Dive Man

Dive Man's stage is one of the better ones and a fairly deep experience, all things considered. It starts off with a wide open area straight out of Pirate Man's stage, and the vertical screen expansion is a nifty parlor trick the classics never saw on the NES. Again, I love the flavor of enemies brought into this hack because it allows for combinations from across various games, which opens up fresh avenues for design. I dally around a bit to show the section off. The short climb out of the water is punctuated by a rather clever booby trap of several shielded enemies, but careful firing sees you through. The clam's projectiles are perfectly suited to catch the overambitious player off-guard as they travel out surprisingly far.

Next comes the main attraction (at least as far as gimmicks) in the stage and a real masterstroke of design, precisely because it takes a very iffy idea and makes a thrilling gauntlet out of it by the simple virtue of using the right enemies in the right places. During this onslaught reminiscent of Wave Man's stage, where it was boringly handled (and insufferably handled in any other franchise occurrence), Rush Jet follows Mega Man 3 rules of always staying beneath Mega Man's position, but is relegated to one horizontal plane. You can speed up its movement accordingly by sliding. The spikes in this section are just for show. The real complication arises from three superbly chosen enemy types with three distinct timings to their movement. The dolphins jump high and continuously, the fish do a moderate hop when near Mega Man, and the joes fire upon you before speeding across the surface of the water. Three basic things that compliment each other perfectly to create several dynamic complications. You really need to keep your eyes and thoughts ahead of your hands here, because working out where enemies are going to go after they appear on screen and what this means given whatever else is present and what terrain you're facing needs to be done before they actually move. The screen's simply too cluttered and enemies are placed too deviously to rely on pure gut reaction, but because of the nature by which each enemy enters the screen, you have reasonable time to strategize where you'll be and what you'll do. I really can't praise this enough, it's incredibly satisfying to do smoothly.

This ends with a rather unthreatening but fun miniboss that combines reflex with planning like the section he bookends. Being able to shoot out a trio of birds or a joe completely at random means you need to keep enough distance on him to reasonably react, but this is complicated by his sheer size and his manner of movement across the screen. You need to identify a sweet spot to get under and behind him in between an enemy release, because he's going to close in too much to dodge said enemies before you're able to kill him. It's interesting but not very tough, and as should be the case with all minibosses, lasts just long enough to get his point across and then leave you on your way.

After a badass automated sequence (another thing the hack has a good deal of), we enter a completely visually distinct portion of the level deep beneath the ocean outside of Dive Man's base, if you want to call it that. Here we have some more familiar Mega Man 4 fare to work our way around, employed as cleverly as usual, and a very out of place enemy the designer included to give Mega Man its first ever morality system. Soon after we enter the base proper and see some niftily reworked crabs from Bubble Man's stage. Their bubbles will capture Mega Man and drag him back, which you need to button mash your way out of. The one above the large health pickup is a beautiful example of dickery. Go for that health, and you'd better move fast, or you'll probably find yourself in a bubble and on top of spikes on your way back. After this is a rather tricky combination of enemies that you need a well-placed charged shot to make manageable. The second room's even more involved, but I need to stress I don't have any problem with intricate or congested enemies as long as they're put to interesting effect and don't become tedious. This room is a matter of wits, not passive waiting. It's another good example of proper execution on a failed concept from an original game, because Mega Man 1 had these types of rooms in spades. They just rarely threatened to damage you in any remote way.

Dropping down into the first of many Game Boy Mega Man cameos (seriously, if you're at all familiar with them, just count how many enemies show up from the series) in Enker, who's marginally more threatening than he was originally, which isn't saying much. Absorbing your shots while forgetting to block the things to the effect of making a pea-sized projectile grape-sized doesn't make for effective battle strategy, and his biggest risk comes from his fairly fast movement, because he can either jump or charge forward at random. He doesn't last long enough for it to matter, but he shouldn't; he's a miniboss.

Picking up his sword (sorry, challenge purists, it's unavoidable) leads up into a completely awesome sequence. Not only is Mega Man untouchable with this shield, he also sends enemy attacks right back at them, and rebounds any enemy he touches, which makes for some beautiful chaos. You want to be very quick here, though, because you're racing to pull a Samus before the shield energy runs out. Sending that missile into the glass tube plummets us into the first of two secret bosses in this game, this one being Wave Man.

Wave Man is basically identical to his original fight, which is to say, tricky to feel out the timing for, but a joke when you realize how patternized he is. All it takes is the same basic movements to see you through his routine, and as long as you're standing still when his 'wave' surfaces, you've got nothing to worry about. The hacker gave him a scare tactic past third-health, but that's all it is, because the nature of your usual dodging will see you avoid this last attack as well. After doing in yet another cameo, we see another small remnant from his stage, and pick up the balloon, which has, predictably, been totally reworked here. We won't be seeing the last of either of those things, and we teleport directly to Dive Man from here.

Dive Man himself is another very fun, high octane, but workable fight. The name of the game here is 'safe zones'. Dive Man is fast and relentless with both his projectile and his movement, and the complicated, death-laden room layout compounds to make your life a seeming hell... until you feel things out a bit and realize that every movement Dive Man makes is very, very consistently locked on a specific path. Same with his projectile. He'll lead you with it at either flat or 45 degree angles, and as you'll quickly notice during my fight with him, his charges and leaps to and from go through the same motions every time. Of course, he can go through these motions at random, so you're still looking at a very tough, reflex-intensive fight. The saving grace is that the lava and pits are more for psychological effect than anything; it's self-evident that precisely zero percent of your battle should be spent dancing over either one if you want to dodge Dive Man at all.

The key to watch for with Dive Man are his visual cues: he has two distinct animations for a charge or a laser and gives a relatively generous amount of delay before using one. His laser, however, tracks your position quite well, so you need to be on your toes to either send it high or jump it. Other than that, you manage his mad dash around the room's two planes by simply being in the aforementioned safe spots. More than dealing with that movement, actually, these serve to castrate quite a bit of Dive Man's inherent threat. It becomes a very satisfying affair when you've realized where you're safe and when, because you can send half his attacks on a wild goose chase. When he enrages, though, you'd better start bleeding your eyes, because he doubles the speed with which he switches between attacks and gives you half the time you had to read which was coming. Overall, he's probably Ring Man's equal in challenge just by virtue of a longer-lasting fight, though there's definitely more to track with Ring Man.

Oh, and for posterity's sake, I include the Enker section without his shield. Nothing hard, but it looks sleek.