Introduction
Mega Man: The Sequel Wars is a fan remake homebrew game for the Sega Genesis developed by Woodfrog and company. The idea was to make a Wily Wars style remake for Mega Man 4 through 6. While not all parts are complete there has been a release with the full remake of Mega Man 4 called Episode Red.
I've been looking forward to this project for a long while. I have done some small TASes of a couple of the demo builds with their EX stages. While this release doesn't have those stages there are still a lot of options to make it different from vanilla Mega Man 4 such as different characters and additional movement customization. This TAS completes the Mega Man 4 remake with Roll without any of the extra movement options turned on.
Note that this TAS was done on version 1.0 of Episode Red. The announcement of version 1.1 was made while I was working on this. Since it wasn't likely this would sync with the later version I asked the creator to make the older version available. They were kind enough to have the older version available.
The game can be downloaded for free from the developers here: https://woodfrog.itch.io/mega-man-the-sequel-wars-episode-red
Run notes
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1
- GenplusGX core
- Takes damage to save time
- Uses hardest difficulty
- Heavy luck manipulation
Game options selected
This has a fair amount of options to set. I'll note the modified ones here.
Settings preset
This is asked when starting up the game without any preexisting SRAM available. I chose Modern for mostly personal preference.
Main Menu options
This is before selecting the save files. Only the options noted here are changed.
- Screen Scroll
- Fast
This makes screen transitions faster. A small note that this is default to Normal and can be set to Slow for that more authentic Mega Man 4 experience.
- Purist VFX
- On
This turns off the effects of a muzzle flash when shooting and enemies exploding into robo-gibs. I changed this to try reducing lag a little bit.
- Boss Intro Animation
- Off
This fan remake adds new boss intros for the Robot Masters rather than them falling from above into the arena. Since those animations take extra time I turned those new animations off.
- New Boss Explosions
- Off
This fan remake adds the extended explosion effects for Robot Masters similar to the ones seen in the X games. I turned those off to speed up the game a little.
Mega Man 4 options
These are the options available when starting a new game and can't be changed after selection.
- Difficulty
- Hard
The difficulty just changes damage taken and the odds for item drops from enemies. Increased damage changes the damage route a bit, though not that much for Roll. The reduced item drops for the most part is helpful since that means less RNG manipulation needed for unnecessary drops, except when I absolutely need weapon energy drops to happen.
- Character
- Roll
This remake adds different characters to play as. Mega Man is Mega Man gameplay as you know it. Proto Man gets a shield that can reflect certain projectiles but takes additional damage. Roll gets a broom melee attack in place of the regular buster shots and can get fast horizontal movement jumping out of a slide. I select Roll for the high damage output and faster air movement.
Mechanics and Techniques
Roll and melee damage
Roll's melee attacks have that "Mega Man Zero (the first one)" property. She also gets a similar strat to Zero's SDC in the PSX Mega Man X games. Anyone who knows what I mean by either of those can probably figure out what's going on but I'll explain below for those that do not.
Normally attacks to a boss causes a fair amount of i-frames. Roll's melee attacks give a much smaller amount due to here ability to do combos on the ground. However, damage isn't evenly distributed between hits in the combo. The 1st hit does 2 damage while the 2nd hit does 1 damage. While doing the full 3 hit string is good damage there's also recovery before being able to do another action. However, the combo can be cancelled early by sliding out of it. That slide can then be cancelled by turning around. Another melee attack can be done the frame of the turn around to do extra damage. This is the fastest boss damaging method available to Roll and outpaces weapon weakness damage for the most part.
There are a couple of problems with this method. The first one is that the fastest method of slide cancelling slowly pushes Roll away from the boss and requires either extra positioning to make sure moving away is an issue or spending extra frames to adjust the cancelling to move towards the boss. The other problem is that the bosses for the most part are moving so this usually can't be done forever. Luckily jump melee attacks for Roll also have reduced i-frames on bosses and can be done every 16 frames. This is her second fastest boss damaging method available to her.
While weapon weaknesses are slower for Roll, that doesn't mean they're useless since they can be used for the final hit on a boss. There's no guarantee this saves time which I will cover later but the general time saves with them are due to the ranged properties of weakness weapons. Also worth noting that the second phase of Wily Machine 4 can't be reached just from jumping melee attacks from the floor, so I used drill bombs to take it out as other options ended up slower.
Weapon swapping
This remake supports the Genesis 6-button controller. This adds a rapid fire option as well as quick weapon swapping. The small drawback to weapon swapping is that they add 1-4 lag frames for every swap. This is the reason why beating bosses with the last hit being a weakness shot doesn't always save time.
Slide jumping
Roll can maintain sliding speed jumping out of a slide. This makes her much faster than the other characters by virtue of being able to make gaps that would be otherwise impossible to clear.
Zipping
I didn't explore too much on this since I wasn't sure if that would get patched out in the future. I did come across some of them.
Horizontal zipping is pretty understandable and reasonable to do in short bursts with the balloon. Landing on a balloon sets the player's vertical height to where the balloon top should be, even if it's despawning. Sometimes that leads to being pushed by the ceiling, dependent on the direction held upon landing. This is used primarily to jump up ladders pretty often. There's a weird quirk where I could only seem to get it to get between level tile areas but that would require someone more experienced in the field of zipping in Mega Man games.
I also found vertical downwards zipping where at certain and probably sub-pixel perfect horizontal positions, falling down the left side of a platform would cause the game to eject the player downwards faster than normal terminal velocity. While this can be used with gaps, the falling velocity gets reset upon leaving the solid walls so there are situations, such as the beginning of Cossack 4, where I found a downwards zip that was actually slower than just falling normally.
Ladders can be rapidly descended by alternating a down input and a jump input. This is similar enough to a traditional zip that I say it fits here, This also has the downside of the other vertical downwards zip where falling speed is reset.
Lag
Since this homebrew is doing a lot with the console, there's a fair amount of lag to be had. A lot of the initial game options are selected to try and mitigate some of that. Destroying enemies creates at least one frame of lag upon death, but there are cases where taking them out is faster, either to clear the way without stopping or to prevent later lag due to their actions otherwise. There are cases where switching weapons to take out enemies cuts down on more lag than generated from weapon switching.
RNG manipulation
RNG manipulation is usually reasonable to do. The sequence of inputs done before the part the RNG is called can influence what happen to a point. While the weapon switch buttons (Y & Z buttons on the Genesis 6 button pad) would also affect the RNG the switching would create lag and also swap around weapons when it's usually not desirable. For frames that require jumping with B, a down can't be pressed at the start of a jump or else it would become a slide input. Rapid fire (X button on the Genesis 6 button pad) can be paired with the regular shoot button (A button) some attacks have recovery between attacks which can be a problem if the enemy has to die some time between that recovery period.
Energy drops for the balloon are the hardest ones to get but thankfully done without slowdown. Some bosses are also manipulated to do certain actions that result in faster strategies.
The developer of this fan game has a really good breakdown of Robot Master AI in video form on YouTube.
Stage by stage notes
Pharaoh Man
This stage is done first to get the balloon as soon as possible. While there's now a weapon get screen for the balloon, the overall time saves with it alongside quick weapon switching means more time gets saved overall.
A lot of the platform riding gets skipped by slide jumping and using balloon to make more floors to slide jump from. There's still a bit of waiting for a bit due to a low ceiling with no convenient enemy to damage boost for i-frames.
Boss rooms that are entered sliding gives a more advantageous position to rush in and damage them quickly. After the initial attack, Pharaoh Man is manipulated into doing his charged pharaoh wave attack since that lets Roll just wail on him with rapid ground attacks.
Ring Man
Boss order for the most part is weakness order past Pharaoh Man with the exception of Bright Man being an option anywhere after Pharaoh Man.
The intensely heavy use of balloon starts happening here. While taking a hit to get past one of the Wall Blasters is possible, just using slide jumps to get around it is a bit faster. Also worth noting that the broom swipe has the hitbox extend a bit above Roll so switching off of balloon to take out a Ring Ring on the ascent is possible.
The Kabatoncue minibosses (the hippo that shoots missiles) are pretty much the same: use balloon to get some height and switch to the broom to get some fast hits. Once initial hits get in, break the tower down, then finish them off with the SDC. The one Whopper miniboss (the ring pile) fought is taken out with a charged pharaoh shot when it's vulnerable.
Lag can get generated by the temporarily disappearing platforms being activated which can be mitigated by having them activate later. After the second Kabatoncue fight, a couple of charged shots take care of two of the Mono Roaders, the third one avoided, and the last one taken out with uncharged pharaoh shots. Pharaoh shots are continually used in the second temporary disappearing platform section to take out stray Ring Rings to cut down on a little lag.
There's a small mistake I caught too late on the avoiding the Whopper miniboss where falling down to its area rather than doing ladder downwards zipping would allow for sooner slide jumping.
Ring Man is a very rigid fight with no real RNG to worry about. The killing blow is performed with a pharaoh shot since it's ranged and Roll needs to end the fight as close to the center of the room to save time obtaining the weapon. There's another noticeable mistake I caught too late with one of the broom swipes missing Ring Man.
Bright Man
I choose this stage right after since flash stopper isn't useful in Ring Man's and Dust Man's stage but is helpful starting with Skull Man's stage.
The long spike halls are jumped over as much as possible with slide jumps and balloon placements. Swapping off of and back on to balloon across the second long spike hall is done to mitigate lag from so many sprites on screen. The swinging platform section is slightly sped up with the last remaining balloon.
Bright Man stops the player at certain HP thresholds, so Roll doing a second hit of the ground combo ensures that Bright Man will never use it and allow for rapid hits. Bright Man is also manipulated to not jump away. The last hit is done with an uncharged pharaoh shot since it has a farther reach to the ring boomerang.
Dust Man
A couple of damage boosts are performed alongside slide jumping with the balloon to avoid waiting on the platforms that rise from the bottom of the screen usually needed to avoid spikes. This stage starts showing off doing minor horizontal zips with the balloon to jump up ladders sooner.
The ring boomerang and slide cancelled broom swipes are used to dig through the dust blocks of the crusher section. Taking the projectile shot to damage boost past the Gachappon is slightly less damage than full on contact, which is barely more survivable on Hard mode from the total damage Roll has taken. The Jumbig is manipulated to do a high jump to avoid needing a balloon. The balloon would cause a little extra lag otherwise.
I couldn't find a way to keep Dust Man always on the ground when close up so ring boomerang is used when he jumps to get some extra damage while he's out of reach. Ring boomerang is used again at the end of the fight to get the ideal weapon get position.
Skull Man
In this homebrew the shield attacker has a wider hitbox. Flash stopper is used to stop a Shield Attacker from getting in the way because the larger hitbox means it's impossible to slip past them without getting hit. A damage boost is used to get past a few of the Skullmets in the way and dust crusher takes out another one in the way due to the split shot.
Skull Man is straightforward since his pattern is pretty rigid and the jump location is a non-factor for final hit positioning due to dust crusher.
Dive Man
A small change made in this homebrew at the start of the stage allows for using balloon to go over the wall rather than having to wait and slide under. The second Moby miniboss (the whale) is slightly faster due to sliding further into the start of the fight. This is because just before the first Moby an M-422A (those jellyfish-like obstacles) guards the end of the screen and is barely dodged in such a way that having a later slide into the transition wasn't possible. The Jumbig in the stage is manipulated into a high jump. There was a vertical zip right after the Jumbig I managed in a file that was lost due to a computer crash and couldn't get again.
Dive Man's charging attack hitbox seems to have a quirk where a perfectly timed hit into a slide to avoid damage is barely possible. A pretty nasty bug I ran into with Roll and the skull shield is that after using the broom, rapidly switching to skull shield and using it the frame it's equipped crashes the game. It might be related to trying to play a shooting animation but skull shield isn't supposed to have one. Anyways, Dive Man is destroyed as close to the center as possible with the skull shield. I tested waiting in the middle and having Dive Man run into it but it ended up being about 10 frames slower with the positions used.
Drill Man
Dust crusher is used to take out one of the Mono Roaders without slowing down. Dust crusher and dive missile is used to take out rocks and enemies in the final hallway to cut down on lag as much as possible. The large rocks would split up into smaller rocks that generate lag, so taking the large rocks out early is the way to go,
Drill Man is manipulated to not dig into the ground or jump up into the air in order to maintain melee damage. Dive missile is used for the final hit from afar.
Toad Man
At the start of the stage sliding causes lag. Despite that it's still faster to slide on the ground as much as possible because there's wind that pushes Roll to the left whenever she jumps. Thus the start is fastest by sliding on the ground as much as possible and taking out enemies with sliding jump attacks.
The Escaroo minibosses (the big snails) are skipped with flash stopper as that skip is maintained in this homebrew. Flash stopper is also used in the final hallway to maintain forward momentum due to stopping the Gyotots from jumping up.
Toad Man reacts to all attack button presses which makes getting a bunch of melee attacks on him with Roll a challenge. Thus a drill bomb is used at the start of the fight to both get some starting damage on Toad Man and to get Toad Man in range for melee attacks.
Cossack Stage 1
Rain flush is used in the Mono Roader room to take out both of them in one go with minimal slowdowns and avoiding the near invincible spin attacks they do. A Ladder Press is touched due to being unavoidably in the way. The Jumbig at the end of the stage is manipulated to drop a big weapon energy refill for the balloon.
The stage boss, Mothraya, is almost always airborne, making the weak point require jumping to hit most of the time. I did manipulate the boss into using the drop down attack to get ground melee cancel attacks in for some slightly faster damage output. Ring boomerang is used for the final hit.
Cossack Stage 2
A Docron is taken out midair to force a large weapon energy refill for the balloon just before the big spike hallway. Every weapon refill is used for the balloon since they're on the way. A later one is also picked up since it's a minor detour to allow for faster vertical movement later in the TAS.
The stage boss, the Square Machine, is manipulated to reform on the first pass. Roll's damage output is enough to take out the boss in one cycle.
Cossack Stage 3
The first part of the stage can be skipped with the old wire glitch, as the developer added an easter egg that lets the player skip to the second checkpoint. Doing this in the second half, however, plays another easter egg that kills the player instead. While this might make the wire adapter tempting to grab, the time to grab it in Dive Man's stage, the new weapon get screen for grabbing it, and not being able to do the wire glitch to skip the Robot Master refights makes it not worth it.
I do a bit of playaround in the autoscroller sections while also trying to control lag. I also take the time to refill balloon ammo. At the end of the first autoscroller it's possible to climb the end ladder too early and glitch into an incorrect screen. It's possible to escape it by climbing up again where the game will eject the player back at the previous area.
The stage boss, the Cockroach Twins, needs two different approaches. The first one is straightforward as the first roach always hangs out at the top and takes air melee attacks until it falls. The second roach requires charged pharaoh shots since it starts on the bottom spikes and can't be reached by most weapons. Once it's in melee range the fight is pretty much finished, with a little bit of playaround before losing control.
Cossack Stage 4
There was a vertical downwards zip I found at the start of the stage that actually lost time due to losing vertical speed between the zips. The stage shortcut can be quickly accessed with the balloon and drill bomb. Drill bomb is used to also take out the Tom Boys immediately after. A Docron near the end of the stage is taken out for yet another large weapon energy drop for the balloon.
The stage boss, Doctor Cossack piloting the Cossack Catcher, is pretty straightforward with air melee attacks from Roll. This boss doesn't have any real weaknesses but only requires 26 damage to defeat.
Oh no it was Wily all along?!
Wily Stage 1
A Metall Dance is taken out with dust crusher due to the split shot of the weapon. Otherwise it's pretty straightforward at this point and the disappearing block rooms are all both skipped.
The stage boss, Metall Daddy, has no weaknesses. However, the boss is also pretty easy to hit with SDC strats and is destroyed before any regular Metalls get to land. A jump is needed to avoid getting stunned by the landing of the boss.
Wily Stage 2
A couple of Imorms are manipulated for weapon energy refills for the balloon. Dive missiles are used on the Mummiras to cut down on lag and the fact that missiles are the natural enemy of mummies. Dust crusher is used to take care of the Gachappons near the end of the stage without slowing down.
The stage boss, Tako Trash, has the same property in this homebrew compared to the original game. It's possible to use the ground right in front of it without getting hit so air melee attacks takes care of the boss quickly. Switching to ring boomerang for the final hit doesn't save time but doesn't lose time either so I did the switch as I have so much of it.
Wily Stage 3
Drill bomb is used for the Shield Attacker right at the start of the stage to avoid getting hit. One last weapon energy refill is manipulated from a Minoan for the balloon for a ladder skip.
The boss refights are mostly straightforward but there are a couple of key differences. The first difference is that the starting position of Roll is usually farther away that the first fights since she could slide into boss doors for a better position in the first fights. This makes some of the boss fights slightly slower. The second difference is the the ideal place to beat the boss is as close to the teleporter as possible to leave the room quicker. Boss explosions cause extra lag due to their explosion effects so it's best to mitigate them as much as possible. Dive Man is the nastiest since his death creates a fair amount of lag even before exploding the effects alongside the water creates more lag.
The stage boss, Wily piloting the Wily Machine 4, has two phases. The first one is straightforward with melee attacks to take out most of the health bar. The boss also lowers enough for SDC strats to come in. The second phase's melee weak point is out of reach for jumping melee attacks to reach without a boost. In this phase, Roll switches over to drill bombs since the explosion seemingly affects any part of the boss it connects with. This was faster than having to use Tango coil or jet for a boost and there wasn't any balloon ammo remaining.
Wily Stage 4
This is a straight shot right to the final fight with only some Imorms getting in the way. Nothing really noteworthy.
The final boss, the Wily Capsule, is only vulnerable to certain weapons. Charged pharaoh shots are the way to go here. Unlike the original Mega Man 4, it's not possible to get double hits on the capsule in this homebrew due to the change in the boss vulnerability window and boss invincibility frames from being hit. The last frame of input shoots a charged pharaoh shot as early as possible with an ideal capsule position that was manipulated. If I was doing a multi-part run that also showed the endings Roll would be positioned at the correct room placement for the cutscene.
Possible improvements
- Known improvements
- Pretty sure that dropping down to the floor on the second ring pile miniboss in Ring Man's stage would be faster since sliding would be done sooner
- I didn't catch missing an attack on the first Ring Man fight until way later. Due to RNG I'd be better off just starting a newer run than trying to completely fix that now
- Other possible improvements
- Faster boss fighting strats and better post-boss positioning could save a little time
- This game has a lot of lag and better lag management would be a key component
- Better ammo management for the balloon to get better boosts
- There were some places where I managed to get a vertical downwards zip that might be sub-pixel perfect, though one of the ones I did find ended up being slower due to fall speed resetting after getting out of the zip
- Having balloon ammo for the second phase of Wily Machine 4 might be helpful since it's possible to get 3 melee hits on the boss with a boost. The problem of course would be the need for more balloon ammo
- I know from Baddap1's TAS of one of the demos that horizontal zipping was a strong tool but I didn't check that hard to see if it can be done as much in this build
Despite all of that I feel real good about this TAS since it's a pretty good benchmark for what future TASers of this should expect.
Probably also worth noting that some of the tricks and techniques used in this TAS might not exist in later versions of this homebrew as it's still in development for the remaining parts.
Special thanks
- Woodfrog and the Sequel Wars team for making this incredible homebrew fan game
- Baddap1 for their TAS of one of the older demos showing me what can be done
- Tiancaiwhr for their NES Mega Man 4 TAS
feos: Claiming for judging.
feos: Great run, accepting.
despoa: Processing...