Mega Man 1

General Tips & Glitches

Screen Wrap Ladder Grabs
If you jump off the top of a screen at a location where a ladder is on the bottom of the screen, notably in Cut Man and Wily 1, you can press Up and grab the ladder at the bottom of the screen. 
 This is considered a glitch and not allowed in Glitchless.

The Select Button
The select button is most famous for "mashing to keep hitting with Elec Beam" against Yellow Devil, but it does more than that. 
 The intended function of the Select button is to pause the game without entering the menu. 
 The specific trick against Yellow Devil is that enemy Invincibility Frames "run out" during a select pause. This allows the player to "mash" select (though it's better pressed with timing) to hit most bosses multiple times. 
 The select button can also be used to stop knockback with quick presses in places, and is in fact intentionally done in speedruns.

Route Information
Mega Man 1 All Stages has one route variation - Guts first or Cut first. The record run uses Cut first. 
 Guts first is recommended for beginners, or anyone uncomfortable with the Early Magnet Beam zip. (This also means Guts first is all but required for any glitchless or zipless speedrun). Having Guts in Cut Man's stage only affects the boss fight, and having the other 5 weapons in Guts Man's stage saves more time (primarily through Magnet beam). 
 Incidentally, this route is also boss weakness order. 
 Many years ago, magazines suggested Bomb Man first. This weakness route is valid, though slower than other routes that visit Bomb Man later. 
 Cut First Route 
 
 Cut Man 
 Elec Man (Must ladder zip to acquire Magnet Beam) 
 Ice Man 
 Fire Man 
 Bomb Man 
 Guts Man

Cut Man
Cut Man is early in the route since the nature of his stage does not give opportunities to save time with other weapons. He is also Elec's weakness, and we want to visit Elec soon for Magnet Beam, but the Elec Buster fight is a pain.

Early Screens


Cut Man
If you fight Cut Man in Wily 2 instead of zipping, the buster fight strats will be relevant. 
 Buster Fight 
 Get onto ground level and fire shots at Cut Man. Don't let him get close. When he fires the rolling cutter, jump over it. 
 There are strats for grabbing the Stage Clear Orb faster, usually involving iframes and jumping up the unused guts blocks. 
 Guts Fight 
 If you are doing Cut Second and have Guts Man's Super Arm, you can use the blocks in the left corner. 
 You can hit Cut Man with the thrown  block directly, or with the scattered debris. You can also select glitch the scattered shot to hit twice if desired.

Elec Man

Early Magnet Beam
You can grab the Magnet Beam without Guts (or Elec) by executing a ladder zip. 
 Setup 
 Get Mega Man to the top of the right ladder below the magnet beam (it does not matter how you entered the screen). To get Mega Man into the glitch position, you must push down+shoot at the same time to get Mega Man into a climbing position above the top of the ladder. Then, if needed, shoot left so Mega Man is looking left. 
 Pushing UP will zip Mega Man into the wall. 
 Grabbing the Beam and Escaping 
 Once in the wall, jump, and at the peak of the jump,  tap left. Mega Man should "get stuck" higher on the screen. 
 If you are not even with the magnet beam,  jump and land to try again. 
 If you are on the level of the magnet beam , tap left until you collect the beam. 
 Do not walk all the way out of the wall. You will not be able to zip back inside. This is the so called GDQ Jail. 
 Jump to escape (much like reseting the zip to try again). Wiggle left and right at the bottom to get out and continue through the stage. 
 An advanced strat is to jump and try to tap left again at an even higher height to escape out the top