Mega Man 2 Any% Difficult FAQs

Q. What is the WR?
A. 26:37.0 by coolkid (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpeNgXNeXWM).
My Personal Best is 26:37.1 - I am behind by 10 frames, or 0.16 seconds.


Q. What is your goal time?
A. Provisionally, 26:29. In actuality - a run that I'm truly satisfied with.


Q. How does the Japanese version compare to the US version? Are you playing on Normal or Difficult mode?
A. Here's the full situation. The Japanese version (Rockman 2) only has one difficulty setting, while the US version (Mega Man 2) has Difficult and Normal modes. The gameplay in Rockman 2 is exactly the same as that of Mega Man 2 Difficult mode, but Rockman 2 is 42.66 seconds faster due to text/cutscenes. Due to this reason, no one runs Mega Man 2 Difficult Mode, as it is considered the same category as Rockman 2 but has more downtime. You may see the category I am running be referred to as "Rockman 2 Any%" or "Mega Man 2 Difficult Any%" - they are one and the same.

While US version Normal mode is considered a separate category from Rockman 2, due to a funny coincidence, the 42.66 second time gain from Japanese text is very nearly offset by the lesser amount of time spent killing bosses in Normal mode. Thus, Mega Man 2 Normal mode runs and Rockman 2 runs with equivalent levels of gameplay will be similar in final time. However, a totally optimized run of Rockman 2 will still be slightly faster than a totally optimized run of Mega Man 2 Normal mode.

Finally, Difficult Any% is considered the more prestigious and competitive category than Normal Any%. Although Normal mode has had more total runners over the years, the most competitive Mega Man 2 speedrunners have all focused their time primarily or solely on Difficult mode since about 2011.


Q. Do you run Normal Any%/Zipless/Glitchless/Buster Only or will you ever run them?
A. I may run the other categories in the future for fun to try to get a category sweep. I care primarily about trying to get the best possible time in Difficult Any%.


Q. Why do you start with stages you don't have the boss weakness for? Why this route?
A. This category makes heavy use of zips to save time, and zips generally require one of the Items in order to be executed. We save much more time by acquiring the 3 Items ASAP than we could by acquiring boss weaknesses ASAP. (Metal Blade does not save any time in any of the stages beyond boss weaknesses).

To go into more detail, Flashman's stage cannot be sped up in any meaningful way with Item-1 or Item-2, and Flashman himself can be defeated quickly with just buster shots, so we start with his stage first. Item-3, which we acquire after defeating Flashman, can be used to set up a large zip in Heatman's stage. Item-1 is then used to quickly traverse the Open Air section of Airman's stage. After we have acquired the three Items, we do the rest of the stages roughly in boss weakness order.


Q. How do zips work? Can you explain the crazy-looking zips in the Clashman/Woodman stages?
A. The game does not check if Mega Man himself is entering a ceiling, it only checks an item's placement in relation to the wall/ceiling. Once Mega Man is in a ceiling, under certain conditions, the game will try to eject him from that ceiling by moving him one full game tile (16 pixels) per frame (1/60 of a second).

This marvelous video by Bisqwit, former Mega Man 2 TASer and founder of TASvideos, explains more of the specifics behind the crazy Clash/Wood zips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOYyX4ajYtc


Q. What are the details regarding the new Wily Stages route?
A. In 2020, a strategy in Wily 4 was brought to the attention of the Mega Man 2 speedrunning community. This strategy was first deployed in paosidufygth's Rockman 2 Complete Works TAS, but we did not realize this strat could be applied in realtime until much later. Video of the strat from this TAS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oRt73cUGew#t=23m31s


The Item-1 version of the strat seen in the video is impractical for realtime, so we adapted the strat to use Item-2 instead. This saves 2 seconds over the traditional method of traversing these two screens. We then rerouted the Item-1 and Item-2 usage throughout the Wily Stages to have enough Item-2 to do this strat.

Overall, the new route saves about 1.5-2 seconds total, but it is also somewhat harder than the old route.


Q. Why are you saying "Clashman" and not "Crashman"?
A. That is how the boss is spelled in the Japanese version. The Japanese language doesn't distinguish the letters L and R. We still say "Crash Bombs" though.


Q. What is "Biggie"? What is "TAS Clash"?
A. Biggie is short for The Biggie Special, the crazy-looking series of zips and walking through walls that happens at the start of the Clashman stage. The name of the trick originates from coolkid, who found a way to do the trick consistently in realtime, and coolkid's previous Twitch username was dabigbooi. TAS Clash is simply a harder form of Biggie that saves 1.5 seconds but requires more difficult execution.


Q. Why don't you go for TAS Dragon kill/other delay scroll strats?
A. Delay scrolls are dependent on multiple extremely precise factors, including lag on screen and specific frames of the sound code. There is no known way to do any of them in realtime without getting impossibly lucky.