Retro spotlight: Mega Man X

Is it too easy? Maybe! Does it rule anyway? Hell yeah it does.

This column is “Retro spotlight,” which exists mostly so I can write about whatever game I feel like even if it doesn’t fit into one of the other topics you find in this newsletter. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Mega Man X was my first Mega Man game, which probably wasn’t how Capcom drew things up. I didn’t have an NES until I was an adult, though, so the slew of Mega Man titles on that system would have to wait until I could play them later on, mostly through Virtual Console and various anniversary collections. Mega Man X, however, was an SNES release, and I had one of those. I also had an account at Blockbuster Video, and a mother who would sometimes forget that we needed to bring rental games back. So that’s how I ended up with an entire summer to learn Mega Man X’s secrets instead of a few days, and also ended up with my family not going back to Blockbuster for a while after that to avoid paying whatever the late fee that summer brought on was.

As an entry point for the Mega Man universe, you can’t do much better than X. It’s easier than its predecessors, to the point that you will find people who find that to be a fault of the game, but there is also real depth here thanks to the collectibles, the stages changing form based on what other stages you’ve already completed, and the focus on story, which would only increase as the X entries did. The difficulty in the X games would come later, but again, as an entry point for someone like me, or someone who was familiar with the older Mega Man titles but had grown tired of them somewhere after the first handful? X was wonderful.

And it still holds up now. If you’re familiar with the ins and outs of Mega Man X, you can knock a playthrough out with all of the upgrades in just a few hours. You can play the stages in such an order that you always have the best weapon for defeating the game’s various bosses on hand, or you can try to make it with your basic X Buster whenever possible so that the stages themselves are easier. Anyone can figure out that acquiring the Flame Wave would make defeating a robot named Chill Penguin a simpler task, but it’s more fun to discover, through playing rather than simple elemental intuition, that Spark Mandrill’s dangerous, electrified factory stage isn’t nearly as electrified after you crash Storm Eagle’s airship into it.

Image credit: Polygon

And it’s fun to find out, too, that you can upgrade X’s basic arm cannon to be on par with that of Zero’s fancy one even before the point in the story where it’s given to you, or that there are a whole bunch of upgrades for X’s armor that will fundamentally change the way you play Mega Man: there’s a dash, there’s a headpiece that makes crashing through certain bricks possible, and there’s an upgrade for X’s body armor that cuts damage. Collect all four of these upgrades — as well as all of the various life-extending heart upgrades found throughout the game’s first eight stages, and then X can also fire off a Hadouken when at full health. Why shouldn’t X be able to use a Hadouken? Why should Ryu have all the fun?

Let’s back up a little. Mega Man X is set a century after the events of the previous Mega Man games, meaning your interactions with Dr. Light are through hologram messages and equipment upgrades he’s left for X, should the new little blue bot decide on his own that the life of a combat robot is the one he wants to live. Dr. Wily isn’t a thing here, either: instead, the focus of X is about a civil war between the robots themselves (don’t worry, Wily’s shadow will eventually loom over the series, but not quite yet). This part of things isn’t in the game itself, but is explained in the manual and elsewhere: X is discovered in a capsule by a different scientist, and it turns out he has free will and the ability to think and rationalize like a human does. This scientist, Dr. Cain, then creates replicant androids based on X, called “Reploids” in the game. Some of these Reploids go maverick, so then a force of military police robots, the Maverick Hunters, forms to combat their revolution.

X is a Hunter, as is the aforementioned Zero, but don’t worry about the fact that you’re working for the military here and combating a revolution, since the Maverick’s plan under their leader Sigma is, in short, “kill all humans.” Sigma believes that humanity is limiting the potential of the Reploids, who can think and feel just like humans can, but unlike humans, come equipped with all kinds of powers and abilities. So, he proposes to get rid of what stands in his way. X is still learning his place in the world, but he knows what Sigma is doing is wrong, and so he sets out to stop some of these Mavericks while Zero searches for Sigma’s base.

Much of the story stuff is optional since it’s in the manual or presented before the title screen even appears, but what is in the game — X’s questioning of who he is and can be, his relationship with Zero, how much Vile just hates these guys, Sigma being a charismatic genocidal bad guy the way Capcom knows how to make ‘em — adds to the experience.

The action platforming is where it’s at for Mega Man X, though, and is largely why the game holds up. It’s not full of the kinds of jumps where, if you’re a pixel off, you’ll fall to your doom, but it is instead full of mini-bosses and annoying projectiles and trick shots and the like. Learning how to utilize the powers that you collect after defeating the game’s eight Mavericks — Chill Penguin, Storm Eagle, Spark Mandrill, Flame Mammoth, Sting Chameleon, Boomer Kuwanger, Launch Octopus, and Armored Armadillo — within the stages is a not-insignificant part of the proceedings. You’re given a whole lot of freedom in how you want to complete the stages, too, and not just in the order that you choose to play them in. There are often multiple solutions for mid-bosses and some environmental puzzles, and you might have to nail some perfect dash jumps or boomerang shots in order to acquire all of the game’s hidden upgrades. That every collectible weapon also has a secondary charge form once you receive the upgraded arm cannon keeps things fresh and exploratory for you, too.

Switching from the [Power] Man model to the animal robots helped inject some more life into the Mega Man proceedings, too. You’re just able to get much cooler looking and varied looking robots by going to the animal world, and it allowed for some of these Reploids to be massive, as well. Mega Man X set out to evolve the Mega Man franchise, and it successfully did so with decisions like that.

And where would any Mega Man game be without its music? Mega Man X has plenty of tracks that will be in my head for weeks after I mention them here. Hell, the theme to Storm Eagle’s stage has been in my head the entire time I’ve been writing this, and I was listening to other music then:

I am also partial to Powerglove’s more metal rendition of this theme, but Capcom’s original has plenty of oomph to it, too. Spark Mandrill’s theme is excellent…

…as is the music from the Sigma stages:

It’s all great, honestly, and the whole soundtrack is available to listen to if you choose to do so, and is very much worth it.

Mega Man X didn’t have the difficulty that the series was known for, but it did freshen up the experience of Mega Man, and introduce ideas that would continue on well beyond this initial spin-off. It’s relatively easy to get your hands on these days, thanks to it being part of a number of Mega Man X collections that have released throughout the years, most recently the Legacy Collection that is on all of the major platforms. Sadly, the Legacy Collection is split into two separate parts, so you can’t just grab all of the Mega Man X titles in one go, but they’re on sale pretty regularly on digital storefronts, and also available pretty cheaply in secondhand physical form, even as a bundle. It’s worth it to at least get the first part of the Legacy Collection, as X lost some steam over the years much like his predecessor, but again, the price is low enough at this point that it barely matters that you’re technically paying money for Mega Man X7 in the process if you buy both parts.

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