News Blog
Catch all of Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch's announcements and highlights here!
Korby • September. 22, 2025, 9:53 PM
Hey all you Mega Fans! We're back again with another V6C Newsletter!
In case it wasn't obvious by me not being Freems, today's update is going to be a little different. Normally we'd show off some content hot off the presses to gladly feed your ever-hungering desire for shiny new playthings, but this time around we're going to zoom out a bit and talk about the bigger picture of the game's design and balance. I hope you like text, because I don't have very many pictures for you. I'll intersperse some big green text here and there to help ease your eyes and give you the gist of my ramblings. Let's begin!
To start things off, I'm here to announce to you that we have removed the Energy Balancer pickup and made it an innate passive that is always active. This is a change that's been pretty heavily requested over the years, and we felt like it was finally time to implement it into the core game. There was always an amount of skill required to manually fill the weapons you wanted to regain the ammo for, but when looking the game over we decided this wasn't an area we felt strongly about as an exciting expression of skill in our game.
Plenty of our players are familiar with how this feels given it's been quite a few mods for years, but if you're not I can most certainly tell you that after playtesting V6C it's quite difficult to go back to an Energy Balancer-less state when playing on servers running older versions!
On the subject of ammo, however, this is as good a time as any to mention a global nerf we've been testing internally and are pretty positive on. Since we changed how our ammo pickups function 9 years ago in V5A, they've restored pretty arbitrary amounts of ammo based roughly on what percentage of ammo the individual pickups previously restored on a weapon with the typical 28 max ammo. Unifying ammo gains like this was ultimately healthy for the game, but the values we've had them set at for nearly a decade are frankly too high.
As it currently stands, ammo is a non-issue in most cases and you can shovel two pickups into your gun to restore a whopping 60% of your clip. Because of how common ammo pickups are on maps, ammo may as well not be a mechanic in the game as it stands.
To make ammo matter, we've made the percentage an individual pickup match the same numbers as our health pickups. Specifically, a small Weapon Energy used to restore 30% of your ammo, and a large one used to restore 72%. They now restore 20% and 55% respectively. We chose this path for a couple reasons - primarily, not having to remember how much percentage each of the four different energy pickups used in core maps restores reduces mindshare.
In addition, tackling ammo rates on a global level like this is going to be considerably easier than reducing the amount of pickups on every single map in the game - not to mention the effect that would have on custom map balance.
To really hammer the point regarding ammo home, it's worth mentioning as well that we'll be reducing the maximum ammo on a small handful of weapons. This isn't a global thing and we're not trying to starve everyone of ammo, we just feel that some weapons have a higher magazine than they really should. For example, we've halved Search Snake's ammo capacity. It has had it too good for too long. These changes are part of a shift in balance philosophy the core game has been pushing since V6A and further refined in V6B.
For most of the game's life, damage was the primary lever used to balance the game. There were changes here and there targeting other things, but mostly we saw a gradual decrease in damage across the entire weapon set all the way up until V6A where everything got cranked back up to get our Time to Kill to a place where we were happy with. V6B toned some of those changes back down and instead focused on buffing other aspects of weapons to further help accentuate what makes each weapon in our game special.
The weapons in our game should feel powerful and fun to use, but most importantly they should feel meaningfully different. When you lower a weapon's strengths and shore up its weaknesses, the choice between weapons becomes less meaningful and our arsenal becomes homogenized.
In general, we would greatly prefer when a weapon's highs are high as long as it pays for it with adequate lows. In practice, this means taking power from areas that aren't exciting for a given weapon and letting it exist elsewhere. As the amount of weapons in our game grows, it becomes more and more important to ensure these differences can be felt.
Balance is an ongoing process and we haven't always hit the mark. For example, power weapons as a class are always going to be tricky to keep sane; their core defining characteristic is that they hit like trucks and reducing that too much is going to feel bad no matter how you slice it. However, power weapons have been in a pretty unacceptable state for a long while now. Where we can, we'll be looking to lower the general effectiveness of the more egregious of these weapons, push their unique traits, or "buy" power for them by taking it from elsewhere.
I do also want to thank our players who've been discussing the balance of the game in the MM8BDM Discord. Keeping an ear to the wall for balance problems in the game is fairly difficult with how many different locations there are for discussion nowadays, and it's very easy to miss with the impermanence of in-game chat and Discord messages being buried under mountains of stream-of-consciousness live chat. In V6C, you'll see some changes to the game directly inspired or contributed by members of our community, including one to Pharaoh Shot by Pr. Fly!
If you have issues with a weapon, item, or the game's balance, please consider posting about it in the MM8BDM Discord or right here on the forums so we can keep track of it! We want to make our game the best that it can be, and knowing what our players have problems with is an important part of that goal.
And as always, thank you so much for playing our game!
Oh, you're still here?
Well, I suppose I can announce one new thing. I wasn't telling the whole truth when I said we removed Energy Balancer's pickup from the game. It's more accurate to say we just changed what it is.
I'm sure at least one person saw this coming, but we're adding Energy Balancer Neo to Megaman 8-Bit Deathmatch!
In addition to the ammo normally restored when picking up a capsule, this powerup additionally restores a reduced amount of ammo to ALL of your other held weapons!
This item comes from Megaman 11 and we were always going to add it when we got around to making the content for that expansion. We elected to add it early because we were committed to giving players an innate Energy Balancer in V6C! Rather than an acquirable quality-of-life change, Energy Balancer Neo is indisputably a strong upgrade that conveniently helps to offset the global ammo nerf!
And that's all for today's newsletter! We'll see you next time, back to your regularly scheduled programming. See you then!
In case it wasn't obvious by me not being Freems, today's update is going to be a little different. Normally we'd show off some content hot off the presses to gladly feed your ever-hungering desire for shiny new playthings, but this time around we're going to zoom out a bit and talk about the bigger picture of the game's design and balance. I hope you like text, because I don't have very many pictures for you. I'll intersperse some big green text here and there to help ease your eyes and give you the gist of my ramblings. Let's begin!
To start things off, I'm here to announce to you that we have removed the Energy Balancer pickup and made it an innate passive that is always active. This is a change that's been pretty heavily requested over the years, and we felt like it was finally time to implement it into the core game. There was always an amount of skill required to manually fill the weapons you wanted to regain the ammo for, but when looking the game over we decided this wasn't an area we felt strongly about as an exciting expression of skill in our game.
Plenty of our players are familiar with how this feels given it's been quite a few mods for years, but if you're not I can most certainly tell you that after playtesting V6C it's quite difficult to go back to an Energy Balancer-less state when playing on servers running older versions!
On the subject of ammo, however, this is as good a time as any to mention a global nerf we've been testing internally and are pretty positive on. Since we changed how our ammo pickups function 9 years ago in V5A, they've restored pretty arbitrary amounts of ammo based roughly on what percentage of ammo the individual pickups previously restored on a weapon with the typical 28 max ammo. Unifying ammo gains like this was ultimately healthy for the game, but the values we've had them set at for nearly a decade are frankly too high.
As it currently stands, ammo is a non-issue in most cases and you can shovel two pickups into your gun to restore a whopping 60% of your clip. Because of how common ammo pickups are on maps, ammo may as well not be a mechanic in the game as it stands.
To make ammo matter, we've made the percentage an individual pickup match the same numbers as our health pickups. Specifically, a small Weapon Energy used to restore 30% of your ammo, and a large one used to restore 72%. They now restore 20% and 55% respectively. We chose this path for a couple reasons - primarily, not having to remember how much percentage each of the four different energy pickups used in core maps restores reduces mindshare.
In addition, tackling ammo rates on a global level like this is going to be considerably easier than reducing the amount of pickups on every single map in the game - not to mention the effect that would have on custom map balance.
To really hammer the point regarding ammo home, it's worth mentioning as well that we'll be reducing the maximum ammo on a small handful of weapons. This isn't a global thing and we're not trying to starve everyone of ammo, we just feel that some weapons have a higher magazine than they really should. For example, we've halved Search Snake's ammo capacity. It has had it too good for too long. These changes are part of a shift in balance philosophy the core game has been pushing since V6A and further refined in V6B.
For most of the game's life, damage was the primary lever used to balance the game. There were changes here and there targeting other things, but mostly we saw a gradual decrease in damage across the entire weapon set all the way up until V6A where everything got cranked back up to get our Time to Kill to a place where we were happy with. V6B toned some of those changes back down and instead focused on buffing other aspects of weapons to further help accentuate what makes each weapon in our game special.
The weapons in our game should feel powerful and fun to use, but most importantly they should feel meaningfully different. When you lower a weapon's strengths and shore up its weaknesses, the choice between weapons becomes less meaningful and our arsenal becomes homogenized.
In general, we would greatly prefer when a weapon's highs are high as long as it pays for it with adequate lows. In practice, this means taking power from areas that aren't exciting for a given weapon and letting it exist elsewhere. As the amount of weapons in our game grows, it becomes more and more important to ensure these differences can be felt.
Balance is an ongoing process and we haven't always hit the mark. For example, power weapons as a class are always going to be tricky to keep sane; their core defining characteristic is that they hit like trucks and reducing that too much is going to feel bad no matter how you slice it. However, power weapons have been in a pretty unacceptable state for a long while now. Where we can, we'll be looking to lower the general effectiveness of the more egregious of these weapons, push their unique traits, or "buy" power for them by taking it from elsewhere.
I do also want to thank our players who've been discussing the balance of the game in the MM8BDM Discord. Keeping an ear to the wall for balance problems in the game is fairly difficult with how many different locations there are for discussion nowadays, and it's very easy to miss with the impermanence of in-game chat and Discord messages being buried under mountains of stream-of-consciousness live chat. In V6C, you'll see some changes to the game directly inspired or contributed by members of our community, including one to Pharaoh Shot by Pr. Fly!
If you have issues with a weapon, item, or the game's balance, please consider posting about it in the MM8BDM Discord or right here on the forums so we can keep track of it! We want to make our game the best that it can be, and knowing what our players have problems with is an important part of that goal.
And as always, thank you so much for playing our game!
Oh, you're still here?
Well, I suppose I can announce one new thing. I wasn't telling the whole truth when I said we removed Energy Balancer's pickup from the game. It's more accurate to say we just changed what it is.
I'm sure at least one person saw this coming, but we're adding Energy Balancer Neo to Megaman 8-Bit Deathmatch!
In addition to the ammo normally restored when picking up a capsule, this powerup additionally restores a reduced amount of ammo to ALL of your other held weapons!
This item comes from Megaman 11 and we were always going to add it when we got around to making the content for that expansion. We elected to add it early because we were committed to giving players an innate Energy Balancer in V6C! Rather than an acquirable quality-of-life change, Energy Balancer Neo is indisputably a strong upgrade that conveniently helps to offset the global ammo nerf!
And that's all for today's newsletter! We'll see you next time, back to your regularly scheduled programming. See you then!
Magnet Dood • September. 17, 2025, 10:47 PM
Whaddya mean September is already halfway finished? Sheesh...
This month's schedule is late, but better late than never! We took a week off to give folks a little time to play the much awaited indie-hit sensation Silksong, then played a more lowkey FBF on the 12th with some randomized layout Team Deathmatch. The two heavy hitters are Saxton Hale making a return and a newly tweaked Possession mode by BullGator! (I promise it's going to be more fun than the last time we tried it)
Hope you'll join us!
This month's schedule is late, but better late than never! We took a week off to give folks a little time to play the much awaited indie-hit sensation Silksong, then played a more lowkey FBF on the 12th with some randomized layout Team Deathmatch. The two heavy hitters are Saxton Hale making a return and a newly tweaked Possession mode by BullGator! (I promise it's going to be more fun than the last time we tried it)
Hope you'll join us!
Freems • September. 1, 2025, 12:38 PM
Hey all you Mega Fans! We're back at it again with another V6C Newsletter!
In lieu of showing off any new maps today, I'm here to show off another new assist item being added to the game! Now we've shown off a good number of missing assist items these past few newsletters, Magnet Beam, Balloon Adapter, Super Arrow, but this is the one I think people have really been waiting for.
That's right. If you were looking for Rush Coil but specifically the version from Mega Man 5, then we have you covered!
That said, it does work rather differently than the Rush Coil we know and love.
When you use what we're dubbing Rush Pogo (The item's official name is "New Rush Coil" but that would be potentially the most confusing item name we could put in the game, so Rush Pogo it shall be), it'll of course summon Rush like the normal coil. But when you use it...
You'll bounce on Rush four consecutive times, each bounce being bigger than the last. This gives you a slightly longer commitment than regular Rush Coil, but also gives you more movement options while revving up the bounces. You can also choose to jump off Rush Pogo for a shorter "double jump" at any time, but it will stop the use of the item right then and there.
Well, that's all we've got for today. Please stay tuned for the next V6C Newsletter and I hope you like jumping on your dog in the meantime!
...
Yeah, alright. Rush Pogo isn't a joke, but here are the actual missing Rush assist items you've been waiting for.
The missing Rush Adaptors from Mega Man 6 are both being added into Megaman 8-Bit Deathmatch!
Let's take a quick look at Jet Adaptor first....
It works mostly as you'd expect it to. Jet Adaptor always had a unique way of flight in its home game, not really replicated by any other item, so it's a very easy type of movement to replicate over.
Like Mega Man 6, the ammo will only start refueling when you are on the ground, so you do need to be a little careful with how you fly.
To help further give Jet Adaptor it's own identity, we've given it a quick burst shot type attack instead of the regular buster.
As for Power Adaptor, we had to give it a few more unique touches in order to help it stand out in a crowd of other melee weapons. Uncharged it works exactly as you'd expect, shooting shorter range shots with your fists. But when you charge it up...
You get a powerful melee attack that's capable of knocking enemies back! But that's not all the charged Power Adaptor can do...
Time your punch just right, and you can even reflect back projectiles! You have to be able to time the punch though, so don't get cocky, mistime it and be in for a world of hurt.
I hope you all enjoy the Rush Adaptors (and Rush Pogo!) when V6C comes out! I may be talking from a slight bias here, but I think they're all really fun weapons and items to use.
That's all for today's newsletter! We'll see you next time with considerably less dogs (I think?) in the newsletter! See you then!
In lieu of showing off any new maps today, I'm here to show off another new assist item being added to the game! Now we've shown off a good number of missing assist items these past few newsletters, Magnet Beam, Balloon Adapter, Super Arrow, but this is the one I think people have really been waiting for.
That's right. If you were looking for Rush Coil but specifically the version from Mega Man 5, then we have you covered!
That said, it does work rather differently than the Rush Coil we know and love.
When you use what we're dubbing Rush Pogo (The item's official name is "New Rush Coil" but that would be potentially the most confusing item name we could put in the game, so Rush Pogo it shall be), it'll of course summon Rush like the normal coil. But when you use it...
You'll bounce on Rush four consecutive times, each bounce being bigger than the last. This gives you a slightly longer commitment than regular Rush Coil, but also gives you more movement options while revving up the bounces. You can also choose to jump off Rush Pogo for a shorter "double jump" at any time, but it will stop the use of the item right then and there.
Well, that's all we've got for today. Please stay tuned for the next V6C Newsletter and I hope you like jumping on your dog in the meantime!
...
Yeah, alright. Rush Pogo isn't a joke, but here are the actual missing Rush assist items you've been waiting for.
The missing Rush Adaptors from Mega Man 6 are both being added into Megaman 8-Bit Deathmatch!
Let's take a quick look at Jet Adaptor first....
It works mostly as you'd expect it to. Jet Adaptor always had a unique way of flight in its home game, not really replicated by any other item, so it's a very easy type of movement to replicate over.
Like Mega Man 6, the ammo will only start refueling when you are on the ground, so you do need to be a little careful with how you fly.
To help further give Jet Adaptor it's own identity, we've given it a quick burst shot type attack instead of the regular buster.
As for Power Adaptor, we had to give it a few more unique touches in order to help it stand out in a crowd of other melee weapons. Uncharged it works exactly as you'd expect, shooting shorter range shots with your fists. But when you charge it up...
You get a powerful melee attack that's capable of knocking enemies back! But that's not all the charged Power Adaptor can do...
Time your punch just right, and you can even reflect back projectiles! You have to be able to time the punch though, so don't get cocky, mistime it and be in for a world of hurt.
I hope you all enjoy the Rush Adaptors (and Rush Pogo!) when V6C comes out! I may be talking from a slight bias here, but I think they're all really fun weapons and items to use.
That's all for today's newsletter! We'll see you next time with considerably less dogs (I think?) in the newsletter! See you then!
Freems • August. 11, 2025, 12:13 PM
Hey all you Mega Fans! We're back at it again with another V6C Newsletter!
On paper I have something of a smaller update for you guys today, but it's something that I'm okay doing to you all because I'm simply a sucker for thematics. So buckle your seatbelt, grab some spending money, and get ready for a fun time, because today we're heading back out to the carnival!
That's right, we're taking a look at our good friend Magic Man's stage today! While it's still based on the existing map in the game, the map has seen quite the expansion from V6B! New paths to break down chokepoints, more ways to traverse the map, more towers to climb, and plenty of new elements to keep you wanting to stay at this carnival all day and night!
And yes, you can ride that train in the background in the first screenshot.
But you know what? Why stop at just one trip to the carnival? Surely we can make this a double feature!
Clown Man's stage has also received quite the makeover! Though as you can see but this screenshot alone, it's not just a layout makeover, the map has received a brand new texture set as well!
While this follows a similar blueprint to the Clown Man currently in the game, it is certainly more different than the existing version than Magic Man is. But it's a wonder what a brand new coat of paint can do for a map! Rockman 8 FC neglected to adapt a lot of areas from Megaman 8 proper, so we're also able to have the map more accurately represent the original game in ways not possible before. Anyone remember Clown Man's weird little skull warehouse?
Now not every Megaman 8 map will be getting a new coat of paint right now, but I can say that you should expect at least a couple others in V6C... So stay tuned for that!
I hope you filled up on your rides and cotton candy, because that's all for today's newsletter! We'll see you next time for some less carnival themed V6C action!
On paper I have something of a smaller update for you guys today, but it's something that I'm okay doing to you all because I'm simply a sucker for thematics. So buckle your seatbelt, grab some spending money, and get ready for a fun time, because today we're heading back out to the carnival!
That's right, we're taking a look at our good friend Magic Man's stage today! While it's still based on the existing map in the game, the map has seen quite the expansion from V6B! New paths to break down chokepoints, more ways to traverse the map, more towers to climb, and plenty of new elements to keep you wanting to stay at this carnival all day and night!
And yes, you can ride that train in the background in the first screenshot.
But you know what? Why stop at just one trip to the carnival? Surely we can make this a double feature!
Clown Man's stage has also received quite the makeover! Though as you can see but this screenshot alone, it's not just a layout makeover, the map has received a brand new texture set as well!
While this follows a similar blueprint to the Clown Man currently in the game, it is certainly more different than the existing version than Magic Man is. But it's a wonder what a brand new coat of paint can do for a map! Rockman 8 FC neglected to adapt a lot of areas from Megaman 8 proper, so we're also able to have the map more accurately represent the original game in ways not possible before. Anyone remember Clown Man's weird little skull warehouse?
Now not every Megaman 8 map will be getting a new coat of paint right now, but I can say that you should expect at least a couple others in V6C... So stay tuned for that!
I hope you filled up on your rides and cotton candy, because that's all for today's newsletter! We'll see you next time for some less carnival themed V6C action!
Trillster • August. 4, 2025, 11:36 PM
Zandronum 3.2.1 has released!
I'm getting deja vu. Zandronum, the game engine that powers Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch, has just released its newest 3.2.1 version! This version is primarily a small hotfix to the prior version, so there's not as much worth noting in this post, but feel free to click here for Zandronum's full update post if you're interested in the nitty gritty details.
What this means for you
Just like last time, as servers begin hosting 3.2.1 and mods begin being built with it, you may find yourself unable to join those servers or play with those mods. To fix this, you'll have to update your game to use Zandronum 3.2.1 instead.
All of MM8BDM's download links have been updated to include Zandronum 3.2.1, so you can simply reinstall the game to do this upgrade. Those updated downloads are linked below for convenience. If you need additional guidance, please refer to the game's installation guide here.
I'm getting deja vu. Zandronum, the game engine that powers Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch, has just released its newest 3.2.1 version! This version is primarily a small hotfix to the prior version, so there's not as much worth noting in this post, but feel free to click here for Zandronum's full update post if you're interested in the nitty gritty details.
What this means for you
Just like last time, as servers begin hosting 3.2.1 and mods begin being built with it, you may find yourself unable to join those servers or play with those mods. To fix this, you'll have to update your game to use Zandronum 3.2.1 instead.
All of MM8BDM's download links have been updated to include Zandronum 3.2.1, so you can simply reinstall the game to do this upgrade. Those updated downloads are linked below for convenience. If you need additional guidance, please refer to the game's installation guide here.