I salute you! And I hope you can capture the splatter in black + white pixels

Thanks. I didn't really think at any point of having gore in the game. Hmm. There hopefully will come a time when I'm in a position to consider the option more seriously though, so hopefully I'll keep your suggestion in mind then.
Updated to-do list (I'm freely allowing it to telescope out, and doing my darndest best not to skip ahead):
firing bulletsimplement basic sound effectshelmet dudesdamage animationhealth barnew game title 
(under discussion)
multiple bulletstransition to boss-screen (the barrier, screen-scroll, &c)*bullets array
robust killentity function (will take care of bullets/&c)
kill all entities when meet boss
breakable/regenerating platform
bullets hit bad guys
bullets deflect off bad guys
bullets kill bad guys
have lady million warp on screen at start of level
bad guys damage animation
bosses
have some music done by now
pause screen
pause screen w/ weapon select
rehash the boss selection screen
killing bosses grants use of new weapon (with screen saying this)
title screen for 1d megaman game
password display
password entry
death
then other 3-in-one stuff if I have time:
game select screen
very buggy/quickly executed biocosm ripoff
game 3, also quickly executed
sick panda game, also also quickly executed
The next couple of items on my list should be really easy to implement, thankfully

(the last thing I did was really gross...not a fan of scripting-based stuff)