Rockman Claw TAS by McBobX
Game description
Rockman Claw is a hack of the first Mega Man game made by Tsukikuro in 2012 (
Link to download IPS file, use Rockman game when patching ).
This hack is way different than the original game thanks to a lot of changes across every aspect of the game, mainly:
- Level layouts and content
- Enemies behavior
- Music from other games (ex: Journey to Silius first stage used in Fire Man stage)
- Weapon design and weakness (RIP Magnet Beam btw, replaced by a mid jump item lol)
Game objectives
- Emulator used: FCEU 0.98.28 but converted with FCEUX 2.2.0
- Takes damage to save time
- Fastest completion
- Pattern manipulation
First off, you may notice that the length of this TAS is somewhat longer for a Mega Man hack, this is because this hack has made the levels more long compared to original game, for instance, Guts Man stage is probably twice as long as in vanilla game. Also the pause glitch using select button is no longer present in this hack, which is a shame since it could be used for weapon switch. Not to mention that Magnet Beam was replaced with a Mid-Jump item, which is mostly useless. That said, this hack provided really good content that is worth checking and playing, and that allowed more strategies and routing to consider when I did the TAS back in 2015. In this regard, this TAS follows the weakness order as follows:
- Elec -> Bomb -> Cut -> Ice -> Guts -> Fire
I started with Elec because the M.Buster actually deals 2 damage compared to other bosses which is important considering weakness order.
Zipping in this game is rarely seen in this TAS as it is mainly not possible. I was able to do some in Elec and Guts by abusing Up+Down on top of a ladder.
Weapon differences
Weapons are completely different than vanilla game, thankfully for the better!
- Elec: It is changed from a Thunder Beam to a 5 arrows with 3 shooting from top and 2 from bottom simultaneously which is useful to destroy enemies from a decent distance, and it is great against Bomb Man
- Bomb: Using this weapon, Mega Man shoots 5 blasts in front of him in different directions, making sure it hits multiple targets at the same time
- Cut: It is still a boomerang, but it takes a curved direction, then in its peak it returns to Mega Man straight. It can hit enemies which Mega Man can't reach by jumping
- Ice: Mega Man shoots a "disc" in a curved direction as well, which is really fast for hitting far away targets
- Guts: Same as in original game except that you no longer need an existing block to use it which is a really good addition
- Fire: Mega Man shoots one Fire Storm above him while the remaining shield has its range extended. This shield is the important one here.
Bosses behavior
Most six robots and Clone from Wily 2 have same patterns as in original game with a little bit of speed increase. As for Wily stages, Yellow Devil was replaced with enemies similar to those shooting "worms" in Mega Man 2, except that they shoot portions from Devil's body, and its eye spawns in random locations that is weak to Bomb Man's weapon. Bubbles in Wily 3 actually do a small deviation compared to original ones, which doesn't matter as the Fire Storm shield takes them down anyway lol. Dr.Wily first form is weak to Cut Man's weapon and second form is weak to Gut Man's weapon but it is slow due to lag and weapon cannot be shot quickly. I used Ice Man's weapon because it is fast and allows dodging Wily's shots while dealing damage, costing no time in process.
Suggested Screenshot
Enjoy
I hope you enjoy this quick TAS for this cool hack!
Info Teddy: Replaced movie file with a file that is parsed as NES instead of FDS.
