Retro spotlight: Mega Man X3

The last of the SNES Mega Man X titles is a worthy sendoff that would also end up on 32-bit successor consoles.

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 X3 is a fascinating turning point for the series for a number of reasons. For one, it was the last of the 16-bit Mega Man X titles, the final Super Nintendo release in the franchise, with the rest making their way to 32-bit systems like the Playstation and Sega Saturn, and eventually the Playstation 2 — Nintendo would still have spin-off titles like the tactical Command Mission on the GameCube and Mega Man Xtreme on the Game Boy Color, but as for mainline games? X3, released in 1995, was the end of the line.

Second is how it managed to succeed in the ways Mega Man X2 did not fully manage, by refining some of the ideas that game had for moving on from and iterating on X. You’ve still got the three optional bosses to defeat here, but the whole approach to that is more sensible and doesn’t detract from the flow and pacing of the game — how you go about selecting levels for Mega Man games is pretty tried and true, and X2, for all that was good about it, certainly and unnecessarily upset that rhythm. The level design is a step up, finding hidden items involves more enjoyable exploration, and the difficulty is a lot closer to what fans of the original series were expecting when X first debuted. Not that I personally had issues with the switch in difficulty in the first place, but still, three games in to X, it was time to turn up the heat a little, and Capcom did.

Well, Capcom published the game, at least, but the developer was Minakuchi Engineering, who also happened to be the developer of Game Boy spin-off Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge. For whatever reason — so they could focus on the ports, perhaps? — Capcom handed off much of the development of a mainline X game to another studio, but the results speak for themselves: none of what marred their first-ever Mega Man game is present here, and X3 trumps Capcom’s own efforts with X2. Now, reviewers at the time were pretty harsh on X3, but they also seemed to be suffering from a bit of Mega Man fatigue. Which, take a look at the release schedule of Mega Man and Mega Man X games at the time, and it’s pretty easy to see why: there were mere months separating the various Mega Man releases for a few years, and when things are as formulaic [non-derogatory] as they are in these games, it’s pretty easy to see how people would tire of them even when the quality is there.

The complaints about the level design seem off-base to me: it all feels a little bigger and more interesting than X2 was, and that you can traverse the environments with more abilities than before, as well as with optional ride armors that you have to 1) collect and 2) discover the deployment points for, often to unlock specific passageways or secrets that lead to additional bonuses, there’s plenty to do here that feels different than the previous two X titles in a positive way. There are also more setpieces than in X2 — areas that are distinct and memorable, or are changed in some way by your progress in other stages. X3 doesn’t have perfect design, by any means, but it’s better than critics at the time gave it credit for.

It really does seem to be an issue of the time. Nathan Smith at Computer Games Magazine seemed personally offended by the game’s mere existence in late-1998, when the Windows port finally arrived:

Packing more cliché console conventions than you can shake a gamepad at, you'll need the patience of Job, the manual dexterity of a nine-year-old, and the intelligence of Forrest Gump to really enjoy this one. Capcom doesn't realize that some of us just don't have the time to slog through dull levels just to lose all of our men trying to discover the pattern of the end-level bosses. Of course most games have thrown off the shackles of "finite men" years ago, but the concept persists, because denying saves during a level and making you start over when you lose all your lives is the easiest way to thicken anemic gameplay.

…

Megaman X is a middling game that hit the scene a few years too late. We don't condemn it because it's a platform shooter. No, we condemn it because it's not a very good one.

Ignoring that Smith called the game “Megaman X” on two occasions, that bit is quoted instead because he also referred to X3 as “middling” but awarded it one out of five stars as a score — “middling” is the nicest thing said about the game in the review. The magazine Saturn Power referred to X3 as the worst game in the Saturn’s lineup, while Sega Saturn Magazine seemed to enjoy the SNES version but not the Saturn one, even though they’re the same game with different audio — I don’t want to generalize, but it’s tough not to consider much of this has to do with Mega Man fatigue and the pretty typical for the time dislike of side-scrolling pixelated platformers during the era of the polygon. It’s fine to not like Mega Man X3, but all of this seems like it’s about something else, is all.

Which you can’t even necessarily blame the reviewers themselves for. It was an era focused on new new new, with refinements of preexisting concepts getting side-eye for not being innovative enough as industry standard. So, a Windows port of a game originally released in Japan in 1995 finally hitting North America PCs in 1998 is going to engender some negativity given the context of the day. Especially since when it first released for the SNES in ‘96, it came out when Capcom had slowed down production for its 16-bit offerings, knowing that the era was coming to an end in favor of the promise of the Playstation and its polygons — SNES cartridges of X3 are a rarity these days thanks to that decision, despite being part of a series as ubiquitous as Mega Man X. X3 is a good game, but it’s not as good as the original, and on top of that released at a time when fewer people were looking for the kind of game it was, and while Mega Man fatigue was reaching its peak due to an overloaded release schedule. It’s no wonder some reviewers were so angry and lacking in patience for it despite what it had to offer.

We’re years removed from that context now, though, so it’s a lot easier to just look at Mega Man X3 for what it is: a more-than-competent successor that’s still worth playing today. It’s not a for-serious-enthusiasts-and-completionists-only kind of release, like Wily’s Revenge, but is instead a worthwhile farewell for the series’ 16-bit days that helps make the first part of the Mega Man X Legacy Collection worth a purchase and your time decades later on modern consoles.

There are some slight changes to the gameplay, but otherwise, this is very much a Mega Man X game in that regard, and we don’t need to go on at length about how it plays. It’s an action platformer where you focus on collecting the powers of robot masters at the end of each stage, in order to defeat other robot masters with the weapons they’re weak to. You’ll do a lot of dashing, shooting, and jumping, and probably cursing, too. As said, it’s Mega Man.

As for what’s different, upgrading X’s leg armor gives him the ability to boost vertically, which allows for some secrets to be hidden away in a different way than in the previous titles, especially since you have to decide about whether you want to air dash or jump dash: you can’t do both in the same jump. Generally, secrets, be they passages or for items, are better hidden in X3 than in X2, which makes searching them out more enjoyable. They’re not unfairly hidden, but you do need to notice there might be something in the environment for you to look a little closer at, whether to jump toward or punch through with ride armor or to drill through with the appropriate weapon. Once you get the head armor upgrade, you will also get a notification when entering a level of where in the map there are hidden items to find, and even before choosing a level, you get a list of what’s been collected and what’s still out there waiting to be found. That’s not a good enough reason for the stage and boss name to never be visible on the level select, no, but at least they put something there eventually.

Mega Man X3 was certainly designed to undo idea that X was an easier Mega Man series. Enemies absorb a lot of damage, have attack patterns you need to memorize, and you’re often using your standard X Buster because refills for your special attacks feel like they drop less often than in the previous two titles. And the solution isn’t to simply charge up your X Buster all the time, either, as plenty of enemies were designed to keep you from easily doing that very thing: they have ways of blocking your larger shots, either with their own projectiles or armor. While some critics felt this created tedium, I appreciated that the in-level enemies asked more of me, and were an actual threat to keep me from simply filling up all of the health-refilling subtanks and pushing through each stage’s robot master with ease. You can’t fill your sub-tanks without full health, and if you don’t figure out the patterns of your enemies and how to avoid taking damage, you’re never going to be able to fill those things in the first place.

In addition, some of the robot masters have second phases where they will begin utilizing different attacks, which makes taking them on with just the X Buster instead of whatever weapon they’re susceptible to an even tougher ask than usual. And speaking of second phases, Sigma’s second is actually the worst part of this game. He has a massive body and a very tiny hit box — his head, which is protected by massive shoulder armor as well as two of the three projectiles he fires at you during the fight, and can only be damaged by the X Buster. You can certainly do it, but you’re not going to beat Sigma on your first or second attempt, that’s for sure. Helpfully, if you manage to collect every upgrade and avoid the optional body-part-specific upgrade chips hidden in a few levels, you can find a special chip that upgrades all of your systems, and one of those upgrades is a heal that refills both your health and your sub-tanks if you stand still long enough. That’ll set you up well for both bosses and retrying Sigma.

Despite that overly rough go of things with Sigma that seems to be making up for how easy he was to defeat in X2, it’s all a massive upgrade over the kind of difficulty Minakuchi Engineering utilized in Wily’s Revenge, which was more in the “lol you guessed wrong” instadeath vein. Whatever promise Capcom saw in this studio when they brought them on to develop spin-off Game Boy titles is certainly realized in X3.

In X2, the series introduced optional bosses who would move their location from stage to stage after each one you completed. Conceptually, it was a great add to shake things up, but in execution, it was lacking something. As I wrote in my X2 feature, “This whole deal manages to be both intriguing and a neat change to the standard formula, as well as kind of a pain in the ass at times. There is no real warning that the X-Hunters will vanish if you wait too long to challenge them, and it’s harder to know what power will make fighting them easier — and even more difficult to set things up so that you’ve managed to both secure that power and not have tarried too long to be able to utilize it.” In X3, the optional bosses — Bit, Byte, and the returning Vile from X — won’t vanish in the same way if you take too long, and you’ll find them again in other stages later on if you fail to defeat them earlier. You also don’t fail in the narrative part of the game by failing to take them out in the game’s first phase of robot master stages: the bonus you get for defeating Bit, Byte, and Vile earlier is that, if they’re defeated using the weapon they’re weak to, you won’t have to fight them back-to-back-to-back in a late-game gauntlet in Dr. Doppler’s lair. It’s not much of a twist or anything — it’s pretty clear early on that the Sigma virus is controlling Doppler — but he’s the antagonist to defeat before you finally get to face off against Sigma, who it turns out was controlling Doppler in order to build a new body for himself.

Even with this change in approach for optional bosses and the payoff, there’s still a Zero-related narrative you need to successfully complete in order to see the good ending of Mega Man X3. In this game, you get to call on Zero once per stage to assist you: early on, Zero is a huge help if you perform the call at the right time, since he has more health than X and already has an upgraded arm cannon, plus his laser sword. And since he can’t fight mini-bosses or robot masters, you can’t just use him to cheese through the tougher parts of the game, either: he’s a lot like the ridable armor, in that it’s a good way for you to conserve X’s health and power for when he really needs them. There is exactly one mini-boss Zero can fight, though, and if you do end up in that situation, he’ll sacrifice himself, because he just loves doing that. If you let Zero sacrifice himself, you get the bad ending, but X also gets Zero’s sword, which is capable of inflicting massive damage. Sure, your soul will be forever stained with the guilt of knowing you easily could have prevented Zero’s death in a fight X was capable of handling on his own, but, then again, laser sword.

As for the “good” ending, it’s actually marred due to two separate misfires of localization. For whatever reason, Capcom’s localizers changed the text from saying that Zero and X would end up fighting someday to “To save mankind, [X] must destroy Zero.” Which was a huge surprise, that any showdown at all would occur between the two someday, because nothing implying the need for it appears anywhere in X3, nor in X2 or the original. Well, not the North American versions, anyway. You see, once again for whatever reason, X2’s localizers decided to omit the part of the game where it’s revealed that Zero was built by Dr. Light’s nemesis, Dr. Wily, and that repeated exposure to the Maverick Virus that infects the robots X and Zero keep on fighting throughout this series could turn him back to his original rampaging, villainous form. So, for Japanese audiences playing X3, the good ending is a reminder that this partnership can’t last forever, and that the two protagonists of the series will someday come to blows. For North American audiences, it was a big, “wait, what?” moment that couldn’t easily be solved, since this was 1996, after all, well before websites dedicated to unraveling this sort of confusion existed.

Mega Man X3 had the limited SNES run in North America in early 1996, but it also released for the Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation in Japan and Europe later that same year and in 1997, respectively. The gameplay is the same across versions, but the Saturn and Playstation releases feature FMV cutscenes both in the opening and for introducing each stage’s robot master, and the soundtrack has been arranged to utilize the audio chips and Red Book audio capabilities of the CD-based systems. So, a track like Blast Hornet’s stage theme sounds like this in the SNES version of the game…

…but like this in the Saturn and PSX release:

Not only different instrumentation, but more instruments, too. The whole soundtrack has that kind of change in sound, and while it’s still not as impressive of an OST as that of the original X, like basically everything else in the game, it’s a step up from X2, with more memorable tracks to be found.

This version of the game was only available in North America through its 1998 Windows release — not Windows ‘98, but Windows in 1998 — and as part of 2006’s Mega Man X Collection for the GameCube and Playstation 2. When the Mega Man X Legacy Collection released in 2018, the SNES version of X3 was included instead — so, if you want to play the version with the alternate audio and sound effects that the 32-bit systems and Windows received, you need to dig up the old X collection, or emulate those versions. Or just watch the cutscenes and listen to the soundtrack on the internet, it’s 2022, you don’t have to burn a copy for your softmodded Saturn just to see for yourself. But you also can do that if you want to! The future isn’t always bad.

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