Punk and Ballade, the other Mega Man Killers, join Enker in their attempt to stop Mega Man at once. As with Enker, their levels borrow elements of stage design from their respective lairs in the original Game Boy entries.

Special Stage 2 is Punk's level. The music is my favorite out of the three. The level is standard stuff, an easily skippable seesaw section (use your Rush Jet... I mean, head), pit jumpers, compactors. One cool thing is that they give you an E-Tank here! No big problem beating the boss having a spare energy bar. Clear time was 4:37.46.

Special Stage 3 is Ballade's level. More conveyor belts with survey enemies. The defining feature of this level are the missiles. If you shoot them, they explode, but you need them to cross a couple of pits, so you gotta be careful with those shots. There's an E-Tank here, too, in a secret room (which is so obvious that shouldn't be called secret). Clear time was 2:41.06, first try.

As with Enker, when you defeat these bosses you earn their weapons. Screw Crusher works exactly, I mean exactly like the Axe in Castlevania games. And you get a crapload of ammo for it. How about EIGHT uses per energy unit? Ballade Cracker is like a multi-directional Drill Bomb. Throw it and it explodes upon contact, splash damage and everything. Each extra weapon is strong against one of the Mega Man Killers. Quite welcome additions to the already robust arsenal in Mega Man 10.

It should be noted that these Special Stages are totally about speeding, so they won't bring a lot of gameplay for those who don't care about high ranks and leaderboards. The weapon prizes are Capcom's shot at making these features irresistible to non-speedsters, but I personally wouldn't buy them just for the weapons.

Both pretty cool, but not nearly as...

Oh, yes. This is the stuff.

One of the coolest arcade concepts out there, Endless Attack works like this:

You cross one out of 40-ish gameplay segments exactly six screens long. When you reach the end of the sixth screen, another segment appears randomly. Every five gameplay segments you complete, you fight one of the eight Robot Masters. The Robot Master you fight is randomly generated, but you don't fight two repeated RMs until you beat all 8 of 'em. And when you beat all 8, you take 1+ damage from that point on. You may use all weapons in the game (including those from Special Stages) from the get go.

There's a counter displaying how many screens you've managed to cross up until that point. If you die, that's your record.

Even though they reuse enemies and gimmicks from the game, these gameplay segments are entirely new. New puzzles, new platform placement, new backgrounds, everything. And there is a TON of new content for $3. To give you an idea, the average Mega Man level is 25 screens long. In Endless Attack, you find enough content for roughly seven completely new levels.

Some segments even pay homage to classic bits of Mega Man history, like the underwater section of Gemini Man's level.

Back in Mega Man 9, I wasted over 25 hours on Endless Attack. It's the perfect casual game. Turn on the radio, see how far you can get, pass the controller if you have someone else there.

First attempt: 68 screens.

Awesome, awesome stuff.