Board 8 > Para ranks every classic Mega Man stage theme

(+) Yeah! (+)

Got a lot to go through but stinks you don't like MM7's soundtrack. Probably my third or fourth favorite in the franchise.

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Just wondering, did you decide that adding in cartoon openings would be a step too far even for you? =D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ufVQIUEiYc
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Team Rocket Elite posted...

Just wondering, did you decide that adding in cartoon openings would be a step too far even for you? =D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ufVQIUEiYc

it doesn't really need to be said that this is one of the greatest artistic achievements in the history of humankind

Honestly it does really kick ass, there's so much good animation in it and the song is catchy as fuck, it's way better than the MM8 opening

I loved that intro

SUPER FIGHTING ROBOT

MEGA MAN

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Wily Field is the right winner for Mega Man Soccer. Let's see how far it can go.

Wood Man was always one of my favorite MM2 themes (behind only Wily 1 and Air Man) so a bit surprising to see it out so early

Wily 2 and Wily 3 from MM3 out so early is a bit disappointing too-- but I love me some MM3 tracks. I'd probably have almost all of them in the top 50.

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hot take: i love the time capsule that is the mmac title theme because it's absolutely the kind of generic dance remix that was popular in 2004. it's not a great song, but i think you're selling short how catchy and satisfying that was back on its release

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ive played the mmac so much that the lobby song is just dead to me. I prob had the mmac as the only game in my ps3 for about a year back in the late 00s.

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I had a roommate that would leave the MMAC lobby music on loudly in his locked room. For hours at a time. Thanks for the reminder that it aint good.

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Sorry I haven't updated in a few days btw, been busy with other shit, will get back to this soon

Sorry it's been so long! I've been busy with other stuff and haven't given myself the time to just sit through and pound some of these out, especially as I'm running out of stuff to say the more I like these songs. Sorry if the writeups get a little repetitive! But anyway I'm back in the swing of things now.

50. Pharaoh Man (Mega Man 4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok5I0Yp-7fo

Ah, good ol' Mega Man 4. Inspired, exciting riffs, completely bonkers execution. Pharaoh Man, despite its bouncing off the walls pacing, is somehow still one of the more reined-in and less experimental MM4 themes. If the goal of a Mega Man theme is to create excitement while playing the level then Pharaoh Man passes that test with flying colors. I feel like at this point in the list I'm running out of ways to say "oh, I like this," so I have to just nitpick at like really specific things I like. For instance, that harmonization at :08 and then at :14 is really dope. I really like what happens at :16 - the previous line ends on this harmonization, and the bass takes over as the lead for a few seconds while the second square wave drops out and starts this little polymelody that catches up to the bass - it's a nice little sleight of hand. Despite really liking this theme, I expect to get razzed for having it as low as #50.

49. Stone Man (Mega Man 5)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o8VHKE2lpM

Even the least memorable tracks out of Mega Man 5 display what I think is artistic mastery of the 2A03 soundchip. Mari Yamaguchi's soundtrack is characterized by crisp, well-produced sounds and well considered use of the limited space provided by the four sound channels; 'instruments' fade in and out of the two square wave channels with new ideas, harmonies come in and out to provide extra color to the melody without overstaying their welcome and making the song sound too empty, and the bassline provides an interesting polymelody that's interesting to listen to on its own. There's just a lot of really nice, small attentions to detail in this track. Listen to the melody at :22; a lesser NES game would just play those notes flatly, but Yamaguchi adds a little bit of shaping here with a soft attack that gives the notes some much needed texture. It's the kind of choice a lot of other songs in the NES era just wouldn't make and it's why I've used this game as the blueprint for my own works. Stone Man doesn't usually come to mind when I think of great tracks from this game, but every time I hear it I'm reminded that I like it and I'm reminded why this game holds a particular place in my heart.

48. Astro Man (Mega Man 8)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIWyZSbNYik

Bringing an MM8 track all the way into the top 50 might seem a little bit like affirmative action on my part, but this track is a really great example of Mega Man 8's aesthetic just really clicking and creating a memorable track that just works for me. It's got all the good synths without any of the brass samples that I don't care for. It's got MM8's low-key good percussion but in the service of something that actually grooves. It's got that chill vibe of Aqua Man's theme but with an actual hook that I can hang my hat on. That main riff is just so damn funky! It's one of the tracks in this game that really stands out as memorable to me and it's probably the only robot master stage in this game I'd be excited to go to for the music alone.

Final Mega Man 8 ranking:

1. Astro Man (48)
2. Dr. Wily 1 (71)
3. Search Man (97)
4. Intro Stage 1 (117)
5. Frost Man (124)
6. Tengu Man (PS1) (134)
7. Grenade Man (151)
8. Tengu Man (Saturn) (171)
9. Sword Man (174)
10. Aqua Man (178)
11. Dr. Wily 3 (180)
12. Intro Stage 2 (181)
13. Dr. Wily 2 (183)
14. Clown Man (184)
15. Dr. Wily 4 (189)

Thoughts: Mega Man 8 would be a more or less fine soundtrack if it was another game, but it has a really strong pedigree to live up to and it just comes out not really sounding like a Mega Man game. Obviously, that isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but given that I have a particular sort of sound that I particularly favor, MM8 didn't have much of a chance. That said, I like to think I'm pretty open-minded, and to be honest I just don't like most of these tracks that much - not a huge fan of the soundfonts used or a lot of the sort of awkwardly half-formed melodies. Just not really my style, I'm afraid to say. I'll keep the top three on this list but I'll leave everything else.

Regrets?: Maybe giving Aqua Man a slight reprieve since it's awfully low (I think I like it more than Sword Man), but not much. There's nothing here that I've ended up coming to appreciate more in retrospect and the order seems about right.

47. Centaur Man (Mega Man 6)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0h5kOuxuFM

I recall more than one expression of surprise that this theme in particular was ranked this high, but yeah duh, because it's rad as fuck. I think it's pretty cool that, especially out of the MM1-6 era, this really sounds a lot different from anything else - it's slow and ponderous, defined by this strangely bright ostinato at the start that has an almost lydian character to it which sort of suggests an ancient Greek flair. The main body of the song does a pretty strong job of capturing the character of the level - if you were going to set a Mega Man theme in Atlantis this is roughly what I would expect it so sound like. Also, because I'm a sucker for good basslines, this one's got a hook I really like in the A section - I find myself humming to it a lot. Really neat track that fits with MM6's whole 'world music' vibe.

46. Dive Man (Mega Man 4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bXE8ldC2DA

A lot of Mega Man 4's tracks create this weird effect for me where the main melody is so memorable that I've always had this weird deja vu where I feel like I've experienced it somewhere else before, even though that's absolutely not the case and this theme is entirely original to Mega Man 4. I dunno, something just feels really quintessential about this headbanging surfer-rock track. It doesn't actually sound like any surf rock track that I'm familiar with, but it somehow captures that vibe really well. I have nothing to complain about with the track's catchy and eminently hummable melody but I do have to nitpick the percussion a bit. MM4 goes a little extra heavy on the snares and that's as true as ever in this track and there's just a little more noise in my noise channel than I would like. Minor complaint. Anyway this song's still great.

By the way, I just want to bitch about the fact that the Youtube account hosting the ONLY good rips of MMV GB (that I can find) got nuked the other day. All those links are now broken and the next best rip of the soundtrack kind of sucks. I'm not happy!

Ive mentioned centaur man a few times because in a prior mm music topic some dude acted like it was no question the worst song in the 6 NES mega mans. I thought that statement was just absurd. Not that its super hype, but i thought it was just such a weird take, almost like the dudes dog was killed while the song was playing or somethin

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Wonder why the account got nuked.

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Anagram posted...

Wonder why the account got nuked.

Wonder if it had anything to do with a Squeenix crackdown this past weekend for anything else they had on their channel.

Also, hi, I'm a Centaur man "hater." It does not feel like a Megaman song to me, is all, and is the worst in the game for me, except for Tomahawk Man's theme. It's still miles ahead of some other tripe that's already been on this list (but miles behind some things that died early, too. IMO, of course.)

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I love centaur man and I love being STRONG

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love both astro man and stone man (i know, my unsurprising bias toward those two games is showing)

glad at least one mm8 song got pretty high. (and glad almost every mm5 song is getting VERY high, clearly)

i think nes sound design being too plain compared to my standards is often why i'm picky about music on the system compared to other chip formats, but mm5 spits in the face of that, like you detailed in your writeup on stone man. big part of why it's my favorite 2a03-only nes ost, it shows it's not the soundchip i dislike, but that the way people use it just isn't nearly as cool as i know it's capable of. but mm5 does what i want nes music to do sound design-wise (on top of being stuff i actually compositionally love, which isn't as much the case with other "impressive use of soundchip" nes music)
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rip mega man 8 soundtrack :-(

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The percussion in Dive Man always sounded really similar to Wood Man's stage to me to the point where the theme as a whole almost felt derivative of Wood Man to me even though it's not really that similar to it (Wood Man is way better!).

Maybe that's why you're thinking it's iconic? I dunno.

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bump man

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was writing some tonight, I should be able to get back to doing this more regularly so I can finish this off after taking like two weeks off

45. Metal Man (Mega Man 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WJXkL9dPk4

Every time I have to eliminate a theme from Mega Man 2 I feel like I'm committing some sort of religious blasphemy but then I remember that the series just has a lot of really good music. Anyway, I don't have a lot to say about Metal Man, so I want to say a word about Takashi Tateishi. Tateishi worked at Capcom from 1988 to 1990 and composed just a few game soundtracks in his time there - between that and his subsequent ten or so years at Konami I only know of maybe five or six games that he was the principal composer of. The only ones I know beyond a shadow of a doubt are entirely him are LED Storm and Willow for the arcade and Cocoron for the NES. (Some people seem to think he composed Batman Returns for the NES, but I strongly suspect it was his coworker Shigemasa Matsuo who did most if not all of the composition. Anyway, that's beside the point.) Oh, and of course, a little game you might have heard of known as Mega Man 2. Anyway, as I said, he left Capcom after 1990 (side note: he wanted to do Mega Man 3 but didn't get the job). As it turns out, he didn't compose a lot of music after this, mostly doing production work at Konami, and some time in the early 00's he left the gaming industry altogether. While he does still do audio-related work, he left music composition altogether, and for a long time didn't even own a keyboard (this is why he has no tracks in MM10). It wasn't until just a few years ago that he even learned that Mega Man 2's music was super popular after hearing about it from fellow MM composer Ippo Yamada, and going to see a cover band playing the music that he had written well over 20 years ago. He had no idea! He was actually pretty excited about it and it sparked an interest in composing again, and I think he wrote some tunes for Mighty No 9 or something, I didn't really look into it. Anyway, the absolute nerve of this guy. He wrote a soundtrack that fostered a love for music in my heart as a young child and he had no fucking idea what he'd even done. Oh, sure, just casually change the landscape of video game music forever and just go about your life like nothing happened. Fucking hell.

44. Dr. Wily 2 (Mega Man V)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTHXNFZmVvg

Again, I apologize for all of the suddenly dead Mega Man V links that I don't think I can fix at this point, the Youtube account hosting them got nuked. And I apologize for the shitty rip in this video, it was literally the best one I could find. Anyway, all of the GB Mega Man games, EVEN II, have banger Wily stage themes and this one is no exception - it is, in fact, my favorite one! It's a fittingly epic finale for the Rockman World series, and I love how slow and dramatically this one builds up - it has a different, more ominous feel from other Wily stage themes and it really earns that 'drop' at :45 into the exciting climax.

43. Fire Man (Mega Man 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S4mi1jH9ds

Accuse me of grading on a curve for Mega Man 1 here if you want, after I just praised Mega Man 5 for the beautiful shaping of its lead instruments; here you have Fire Man's theme, where the lead square wave couldn't be more flat. It just turns on and plays notes - it has no shape to it at all. Regardless, I don't care, this theme is dope. I love that menacing bassline in the first half and I think it's interesting how withholding the second square wave for the first part makes the second half of the theme sound more full. I just like how this one sounds aggressive, yet classy. Like all of the tracks in MM1, for something written in 1987 I feel like it was ahead of its time.

42. Snake Man (Mega Man 3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqGLXispP08

To be totally honest with you, whenever I hear the first 15 seconds of this track, for a second I go 'wait, why do I like this track that much? It's just ok' then that B section kicks in and it's just pure MM3 goodness. I dunno if any other track in MM3 sounds more like MM3 than this track. That whole second half of the track is so smooth you could literally spread it on toast. Everything in MM3 is just mixed so impeccably well and this track is no exception, it's just really pleasing on the ears. A classic that I'm sure everyone will think I ranked 30 spots too low, like Pharaoh Man.

41. Dr. Wily 1 (Mega Man 3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfOE4rJnYYc

Improbably, this is only the second highest ranked Dr. Wily stage that makes me think of turtles.

Losing more of my favs now! Poor Snake and Fireman! Both would make my top 20 for sure

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Dang, Snake out, but at least IT remains.

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oh man snake man is one of my few "favorites" not from the usual yamaguchi/uchiyama suspects. it doesn't quite make my fabled "top 10" i keep referring to but sad to see it go (actually, more than anything i'm just happy to see it this high...though at the same time maybe it was sorta expected)
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Snake mannnnnnnn

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metal man is the only one i think deserves to be higher up. snake man and wily 1 are good but mm3 is overrated anyway lol :)

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Just bumping this for now. Sorry for the slow rate of my updates

Hi! I'm back. Sorry, I had one bad week, and that was somehow enough to make me run out of steam and totally crash and burn on this for a while. But no more of that! Even if I've kinda lost my momentum I'm going to force myself to get through the rest of these. So here we go!

40. Blizzard Man (Mega Man 6)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93q61LT2Vuk

Is this a sleeper? I have no idea if this is a sleeper. Do people like this track? What do people even think of MM6's soundtrack? Hell if I know. I like this one a lot and I've always gravitated towards it for some reason, probably because I really like dramatic tracks with a lot of fun harmonization and even by MM6 standards this one has a noticeably sweeping, operatic flair to it. It really sells the hell out of that climactic section, just standing atop the mountain and singing it with as much grandiosity and sincerity as it can muster and I can really respect that. I also just think the rhythm of the melody in the introductory part's cool. Doo... doo... doo... DOOOOOO doo doo

39. Crystal Man (Mega Man 5)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNMI-Vkrp_Q

A little slower and shorter than some other tracks in MM5 but I love the foreboding, mysterious vibe of this one, and it shows off a lot more of that great lead shaping that I know MM5 for. Listen to that really insane vibrato in the lead in the first 10 seconds of the track - I don't know if I've ever heard anything that sounds like that on NES. Then, during the main body of the track at :16, really watch for the way the attack of each note changes, basically from note to note. It starts with this very legato (smooth and flowing) note that sweeps slowly up, but then follows with these two staccato (short and sharp) notes before another legato sweep upwards. More than the melody or the rhythm here, it's that articulation on the notes that make this really worth coming back to for me.

38. Bomb Man (Mega Man 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SITeW1GIj3k

It's Bomb Man, my favorite MM1 theme! I feel like poor Bomb Man is always the most forgotten of the MM1 robot masters. All the others are used for stuff all the time but nobody remembers poor Bomb Man. He's not even in the GB game! His stage is my favorite in the game though, and so is his stage theme. I can't stop humming this motherfucker, it's got such a catchy melodic motif. Despite the fact that the bassline isn't moving around a lot and the second square wave is only used to harmonize, this track still comes out sounding really 'full' and not too static at all, and I dunno how it does that, it's impressive. I think the harmonization stays interesting enough to keep my ears entertained - that major 2nd at :10 is a ballsy choice (although the decision to have both square waves overlap on the same note afterwards is really strange - generally not great practice imo). The B section is pretty high concept for something written in 1987 when most composers were still getting a hang of making any notes play on the NES at all.

Final Mega Man 1 ranking:

1. Bomb Man (38)
2. Fire Man (43)
3. Cut Man (79)
4. Elec Man (96)
5. Ice Man (100)
6. Dr. Wily 1 (127)
7. Guts Man (150)
8. Dr. Wily 2 (155)

Thoughts: Even though Mega Man 2 gets all the credit for really launching the Mega Man series in earnest - well deserved, mind you - Manami Matsumae deserves all the credit in the world for getting it all started and setting the tone of the franchise. Mega Man 1 is a good game with a good soundtrack! It gets a bad rap for not being Mega Man 2, but I think this game is still way ahead of its time - NES games just didn't have soundtracks this deep and involved at the time, some games had a few good tracks but that was about it. The sheer amount of polish that this soundtrack delivered to the game can't be overstated. Other NES games of this day were lucky if they even had more than one stage theme at all but here's Mega Man 1 with beautifully detailed designs for each stage and a unique, thematic theme to go with them. Most of these tracks hold up today... even if that's like only 5 or 6 of them but that's pretty good!

Regrets?: I could have ranked Dr. Wily 1 a bit higher - even though it's a pretty short theme with a weirdly offkilter rhythm, I was always really excited to get to the Wily 1 stages in this game as a kid and always found this theme memorable. Everything else seems about right.

37. Uranus (Mega Man V)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-WYgc2HPNw

Hey check it out everyone, it's Mega Man's first and only ska-themed track! Jealous of Sega's collaboration with Michael Jackson on Sonic 3, I guess Capcom got The Mighty Mighty Bosstones in for a couple of tracks on Mega Man V or something. This one's a pretty short loop but it's undeniably cool. The vast majority of Mega Man tracks have a pretty strong commitment to four-on-the-floor type rhythms that this one really stands out as a breath of fresh air - that offbeat 2-and-4 rhythm is cool as hell. It occurs to me that I haven't actually looked into MMV's composer at all but I'd bet money on the ska influence here. Extremely weird and funky track that's right at home in the rest of MMV's soundtrack.

36. Burst Man (Mega Man 7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QvVL4Xk3ZE

I realize that this is pretty much the furthest thing from what you'd expect to be in the top 50 (well... aside from maybe one other track that people probably expected to be out in like the bottom 10) but you have to hear me out on this one. First of all, I have to owe Mega Man 7 a really big apology here, because I have not really given it a lot of credit up to this point, but I've also been sleeping on what is easily the soundtrack's best asset - percussion. I don't think I've talked about it even ONCE this entire ranking, but MM7 has a strong percussion game - crisp samples and a knack for writing that strongly implies to me that Toshihiko Horiyama probably has seriously played the drums before - I'd bet a few bucks on it least. It's present in the entire soundtrack, but Burst Man is really a tour de force. For this theme, don't listen to the main melody, which is fine, but nothing special. Instead, listen to two things - the harpsichord-like accompaniment which creates a really nice rhythmic texture, and listen to those fucking drums. He really goes hog wild with them here and they sound great - crisp snares, beautifully panned toms, and everything from that fill at :34 onwards is great. It's honestly taken a few listens to really notice these details but god help me, I'm starting to actually come around on MM7. Always liked this theme and I think it deserves another look.

Snake and Metal both in my top 10. Pharoah is my number 1 though. Big ouch the last few posts

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those are some rockin' drums in burst man's theme

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NOooo CRYSTAL MAN (ok i know we're so high that i can't complain but yeah that's one of my top 10 classic mm songs, probably 3rd favorite from mm5. first mm5 pick in my top 10 to go!) mostly i just find it harmonically and melodically addictive, so many cool simultaneous unpredictable+catchy chord movements give it a cool mysterious feel, and the crunchy dissonance is fun. but the 'nes sound design' is so goood too for all the reasons you've listed to. especially like the fake almost crystalline echo-like feelings it's able to give off
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while i disagree with a lot of your opinions (seeing practically the entire mm8 soundtrack ranked below mm1 songs that i think are nothing more than decent is pretty painful for me), at least i do agree that bomb man is easily the best mm1 song. awesome track.

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35. Yamato Man (Mega Man 6)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6ST9

Is this a spicy pick for best Mega Man 6 theme? Honestly, I have absolutely no clue what the consensus best theme from this game even is. If I asked a bunch of people who have played MM6 I have no idea what answer would come back. Probably not Centaur Man. That's about it. I think Yamato Man's a pretty crowdpleasing theme, though? This one always instantly energizes me to want to play this stage - the melody hooks are good and memorable but the real meat here is the harmony. The second square wave spends almost the entire time harmonizing the lead square wave, and yet not only does this track not sound all that sparse, it provides a lot of pleasant surprises in this track. For repetitive stage themes like these, something I ask for is a reason to keep coming back to the theme - some particularly interesting element that tickles my ears and drives my curiosity. In Yamato Man, it's the harmonies. Everything up to :12 and then from :37 onwards is an interesting instructive lesson on two-part harmonies for the NES, and isolating that underlying second line is a nice exercise for would-be transcribers. Anyway, those parts really keep me coming back to this theme.

Final Mega Man 6 Ranking:

1. Yamato Man (35)
2. Blizzard Man (40)
3. Centaur Man (47)
4. Flame Man (57)
5. Plant Man (62)
6. Wind Man (65)
7. Tomahawk Man (80)
8. Knight Man (88)
9. Mr. X (98)
10. Dr. Wily (99)

Thoughts: Oh, yeah, I guess that's it for Mega Man 6, huh? Nothing scratching the top 30, but nothing falling below the top 100 either. High floor, low ceiling is how I feel about this one. It's a really good soundtrack, nontheless, especially once boss themes and the like are accounted for. Lots of good writing, although it's not as brilliant as 5 while also lacking the sheer creativity of 4. Of the first six games, I guess it just narrowly edges out 1, but I like the rest more - 6 stands out the least. But it's still good! All the NES-style MMs are treasures.

Regrets: None whatsoever. 98 might seem harsh for Mr. X, but top 100 is all songs I like and I merely like Mr. X. I wouldn't change this ranking one bit.

34. Top Man (Mega Man 3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dgtHw-uAxY

Someone's gonna have to help me out here, because I swear to god this theme reminds me of some particular genre of music, but it's escaping me. It's definitely a rock 'n roll vibe, but it reminds me of something more specific and I can't pin it down. Like every 3 theme, it's good. I've overlooked it for a while, hasn't really been one of my particular childhood favorites, but something about it has kind of grabbed me as of late as I've realized that all of the elements of this theme really get their hooks in me for some reason. Moreso than any other track from 3, this one really relies on repetition, each little bit getting played out 4 times before moving on, but it certainly makes each part memorable. I like that sort of tremolo (I feel like there should be a better word but I'm blanking) effect on the lead at :18 that leads into that very 3-characteristic vibrato, it has a lot of character.

33. Heat Man (Mega Man 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIDIZKVjmR4

This may be only a 25 second loop or so, but goddamn if it doesn't make the most of those 25 seconds. There's not really a lot here - half of those 25 seconds are basically an introduction section, then an A section, then... back to the intro! It always seems kind of like it's building up to something but never gets there. But goddamn, it rocks. The bassline is just so ahead of its time - I like how the triangle wave continues it into the "A section" - and the use of the square wave to create that weird tom-like percussive effect in the intro is rad. Very MM2 thing to do. What's really cool about that is that it seems like the theme was kind of designed for the yoku blocks in this stage - the fact that the square wave plays a secondary role means it can be used for the yoku blocks instead, which I'm not sure they intended but it works well. My favorite thing about this theme, though, is that it sometimes gets kind of fucked up when you play the actual game - the sliding effect on the sound of the yoku blocks doesn't get fully overwritten, and it starts to slur the notes of the melody sometimes, and it makes it sound really cool for some reason and it's always a weird, pleasant surprise when it occurs - it gives the theme some variance in an unexpected and unpredictable way.

32. Dr. Wily 2 (Mega Man 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MROwI0bwAb8

Welcome to the very hottest take on my list! Finally, we're here. If all this song does is give you a headache, that's fine, I admit it's not for everyone. But I always look forward for the part of the game where this theme kicks in. This one's all about texture and about the psychological effect it creates. It's just so different from all the other music in the game - you've got all these jamming themes, and then here's Wily 2, and it's just this nonstop, repetitive motif that keeps rising and escalating, and I don't know why but I love it. It just winds up for so long, by the end of the loop the tension is just ready to snap like a rubber band pulled too taut, until there's that sudden release of pressure with that loooong slide back down to the start. I don't know what to say except that it tickles my ears just right, and it seems all too appropriate for the latter Wily stages. It's a really defining part of Mega Man 2 for me.

31. Dr. Wily (Mega Man 5)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5YIJ_-WlNM

Another undeniably cool MM5 track and another undeniably cool Wily theme. Like most Wily themes, it isn't the most memorable theme from its game (I have a feeling that a lot of people might find this to be kind of strange but I do think it's the case), and I don't have a lot to say about it specifically. It's got a great opening hook and a lot of really cool harmonization and yet I find myself forgetting why I liked it so much about halfway through sometimes before that transition into the C section at :40 that really gives it an extra burst until the end. Like every MM5 theme, it's gratuitous in a good way - it's a nice, long loop, and I could almost imagine it coming back to the start at :40, but then it turns out the theme still has a lot left in it. A more than suitably climactic final stage theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6ST9g8VAT8

I'm not sure what happened but here's the not-broken video link to Yamato Man

heat man's loop is just too short for me to put that highly. it's a good loop but i think it needs another section - for me it's the weakest robot master track in mm2 (though obviously that's stiff competition)

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Just bumping this really quick! I've had - let's say it's not that "I didn't have time" and more "the times that would have been most convenient to work on this got eaten up by a really lengthy engagement, and I could have done it at a different time, but I spent most of it outside"

30. Dr. Wily 3 (Mega Man 10)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip_oxOGIhAs

Another really neat Dr. Wily stage that's pretty similar to MM5's - a particular sort of Mega Man-ish mood that I can only describe as "somehow energetically melancholy." The bittersweetness of the melody here is appropriate, since this is the last challenging playable stage in the whole series - wait, right, Mega Man 11 exists, I keep forgetting that MM10 wasn't the series' swan song. Uh, anyway, I like this one, it's somehow aggressive but pleasant and I like it. This is another one of those tracks that gives me a lot to come back for - the melody is strong, but the polymelody offered by the second square wave and the also-basically-a-polymelody that the bassline is doing means that there's basically three different voices to listen to at any time, and yet they somehow manage to not talk over each other much at all and they converge at a really satisfying point. This is a feat of melodic engineering that is NOT EASY to pull off, and I must give a tip of the cap to Ryo Kawakami here, who I don't think I've really mentioned much yet - he is credited with most of MM10's soundtrack that wasn't any of the robot master stages, and a few tracks in MM9 - he did Wily 1 from that game for instance. Anyway, he quietly amassed three tracks in my top 30 and that's pretty impressive. Good job! He also wrote a lot of stuff in Mega Man ZX. A good and unheralded composer.

29. Ballade (Mega Man 10)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F9q6_pYBfI

Oh, uh, speaking of Ryo Kawakami, here he is again, with a track that sounds very similar to the previous one - 'aggressively melancholy' once more is the theme of the day, but the sappiness is dialed up to 11 - really putting the 'ballad' in Ballade, eh? eh??? But hey, I kinda like the sap, that's some good sap. Again, this feels like a fitting send-off to the franchise as a whole, except it came back again somehow, so I guess not. I think this was an intelligent way to do an arrangement of Ballade's theme - don't force the issue and just repeat the two or three ideas that existed in the original, but write an entirely new theme and slip those motifs in there. It's a pretty damn interesting feat that Kawakami wrote a completely different theme from Ballade's original theme here but managed to slip those really odd motifs from Ballade's theme in here, subtly enough that you could almost totally miss them if you weren't paying attention. Neat! It's totally ripe to be discovered a few years from now in a lame "did you know?" video like that one time someone thought they found the Donkey Kong motif in Super Mario 64.

28. Dr. Wily 2 (Mega Man 7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6CC-CHra2o

Okay, look, here's the thing. I was going to do a writeup where the joke was every sentence was somehow a Michael Jackson reference, but fuck that, I wanna get real with you guys here and talk about something that's been bugging me. See, people got a real stick up their ass recently about Balan Wonderworld's soundtrack, and how the main theme of that game ripped off the theme from Ghostbusters (not the Ray Parker Jr one, the other one). And like, yes, okay, it did. And that's Fine. Look, here's the thing - video game composers aren't geniuses (unless they're Tim Follin). They are simple, working composers who have some talent and a few good ideas in their head, and at the end of the day they have to write like a few dozen tracks for a single game, one that sometimes they don't even know if anyone will play, and they're just trying to make it through the day. So, they're gonna use ideas that they've heard from other places. This happens! Not every musical idea is a wholly original one - in fact, it is incredibly difficult to come up with brand new musical ideas, and if you've got one, it's worth its weight in gold. Most of the time, you get this, and most of the time, unlike Balan Wonderworld, it goes unnoticed and nobody gives a shit. Most of the time, you get Makoto Tomozawa just plugging in the bassline to Michael Jackson's Thriller - he might not have even done it on purpose, it might have just been floating in his brain somewhere - and riffing over that. And you know what? It works! It works for me. I love the weird moodiness of this one. Most Wily stages in the franchise prior to this have a particular sort of aggressive and melodic sound, but here we've got this dank, menacing turtle funk and it's cool as fuck. The moment that hi-hat kicks in at the very beginning, I'm just sold. I'm in. The drumming over that repeating Thriller hook is everything in this song for me so much that I barely even care that its melodic ideas aren't that interesting. This song never even really goes anywhere, which is my only complaint - it just kind of hangs out on this singular idea of ripping off Thriller and doing a cool hi-hat and I'm FINE with that.

27. Galaxy Man (Mega Man 9)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYpy7SfTejQ

Pretty much every Mega Man game is due its one work of absolute genius - here's Mega Man 9's. It's Galaxy Man. Out of all the spicy takes I'm about to make, this isn't one of them. You know this one, and you love it, and you should, because it's great. Really, my only complaint is that this track continues Mega Man 9's pattern of being, well, gratingly nasal? Those 12.5% duty cycles (I promise you I'm not making up terminology) are just really not flattering and there's a reason I don't usually use them as a lead unless I have a compelling reason. But I guess it works for this goofy space theme well enough, so it's fine. The writing here is superb, otherwise - fast paced, catchy, constantly bouncing from one good idea to another and doing it with a rhythmic literacy that not every Mega Man track's got. All that off-beat action in the A section really serves the pacing well and there's a lot of nice melodic moments that don't just happen on a gentle 4/4 pacing. I'm a real big fan of that run at :23 and the off-kilter way it resolves at :33, it's another one of those 'ooh, I gotta let the song loop again so I can hear that one more time' elements.

Oh yeah I guess Mega Man 9 is done now.

Final Mega Man 9 rankings:

1. Galaxy Man (27)
2. Tornado Man (51)
3. Dr. Wily 2 (54)
4. Dr. Wily 1 (63)
5. Jewel Man (64)
6. Splash Woman (87)
7. Dr. Wily 3 (102)
8. Plug Man (128)
9. Endless Stage (129)
10. Fake Man (135)
11. Hornet Man (139)
12. Magma Man (147)
13. Dr. Wily 4 (160)
14. Concrete Man (169)

Thoughts: To be totally candid with you, this is probably my least favorite NES-style Mega Man soundtrack, competing with 1 for that spot, but I kinda give 1 a tiebreaker for being 1. There are definitely a few tracks here I really like, but there's more that are merely unremarkable, and out of all of the NES games, I just don't like Mega Man 9's sound that much. I talked about it nearly every time but it's really high pitched and nasal and just doesn't tickle the ears very nicely for me, which is a shame because that flaw kind of masks what are some otherwise quite fine ideas. I remember liking this soundtrack a lot more when it came out, but I think that's mainly the shock of getting another NES-style Mega Man in 2008 and how much that blew my mind, so hearing anything written with a 2A03 soundchip was heavenly, like finding an oasis in the desert. But now that the superior Mega Man 10 has come out (fight me) and I've had more time to digest, 9 ain't the best. Sorry!

Regrets: That I accidentally typoed it as "Horney Man" one more time, for the road. Other than that, nah. I honestly did give Concrete Man another chance, but I just couldn't find it - I don't like that track! Nothing I can do. I really gave it my most honest reappraisal.

26. Flash Man (Mega Man 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncC6OhrpcTc

Truly, will the sacrilege never end? Something had to be #26 and just barely miss out on the top 25 and it wasn't an easy pick, believe me, since I arbitrarily decided that the top 25 was sacred, somehow. So here's another Mega Man 2 track, which consistently somehow places lower on the list than I expect it to, maybe because my brain is trying to be a contrarian and get me to like different things instead of just placing everything from 2 at the top and calling it a day because hearing Mega Man 2 music gives me the good brain juices and makes me feel happy things. Flash Man is a classic - it's usually the first track I hear in Mega Man 2 since I usually start with this stage, so it holds a particularly special place in my heart, and it's also the first video game track I ever tried to write an arrangement of! Well, a transcription. I made a really crappy sounding MIDI of it back when I was like 15, and I was pretty proud of it because it did more or less sound like the song I was trying to make. That MIDI is still probably around, somewhere, but I'm too lazy to go looking for it. Anyway, I do have particularly fond memories of this track because of that. And it's a damn good track! All of the hooks in this one are cool... if a mite repetitive. I mean, yeah, that opening hook is awesome, but it does lose its shine a bit by the fourth repetition.

Alright, I've got no major engagements this week, and this has to be done before I go on vacation, so I'm going to buckle down and do it. So here's the top 25 that are left to rank.

• You'd expect MM2 or MM3 to be on top, but no, it is MM5 that rules the roost with a whopping 6 tracks. A full 60% of the list is these three games now.
• MM2 somehow only has four tracks, which is hard for me to believe, and it's my list.
• If it's not one of those three games, then it's probably MM4 or MM10, which have a strong contingency remaining with 3 each. They should not be this close to MM2, and yet, here we are.
• Goodbye to MM1, MM6, and MM9, but a few games still have one ace in the top 25, including MM7, MM&B, MMV, and...
• lol. lmao

Mega Man 2
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Air Man
Crash Man
Quick Man
Dr. Wily 1

Mega Man 3
---
Gemini Man
Magnet Man
Needle Man
Shadow Man
Spark Man

Mega Man 4
---
Bright Man
Drill Man
Toad Man

Mega Man 5
---
Charge Man
Gravity Man
Gyro Man
Napalm Man
Wave Man
Dark Man

Mega Man 7
---
Dr. Wily 1

Mega Man 10
---
Sheep Man
Solar Man
Dr. Wily 2

Mega Man & Bass
---
Cold Man

Mega Man V (GB)
---
Venus

Mega Man Soccer
---
Dr. Wily

I adore MM10 Ballade. Pretty good run for it here.

Think my top 3 out of the remaining are Spark Man, MM2 Wily 1, and Wave Man in some order or another.

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And my number one is gone. :(

Galaxy Man is just too good.

Favorite 3 remaining are Spark, Bright and Drill probably

---

Glad to see Cold Man and Sheep Man hanging in there for top 25

---

galaxy man and flash man seem about right (concrete man is a better theme than both though, imo)

not nearly as big a fan of quick man, so i'm interested to see where that lands in the overall ranking

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lol

lmao

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WarThaNemesis2 posted...

lol

lmao

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Yoooo where is Soccer Dr Wily gonna land? Please

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BONUS RANKING: ROBOT MASTER THEMES

I had a real hell of a time figuring out what to do with these. If I included every boss theme together it's almost 50 themes and that is kind of its own ridiculous list - I wanted to separate the robot master themes and the final battle themes to their own list, at least. That kind of leaves an awkward middle list of "Wily stage bosses but also special bosses like Bass" but I'll rank them as such anyway, it's fine.

I was kind of arbitrary about things here, since I basically use different rules for inclusion every time - if I feel a theme is different enough then it gets a separate entry, otherwise it doesn't. So Mega Man III is a no here, but the first boss theme in Mega Man IV is. That'll hold for the other boss theme lists too.

18. Mega Man: The Wily Wars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUvTiIiSUxE

I wasn't sure if I should include this as a robot master theme or a Wily stage theme but I think it fits better on this list. It doesn't really fit well on any list, though, because it's really dull. About as generic as a boss theme gets.

17. Mega Man II (GB)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPcqyo8WwsI

I would confidently say that this is probably one of the five worst tracks in the entire franchise. It's so bad, it's funny, and for that alone I'm going to elevate it one spot on this list over the terminally boring WW theme. This is downright amateurish, which is one of the harshest criticisms I can give, but it really sounds like a new composer's first attempt at writing a boss theme - that uninspired chromatic bluesy riff just screams "this is what sounds like a boss theme to me" and that snare beneath every note is exactly the sort of thing a newbie composer does when they don't know how to use drums. And then it all goes WACKY at :23 and I literally laughed out loud at how terrible it sounds. It's certainly creative!

16. Mega Man 8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCWbcQxkXls

Competent, but really not my style. Not really into the whole style of playing a bunch of discordant notes to try to convey, like, the panic of fighting a strong enemy, especially when MM8's bosses aren't terribly intimidating.

15. Mega Man 11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWjgV67d-nM

I can't remember this one at all, honestly. It really does just sound like every other MM11 theme, yet again - it's not bad but it pretty much immediately leaves my brain after I hear it. Kinda goes on longer than necessary.

14. Mega Man 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0Mm4M211bM

Kind of a hot mess, but it's a classic hot mess! I don't even know what you have to do to get the rhythm to sound that completely off the entire time. It's memorable enough though so it does its job.

13. Mega Man V (GB)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAmKgnnMNtA

Mega Man V sure does love its chromatic scales, doesn't it? This one's fine, but not a standout. It's not really as creative as most of MMV's soundtrack, unfortunately.

12. Mega Man IV (GB)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbcz9GtUblY

Just the theme that plays for the MM4 bosses at the start. Since they already used the MM4 boss theme in MMIII, they made a new arrangement here, which is kinda neat, although I don't like this one as much. It sounds darker and more intense but it doesn't really suit the theme that much for me.

11. Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74m_48N6UGc

This one's actually an arrangement of MM2's battle theme if you listen closely enough, and it's not as good as the original but it does have kind of its own take that I still think is pretty fun. Much like MM2, it's the only boss theme in its game at all.

10. Mega Man & Bass
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMVRsnINsgU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gWXSCavy0w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NBMHB5VZpc

Three different versions of the same theme again - you can guess which one I like most and which one I like least. I think the extremely vibrato-laden synth of the GBA gives it some much needed vocality; I think the SFC version just sounds too muted, the lead mixed too quietly to really stand out. And then there's the Challenger From The Future version, which is pretty bad, but I actually genuinely like the lead synth in it more than the one in the SFC, which is horribly damning.

9. Mega Man: Powered Up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbz-JIsIhXw

Because of just HOW MUCH this cleans up the original and arranges it into something that makes sense, I decided to include this one separately. No completely bonkers rhythm issues here, just a pleasant boss theme that reminds me of the original enough to be nostalgic.

8. Mega Man 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLjz19Vs6ig

This song is a - DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE - aggressive pace suits it well so it's pretty good.

7. Mega Man 9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOo5IzBATgQ

Points for being different - it's a lot less melody-driven than most of the other boss themes, which works to this one's advantage, since it's got an especially frantic tempo that would probably make it kind of overwhelming if there was too much going on. Catchy theme, doesn't get too old while you're waiting 2 minutes for the Twin Devil to become vulnerable again.

6. Mega Man 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPVDroHSUic

It's the classic! And yet, this is somehow the easiest decision I've ever made in my life - I like the top 5 more than this but it beats everything else. Shrug! I like how, because the boss health bar fills up and covers part of the intro, you get a longer, more dramatic intro when you fight Wily, sort of by accident, since his health bar fills up later. It's a cool effect.

5. Mega Man 10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mWgrAibVEA

One of the cooler openings out of any of the boss themes. Really like the bass in this one. The slower, more melancholic pacing is an interesting choice. Like this one a lot. It's just cool. Yeah that's the best analysis you're getting from me here.

4. Mega Man 5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9Hxd8Qx3iU

Oh man, I want to talk about this one so much, because it's got one of my favorite little composition tricks. You know how in Mega Man 1-4, the boss themes are interrupted by the sound of the boss's health bar filling up? Especially in MM4, where their completely insane solution, for some reason, was to pause the music entirely. Mari Yamaguchi was a genius, so she employed a clever sleight of hand here - the intro of the song is just the bassline, leaving space for the boss's health bar to fill up cleanly without getting in the way, since there's such limited space on the NES's soundchip. Brilliant solution to a problem they basically made for themselves, and also the theme itself is great.

3. Mega Man 6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUESH4vWIos

Love this one. It's got another one of those classic chromatic, bluesy boss riffs, but this one is very *fancy.* It's too bad that this theme makes the bosses in this game seem much cooler than they are, since most of their attack patterns are mostly to just jump around and wait a couple of seconds before jumping again. And it also employs the same trick that MM5 did, which was to only have the bass play during the intro, which is really neat.

2. Mega Man 7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yooYiGn6GRo

I've been giving Mega Man 7 its dues lately, I guess. I've always had a guilty pleasure for this theme. The bass and the percussion totally slap - the lead is a really weird sound but it works for me I guess. I like the slower pacing of this one that gradually builds to a climax, rather than the more frantic tempos of previous themes. I really fucking love that little drum fill at :33. It's so neat. It's good that MM7 has a rockin' boss theme since all of its bosses spend about 80% of their time in i-frames.

1. Mega Man 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3t6peqsorE

Mega Man 3 is pretty much unbeatable - I don't think there's a single track in the entire game that isn't top 3. Anyway yeah I just think this is obviously the best boss theme. It kicks ass. It also has that weird effect that MM2 does where the doc robots' health bar fills up later so they accidentally get a more dramatic intro. Always thought that was neat.

1. Mega Man 3
2. Mega Man 7
3. Mega Man 6
4. Mega Man 5
5. Mega Man 10
6. Mega Man 2
7. Mega Man 9
8. Mega Man 4
9. Mega Man: Powered Up
10. Mega Man & Bass
11. Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge
12. Mega Man IV
13. Mega Man V
14. Mega Man 1
15. Mega Man 11
16. Mega Man 8
17. Mega Man II
18. Mega Man: The Wily Wars

I'm sort of worried I might be missing boss themes for this one that I should have ranked, but I've like triple checked my work and I'm pretty sure these are all the themes that are proper Robot Master-fighting themes.

I was gonna do the others tonight but I'm sleepy so I'll do them tomorrow! Then the list shall continue.

I think MM2 is the only time I'd put it on top for anything here. Usually think it's overrated for everything else, but I do enjoy the boss theme the most for sure.

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BONUS RANKING: WILY STAGE/SPECIAL BOSS THEMES

This is sort of an awkward ranking, but I looked at the final battle themes and decided I wanted to keep those to their own list. But there aren't really as many "Wily boss" themes as I thought there would be, and it's sort of an awkward and unsorted list when combined with the other miscellaneous boss themes, but ah well. Not to mention that a few of these are used as final boss themes as well.

There's a strong likelihood that I forgot something to include on this list, forgive me if I did so. And of course, as usual, whether or not I include entries and whether or not I separate or combine them is basically arbitrary.

13. Mega Man 8 (Duo)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CINLGtoFi_g

Those horn samples that I really don't like return, although I think this may be the last time I have to talk about them, actually. They sure to make an ignoble appearance though, producing a bland, uncertain melody with one really random, out of place note. This is a really terrible character theme, if that's what it's meant to be - it doesn't really seem to know what it wants to do and completely fails as a leitmotif of any sort. It's just bad!

12. Mega Man & Bass
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhCn02rTHbM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdBlYY1li_M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn1fjtnVnXY

MM&B seems to have a habit of producing a few real stinkers in its soundtrack, and this is one of them - an unpleasant and annoying track for some boss fights that go on way too long and cause this theme to badly overstay its welcome. This is a rare case where I prefer the SFC version - I think the instrumentation is better and less grating, for what it's worth. This gets used for the final battle as well, so you get to hear way too much of this one.

11. Mega Man 8 (Bass)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ7nhtb04J0

It's Bass's theme, which is cool, but with all of its teeth removed. Gone is the really punchy bass and now it just kind of has a bland techno vibe with some really ill-considered chord progressions added to it. The synths in the background aren't really adding anything either. Nothing here works for me.

10. Mega Man 8 (Midboss)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IoNKYtMNlI

I'm pretty sure this is the only mid-boss theme in the entire series, which is weird! Mega Man 8 might also be the only game with five different boss themes in it, and this is somehow the best of the ones on this list, although that is saying incredibly little. It's perfectly bland and not outright bad like the previous ones and that's all I can really think to say about it - it does its job.

9. Mega Man V (Terra)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOs_JvBuGks

I'm sure what they WANTED was 'intimidating' - what they got instead was 'silly,' which seems roughly part for the course for MMV. It's certainly a... memorable motif I guess, since it's just those same five notes in a chromatic scale, gradually ascending, but it really comes off as sort of comical and it's not very interesting to listen to.

8. Mega Man: The Power Battle/Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters (Yellow Devil)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG5eGe3_kb0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv8q8gdROP8

This is almost certainly the most obscure song in the franchise to appear in two different games - I'd wager you forgot this one exists unless you weren't starting directly at the OST, like me. This is one of the weirdest songs because as far as I can tell, it's the ONLY unique theme in Power Battle, and one of just a couple in Power Fighters. Really beats the hell out of me! This is actually a pretty big jump in quality because this is a perfectly okay track, even if it is a D-lister. The Power Fighters version is better because obviously it is - everything in Power Battle sounds terrible, but Power Fighters actually uses some samples that aren't pure garbage. I probably could have been talking more about Power Fighters' soundtrack throughout all of this, but it was too much work. (There's also a neat arrangement of MM2 Wily 1 when you fight Mecha Dragon but I'm not including stage theme arrangements here.)

7. Mega Man 10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGiid1FK3gg

It's okay, but not one of Mega Man 10's bigger hits. It's pretty memorable when you arrive in the first archival room, since that's just a very cool boss fight and it's notable since MM9 didn't have a unique Wily boss theme. I think it gets a little annoying after a while.

6. Mega Man IV (Ballade)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5ZaA_0MPKk

Much like Terra from MMV I think this one is teetering on the brink of being silly rather than intimidating, but it's got much better ideas, and ends up being kind of catchy. I think I like this theme more for the ways its motifs later get used in MM10, though.

5. Mega Man 7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huDeUlKBsv0

Gets dangerously close to being annoying but never quite gets there for me - I think the melody's entertaining and the urgency suits the idea of a hard boss fight without getting too frantic. I have good memories of this one because the Guts tank was really hard for me as a kid, so I had to hear it a lot and I eventually associated it with being challenged. Low bar to clear - this list is a rough one.

4. Mega Man 11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AnNFcCKl6E

Ugh, CHRIST, can Mega Man 11 ever just NOT? It does it again! It does the same thing that literally every Mega Man 11 song does! It starts out with what I think is actually a pretty sick idea - it really nails that 'scary monster discordance' vibe that all the Wily boss themes want but I think it really nails the character the best out of all of them, until it hits :33 and turns into another gag-worthy happy cheesefest. Then it kind of loses the plot again for a bit until it really abruptly lunges back into the good part, like it's desperate to go there because it's so badly out of ideas. This didn't need to be over a minute long, probably. This is not a good list of songs.