In Mega Man 9, you have to do a bit of collecting. Mostly these Bolts that you use as a kind of currency to buy upgrades to make the game slightly easier. But collecting them is a pain, since they're kind of rare.

But you can tip the scales to your advantage (slightly).

First, you have to have completed Jewel Man's stage, so you have the Jewel Satellite.

Then go to Concrete Man's stage and stand right here (it's pretty close to the beginning), face left, and activate the Satellite

Now, birds will fly by and drop boulders which will break on the upper platform, and a chunk will fall into your shield. If a goodie falls out, it'll drop right on you for collection!

You'll get all kinds of drops here, and it just keeps going for as long as you want to stand around.

So how long you should stand there really just depends on how much stuff you want.

If you check out Mega Man 9's pause screen, you get lots of info like how much weapon energy you have left and how many more Mega Mans you have in reserve.

[Normally a screen shot would go here, but I kind of don't have access to a working capture device, and my artist is on vacation, so use your imagination, or just consult your own status screen]

You'll notice that next to Mega Man's Mug that there's a two-digit number to indicate how many lives you have left. You might think that you can get up to 99 tries to off Wily, but you'd be mistaken.

For some reason, even though you have two digits to show how many lives you have left, the counter stops at 9. And lives don't continue to accrue, either. If you have 9 lives, pick up 4 more, lose one, you won't have 12 left in reserve, you'll have 8.

So be wary.