Get Equipped Analysis: Rolling Cutter

by Redmage1987

Time to rock and roll with Rolling Cutter!

Damage Data: The numbers represent the amount of hits it takes to kill each enemy. If there is a zero, then the enemy isn’t hurt by the weapon.

The Rolling Cutter is a blade that acts like a boomerang, and is obtained by defeating Cut Man. Every time you throw the Rolling Cutter it will go up at a small arc before turning around and returning to Mega Man. You can only have one shot on the screen at a time and each shot consumes one bar of energy, thus giving you 28 uses to a full bar of weapon energy.

When compared to the Mega Buster, the Rolling Cutter is almost equal in terms of strength on most enemies. However, the Rolling Cutter can also hit enemies on its return trip to Mega Man for extra damage. The thing is, though, this feature doesn’t matter on most stage enemies because almost all of them go down in one hit to the Rolling Cutter anyway. You can, however, manipulate the blade to kill (or damage) additional enemies by jumping or moving to a new location to cause the blade to change its return course. Furthermore, like all the other Robot Master weapons in Mega Man 1, the Rolling Cutter doesn’t disappear when it hits an enemy, so you can kill multiple enemies with one blade.

It’s also worth noting that the Rolling Cutter can hit enemies slightly above or below or below the Mega Buster’s firing range due to its arcing path. This allows you to destroy Screwdrivers before they activate and begin shooting at you. You can kill Gabyoalls this way, too.

The best bosses to use Rolling Cutter on are Elec Man and Dr. Wily’s second phase. Even though it only does one point of damage per hit on Dr. Wily, the speed of the Rolling Cutter keeps it inside of his machine long enough to score three damage per shot when he’s moving right and two damage per shot when he’s moving left. This makes it the most powerful weapon to use against him during his second phase.

So where would the best places be to use this weapon? Anywhere …except against Pickel Men and Big Eyes, as they take the same number of hits to kill with the Rolling Cutter as they do with the Mega Buster, and you can score hits more quickly with the Mega Buster since its shots are quicker and you can have more on the screen at a time. Other than that, though, the Rolling Cutter makes an effective weapon of choice for just about every other situation.

So where does the Rolling Cutter place at when compared to the other weapons from Mega Man 1? Well it’s definitely an above average weapon; however, once you’ve obtained either the Thunder Beam or Fire Storm, there is absolutely no reason to go back to using Rolling Cutter. The only reasons to use Rolling Cutter after obtaining something better would be if you just really enjoy using the weapon, or to fight bosses who are weak to it. The Rolling Cutter does make a good replacement for the Mega Buster until you’ve got a more useful weapon, though.

Overall, I would have to rate it as the the 4th best Robot Master weapon. It has good power, it’s energy efficient, and there are a ton of places where it can be used effectively, but the fact that it becomes mostly obsolete once you’ve obtained Thunder Beam or Fire Storm puts a dent in its overall usefulness. It’s still an above average weapon that’s definitely worthy of being used in many different places.

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Redmage 1987 is a member of The Mega Man Network’s User Content Submission System, and the views expressed here reflect the views of the authors alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Mega Man Network.

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