General Information
Routes
Zips or Zipless
The major difference of the routes is zips. With zips, your route is focused on acquiring Item 1 as fast as possible. Without zips, item 1 is less important.
Yes-Zips
- Flash
- Depends
- Fastest: Heat then Air
- More accessible: Air then Heat
- See above
- Crash
- Quick
- Metal
- Wood
- Bubble
This route is focused on getting Item 1 quickly. It starts with Flash to get Item 3, needed for the Heat Man zip. WR pace goes to Heat second and executes "Fast Air". Slightly slower overall (with a much slower Air and a much fast Heat) is Air second and Heat third, using item 2 to skip the Yoku Block section.
Wood could be significantly earlier, if you wish to try Dog Zips and "get them out of the way". Most important is having Crash for Quick, and Metal for Wood & Bubble.
Zipless
- Flash
- Air
- Quick
- Metal
- Bubble
- Heat
- Wood
- Crash
Without Zips, the focus is on Item 2 for speed and flying over long sections.
True Weaknesses?
Mega Man 2's bosses often take extra damage from multiple weapons, so this is debatable. Much of this is not useful in the actual route, so check the individual stage pages. However...
Flash > Quick > Metal > Bubble > Heat > Wood > Air > Crash > Who Knows
- Crash is effective against Quick as well
- Bubbles are somewhat effective on Flash
- Metal is effective against Flash, and of course, Metal himself
- Wood Man is weak do just about everything.
Normal vs. Difficult
The North American release of the game introduced a difficulty select of Normal or Difficult. The Japanese release does not feature this option, but is equivalent to "Difficult" mode for gameplay.
Damage done by the player to enemies is is doubled in normal mode. Note that most enemies die in half as many shots (round down).
Normal mode also tends to produce more large drops than Difficult.
Though not a gameplay difference, North American "Difficult" mode features exceptionally longer "Weapon Get - Dr. Light Get Your Weapons Ready" cutscenes than the Japanese version, by approximately 30 seconds. These cutscenes are a set amount of time, and the Leaderboards on megamanleaderboards.net will automatically adjust times for proper comparisons.