Mega Man 2/YMMV

• Alternative Character Interpretation: The ending's somber tone causes some to think that Mega Man is plagued with guilt over destroying the Robot Masters for the greater good. This interpretation was explored upon by The Megas in their Mega Man based rock opera.
• Anticlimax Boss: The Alien is much, much easier than the Wily Machine beforehand, as it attacks by firing a single bullet that is easy to dodge and flies around in a predictable pattern. It's justified however thanks to it being a tiny holographic projectile with a small cannon Wily was using as a last ditch effort to defeat Mega Man.
• Breather Boss: Flash Man is pretty much the easiest boss in the game thanks to the fact that his "attack pattern" consists of running around his stage and stopping time randomly to fire at you. He runs around in a set pattern, and only attacks after using his Flash Stopper. It's safe to say that beating him without taking no damage is a very common occurance.
  • Metal Man too. He's not as easy as Flash Man, but his Metal Blade attacks are easily avoidable. He's even easier in his rematch, where you no longer fight on a conveyor belt AND have access to his own weapon, which kills him in two shots.
  • Heat Man is a well-deserved breather after getting through his hellish stage (at least without Item 2) as he gets locked in a very simple attack pattern when you keep pressure on him.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Most of the weapons are very good, and the game is generally considered to have one of the better weapon sets. Of course, none of that matters considering the Metal Blade is insanely broken, being an omnidirectional weapon with high damage, a large bullet, and so many shots it might as well be unlimited. Many players prefer to go after Metal Man first simply because they want the Metal Blade.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Virtually ALL of the tracks, but especially the now-iconic track that plays in the first two Wily Castle stages. This game has more remixed music tracks than any other game in the franchise!
  • The music in Wily stages 3-6, however, is a reverse of this trope. It's a depressing tune, just a few notes slowly rising up in pitch to the 12th key, then restarting again. It's one of the least talked about tracks in the entire franchise and when is talked about, is generally criticized for being far inferior to everything else
• Demonic Spiders: Returning Sniper Joes, which are Sniper Joes piloting giant walkers that replace the Big Eyes from the first game. They're just as durable, and even when defeated toss the Sniper Joe pilot at you for a smaller, less irritating battle. You're better off running into them to avoid fighting them.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Air Man, mainly thanks to his reputation as a total badass.
• Even Better Sequel: One of the benchmark examples, to where at the very least the game is considered an improvement over the original in every way.
• Game Breaker: The Metal Blade. It's a weakness to Bubble Man, Wood Man, Flash Man, Metal Man himself, and the second-to-last boss, not to mention it uses a ludicrously small amount of ammo per shot, meaning it would take a conscious effort to try and deplete it of ammo! Also, unlike any other weapon in the game, this one can be thrown in all eight directions, making it much easier to strike any Goddamned Bats. Plus it can cut through lesser enemies in a row.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Tellys — small tube-like bots that infinitely respawn from holes/pipes. Avoiding them unless you need resources is the best solution.
  • Pipis. These robot birds drop eggs filled with about a dozen tiny Chibi Pipis which will Zerg Rush you. The ones in the ladder-intensive portion of Crash Man's level are especially annoying, because they're nigh-impossible to avoid without the Leaf Shield, Metal Blade, or (as demonstrated by Roahm Mythril in his Perfect Run series) the pause-fall glitch listed under Good Bad Bugs.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • When the game is paused, Mega Man's vertical speed is set to zero. Repeatedly pausing the game during a long jump will make Mega Man "glide" diagonally instead of falling parabolically, allowing for much longer jumps.
  • When pausing and unpausing, Mega Man will be in the "teleport" animation for a split second. During this time, Mega Man is invulnerable to all weapons.
  • If the game is paused while Mega Man is equipped with a weapon that uses less than one bar of weapon energy per shot, unpausing the game will "reset" the bar he's currently on, thus giving potentially infinite weapon energy for those types. In essence, this makes the Metal Blade even more of a Game-Breaker.
  • One peculiar glitch can be triggered during the Air Man boss battle: If you use Item 1 near the door inside Air Man's room, it takes you to a glitchy (but playable) version of the second Wily Castle stage, but with the tileset and palette of Air Man's level. Unfortunately, it can't be beaten, because the PicoPico-kun doesn't show up at the end, forcing you to reset the game if you reach it. See it in action here.
    • One can pull off this trick in other levels to access similar glitched up Wily Castle levels. However, the boss data doesn't load up in any of these cases, meaning getting up to that point will trap you.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The real final boss, an Alien, is killed by a water-based weapon.
• Hype Backlash: As probably the most popular game in the Mega Man series and one of the most acclaimed games of all time, it naturally tends to get this from time to time. In particular, more than a few fans consider Mega Man 3 to be the actual pinnacle of the series, and consider this game to be overly simplistic by comparison.
• It Was His Sled: No, Wily isn't actually an alien. The alien form in general counts though: back when the game came out, it was a huge surprise for obvious reasons, but now, it's one of the most famous moments in the franchise's history.
• Magnum Opus: For Keiji Inafune, to the Classic series, and the franchise as a whole.
• Memetic Badass: You can't defeat Air Man!
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Thanks to the song of the same name, you can't defeat Air Man.
  • Also, "Okkusenman", to the point that some fans think it's the name of the song (Wily stage 1) it's based on.
• Polished Port: The Wily Wars re-release gave the game a 16-bit graphical upgrade, remixed music, and a save feature.
• Signature Scene: The opening is this, to the point where anything that pays homage to the 8-bit era has a high chance of beginning with an ascending shot of a building with the hero at the top. Even the promotional video for the Mighty No. 9 Kickstarter alludes to it.
• So Cool Its Awesome: It built on the foundation of the first Mega Man game and improved its flaws every which way. The awesome music, the fact it averted the "second in the series is the Oddball In The Family" trend that Super Mario Bros. 2 (not counting the Japanese/real SMB 2, as wasn't released in the United States until 1993), Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and Final Fantasy II "started" and the fact it has a password option for players to continue playing. Which was something the first game sorely lacked.
• That One Boss:
  • Air Man, at least in the games hard mode thanks to having a tornado pattern that can't be dodged.
  • Quick Man is even worse. Not only does he live up to his name, but he is an unpredictable spaz who deals a disgusting amount of collision damage while you try your best to dodge both him and his Quick Boomerangs. It's very easy to run right into him, even moreso in his home stage where you're forced to jump around thanks to an uneven floor.
  • Without the Atomic Fire or Metal Blades, Wood Man. His shield isn't too tricky to dodge, but trying to avoid it while staying away from his falling leaves can be frustrating, especially since the leaves require pixel-perfect dodging.
  • The Buebeam Trap at the end of Wily Stage 4. Not only do you have to use Item-1 to reach the higher part of the chamber, but the boss can only be defeated by Crash Bombs, which you only get so many. If you run out, you're screwed.
    • Not to mention the only way to refill Crash Bomb energy if you run out, would be to shoot hundreds of impossibly placed Tellys and a bunch of Sniper Joes in narrow hallways, in the hope of getting those desperately needed energy capsules... yeah, you're better off killing yourself to restart the stage.
  • Wily Machine 2 has an incredibly easy first stage... but an incredibly irritating second due to using attacks with ridiculously disjointed hitboxes, as well as shot patterns that are flat-out impossible to dodge.
• That One Level:
  • Quick Man's stage is notoriously irritating without the Time Stopper. There are two segments where you have to outrun a batch of instant kill lasers coming out of the wall, and you have very little room for error — especially with the second set. If you do manage to pass through the second set, you have a few respawning Sniper Joes in walkers waiting for you.
  • Heat Man's stage becomes this during the disappearing blocks segment (unless you happen to have Item 2 on hand). Until you memorize the three tricky jumps (which isn't easy because it's somewhere around 30 blocks long), you need split second reflexes. One slip up will send you to your death. This segment makes the Ice Man and Guts Man stages from Mega Man 1 look easy. Much of this can be attributed to the fact the rhythm the blocks follow is very awkward, unlike anything else in the entire franchise.
  • Among the Wily Castle stages, stage 4 easily qualifies due to its tedious string of fall-through floors and line-guided platforms. The fact that you have the Buebeam Trap waiting for you at the end does little to alleviate the pain of playing through this stage.
  • Crash Man's stage is about near constant upward movement and is filled to the brim with enemies attacking you from above or below, usually while you're either on small mobile platforms or on ladders, meaning guaranteed lost progress whenever you get hit. Fortunately, if you have Leaf Shield, it renders the majority of these threats rather trivial.