Poll: Mega Man Boss Teleporters

[zonetrope]

I posted this thread on TT 2.0 a long time ago, and Talking Time came out overwhelmingly in favor of the Mega Man boss teleporter rooms. I've always dreaded this part of every Mega Man game, but the poll spawned some fun discussion that made me consider some angles that hadn't occurred to me before. So I figure, what the hey, I want to see how Talking Time 3.0 feels about this hallowed Blue Bomber tradition. What say you, Tyrants?

 

[FelixSH]

I like them. Fighting bosses in MM games is fun, especially if you can decimate them with their weakness.

I also think these fights, especially against the regular robot masters, might be my favourite part of the games?

 

[Phantoon]

Unless the weapons don't have enough energy to fully wipe out a Robot Master and it turns into an annoying war of attrition, it's fun to revisit them at full power and with knowledge of their attack patterns.

 

[nosimpleway]

I probably watch more LPs/speedruns of games than I actually play them anymore, in which case I tend to fast-forward past the teleporter room level.

 

[gogglebob]

I'd argue that the action-based Mega Man games are all about graduating from "cleaning robot" to full-on murder machine, and the teleporters are the greatest way to show how far you've come from the time you first press start to begin the adventure. Mind you, Mega Man X eventually found much better/less violent ways to show your progression (like revisiting stages to find new areas with new abilities), but in the OG franchise, introducing Metal Man to a metal blade was the best.

 

[zonetrope]

I've added an option for ambivalence, because it varies a lot by game, and I think that's actually where I lie now. It's really fun tearing through the Robot Masters like tissue paper in 2, and 11 is a fun romp with its over-the-top weapons and animations. On the other hand, I'm playing through X4 right now, and some of the Mavericks like Magma Dragoon are such a slog to fight again, alongside 7 other bosses. So I'm somewhere in the middle overall.

 

[Mogri]

They're great in the classic series, less great in MMX, where bosses have too much health. But that's not the fault of the teleporter rooms.

 

[Torzelbaum]

Unless the weapons don't have enough energy to fully wipe out a Robot Master and it turns into an annoying war of attrition, it's fun to revisit them at full power and with knowledge of their attack patterns.

For this reason I really think refight bosses should drop a large weapon energy refill in addition to a large health refill.

 

[Zef]

Love 'em. The only one I have a problem with is MM9's because, if for some reason I run out of power for Plug Man's weakness, I have to Continue and start over--I never, not even 10+ years later, figured out his pattern for a Mega Buster-only run. I can take down any other Robot Master but him.

 

[Tato]

The Teleporter Rooms are iconic at this point, but I kind of prefer the Mega Man 1 style of running into the bosses periodically throughout the final levels.

 

[Falselogic]

I'm meh on most of them. They're certainly better than the MM2 boss rush in MM3. Which is probably why we never saw that again but still see the teleporters.

 

[Nich]

I generally don't mind them except for 10, where most bosses are only weak to a weird secondary property of the weapon. They don't feel much different than buster-only fights in that game, which has always been one of the things that bugged me overall about it.

 

[Zef]

I'm meh on most of them. They're certainly better than the MM2 boss rush in MM3. Which is probably why we never saw that again but still see the teleporters.

Technically, the Doc Robots in 3 are a reprise of the "Robot Masters integrated into the main stage" approach from MM1, and MMX did the same thing Only difference is that, unlike those other two, Doc Robot stages didn't have separate bosses of their own.

 

[Regulus]

I like them, most of the time. But I prefer it if it's not in the same stage as the actual final boss, because having to redo them again if you screw up afterward kind of sucks.

They're great in the classic series, less great in MMX, where bosses have too much health. But that's not the fault of the teleporter rooms.

Yeah, there's a big difference in the design of "boss weakness" in the NES Mega Man games and the X games. In the classic games, the main idea behind weaknesses seems to be "this does an assload of damage", whereas the X series instead shifts it to "this invalidates the boss's ability to fight in some way". This is done in a few ways, but the most common is that it straight up resets the boss pattern, making for some very dull fights that take too long. It gets worse as the games go on, too, reaching a head in X5's boss refights, where they all have screen-height health bars.

 

[zonetrope]

It gets worse as the games go on, too, reaching a head in X5's boss refights, where they all have screen-height health bars.

Oh, geeze. I've held off to this point on playing past X4, and I think I'll be holding off for a while longer.

 

[nosimpleway]

Are we gonna talk about how robot masters and mavericks are more or less people, with feelings and personalities and so on, and that the boss rush involves cloning and murdering eight different individuals?

 

[gogglebob]

This is done in a few ways, but the most common is that it straight up resets the boss pattern, making for some very dull fights that take too long.

 

[Phantoon]

The only one I have a problem with is MM9's because, if for some reason I run out of power for Plug Man's weakness, I have to Continue and start over--I never, not even 10+ years later, figured out his pattern for a Mega Buster-only run. I can take down any other Robot Master but him.

And it's Plug Man that I was thinking of. I hate that guy!

 

[RT-55J]

I think a big deciding factor of how tolerable the teleporter rooms are is the how many invulnerability frames the bosses get. In games like MM2 or MM9/10/11, weapons do enough damage and can hit fast enough that they can take out the bosses in a matter of seconds. On the other hand, in MM7 bosses have very large invulnerability periods, which tend to be even longer if you use their weaknesses, leading to some very dull fights.

As for games there spread out the refights between the stages, there's also a right and wrong way to do things. Mega Man & Bass sticks all 8 refights in a songle stage, which tbqh ruins the pacing and flow. Mega Man X, on the other hand, has them split between 3 stages in reasonable proportions.

 

[conchobhar]

I voted "Nay" (the first to do so, it seems), but I wouldn't call them rehashed or tedious. To me, the problem is that it's a momentum killer: instead of pushing forward through the stage, you're dumped into a room with eight teleporters to eight bosses that you need to deal with before continuing. I think that's really boring. I don't mind fighting the bosses again (it's usually quite trivial), but I much prefer the MM1/X1 method, where the boss rematches are integrated into the stages themselves, and across the entire fortress.

 

[Octopus Prime]

I luv’em, but only with the caveat that if the boss fights stink to begin with, getting a bunch all at once doesn’t do much to make me enjoy them any more.

Or in a case like the Mega Man Zero games where you don’t typically get that much better equipped between the start and end of the game.

 

[Falselogic]

Technically, the Doc Robots in 3 are a reprise of the "Robot Masters integrated into the main stage" approach from MM1, and MMX did the same thing Only difference is that, unlike those other two, Doc Robot stages didn't have separate bosses of their own.

Oh good point! That doesn't bother me. In fact I think the rebattles would be better if there were mixed-up more difficult versions of their stages to go through instead of just the choose your own boss rush. I think the biggest issue is that the Doc Robot is too big! It messes everything up!

 

[Poster]

I guess I would be ambivalent. I mean, whatever, they are an iconic part of the sundry Mega Man series, but I also would not be too broken up if they stopped showing up. That being said:

Mega Man X, on the other hand, has them split between 3 stages in reasonable proportions.

I think I prefer this approach more than fight all eight at once like most games seem to do.

 

[JBear]

MM9... 10+ years later

Wait, what? But that's not... that can't be--

*turns to dust*

 

[FelixSH]

I luv’em, but only with the caveat that if the boss fights stink to begin with, getting a bunch all at once doesn’t do much to make me enjoy them any more.

Or in a case like the Mega Man Zero games where you don’t typically get that much better equipped between the start and end of the game.

The Zero games are an interesting case, because Zero and the bosses are faster than in the other Megaman games, and weaknesses don't work that well. Which means you need to really learn the bosses, to beat them the first time. Well, at least to a good point. So you mightt need a ton of tries, when fighting Harpuia in MMZ1 for the first time, but will beat him pretty easily the second time. Which works similar to having upgraded Megaman, except it's your own skill, not the weapon selection, that got bigger.

 

[MJG]

Wait, what? But that's not... that can't be--

*turns to dust*

Thinking about it, we're probably almost as far removed from MM9's release as MM9 was from MM6's release. Fun.

 

[muteKi]

I voted "Nay" (the first to do so, it seems), but I wouldn't call them rehashed or tedious. To me, the problem is that it's a momentum killer: instead of pushing forward through the stage, you're dumped into a room with eight teleporters to eight bosses that you need to deal with before continuing. I think that's really boring. I don't mind fighting the bosses again (it's usually quite trivial), but I much prefer the MM1/X1 method, where the boss rematches are integrated into the stages themselves, and across the entire fortress.

Yeah, this. I know it's coming and yet every time I see the teleporters in MMX2 my heart sinks a little bit. They could have done anything and they did that again.

 

[zonetrope]

I think that's part of the tedium for me. There's no interesting stage design going on, the bosses are just served up in a plain room with eight nondescript teleporters. The castle levels are already less interesting to play than the earlier ones, and this takes it to another level.

 

[estragon]

I'm ambivalent, because I think it mostly depends on how much fun the bosses are to fight. I like both the original Mega Man style victory lap where the weapons often a spammable instant win button and the Mega Man Zero version where it's a test of mastery. But I agree that the Mega Man X "watch 67 stunlock animations in a row" variant is generally dull. I also agree that I prefer them sprinkled through the final stages than 8 in a row. MM1 got it right!

But the core issue for me is just that some games have better sets of bosses than others, and this is where that really sticks out.

 

[Peklo]

I've never enjoyed them. Mega Man's overall combat mechanics aren't interesting enough to me to sustain such a prolonged, isolated focus on them, for material that's already been covered in its original, more engaging context in the game's sequence prior. They're not a great final "test" because if you're the kind of player who goes for the weaknesses, then that's sheer repetition of what you've already done with no room to apply skill into, and if you're more into Buster-only theatrics, eight of those in a row in addition to whatever the final bosses involve is too much to slog through at once. I haven't found a way to make the concept compelling or at peace with the surrounding design no matter how I've approached it and always wish it didn't exist.