Mega Man 2’s Composer Reveals How Wily Stage 1 And Other Themes Came To Be

During the Mega Man-athon 7 charity marathon that took place during MAGFest this weekend, Mega Man 2 composer Takashi Tateishi appeared in front of English-speaking fans for his first trip to the US, revealing secrets behind classic tracks like Dr. Wily Stage 1 and Wood Man Stage. [Thanks, Rockman Corner!]

Here are the highlights below:

• Takashi Tateishi didn’t find out how popular Mega Man 2 was, nor how popular the Metal Blade was, until around 10 years ago.

• Tateishi made a few songs that were “cute” sounding, which ended up getting rejected in favor of “cool” sounding songs. The only “cute” song that made it in was Crash Man Stage.

• Flame Man Stage uses all three channels to simulate a bass, as the Famicom wasn’t able to produce bass sounds well.

• Dr. Wily Stage 1 theme plays during Stage 2 as well because the team ran out of memory space on the Famicom cartridge. The theme had to be played over and over at the same interval in order to compose the whole thing, so if there were more space available then, the track would have ended up sounding very different. That said, development time was short, so he might not have had time to compose more tracks either way.

• Akira Kitamura, director of Mega Man 2, was so impressed with Dr. Wily Stage 1 that he asked Tateishi to make another track that was similar, which ended up being used for Wood Man’s stage.

• Quick Man’s theme was composed with Kitamura asking Tateishi to compose a song that would tell players to hurry up. Also, the final stage having no music before the fight against “Dr. Wily” was Kitamura’s idea.

• Most of the songs in Mega Man 2 are loud and seemingly played with a guitar, except Bubble Man’s stage, which was more piano-oriented. That said, Tateishi couldn’t make the tune too quiet, or it would be rejected by Kitamura.

• Tateishi’s favorite boss is Metal Man, while his favorite tune composed is the ending theme. He last played Mega Man 2 five years ago.

• Tateishi respects Kitamura a lot, and regards Kitamura and Inafune as creative geniuses.

You can find the video for the Twitch stream below (Mega Man 2 and Takashi Tateishi segment starts 1:40:45 mark):

Mega Man 2 was originally released for the NES.