As the story famously goes, the original Rockman and its localized counterpart were pushed out into the world... with lukewarm reception at best. The devteam had tons of leftover ideas for a second game, and Capcom only allowed it out of the... generosity of its heart... on the condition that it would have to be in their spare time and within a few months. It was raced to the finish, ended up being a smash-hit, and the rest is history.
I may consider it heavily overrated as a standalone game, but I won't pretend the entire franchise as we know it didn't hinge on Mega Man 2's success. And hey, I have to at least commend the things it brought back that were planned for MM1.
Mega Man 2 departs slightly from 1's mechanical feeling to stages that feel a bit more... thematically specific, if not necessarily to their respective bosses. It also utilizes palette animation much more extensively and shrinks the shared CHR rows for extra level-specific graphical space; while built off 1's engine, it now utilizes an MMC1 chip to pull off a smidge more, memory-wise. Of course, in light of the short amount of time given to work on the game, a handful of tiles were still inevitably cut.
Heat Man
A shell of a level, really, but it had to share memory with Wily 1. Changkey Makers would not only not-fit, they would physically break the stage. They were completely unable to plan ahead. On the other hand, nothing seems to be left unused; they worked with what they made.
Air Man
This level shares memory with Wily 2, and you can probably guess how I'm ordering these. Mega Man is pushed to the background for the entirety of the level, and most tiles seem to be made with this in mind. The animated stuff uses the same color as the background, which is why-- again-- I swapped the background color with a placeholder for this rip. I'm... not entirely sure if reserving two whole palettes just for a cool fade-in effect for the Air Tikis was necessary, but hey... cool fade-in effect for the Air Tikis.
Wood Man
Despite bearing little relation to it otherwise, this shares memory with Wily Stage 3. This is also one of the few MM2 stages that doesn't feature a fancy palette animation or the like, but hoo boy. In light of the unused Atomic Fire interaction, one was certainly planned. A plethora of tiles go unused as well; the second foliage bit seems to be a rudimentary version of a finalized tile, but the 5 brown ones would've helped round out some of the stage's boxy edges. I feel a lot more time was spent making sure Wood's actual level design worked well; can't complain there.  |
| Mockup of Wood Man's unused palette animation. While the planned interaction does not exist in the final game, the palette can still be found internally. |
Bubble Man
Bubble shares memory with Wily 4, and nothing major seems to go unused. It seems they comparatively had the most ideas for this stage in terms of enemy diversity and context, even if some things could've been refined. It's almost like the stage idea was... swimming around for a while. As I teased in Ice Man, the concept for a "Bubble Man" and a full-on water level were always rumored to have been planned for 1, and with the leaked MM1 planning docs, this was ultimately confirmed.
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| Just look at this goober. |
Quick Man
Shares memory with Wily 5. This is one of the first instances of an entire palette going unused, and was planned to be animated, though it contextually doesn't fit with any tiles in the bank. The Force Beam palette would've been animated, likewise. The reason they weren't was that it would conflict with the coding for the blackout mechanic... A concept that Bright Man would come back to. Actual unused tiles include a 1x1 block that fits best in the background.
As always, the ladders and additional alternate-palette tiles are provided as hypotheticals.
Flash Man
Shares memory with Wily 6, the ending, and various menus... Yeah, if it feels short to anyone else, now you know the reason. Between the end of the level and Wily 6 is another boss corridor and room, which don't match any final MM1 or 2 layouts block-for-block, so it could very well just be an unused placeholder for Flash's boss room.
Despite all the shared memory, it still could've had at least a little variation in its tiles. Of the few that actually exist, the leftover curved pieces and a shadowed version of the horizontal background pipe go unused. The ladder is again hypothetical.
Metal Man
Shares memory with... no existing stage; just bits and pieces of MM1 screens, mostly from Cut Man. While the stage uses its tiles to mostly full effect, a stray 1x1 chunk from the center of the green horizontal cog goes unused. It flew under the radar when I first pieced the tileset together... whoops. Ladder recolor is provisional, you get the drill.
Crash Man
...Or is it Clash Man? Doesn't really matter to me; I've always seen him by his contest entry name of Missile Man. Not that his stage has much to do with any of the three, though.
Shares memory with the intro cutscene, and both are a loooong way up. The main unused chunk of tiles is, rather infamously, what looks to be some kind of Met-themed dispenser... perhaps specifically for spawning Mets, Super-Cutter style. We may never know. Considering the unused Guts Man concepts that were directly addressed, the fact that its song was the only "cutesy" track not to be reworked, and the level design's rudimentary nature, I theorize that this was one of the first levels to be worked on, though no one can say for sure.
Wily 1
It's big, it's grand, it sets the mood. Even if the gameplay isn't anything mindblowing. Nothing is unused here... unless you wanna count the Mecha Dragon, brought back from MM1's concepts.
Wily 2
Rudimentary and monochromatic, but the fans offer some marvel. Nothing goes unused. TCRF says there's an unused extra palette for the fan animation, but I consider it an erroneous duplicate. If the used-up Pico Pico-kun blocks look like background elements, ohoho... it was certainly planned for them to leave behind pits (before being cut for difficulty). This concept would be revisited with Block Devil... in a less-savory manner, if you don't mind me saying so.
Wily 3
Same thoughts as Wily 2, but swap the fans for grimy sewage stuff. It also feels... tragically short, but hey, for the first formal spike drop, not too shabby.
Wily 4
Echoing 1 Wily 4's repurposing of railed platforms... and using a lot more tiles to do it. That garbled stuff is the synesthetic equivalent of code; overwrite it under the hood, and problems show up. The tileset does have an entire unused palette... What could've been made with it is anyone's guess. While linked to Bubble, as aforementioned, screens from the second half of MM1 Wily 1 remain beyond the boss gate.
Wily 5
A visual breath of fresh air, if brief; nothing goes unused. While Quick was already mentioned, Wily 5 also shares memory with the hologram room in the ending cutscene.
Wily 6
Unused graphics again. For one, betcha didn't know the background was designed with multiple colors in mind. Secondly, there is an unused palette cycling animation. Probably didn't apply to these particular tiles, but I pulled up what it looks like anyway. Third is a Wily Machine-like floor piece; I guess it wouldn't entirely fit the "space-hologram-simulator" aesthetic. The single-pixel stars are background-scrolled, but the larger two are sprites.
Hologram Room
No unused graphics here; just a spiritual (and memory-related) continuation of Wily 5. "Isn't this a cutscene graphic?" Technically, but I still included it because I could.
Thus concludes Mega Man 2. A little more graphically ambitious, with plenty of neat tricks and unused tidbits. But just you wait for later games down the line...
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