Gross Football Lunch – Week 15, 2025 NFL Season

I have bad news and good news this week. The bad news is that, because J.J. McCarthy played well for an entire game this past Sunday, I have lost all brain functions that do not pertain to video games, grocery lists, and willing the Vikings to seize on their witheringly scant chance of grabbing the #7 seed in the NFC (they are already eliminated from all other playoff positions, per Bryan Knowles of FTN, and FTN’s own playoff odds calculator doesn’t even give them that much). Having resolved to forego any in-depth Vikings chat until the annual end-of-their-season postmortem, this means that I was unable to think of fresh material for this space, for this week.

The good news is that I scoured this humble blog’s archives for a piece from its Precambrian era, and I found a post that only needed a light hatchet job in order to become readable, and worth preserving for future generations. So, without further ado, I present…

Rob’s Guide to Mega Man 2

Mega Man 2 is one of the greatest games ever made, and while it can be quite difficult, it is easier and more approachable than many other classics of its era, featuring both Normal and Difficult settings. If this is your first time playing through this masterpiece, I highly encourage you to play on Normal mode. Normal mode is as easy as games got in the 8-bit era, and success creates success. Start on Normal, and move to Difficult if and only if you’re comfortable doing so.

The scope of this guide is limited to my recommended boss order and boss strategies only! I do not offer counsel on any regular level segment or mini-boss (not even the lasers in Quick Man’s level). That would take too much time. Furthermore, practice makes perfect in video games, but more importantly, practice is gameplay. If you want someone to play the game for you instead of putting in the stupendously fun work of achieving mastery on your own, there are any number of Let’s Plays and Longplays of Mega Man 2 available for your edification.

My recommended boss order in Mega Man 2 is as follows:

1. Air Man
2. Metal Man
3. Crash Man
4. Bubble Man
5. Heat Man
6. Flash Man
7. Wood Man
8. Quick Man

Air Man: Not much to this fight. Jump inside the cute little tornadoes he shoots out, walk towards Air Man so his fan doesn’t blast you all the way to the other end of the screen, and pump him full of as many Mega Buster rounds as you can. Try to jump over the tornadoes as he fires them, but know that you might take a few hits and that’s OK. When he jumps to either side of the screen, position yourself as close to his landing spot as possible. Repeat until dead. You will receive Item 2 (the jet-ski) once you have beaten this level.

Metal Man: Stand on the opposite side of the room from Metal Man, jump to dodge incoming Metal Blades, and get as many hits with the Mega Buster as you can. The conveyor belt on the ground will reverse direction when the background flashes, and this can easily throw off your timing and spacing. When that happens, close in on him; he will jump to the other side and you can reset your position. Repeat until dead. This fight can be pretty intense, especially on Difficult mode, and you may need to use an E-Tank or two. Note that when you fight Metal Man again in Stage 5 of Wily’s Castle, his weakness is the Metal Blade! The Metal Blade destroys Metal Man in one hit on Normal, and two hits on Difficult. Neat!

Crash Man: Crash Man isn’t too tough, but he can be hard to hit. The Crash Bombs aren’t too hard to dodge, but he deals hefty collision damage and the Air Shooter – Crash Man’s weakness – works best at short range. Crash Man tends to jump when you jump, so use this to bait him into the path of the Air Shooter, which shoots upward at a slight diagonal, while avoiding that collision damage as best as you can. In addition to a weird trajectory, the Air Shooter has subpar ammo efficiency, so you’ll need to line up your shots well. Three hits will do the trick.

Bubble Man: As long as you have beaten Metal Man and have the Metal Blade, this fight is super easy. Use the eight-directional firing of the Metal Blade to Shoot Bubble Man until he dies. Don’t even worry about taking hits unless you come in extremely low on health. You’re in no danger whatsoever unless you jump into the spikes on the ceiling, so stay on the ground as much as possible.

Heat Man: Heat Man can be an intimidating boss. He lobs three shots of his weapon in an arc, making it tough to tell what section of floor is safest until it’s too late. In addition, he becomes invincible for a few seconds when he takes damage, then teleports along the floor to your location, once again dealing hefty collision damage. The key to this fight is staying calm and avoiding collision damage. Dodge his shots as best as you can, hit him with Bubble Lead, wait for his teleport to begin, then jump over him as he teleports along the floor towards you, and then repeat until dead. Do not try to jump over him before he teleports; stay calm and wait for him to move first. You will receive Item 1 (the lifts) once you have beaten this level.

Flash Man: As long as you have the Metal Blade, you can tackle this level whenever you wish, although I wait until I have the Crash Bombs, Item 1, and Item 2, as they enable you to grab some additional items. This fight is on uneven terrain, which is scary, but always remember that the Metal Blade fires in eight directions. Hit him with the Metal Blade as frequently as possible and you’ll be just fine; worrying about defense is discouraged. You will receive Item 3 (the wall-crawler) once you have beaten this level.

Wood Man: Wood Man is another harder boss fight. He is weak against Atomic Fire, which can be charged by holding down the B button. Fully charged Atomic Fire will kill Wood Man in one hit on Normal and two hits on Difficult, but these shots do not penetrate Wood Man’s Leaf Shield, so you’ll have to wait until he fires the shield to blast him. As ever, stay calm, put as much distance between Wood Man and yourself as possible, wait until he fires the Leaf Shield towards you, then jump over it. Don’t worry too much about the leaves falling from the ceiling. They’re incredibly tough to dodge and don’t deal enough damage to force the issue. Ammo management is a real concern here, particularly on Difficult – you only have ammo for three fully charged shots, so if you die there’s a very real chance you won’t have enough ammo for a second fight. If you do run out of Atomic Fire, the Air Shooter is an effective secondary weakness. You might find yourself taking a lot of damage in this fight, so don’t be shy about using E-Tanks.

Quick Man: If you are able to make it through both laser sections without using the Time Stopper (remember, practice makes perfect!), you will be rewarded with a much easier Quick Man fight. Using the Time Stopper on Quick Man kills him outright on Normal and reduces him to half health on Difficult. Once he’s down to half health, or if you needed to use the Time Stopper to get through the level, uh…do your best. Again, the terrain here is uneven and that’s a killer, but when he’s running into the wall unload as many Mega Buster shots as you can. Quick Man is also weak to Crash Bombs but is unspeakably tough to hit with them, to the point that I don’t bother trying. You’re welcome to try yourself, though.

Wily Castle, Stage 1 (Dragon): This boss fight has two parts. In the first part, you need to jump across a series of narrow blocks while the screen automatically scrolls to the right, and the dragon chases you to your left. As always, don’t panic! Stay calm and jump from your starting block to the next, and as you reach a new block, stop and wait for the next block to materialize, then keep going. The screen scrolls at a fixed speed, so there’s no benefit to working ahead. Once you get to the end of the auto-scroller, it’s time to fight. Jump up to the highest of the three blocks on the right end of the screen and stand as far to the left on it as you can. Once you’re set, unload Quick Boomerangs into it’s face. You’ll get hit by some fireballs, but if you’re on the top block the knockback will drop you onto the middle block instead of into the pit. Get back up top and keep firing, taking full advantage of the Quick Boomerang’s high rate of fire. The dragon will be slain before you know it.

Wily Castle, Stage 2 (Picopico-kun): The Picopico-kun is a room of segmented blocks. Two blocks will come out of the wall, ceiling, and/or floor and fuse together to form a mechanical butterfly that performs diving attacks. Once the fusion is complete, use the eight-directional fire of the Metal Blade to destroy the butterflies as quickly as possible. The order in which each pair of blocks comes out and fuses is scripted, so try to memorize this script and position yourself accordingly. Generally speaking, it’s best to stay close to the middle of the floor. If you get pushed to the right that’s fine, but if you end up on the left side you’re likely to take hits. Also, it’s best if you can get through this fight without using any E-Tanks. Using one is OK, but if you’re tempted to use a second, consider taking an intentional death and focus on memorizing the boss script in your subsequent attempts.

Wily Castle, Stage 3 (GutsDozer): This fight is pretty simple, but tough to get through without taking lots of damage. Hop up on the tank treads, bust out the Quick Boomerang, then jump and hit it in the head as many times as possible. The best defense here is a good offense, so make your focus getting as many hits per jump as you can, dodging its shots and the enemies that come tumbling out of it only if it is convenient to do so. If you get knocked off of the treads at any time, for any reason, it is imperative that you back on top of them immediately.

Wily Castle, Stage 4 (BooBeam Trap): This is the most complicated and difficult boss in the game, by far, and to make matters worse, it is unwinnable unless your Crash Bomb ammo is completely full. Pause and take a deep breath, you got this.

There are five cannons in this room. These cannons fire at regular intervals, and are placed in a variety of inconvenient locations. Each cannon can only be destroyed with Crash Bombs. There are also several 2×4 wall segments; these too can only be destroyed with Crash Bombs. If you’re full of Crash Bomb ammo, you still only have seven shots, and yet, it would seem at first blush that you need more than seven bombs to get at all five cannons. So what do you do? First off, establish a defensive rhythm. The cannons will blink before firing. Once they start blinking, pause and un-pause repeatedly. Since Mega Man teleports after each pause, the shots will pass through him harmlessly if he is teleporting in when the cannons fire. Neat, huh? Keep doing this whenever the cannons are about to fire.

Once you have the defensive rhythm established, it’s time to get to work destroying the cannons. Since there are five cannons to destroy and you only have seven Crash Bombs to work with, you can only use them on two wall segments. Therefore, the first thing to do is use Item 1 to get up to the platform above and slightly to the right. Once you’re up there, destroy the first exposed cannon in the top middle, then jump to the right and drop down to destroy the second cannon at center right. Use Item 3 to escape this crevasse, then drop to the bottom right. The cannon here is inaccessible without using a Crash Bomb, so use one to destroy this wall segment, then another to destroy the cannon.

After you destroy this cannon, there are only two remaining, both of which are in the top left corner, and both of which appear to be guarded by wall segments. You only have three bombs left, so you have to circumvent one of the walls. Use Item 3 to get out of the bottom floor and back up to the middle floor segment from earlier. The far left cannon is inaccessible without destroying the wall, so take out the far left wall and cannon first before tackling the final cannon.

Now you need to destroy the final cannon, which means you have to get a clean shot at it with your final Crash Bomb without destroying the wall segment in front of it. You have a couple of options here. You can either drop down to the floor by the entrance and ride Item 1 as far up as possible, or you can try to jump around the top platform from the middle platform. Do whichever is easiest for you, and once you’re up, fire your final Crash Bomb and end this madness.

Phew! You made it. Even if you use the pause dodging trick, you’re still likely to take hits. You can’t pause when any Items are in use, for one thing, and for another, maintaining perfect defensive rhythm in the midst of all this chaos is a tall order. Feel free to use as many E-Tanks as you need, however, I strongly encourage you to hold on to at least one E-Tank, especially if you’re playing on Difficult.

Wily’s Castle, Stage 5 (Wily Machine): After you take out all eight Robot Masters a second time, it’s time to take on the Wily Machine, which a two-phase boss battle. The first phase is pretty easy. The machine hovers slowly from left to right, firing shots in an arc at fixed intervals. As with with Boobeam Trap, establish a defensive rhythm. Make sure you can jump over the shots easily before going on offense, and avoid collision damage at all costs. Once you’re in a good dodging rhythm, start shooting the Mega Buster at the conspicuous blue dome on the front. If you have any Atomic Fire remainingafter the second Wood Man fight, you can use that here to make the fight go quicker.

The first phase may take a while, but as long as you take as few hits as possible your patience will be rewarded, because the second phase is a nightmare. It fires bouncing energy balls that are just about impossible to dodge and do high damage. Bring out the Quick Boomerang and, as with the Stage 3 boss, jump up and shoot at the cockpit as much as possible each time. You will almost certainly need to use another E-Tank in this phase, unless your rate of fire with the Quick Boomerang is speedrunner quality, but keep jumping and firing until you win, and use all the E-Tanks you need.

Wily Castle, Stage 6 (Alien): The final boss floats around the screen in a fixed Figure-8 pattern and fires single shots towards Mega Man’s location at regular intervals. Even by Mega Man 2 standards, the alien deals absurd collision damage, so memorize the movement pattern and learn how to dodge collisions before figuring out how to dodge the shots, which are easy to avoid with good timing. Once you’re in a defensive rhythm, whip out Bubble Lead. Since Bubble Lead drops to the floor and rolls, and the Alien’s movement pattern never touches the floor, you need to pop him in midair from close range. The best time to do this is when the Alien is halfway up or below, and right after it’s fired a shot. After it fires and gets to an appropriate depth, get close and hit it with Bubble Lead. Since Bubble Lead has a high rate of fire, you can get multiple hits in at a time if you have good enough timing. This is it, so there’s no reason to be shy about using any E-Tanks you have left.

You did it! Congratulations, you have beaten one of the best games ever made. Enjoy the ending, then go get some fresh air. It’s good for you, even in winter.

(The original piece can be found here. As ever, I am providing this link for posterity, not because I want anyone to read the original.)

NFL Confidence Pool – Week 15

Good heavens, that guide took forever! Fortunately the Week 15 slate is filled to the brim with mismatches so lopsided that I needn’t justify any of the selections involved. I need only arrange the assignments such that the Jaguars are given as few points as possible. I will trust the Jaguars when I see them advance to the conference championship, and not a moment before. Needless to say, I am not convinced the Eagles are as bad as their vibes would indicate, but if they lose to the Raiders it’s over.

At first, I was tempted to take the Lions for narrative-based reasons, as I believe there are few things more dangerous in the sport of professional football than a would-be contender fighting for its very last chance at the playoffs. Then I made the mistake of seriously asking myself what a Lions victory would look like, and it involves Jared Goff hanging tough in the pocket while facing pressure up the middle, while their permanently depleted secondary keeps Matthew Stafford in check. There is another method, but it involves controlling the clock with the run game, but that can cut both ways. Decrease the amount of possessions, and you decrease the amount of scoring. Decrease the amount of scoring, and you decrease the margin for error. Decrease the margin for error, and you make our dumbest, most chaotic sport dumber and more chaotic.

I have lost so very many points on the Ravens over the years, a team I keep treating like a juggernaut despite their penchant for losing in the stupidest ways available to them. This year, the Ravens rose from the dead to re-take their place as the division favorite, only to decide that a Bengals-Steelers-Bengals stretch was the perfect time to resume farting in their own mouths. I’m done taking them seriously for the season. Same goes for the Chiefs, who aren’t playing good with any consistency, and whose plot armor appears to have worn off.

I’m picking the Broncos here not because I think they’re a better team, but because they have everything they need to make the Packers’ offense revert to its pedestrian form, and because not even 11 Micah Parsonses could show Sean Payton something he hasn’t seen before. Finally, this is your weekly reminder that you should not pick the Vikings; however, the Cowboys still suck on defense, and if McCarthy has actually become a serviceable quarterback – which is in no way guaranteed – he should be able manage this game as adequately as he managed against the lifeless Commanders last week.

Enjoy the games, everyone!