Welcome to the Mega Man Legacy Collection Companion Guide!

If you've never played a Mega Man game before, or have played others but not the original series, skip to the "New to Mega Man?" section before reading on.

In each game's section I will supply a chart which will give you a suggested stage clearing order; which weapons are effective against the bosses; and also some endgame boss weaknesses as well. After that, I will list a few general tips that you may find useful if you are a Mega Man rookie.

After the individual games you'll find a section showing various glitches (including the famous Yellow Devil quick kill); a note for series newcomers; and finally a troubleshooting guide with some technical advice and some useful software.

Enjoy the guide!

• 6 Robot Masters
  
• No E-Tanks
  
• No password system
  
• Has a score system, the only game in the classic series to do so
  
• Unrefined and 'slidey' play control

• Be sure to grab the Magnet Beam from Elecman's stage, or else you won't be able to progress in Wily's Castle.
  
• Use the Magnet Beam to traverse the tough disappearing block areas.
  
  
• Conserve your weapon energy in Wily stages as there are parts you'll need it all. Although, if you find yourself low just die and choose continue to be restocked.

• 8 Robot Masters
  
• Password system added
  
• E-Tanks for refilling Mega Man's health energy
  
• E-Tanks aren't stored between sessions or after continuing
  
• North American version with two difficulty levels, Normal (easy) and Hard (normal Mega Man difficulty)
  
• Contains one of the series most famously powerful weapons, (M) Metal Blade

If you want a difficulty consistent with the rest of the series, choose Hard.

• Don't forget you can charge the (H) Atomic Fire weapon up for a more powerful shot!
  
• You can use Bubble Lead to detect holes in the floor...
  
• Use your (M) Metal Blade! It's one of the most useful weapons in the game! It can shoot in 8 directions, making quick work of minor enemies above, below or in front of you. It's also useful on many of the bosses.

• 8 Robot Masters + 8 repeats from Mega Man II (split into 4 stages, 2 per)
  
• E-Tanks won't be lost when continuing
  
• Refined control: you won't slide after stopping movement. Also a small delay added where you can't fire immediately after turning around
  
• Some interesting 'cheats' while having a second controller plugged in...
  
• Introduces the slide move to the series
  
• Seems to have the most slowdown of the NES series

• 8 Robot Masters
  
• E-Tanks are not saved between sessions but won't be lost when continuing
  
• Mega Buster charged shot debut
  
• First appearance of Eddie
  
• New story characters such as Dr. Cossack and Kalinka
  
• Higher level of graphical polish than first 3 games, and less slowdown

• Find the Baloon adaptor in Pharaoh Man's stage
  
• Find the Wire adaptor in Dive Man's stage

• 8 Robot Masters
  
• Introduction of Beat

• Find one letter in each Robot Master stage to spell out MEGAMANV in order to get the Beat adaptor
  
• Find an M-Tank on Crystal Man's stage

• Introduction of Jet Mega Man form
  
• Introduction of Power Mega Man form
  
• The mysterious Mr. X

Coming soon (really)

• Defeat the "true" bosses to spell "BEAT" and gain the Beat Adaptor
  
  • Take the bottom path in Tomahawk Man's stage to find "B"
    
  • Take the upper path in Yamato Man's stage to find "E"
    
  • Destroy a block near Knight Man's door to find the "A"
    
  • Enter the upper lair in Centaur Man's stage to find the "T"
    
• Climb an out of reach ladder in Tomahawk Man's stage once you have both Jet and Power forms to find Energy Balancer inside a cracked rock

In Mega Man, you can get an easy kill on one of the game's toughest bosses by utilizing the pause trick. First, dodge the initial onslaught of blocks flying at you. Next, when Yellow Devil opens his eye, hit it with (E) Thunder Beam, and just as the bolt hits the eye, quickly *pause the game. Next you'll want to rapidly pause and unpause while the bolt is over the Devil's eye. Do it fast, but if you mash too quickly it won't register.

*Note that you have to use the actual pause key, which is bound to 'LB' on an XBox controller and 'L1' on a Playstation controller by default, not the 'Start' menu

(E) Thunder Beam can also be used in conjunction with the pause trick to quick-kill many tough enemies and bosses. Experiment and find out. See Yellow Devil easy kill above for details.

In Mega Man III, a few different cheat type effects can be activated by using a second controller.

• Hold RIGHT to allow a super high jump, which you can use to jump out of pits (not spiked ones)
  
• Hold UP for slow-motion
  
• Hold UP and A to freeze everything

I haven't been able to access these in the PC release, though I did read one instance where some of the effects happened to a player. It does work for sure on console releases of Legacy Collection.

More to come...?

When dealing with ports or emulation of old games to a new platform, sometimes we get some added input lag. Input lag is not your framerate, or the slowdown caused by NES hardware, rather it's a small delay between pressing a button and an action happening on screen. Various things can cause input lag (even your monitor can add up to 30ms of input lag depending on the quality), and there are a few steps to take to reduce it as much as possible.

• Use a natively supported controller (such as the Xbox 360 pad). 3rd party remapping solutions such as joy2key, while great if they are your only option, can add a few ms of input lag.
  
• Plug that controller into a USB port that is directly connected to your motherboard, rather than a port on the front of your case. The difference in most cases (heh) is negligable; but it may help.
  
• Disable Steam overlay. It doesn't add much, but if you're super sensitive about it you may notice an improvement.
  
• Using an nVidia graphics card? Visit the card's 3d settings panel and add a profile for MMLC. Then change "Maximum prerendered frames" to 1. There's a similar option for competitors, I'm just not sure what it is.
  
• Turn VSYNC off in the game options. Then play fullscreen. If you play windowed or fullscreen windowed, your game will still be synced to your desktops refresh rate and probably still feel laggy. Personally I suffer the slight lag and play fullscreen windowed (with VSYNC off anyway) because I hate the tearing on fullscreen.

Sadly, as is the case with many modern games, MMLC seems to only support XInput controllers (such as the XBox 360 pad) natively. If you don't have a supported controller, there is hope. You can use a 3rd party keyboard emulator software. Here are a few:

• Joy2Key[joytokey.net] I use this one frequently.
  
• XPadder[sourceforge.net] Older, but may work on newer OS's with tweaks
  
• TocaEdit XBox 360 Controller Emulator (or x360ce)[www.x360ce.com]

You can find your savestates and options file in your userdata folder. On my windows 7 machine it's located at C:\Users\myusername\AppData\Roaming\megaman. A shortcut to get there is just hit Windows Key+R, then type %appdata%\megaman.

The individual game savestates are clearly named

MegaMan-00.sav (Mega Man)
MegaMan3-00.sav (Mega Man III)
..and so on

and your game options are stored in

Options.sav

Some users have found it helpful to delete the options file after a crash to allow the program to run again.

Under construction

If you have never played a Mega Man game until now, you are in for a treat. That is, if you like old school platformers with tight control and a nice challenge.

As some general advice to a newcomer, I reccomend the following:

• Don't use glitches or cheats your first time through.
  
• Try to find the robots' weaknesses on your own before looking them up! Most of them are logical when you think about it (at least in the early games).
  
• Don't skip Mega Man 1! Many suggest this, but other than slightly looser controls, it's a fine game and will let you build a solid set of skills to enjoy in Mega Man 2 (series favorite of many) and onward.
  
• Don't let yourself get frustrated! They are hard games at first, but actually easier than they seem initially.
  
• Don't be afraid to use your acquired weapons during the stages! There's usually plenty of energy refills and every enemy in the game (not just bosses) has a weapon weakness.
  
• Try not to abuse savestates. Though you may have to replay some sections after dying, this will help grow your platforming skills.
  
• Write down or take screenhots of your passwords, just incase any save you're using gets corrupted or lost. Or just use passwords exclusively, like the old days :)

The reasons I suggest not using glitches, and not skipping Mega Man 1 are simple. You'll get to play the series in order, build skills, and appreciate your victory when you crush Yellow Devil and Wily for the first time! Of course, it's totally up to you; it may be more fun to take advantage of glitches and save states. Maybe Mega Man 1 is too annoying for you and you want to skip it. As long as you are enjoying yourself that is what matters. If you get discouraged during the first game, just know the control and level quality improve dramatically as the series moves on to number 2!

Thanks for reading my guide! I am trying to play through the games as I am writing the guide so I can test and confirm things as much as possible, as I haven't played Mega Man's classic series since the 90's (other than a little while with the Anniversary collection).

I am trying to keep the guide concise and not overloaded with every little tip and trick, but I like to have the major stuff. If there are any suggestions, please leave a comment.

Mega Man 1-5 are in, and 6 will be added soon.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has figured out a way to get the MMIII 2nd controller cheats working on Steam release.

Special thanks to:

• Whygee, for some suggestions and a correction

• Sep. 05, 201X - Added Mega Man V section. Seperated Cossack / Wily charts in applicable sections.
  
• Sep. 03, 201X - Added Mega Man IV section. A couple error corrections and additional info for MMII. Cleaned up some charts and seperated Wily boss fights.
  
• Sep. 02, 201X - Initial release.