General Tricks

Balloon Jumping

When a Balloon is placed into a wall, it remains there for about 16 frames. This gives you time to land on the despawning ballon and jump again. This is most obvious in Ring Man's stage, and Cossack 2.

image.png

Its worth noting that the time might be reduced due to when you land on the balloon. So placing it weirdly might cause issues

While only used at top level, balloons have a weird quirk while climbing a ladder. 

See normally balloons are just placed straight to the direction Mega Man is facing. 

fceux_5o93MYN0qg.png

However by standing on specific pixels, the balloon will be offset downwards, which allows Mega Man to land on it. We call these specific placements Ladder Balloons they dont have a lot of usage in the run, but it's a very nifty trick.

fceux_Zhse3lPA8e.png

This can allow Mega Man to skip all the climbing here for instance. See Cossack 2 spike room for more details about it.

fceux_SRdC2EWK46.gif

Considerations

You can't be completely against the wall when you shoot.

You still need to move forward onto the balloon.

Speedrunners joke that "16 frames is a literal eternity", but that's still less than half a second.

Despawning the balloon is not only useful for getting up tight passages, but it ALSO reduces lag by immediately removing the balloon from the screen.

Rush Teleporting on Damage

In Mega Man 4 (as well as some ROM Hacks of it), Rush will teleport under Mega Man when he takes damage. This is actively used in the run as a strat and a race-backup.

Rush Coil in Pharaoh Balloon Jump

By having (unused) Rush Coil on screen, if you take damage in the balloon jump from the bee, Rush will "save" Mega Man.

Wily 2 Jet Boost

On the last long screen before the boss door of Wily 2, you can take a damage boost to pull Rush Jet along faster.

Extending Flash Stopper Duration

If you pay attention, Bright Man's Flash Stopper lasts longer if you slide.

The "duration timer" does not count down while Mega Man is in a slide, so by extending the slide, you make the frozen enemy effects last longer. This allows long rooms, such as the last 2 long screens of Skull Man, and the last screen of Drill Man, to be completed in a single use of Flash at the top levels.

A good example of this is watching the white flash. The longer it does not flash, the longer the flash duration is extended. (It is still extended even after that, but the flashing background does not show it)

mm4-toad-screen1-flash-example.gif

Boss Life Meter Speed

Mega Man 4 is known for extremely long meter filling. However, damaging a boss while it's life meter is filling will cause the animation to instantly complete. There are two points in the run where this can be done.

  1. Tako Trash (Wily 2 boss)
  2. Wily Machine phase transition to phase 2 (Wily 3 boss)

In theory this could be used in other places, but there is no opportunity to do so.

Pharaoh Shot Mechanics

Double Hits

You can hit an enemy with the charged orb over Mega Man's head, despawning the orb, and then still fire a full charged shot. Technically, you fire the same charge level the orb was when it despawned, so be aware of this against bosses (mainly Bright).

This also works for firing an uncharged shot - if an enemy is above Mega Man's head, it will take the damage from the uncharged shot on a B button tap. This is potentially useful in Ring Man's stage against the floating Saturn enemies, and the Hippo Mid Boss

image.png

Saving Ammo

If you hit with the orb over Mega Man's head, it does not use ammo. You can then pause the game, and hold B while unpausing, to begin charging a new shot.

The primary use for this is if you are on your last Pharaoh shot against Dr. Wily's capsule and do not want to spend the ammo.

About Zips

Zips in Mega Man 4 require the player to be in invincibility frames. There are only 2 RTA viable zips in the run, Skull Man and the Dust Man crusher section, and only one of them (Skull) is the optimal strat. These zips are covered in their stages.

There are TAS only zips, notably the refight skip.

Stored Charge

If you hold a full charge shot, and switch weapons, the charge will still be there when you switch back to buster.

mm4-cossak4-storedcharge-demo.gif

Boss Magic Pixels

Being perfectly centered (X-coordinate, so height doesn't matter*) in an 8 Robots boss room, looking either way, results in skipping some of the "weapon get" animation where Mega Man jumps to the middle of the room and "absorbs" the explosion bubbles.

By skipping the jump animation, you save roughly 2 seconds per stage, so these are the free-est 16 seconds you can save in the run.

If you can't get perfectly centered and always feel "off by one", you can slide and "back-cancel" to sort of reset Mega Man to get onto the correct pixel.

Pixel Locations

Images to be collected and posted here.

Dive and Pharaoh

In these two stages, you can additionally be in the air when the animation triggers. If done correctly, you will see the white bubble spin in the middle of the screen when Mega Man passes through the actual center (X and Y coordinate) of the screen. This saves a little more time over just being on the correct X-Coordinate.

These are the only two robots this saves time on, as they are the only two Mega Man can easily access the middle of the screen.

Boss Kill Locations

In Mega Man 4, the boss fanfare and weapon get animation do not trigger until all bubbles leave the screen. This means the location of your kill can affect your stage time by up to 2 seconds.

In the case of Dive Man, this includes Mega Man's periodic Air Bubble. You can jump to make it spawn higher up, but remember a new one spawns right after it despawns at the top.

The closer you kill a robot to the center of the screen (true center at that), the more time you save. Depending on the robot master, this means you should be drawing the robot master to the center of the screen if possible.

Bright, Skull, Dive, and Toad are easy to manipulate to a specific position. Ring can also be killed in the center but is a higher degree of difficulty than the other 4. High level strategies for these bosses take this kill position into consideration.

Pharaoh, Drill, and Dust are jerks who will do whatever they want. In all cases, if you can kill, get the kill. Don't wait for them to move.