Heat Man’s stage is easy peasy. Use Item-2 (the proto-Rush Jet) to fly over the lava past the disappearing blocks. They’re only hard if you have no rhythm though. I never had any trouble with the Ice Man stage in Mega Man 1. (The jetpack in MM6 isn’t an innovation; they’ve had utems/Rush since MM2 – 1, actually, if you count the magnet beam in the first one, the one you get in Elec Man’s stage).

Metal Man’s weapon is crazy OP. Kills Bubble Man and Flash Man in four hits while using virtually no weapons power. The manual has you starting with Air Man and the NES Game Atlas has you starting with Bubble Man, but real power players start with Metal and breeze through the first half of the game. Hardest stage is Crash Man with the ladders and those enemies that come from the top of the screen while it knocks you off the ladder if you get hit. Easiest way to get past it is just to hold up, damage be damned, and suicide at the boss so you have a fresh energy bar.

I didn’t have an SNES until after I had a PlayStation, but I rented a console and three games one summer while spending a week at my grandparents’ – the games were Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, and MM7. I got stuck at the miniboss after the furst four robot masters, which is probably intentional so you don’t beat hhe game in one rental period. It was rough having to not only beat the first stage and boss, I didn’t know which one to start with or which order to take them in.