. When he is on the opposite wall he’ll either quickly transition to the top, or pause on the wall for a while and then jump towards quickly you. I thought the latter was almost unblockable as he dashes at you quickly, but as soon as I realised the delay on the wall happens before he dashes it became easy. You can walk towards him and then jump in the opposite direction as he charges at your previous position. The projectiles themselves are fairly easy to avoid, you just need to learn where to stand. Defeating him unlocks my favourite weapon in Mega Man 10, it’s really useful and has low energy consumption without being too overpowered (looking at you: bubble shot).

Commando Man

Difficulty: C+

I had a lot of difficulty with this guy at first because I thought you had to time your jumps to both avoid the “ground shaking” effect (which traps you in hit-stun) as well as jump over the missile shock waves. That’s actually possible but the timing needed is ridiculous. Instead if you just run towards the missile to get it to drop and then jump backwards you’ll avoid the hit-stun from the ground shaking and be far enough away the shock waves can’t touch regardless of your height from the ground. When he traps you at the side it’s very easy to just walk underneath him while he hovers but if he fires a shot along the ground you’ll get hit by the shock wave created when the missile hits the wall. This happens rarely enough that it probably won’t stop you draining his energy before he defeats you. I’m glad this master isn’t so difficult because the stage is the hardest robot master stage in the game by far! There’s so many ways things can push you into holes for an instant kill, especially annoying are the parachute robots that jump out of the holes in the ground. If I was including the stages in the rankings then this one would be an A+, but the master himself is fairly easy, if not as pitiful as Sheep Man.