General Tips

Ball Jumping

Hold the jump button

From the Compendium

The primary movement tech in the run is Mega Ball jumping.  This is done by jumping in the air (making sure to continue holding the jump button down), and then dropping a Mega Ball at the peak of your jump.  The timing is not precise, and it can be sped up or delayed depending on your needs (gaining height or not).

Another useful form of movement tech are money jumps.  These are performed by sliding off of a ledge and chaining into a Mega Ball jump (making sure to keep holding down the button after sliding).  You have an 8 frame window to execute this trick after Mega Man leaves the ledge.  This saves time more or less everywhere since it extends the duration of your slide.

Slow Motion Example

First jump - hold jump and right, fire mega ball at the appropriate time.

Slide "Money" Jump - Slide (down+jump) and HOLD jump. Continue holding jump as you use the mega ball.

ballJump-slowmo.gif

Other Notes

In Jet sled sections (Frost Man, Wily 1), you can perform ball jumps almost any time in mid air by firing a Mega Ball in front of you while holding jump.

There are also spots to use money jumps just above spikes or lava, or just under spikes. These aren't much more complicated than the above explanations, however the timing is significantly tighter to not fall to the spikes before ball-jumping, or to release jump before rising into spikes-and-then-still jumping again We encourage runners to get comfortable with ball jumping before going for these strats.

Fast Disk Speed & Resetting

The Playstation 2 has an option for Fast Disk Speed (FDS) with Playstation 1 games. This is useful for Mega Man 8 speedrunning. Runs with this configuration have their console labeled as "FDS" on the Mega Man Leaderboards.

NOTE - This is banned for Mega Man X4, X5, and X6 speedruns, due to those games potentially crashing with "FDS" enabled. Mega Man 8 has no such documented crash issue.

Enabling FDS

The following steps work on a North America Playstation 2.

  1. Power on the Playstation 2 with the disk drive open to access the system menu.
  2. Press Triangle.
  3. Press Triangle (again)
  4. Select fast disk speed and turn it on

Resetting Your Run

If you use the PS2 reset button, you will turn off FDS and need to re-enable it.

The best way to reset is to pause the game and press Select in the pause menu. (You will get a confirmation dialogue before the game resets). This takes you back to the Title Screen, however you cannot pause the game at some points (such as when the intro stage boss is at 0 HP), and you must be in a stage (not the stage select).

Always Be Sliding

Mega Man moves ridiculously slow. Even small slides add up over the run.

However, keep in mind the distance of a slide on a platform. If your slide ends near the end of a platform, jump before Mega Man's slow standing animation.

About the Hyper Slider

After Duo's stage, runs buy the Hyper Slider to dramatically increate Mega Man's movement speed. Strats on video in the second half of the run typically depend on this speed to work, and your results will be different without it.

Also note Mega Man out-slides the Mega Ball with the Hyper Slider. You cannot "dribble" the ball along when sliding at this speed. This is why enemies are typically killed with grenades rather than Mega Balls in the second half (the first enemy in Sword Man, the first Turret in Wily 2).

Rush Bike

You can jump off Rush Bike by holding up. This includes a "Yoshi Ditch" double jump.

Rush Bike lasts for 40 seconds. This time drops by 5 seconds every time you get hit.

Rush Bike is fast in the early game, but is largely outclassed by the Hyper Slider in the late game.