Most of the bosses who don't end in "Man" you remember from old Mega Man games. You see this thing? It's a face. Its name is Rangda Bangda. It is not intimidating or memorable at all. It is a face. That is a wall. And you're only seeing this because it's actually kinda gimmicky and cute. There are tons of other side bosses in the Mega Man X series, far more than there ever were in Mega Man games, but I couldn't tell you a single one of their names.
Do you know why so many people remember the Yellow Devil? That's him right there. It is not because he's a stately, beautiful work of art. It's because he is harder than a diamond-infused poop from a week-long cheese and ice cream binge. He's probably responsible for more broken controllers than some of the hardest bosses we've mentioned before , and for good reason.
He requires split-second timing down to a science to defeat. Unfortunately, every damn Mega Man game is like that. Mega Man X , on the other hand, is far more forgiving. From enhanced save features to a way to leave levels you've already beaten, MMX knew there was a line between a brutally punishing difficulty and a challenge of skill mastery.
The quality of gamer's lives increased substantially when X showed up, and not a moment too soon. But that didn't mean that X was going to take it easy on us. Sure, the bosses may have been easier, in part due to the upgrades in the game. But every little upgrade had to be acquired by finding little hideaways in each stage, and completing some little challenge to get to it.
Take, for example, this stage pictured above from Mega Man X4, where you're running a race in Cyber Space in order to get the headpiece of X's armor. Naturally, the course is filled with enemies that freeze you in place, robbing you of precious seconds. The games were actually pretty difficult to fully clear sometimes, which was a change of pace for Mega Man players; their world was made up of running right and shooting things until they blew up.
In MMX , they could go right, but they could also go up and down in a way they never could before Now, I need you to get on the same level with me here. Climbing is nothing new nowadays. But in Mega Man games, the only thing the Blue Bomber could climb was a ladder.
Every single wall in every single Robot Master's world may as well have been slathered with butter for all the good they did poor ol' Megs. But in the X series, you were able to wall kick, effectively giving you a way to jump up walls, and you were also able to slide down walls a much slower pace, meaning you could see if a pit was actually bottomless or not. This created a whole new way for players to interact with the game's worlds, and opened up level designs never before possible.
It was awesome. There's kinda no getting around this. Even though Mega Man X is an action game and you can technically blow through it in an hour or two, it has innumerable loving touches that are worth seeking out. Best of all, fighting through each stage just feels good. Very good. Whichever Maverick you choose to fight, getting to the final showdown requires a lot of shooting, charging, jumping, grabbing, and climbing. X moves with a graceful flow that makes the game's intro text redundant: A few minutes in X's company makes it obvious he's Dr Light's best work.
Frankly, it's difficult to go back to Mega Man's classic controls after playing an X game or two, which is one reason a lot of Mega Man fans aren't hot on Mega Man 7. Mega Man X's foundation and mechanics are sturdier than a titanium outhouse, but its graphics and sound deserve their own accolades. The classic Mega Man series on the NES was never a slouch in the visuals department, but Mega Man X experiments with detailed backgrounds and huge bosses.
Music has likewise been an important part of the Mega Man games since day one, but there isn't a soundtrack in the series that rivals Mega Man X's. I've analyzed the soundtrack more than once. Realistically, I can write a book about X's playlist. There just isn't a single song on there that ranks anywhere below "fantastic. I think Mega Man X might be the one. The reason it stands out in particular, though, is because you can set it to play the music while showcasing a series of clips from the assorted games.
The X series is not a particularly newcomer-friendly franchise. Even the later games, which do have easy mode options, still offer quite a challenge. Rookie Hunter Mode halves damage across the board, and eliminates instant-death from spikes in X4-X8. Purists can safely ignore this mode, but I am glad it exists for those interested in the series who have never played it before.
On the opposite end of the challenge spectrum from Rookie Hunter is X Challenge, which pits X against two bosses at once. Seeing the disparate bosses from different console generations on the same screen is fascinating, and for those who have played a lot of X through the years, having a brand new, legitimately difficult challenge, is awesome.
The first three games, which released on Super Nintendo, really never had to deal with loading, but the later entries did and it was more than you would expect for 2D games on platforms that predominantly played 3D games. Thankfully, loading is pretty much completely gone. With the initial filter turned on, you will see random pixels flash and move, even when X or Zero is standing still, which you can see if you look closely at the GIF above.
I would have much preferred having all the games in one comprehensive, singular piece of software. Anyway, enemies shoot bullets that move toward you, encouraging you to jump or move out of the way. It's always exciting to make it to the end of a difficult stage while skillfully dodging attacks and making it to the boss with maximum health. Mega Man also possesses a lot of movement possibilities with dashes and wall jumps. You can hold A to dash and you can also jump while dashing to perform a long-distance jump.
Now, to quickly explain wall jumps: if you hold the D-pad in the direction of any wall while in mid-air, you'll start to gradually slide down the wall and you can then easily jump up or off the wall. You can also combine a wall jump and a dash to do a very fast wall jump. Mastering Mega Man's movement is very fun as you can run through stages quite fast and you'll need to make use of dashes to collect items and dodge certain boss attacks.
After you complete the intro mission which ends after you lose a battle to a powerful robot named Vile , you're dropped into a stage select where you can choose to play any of eight selectable stages. Some of these are definitely harder than others so the difficulty curve can get pretty wonky and it can be frustrating for newcomers like me to choose a tough stage only to lose over and over.
The levels offer solid platforming and you can find some deviously hidden power-ups like armor parts and health upgrades.
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