Mega Man 1

 Ah, the original Mega Man. While incredibly rough around the edges, no following iteration has truly come close to emulating its exact tone, atmosphere, and simplicity. In fact, its graphics are so simplistic that what you see is mostly what you get, so I apologize in advance for my commentary being much shorter than that of later games (which naturally have more graphics in general). The first game's enhancement chip was the UNROM, and it shows in the visuals-- aesthetics are on the mind, but limited memory also means sailing a tight ship.

Mega Man 1's tile artstyle has a distinct mechanical feel to it, focusing on mostly bricks and circuitry and clean, rectangular shapes (with a smidge of scenery-dithering, heh). Its backgrounds are often also minimalistic, only sporting a solid color with some landmarks here and there.

Cut Man

A large amount of people like to speculate that Cut Man was likely the first Mega Man stage-- as well as one of the first Robot Masters-- ever conceived in development, and an overwhelming amount of things do point in that direction. Sure, he's serial number DLN-003 after Rock and Roll, but the cursor hovers on his stage by default when booting the game up, and it is probably the most visually simplistic stage within MM1 itself. Its level design has minimal pitfalls, abundant but resourceful screen-repeats, and a heavier emphasis on enemy combat and hazard evasion as opposed to platforming challenges. A bit like an intro stage, forgiving but not overly saccharine. Cut Man himself even looks like a modified upgrade of the protagonist. Well, these rumors of it being the first stage-- at least to be worked on-- are likely true.

As mentioned in Kitamura's interview, Cut Man as a character concept predated even Rockman himself-- as the playable character, in fact-- and has also confirmed that the serial number order (at least for all of MM1's Robot Masters) is indeed based on the order they were conceived. It was only natural that Cut Man would stick around in the game as one of the bosses. Furthermore, Cut Man's stage graphics are the first to be stored within the CHR, so that pretty much settles it.

Because of the tight memory, most MM1 and MM2 stages are paired up with the memory of another stage; pop open a level editor, scroll past the last screen of the stage, and prepare to see the first screen of a completely different stage, depicted with garbled tiles of the first. Cut Man's memory is linked with... wouldn't ya know it, Wily 1.

"Screen preset 11" (The fourth screen of Wily 1) using Cut Man's graphics, as seen in the RockAndRoll level editor.

I always provide the CHR info for my tilesets because it really does tell all. As you'll quickly pick up, the top half of the loaded bank for 1's Robot Master stages always looks like this-- spikes, ladders, boss gates, clear points, the "ready" signal, and some end-cutscene bits, leaving all the unique graphics to go in the bottom half. Every piece of Cut Man's stage seems to be used-- again, what you see is what you get.

I sometimes wonder if Cut Man's MM7 cameo was an inside-joke on his origins as a playable character idea.

Guts Man

I'll admit-- going by serial number order for this game carries some oddities. This stage is stored last out of the Robot Masters, and shares memory with the ending cutscene. You can even see a piece of Guts' tileset right above the "1987" in the top half of the bank! I distinctly recall an account of Inafune joining the development team around the time that Cut, Guts, Fire, and Ice were already brainstormed and being worked on, implying that the serial number is correct and Guts was not made last-- only stored last (which also lines up with the only known stage concept illustrations being for Ice Man and Bomb Man).

Here, though, we come across our first major piece of unused tech-- a vertical rail. Yeah, the rail-end tile branching in four directions had a purpose. The structure table shows how a few of these rails could've looked together, and a good handful use the gray palette, so such is also provided. Perhaps the memory and structure limitations made horizontal lift rails, drops included... enough on their own. Or perhaps the "Magnet Beam" jumpthrough instance attached to the lift itself was buggy with vertical movement-- such was the case for Footholders, as uncovered by the Snupsters.

The Guts rail graphics actually load into the bank in the vertical section of the stage, so perhaps the vertical ones were planned to go there. Again, just my speculation. Considering how remarkably short Guts' stage feels (not helped by its last few screens being a rapid drop), some extra lift sections at the end really could've spiced the place up. Mega Man 1 had a lot of unused concepts floating around, many of which never made it to the ROM itself, but many more of these concepts would be recycled for its successor... you can probably guess which Robot Master re-explored four-directional railed platforms, heheh.

MM2 wouldn't be the only game to revisit this gimmick, though-- in the first Wily stage of MM7, topped by the modified Guts Man G, rail platforms fittingly make a return, but with four directions and rail drops and a blackout gimmick that works with said drops. Something old, something fresh, and a true love letter to the original stage in all of its hair-tearing pitfall infamy.

Ice Man

Some people consider the palm trees in this stage to be avant-garde, but my interpretation-- and hopefully I'm not alone-- is that the place was a lot warmer before Ice Man came along and froze everything. Well, almost everything-- I always forget it was the first stage with water... probably because it didn't alter movement too heavily. Perhaps it's a vestige of MM1's scrapped plans for a... Bubble Man. Pssh! In fact, the stage fiddles with a lot of different gimmicks and challenges-- slippery ice, Yoku blocks, Footholders...

I like the stage's use of background tubes as a substitute for the typical ladder, and it helps give the impression of slipping and sliding downward between Yoku puzzles; however, the existing palettes happen to fit perfectly with said ladder graphic (and spike). For this reason, both are provided as bonuses.

As of now, the Yoku sprites themselves are not provided with the tileset; both they and the background work independently of each other, and plenty of sprite-ripping resources have them on-hand anyway. I'd open a can of worms if I decided to include every sprite-generated platform gimmick willy-nilly.

At any rate, Ice Man has a unique and memorable stage, to be sure. Considering its intermediary position in the stage order, it very much feels like an experimental work, with all kinds of new enemies and strange platforming challenges. If only the Footholders were programmed a little better.

As for internal details, this is also that one stage with the funny spawning glitch-- ya know the one. In line with its storage order, it shares memory with Wily 2.

Bomb Man

If its concept art is any indication, the stage is supposed to take place on... some kind of futuristic highway...?-- an aesthetic fittingly re-explored in Nitro Man's stage (with its composer being even more fitting). Bomb Man's stage is otherwise another case of what-you-see-is-what-you-get, with every major tile being used and accounted for. The lollipop towers feel grandiose, robotic... and a bit comical, at the same time. A bit like Bomb Man himself. For a "highway stage", though, there is a surprisingly high enemy-encounter-to-platform-challenge ratio. Really wish I had more to say about the stage; the Sniper Joes are a fun lil' pseudo-miniboss, I suppose (definitely won't be seeing more of those any time soon), and there are other cute enemy positions here and there. Its memory is paired with Wily 3.

Fire Man

Fire Man's level has been regarded by some as the best stage in the game, and I must agree on that front. It truly feels like the game finally finds its footing here; there is a healthy balance of enemy/hazard challenges like in Cut Man and platforming challenges like in Guts and Ice Man, on top of being close to Guts Man's screen length and not feeling short in the slightest. There's quite a lot to gush about, from being the first Mega Man stage to utilize palette-cycling for animation purposes to also being the first to play with that foreground layering feature, as seen with the handrails and Fire Droppers. Come to think of it, that's also why the tiles use few black outlines-- they have to account for the flame pillars inside of them. It remembers to have weapon interactions, and resourcefully makes most enemies blue to accommodate that (sharing palettes with the frozen flame pillars)!

The largest element of note is the giant unused flame found in the CHR, whose purpose even I'm not quite sure of. It doesn't appear in the structure table, so I originally tried putting it under the cycling palette. That didn't look quite right, though, so I changed it to the third.

Its memory is paired with Wily 4.

Elec Man

Ah, Elec Man. The first Robot Master Inafune ever designed. Which would make sense, considering he sticks out next to the less humanoid designs of 1's lineup. While the slow ladder climb of the first two games can make this level more of a chore than normal, a lot of detail was put into the background-work... if you're indoors, anyway.

While Fire's stage is the first to use palette-switching for animation, Elec is the first to switch a palette offscreen to make a background exclusive to the boss room. Only a couple tiles are actually used for it, but hey. Probably had to do with the Super Arm blocks in the room. The other background pieces are provided in that palette off to the side, for those curious.

Oh yeah, and the little electrical bits that would animate in that tube are actually sprites that can damage you. Go figure. I made a little alignment correction, but the original is there if you prefer it looking more centered.

So by process of elimination, what stage could this possibly share memory with...? There are certainly extra screens in place. These were long speculated to be the remains of a Wily 5, but AK recently answered that there was no fifth Wily stage planned, and these were leftover junk screens.

Extra screens of Elec Man, as seen in the RockAndRoll editor. Note that the first four screens are Elec duplicates, but not preset Elec duplicates.

This stage is thoroughly documented on MM1's The Cutting Room Floor page, though the current map resolution is blurry. Perhaps I'll upload this version instead sometime.

While I'll probably split the posts of each game into two parts down the line-- one for the Robot Masters and one for the endgame-- MM1 is short enough for it not to matter.

Wily 1

How 'bout that. The CHR info is loaded in a little differently this time around. An unused 1x1 block shows up in the bank, but as it could have realistically shown up in any given space using that bank, it is provided in varying palettes depending on the Wily stage. Another classic stage-- though I wonder how the two-pixel ladder error slipped under the radar.

Wily 2

When the boss gate closes, the adjacent tiles take on the palette of the gate, so such is provided as well. It is unclear whether this was a limitation or an oversight. Also of note is how the Copy Robot scanning device is stored within the tile graphics despite being a sprite... I decided to include it this time since it's in the CHR.

Wily 3

Three whole unused tiles, whadda find. They appear in the structure table, too, so these are their official palettes... God, the 1x1 sandstone is just cursed... that being said, not sure what the middle tile would've been used for.

Wily 4

And finally, Wily 4. Wily's obsession with Guts Man in this stage and MM2 has remained a mystery for quite some time, but thankfully, AK recently managed to answer that curiosity too. Keep in mind that MM1's Wily fortress is a hijacked robot factory, instead of a castle built from the ground-up; the implication was that he was manufacturing more Light Robot Masters en masse in an assembly line. The CHR obviously isn't going to fit all 6 bosses in there, so only the "strongest-looking" was picked by Wily, as an in-universe handwave. His return in MM2... was an in-joke by Inafune, supposedly.

While the ceiling spikes exist in Wily 1, they are provided again here for convenience as a hypothetical.

And that wraps up Mega Man 1. Like the rest of the game, the graphics are simple but establish a clear aesthetic that the following games would (mostly) build off.