LogFAQs > #951944437

First, it's important that I lay down the ground rules for what exactly I actually included in this list.

What's included in this list:

Every unique stage theme, no matter how minor, from...

Mega Man 1-11
Mega Man & Bass
Mega Man I-V (GB)
Mega Man: The Wily Wars
Mega Man Powered Up
Mega Man Soccer

Yeah, I included Mega Man Soccer. I figured, at this point, I'm gonna get pretty much every classic Mega Man game in here, so I might as well include it. It's not a platformer, but it does have easily-defined stage themes, and I have played the game, so it's familiar to me. (I immediately regretted including Mega Man Soccer.) I also included Powered Up and Wily Wars, but only original tracks from those games - more on that in a second.

What's NOT included in this list:

- Boss themes, stage select themes, password themes, etc. Just comparing stage themes today. That's a big enough list as it is. Stages are kinda the meat of the soundtrack here, and that was what I set out of quantify. I might do separate rankings for boss themes and other stuff... maybe. I don't know yet.

- Any themes that are repeats or derivitive of another theme in the series. That means...

--- The four robot master themes from Dr. Wily's Revenge. These are actually pretty different from the NES originals, so I could have reasonably ranked them, but I would have had a hard time trying to place them alongside the originals. I decided to leave them out and only rank unique themes.

--- Pretty much everything from Mega Man III and Mega Man IV for the Game Boy (note - as per tradition, I'll use roman numerals to denote the Game Boy games). Almost everything here sounds nearly identical to their NES counterparts.

--- Everything from Wily Wars except the Wily Tower themes. These are just sad attempts by the Genesis to recreate the NES's magic.

--- Most of the tracks from Powered Up except for the few originals. This was another tough call, since Powered Up is quite stylistically unique and its arrangements could have been ranked, and leaving the three original stage themes from this game on an island by themselves is a little weird, but I just didn't know what to do with them. I just decided to leave them out.

--- Cut Man and Wood Man's themes from MM8. Same deal as usual.

--- Any arrangements or remixes, so no Rockman Complete Works, or Mega Man 11 instrumentals, or anything like that. Just the originals here.

- Ballade's theme from MMIV. It technically DOES play during a stage portion of the game, but it's obviously a boss theme, and I'm not ranking that shit okay. That goes in a boss theme ranking.

- Similarly, there's a theme that plays in Wily's Castle in Mega Man II where you fight Quint, and I think you have control of Mega Man just before you fight him, but I can't really regard it as a stage theme. It's a boss theme.

- Some obscure tracks from Powered Up that aren't used in normal gameplay.

- An unused theme from MMV. I'm not sure if it's a stage theme or not.

- Anything from the arcade games Mega Man: The Power Battle or Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters. No original music here, everything is reused.

- Anything from Rockman & Forte: Challenger From The Future for the Wonderswan. There is a very high chance you had absolutely no idea that this game existed, despite the fact that it is an official product, an entirely original game, and even has completely unique, canonical robot masters in it! Sadly, all of its stage music is entirely recycled from Rockman & Forte, not a single original stage theme to be found here. By the way, this game is really bad, so that's probably why you haven't heard of it.

- Anything from Mega Man for the Game Gear. I'm not even 100% sure that this game is canon or even officially licensed, it might be some kind of weird bootleg. It's garbage, and it has no original music, only reused stuff from various NES games.

- Anything from either of the Mega Man DOS games. I'm sad to report that these games have no music AT ALL. I absolutely would have included them if I could have, but there is no way for me to include these, even ironically.

- Anything from Street Fighter x Mega Man. Just gonna say 'nah' to that one. It's a fangame. Nothing from any other fangames either of course, just canon stuff here, although some of them do have lovely music.

- Anything from any of these other weird obscure Japanese-only games, like Mega Man Battle & Chase, Rockman Strategy, etc. I have no idea if any of the music from these games would meaningfully qualify for this list and I don't care at this point. If it's more obscure than Wily Wars, I didn't care to track it down, and it's not here.

- Anything from Mega Man X, Zero, Battle Network, etc. I'm just doing the classic series. The rest of these would really be their own ranking projects, and they're beyond the scope of something that I would really care to rank. You MIGHT be able to wrench a Mega Man X ranking out of me, but it's a stretch.

- Anything from Mighty No 9, just in case someone mentions it. No Mighty Gunvolt or anything like that either. I think you get the point.

I THINK that covers all of my bases - if there's other excluded stuff I didn't mention you can probably figure out why on your own. If there does happen to be a track I missed that I should have included, let me know, and I'll either include it as an afterthought or I'll tell you to fuck off, depending.

Oh, one note I forgot to add: For Rockman & Forte for the SFC and Mega Man & Bass for the GBA, I don't really consider either version of the soundtrack to be the definitive one, so I just used whichever version of the track I liked more. Is that arbitrary? Yep!