Fire Man's stage may be the shortest of the six Robot Masters, but it's also the most dangerous. It takes place in an inferno of a factory set inside of a volcano, complete with lava-soaked floors. Fire Man was designed for waste management work; in particular, incineration. He can withstand temperatures in excess of 8000 °C. Fire Man attacks by surrounding himself in a circle of flame and shooting balls of fire with impressive destructive properties.
Unlike most other stages, the difficulty of Fire Man's stage can be reduce by using a particular weapon: the Ice Slasher. While it ordinarily freezes many enemies, it has the ability to turn pillars of flame into temporary platforms that Mega Man can use to reach higher locations. Jump quickly, however, before the pillars thaw!
Stage
- A: You begin the stage by navigating through a small maze of Screw Drivers. They will pop up when you stand close to one. Use that as an opportunity to blast it and clear it out of the way before you proceed to the next ladder. Make your way up and around to the next portion of the stage.
- B: A set of three Changkeys will rise out of the lava and fly up beyond the ceiling. After they disappear, the three will begin to float back down, randomly heading to the left or right. You'll see a large health capsule on the far left platform above. You can climb up and hop over the gap, or you can take a shortcut by using the Ice Slasher on the fire pillar below. You must freeze the pillar when it is the height of three blocks in order to be able to jump on it and jump up to the platform above.
- C: You must now navigate through a maze of fire pillars and plasma gates. You can run into the tunnel when the two fire pillars are down, or you can use the Ice Slasher to give you a boost to the top platform and collect the two large weapon capsules. Once again, you must shoot the first fire pillar when it is three blocks high. If you take the low route, drop down to the platform below the first plasma gate when it is empty. Then run and jump to the safety of the right block and wait for the gate above to clear before jumping up. Drop down to the tiny platform below the third plasma gate when it's safe and immediately jump back out to the right. From here, two fire pillars serve as the last obstacle. There are three small health capsule waiting for you before you climb down the ladder. Note that if you climb down and back up, the capsules will return so you can collect them until you have full health.
- D: Make sure you push right as you drop off the ladder above to make sure you land on the platform below, and not in the lava. Not only must you time your jumps from one platform to the next between the fire pillars, you'll also have to contend with a set of Changkeys. Use the Ice Slasher to freeze the pillars if you're having trouble getting past them, and continue to head right as you climb up the ladder and leap over the gap between the platforms.
- E: Blasts of furnace heat are pumped through the ventilation shaft that winds its way through this screen. You have two choices. You can attempt to run between the blasts, get to the ladder on the right, climb up, and run between more blasts to get to the exit. The likelihood that you will get through all that unharmed is unlikely. The safer alternative is to use the Magnet Beam to create a small ledge that will allow you to hop up to the ladder above and bypass all of the dangerous heat.
- F: Killer Bombs will begin to fly through this area. They will continue to appear until you run far enough to the right. However, you will encounter Gabyoalls on the platforms in this area. You can either jump over them as they rush toward you and disappear off the side of the screen, or you can take them out with one of your special weapons. Dodging them is particularly difficult in the middle and lower sections where jump height is limited.
- G: Before you reach the door, two sets of Changkeys fly into the air and slowly float back down to the ground. The enemies inside the tunnel to Fire Man's room are difficult to fight, so they don't provide you with a good chance to power up before the big fight. The Changkeys, by comparison, are relatively easy to fight. Stick around long enough to fight Changkeys over and over until you have recovered enough health and weapon power to continue.
- H: Like Cut Man, the tunnel to Fire Man is lined with Screw Drivers. Unlike Cut Man, all of the Screw Drivers you find here are mounted on the ceiling, making them slightly inconvenient to fight. It's best instead to run past the four of them, pausing to let bullets fly in front of you, and running for the door to take on Fire Man.
Fire Man
You've managed to survive the dangers of Fire Man's stage, but now you have to survive a fight with the Robot Master himself. Fire Man doesn't have any fancy moves. He's content to stay on the ground and let his flame attack do all of the hard work. Since he stays on the ground, you have to jump over the flames that he fires at you. But these flames have a special trick: whether they hit you, or pass beneath you, a flame appears on the floor below your feet. So even if you manage to jump over the attack, if you don't move laterally, you will land on the flame that appears on the floor. Fire Man literally keeps you hopping. Fortunately, the strength of his attack is not as strong as some of the other Robot Masters. You can counter attack when you land, or stand there and take the attacks while you fire at him with the hopes that you can finish him off before he finishes you. Of course, if you know Fire Man's weakness, you will be able to finish him off that much faster. When you do defeat him, you will obtain the Fire Storm attack. It's a lot like Fire Man's attack, but it also gains one interesting property: whenever Mega Man uses it, a circle of flame wraps around him. It's very brief, but it's long enough to hurt anything that standing very close to Mega Man.
There's one weapon that's been helping you out all along throughout Fire Man's stage, so it should come as no surprise that it will come in just as handy in your fight with Fire Man. No fan of the cold, Fire Man is indeed weak to the power of the Ice Slasher, although he generates enough heat to take some of the sting out of the weapon before it reaches him. It will take seven hits from the Ice Slasher to put Fire Man down, but that's half the number of regular Mega Buster bullets that it would take to accomplish the same thing.