Mega Man 2

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Mega Man 2.

Shinsaku Software Information#

Watch on YouTubeFootage of a very late build of Rockman 2 was featured in a Japanese sales tape distributed by Capcom (footage begins at 9:24); it seems to post-date the images below, but is still not finalized yet.

• Most interestingly, ALL the Robot Masters (including their health bars and projectiles, since they share the same palette) are completely greyed out in this build; according to the announcer, this was done to not spoil the contest winners (which future games would also do).
• Wood Man's trees bare a more blocky design; the same designs appear on the back of the U.S. box, indicating it was a late change.
• One of the ladders in the second screen of Crash Man's stage is positioned further to the right than the final.
• Flash Man's stage is missing several enemies and extra lives.
• At around 12:14, you can see an enemy drop an E-Tank! This functionality is still in the final game, but was disabled for obvious balancing reasons.
• If you listen closely, you can hear that this build is still using the hurt and life/weapon refill sound effects from the original Mega Man. The final game would tweak them slightly.
• The presses in Metal Man’s stage use the sound that would be used for when the Prop-Top/Fly Boy enemies land in the final game (re-used from the Big Eyes landing in the original Mega Man) instead of sharing the sound that Time Stopper uses. The Prop-Top/Fly Boy enemies don’t have a sound at all when landing in this build.
• None of the special weapons (except for Metal Blade and Crash Bomber (when clinging to walls)) have sound effects.
• The tape contains what appears to be the original demo versions of the prologue theme, the title theme, Wily Stage 1, Metal Man's theme, the boss theme, and Crash Man's theme.

Early Screenshots#

Title Screen#

Prerelease	Final

A 1988 Japanese magazine shows that the game originally had no subtitle. The top left of the R in Rockman also seems to be more curved, similar to the first game's Japanese logo.

Wood Man Stage#

Prerelease	Final

The back of the US Mega Man 2 box shows an early version of Wood Man's stage, with blockier trees.

Dr. Light Message#

Prerelease	Final

Issue 7 of Nintendo Power shows an early localization of Dr. Light's "Item Completed" message. Here, the "r" in Dr. is in lowercase, written using the unique "small r and punctuation" tile that's used to spell Dr. Wily's name on the stage select screen. The final localization opts to spell the word in all caps using the game's regular font instead.

Possible Debug Build#

In the Japanese manual, we can see a very interesting screenshot! We can see the weapons menu that curiously has Item-2 early, since we need to defeat Air Man to get it and Mega Man is facing Air Man as we can see by the health bar, which indicates that it may be a debug version of which all weapons are enabled.