The second level picks things up a notch due to the number of ways Mega Man can die an instant, grisly death. It's at least a good place to stock up on supplies, however.
From the start, have him head right along the descending ledges. There are more enemies that fall from above (like the ones you encountered in Crash Man and Heat Man's stages), so the Metal Blades are a good safety precaution in this area. If you want, you can stand in the place shown in the first screenshot and easily take care of enemies that fall to your left and right with Metal Blade shots. This is a good way to get an extra life or two, if you're patient and running low.
When you reach the end of the ledges, you'll find that a long bed of spikes lines the path ahead. Switch to Item-2 and use it to ride across this hazard. As you do so, hold the 'Up' button on the controller. You'll be watching for a set of ladders. Ignore the first one and instead press the 'A' button as you pass beneath the second one. With 'Up' also held on the controller, this is an easy jump to the ladder, which Mega Man will start climbing.
Once he reaches the top of the ladder, have him walk to the right and collect the castle's first energy tank, then descend the ladder to another ledge where a 1-up icon rests. Continue down past the series of ladders, and you can refill the special weapon energy for item two as you go. You'll also encounter some red robots that shoot bullets, so take them out quickly with metal blades.
In this area, you should also see destructible walls that prevent you from snagging another 1-up icon and yet another energy tank. Use the Crash Bombs to break through and collect that bounty, if desired. From that screen, descend the ladder and you'll find yourself hanging over a bed of spikes. Drop and aim toward the right, and you'll fall through an opening to the safety of a narrow tunnel that waits below.
Proceed along the tunnel, and you'll find more of the metal pods familiar from Metal Man's stage. You can run back and forth here to collect special weapon energy and more 1-ups (which appear with reasonable frequency), or you may prefer simply to press onward, to the block wall that lies beyond. You must scale this with Item-3, and be sure that you do not let the steel trap hit you at the top. From there, continue along the corridor, dodging the steel traps that will try and crush you.
The space between each of these traps is quite narrow, and one trick that seems to work for me is to run between them, then hop when I'm in one of the openings so I don't accidentally run too far and hit the next trap. It's risky business, but you want to conserve your energy for the boss encounter not far beyond.
When you reach the end of this next passage, a ladder leads down to the next room. Here, there are a few blocks suspended over two more beds of spikes. Use the blocks to reach the opening, then drop down through it to the next room below, which has still more spikes. There are more blocks here, as well as an energy capsule resting on a nearby ledge. If you need to, you can use Item-1 to reach that energy refill before dropping through the next gap to face the stage's boss.
Crumbling Wall
For this boss encounter, you will find yourself in a small room. You may notice that it is comprised of pink blocks. Soon, you will see that two of these break away at a time, fly to the center of the screen, and form a speedy little robot that will crash into you for some serious damage.
Quickly switch to the Metal Blade if it's not already equipped, and try to stay near the bottom center of the screen. This gives you the most time to react to wherever the tiles may break away from the walls. They follow a pattern, which you'll soon get down, but it's not a pattern that can be usefully described in a walkthrough such as this one. Just know that you need to be ready to avoid tiles from low along both walls, midway up both walls, the top portion of both walls, and from the left and right sides of the floors.
As you defeat more of the flying tile robots, they'll begin to move more speedily. Therefore, it's important that you be ready to not only avoid them as they're being created, but also to hit them with some metal blade shots the minute they've been created. There's no way to speed up this battle. Victory depends on your ability to react quickly and, perhaps, the use of a single energy tank (if you feel you really need it, though you shouldn't). After all, you'll be able to replace that energy tank in the next stage.
NEXT: Stage Three
