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

  1. Flash
  2. Depends
    1. Fastest: Heat then Air
    2. More accessible: Air then Heat
  3. See above
  4. Crash
  5. Quick
  6. Metal
  7. Wood
  8. 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

Without zips, the focus is on Item 2 for speed and flying over long sections, which means Air early is a must.

Beginners will want to do Flash early, because Time Stopper allows you to skip some tricky sections in Air and Metal.
Once you get the hang of those sections, you'll want to do Flash later in the run to take advantage of his Metal Blade weakness.
In Normal mode, however, it actually saves more time to use Time Stopper on Metal Man's crushers than Metal Blade saves in the Flash Man fight.

Beginner Route
  1. Flash
  2. Air
  3. Quick
  4. Metal
  5. Bubble
  6. Heat
  7. Wood
  8. Crash
Advanced Route (Difficult Mode)
  1. Air
  2. Quick
  3. Metal
  4. Bubble
  5. Heat
  6. Flash*
  7. Wood**
  8. Crash**

** Wood and Crash are fully interchangeable.

* There is some flexibility as to where you place Flash in the route: it just needs to be after Metal but before Wood/Crash. Most runners put it after Heat, because F and 3 get in the way in the menu.

TAS Route

QMBFHAWC

  1. Quick
  2. Metal
  3. Bubble
  4. Flash
  5. Heat
  6. Air
  7. Wood
  8. Crash

The Zipless TAS takes an unusual route. While the category is ordinarily defined by Item 2 rides, doing Air Man without Item 1 loses 12 seconds. Several Item 2 rides have to be sacrificed in order to have Item 1 in Air. It's almost a wash, but it's 1.5 seconds faster overall, so that's what the TAS does.

You may wonder why you don't see this in top-level runs. While top-level runners are well equipped to do the Item 1 strats, they are scared off by the Item 3 climbs in Heat, particularly this one. The slightest mistake can make the whole route fall apart.

Another variation you can find in Seth Glass' old runs is a Bubble early route, which saves Metal for later to take advantage of F and 2,
but does a bit of an awkward Bubble stage with Q only. It's slower in Difficult, but it may be faster in Normal. More testing is needed.

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

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.

 

MM2 Loot Table

(As posted by WarmCabin in discord)

```Difficult Loot Table:

Result | $4A pokes (hex) | Ratio | Percent --------------+----------------------+--------+--------- Nothing | 00-30, 61, 63, 64-7F | 78/128 | 60.94% Small Energy | 30-48 | 25/128 | 19.53% Small Health | 49-57 | 15/128 | 11.72% Large Energy | 58-5C | 5/128 | 3.91% Large Health | 5D-60 | 4/128 | 3.13% Extra Life | 62 | 1/128 | 0.78%

Normal Loot Table:

Result | $4A pokes (hex) | Ratio | Percent --------------+------------------+--------+--------- Nothing | 00-1B, 62, 64-7F | 57/128 | 44.53% Small Energy | 1C-25 | 10/128 | 7.81% Small Health | 26-2F | 10/128 | 7.81% Large Energy | 30-4D | 30/128 | 23.44% Large Health | 4E-61 | 20/128 | 15.63% Extra Life | 63 | 1/128 | 0.78%

 

MM2 Frames for Weapon Get

A count of Frames for each weapon Get cutscene, in Japanese and English versions, provided by WarmCabin

"Note that Quickman on US is 112 frames slower than his fellow non-itemers, because fuck you. These are all post frame rule; in a full run, each intermission could be up to 7 frames slower."


 Japanese English
Air 1590 2110
Quick 373 661
Metal 373 549
Bubble 373 549
Flash 1590 2110
Heat 1590 2110
Crash 373 549
Wood 373 549



Total 6635 9187
Difference
+2552