The metallic, barren wasteland that serves as Magnet Man's stage brings with it a number of challenges that are likely to lead to some serious frustration. However, a patient blue bomber can breeze through the stage in hardly any time at all.
Begin your assault by heading to the right. Here, you will find a series of ledges and a few bottomless pits. Before making each jump, note that robotic insects carrying magnets are fond of flying over the area. The magnets can pull you slightly off your course, and it's easy to wind up plopped into a pit if you're not careful. A good strategy is to clear them out before making each jump, then get to the middle of a safe ledge as the next passes overhead and tries to drag you to your death. This way, it's easy to break free of the magnetic charge and proceed.
The ladder you'll soon reach leads to another encounter with Proto Man, who will fall just as easily here to arm cannon shots as he did elsewhere. When the pit opens up, drop down to the next room and head right.
The spring-like robot here has a red cap over its head, and sends out blue missiles that are magnetically drawn to Mega Man. You can shoot the missiles to destroy them, but it's likely better just to avoid those until you've focused enough shots at their source that it explodes. Then take out any remaining missiles and continue toward the right.
When you climb down the next ladder, you'll have to take out some of the giant, suctioned eyeballs to climb the stairs left, then drop down that ladder into the next room. Here, head right and you'll find more suctioned eyeballs as you ascend some steps, then descend more to find the next ladder.
There's a gap between the ladder and the ledge you can use to reach it, so drop down that gap and press left. In the room below, you'll land on a ledge with small energy capsules. Collect them and work left to the ladder at the bottom left corner of the room. Climb down that and you're to the most challenging portion of this particular stage. What you're greeted with now is a series of four rooms with disappearing/reappearing blocks that you likely remember from previous Mega Man titles.
To progress through each room, you'll want to note the patterns that the blocks follow. There are magnetically charged fans throughout, as well, and a few bottomless pits. Not pleasant stuff.
In the first room, the blocks disappear and reappear in the approximate order and locations indicated in the chart below:
| [8] __
| |
| [4] [7] |
| |
| [5] |
| |
| [1] [3] [6] |
| |
| [2] |
| |
| |
|____________________________|
The rest of the rooms that follow are much simpler in terms of their patterns, but there is the afore-mentioned pressure from the fans to consider. In the second room of disappearing/reappearing blocks, start with the lower right of the two blocks that appear simultaneously, ignore the second block that appears, then jump quickly to the third one just before the block you were standing on vanishes. From the third, watch as the fourth block appears, and ignore that one. Just before your new foothold evaporates, jump to where the final block appears.
The next two rooms are really simple, so long as you keep moving once you start and jump to compensate for the magnetic pull. When you're across the bottomless pits, climb up the ladder to the right. It leads up past energy items in the rooms to your left, up to a new room where a robot is perched on a ledge over some spikes. Hop to a platform left of the ladder, and from there fire a few shots to take out the robot. Now cross safely over to the ladder on the room's upper left side.
Climb that ladder and you're in another room with a red-capped spring that sends out magnetic missiles. Take it out the same way you did its brother, then head right through the gate that leads to this area's robot master.
NEXT: Hard Man
