Retronauts - 714: Mega Man X4

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

Make mine a Double! Nadia Oxford, Jeremy Parish, Stuart Gipp, and Victor "Maverick" Hunter talk all about the classic PlayStation platformer Mega Man X4. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts 

This week on Retronauts. And on the 8th day, God gave voice acting to robots. It was... not good. and welcome to Retronauts, where this week it is all about Mega Man X4, that is the fourth entry in the sometimes good, sometimes not so good, Mega Man X action game series. I'm here with actually, actually, in my note, say two devoted Mega Man fans, but actually have three devoted Mega Man fans with me who don't know any better. First, of course, is our very esteemed leader, Jeremy Parrish, who has been a Megaman fan alongside myself for a very, very long time. Why don't you introduce yourself, Jeremy? That's not necessary, but I want you to because I value you.

Sure. I'm Jeremy Parrish. Sometimes I'm on retronauts. And I'm always wondering why bass and us must fight. Hey, bass, we are not enemy. Shut up. I love base. And we also have our...

No, he's bass. Damn it, he's not a fish. He's base, Jeremy. I've heard Mega Man say it with his own little Robo mouth. I think Forte is better person. Mega Man's an idiot. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Okay. I can't argue that. Wait, it's Dr. Wiley again.

I didn't see it coming. This Mr. X, this Mr. X seems on the level. That's why I like Mega Man 7, because even though canonically in Japan, he didn't say, I'm going to blow your fucking head off, Wiley. He said it in America, and that was enough for me. It was the only time Mega Man was cool. It's the only time. Why don't you say hi, Stuart, since he already introduced yourself here by slandering Mega Man? Hey, Stuart.

I was doing a joke. It's me, Stuart, you're a pal. You're our pal. Actually, something you said to me recently on Blue Skies, we've got to have a retronauts about Beano. Oh, yeah. I'd have to find an actual gaming reason to do that somehow. I'd have to tie it.

Wasn't there a Beano game or a dandy game? There must have been some game based on at least one of the many terrible characters, possibly desperate down. It feels like Desperate Dan. You could do like a Lagoon's and Video Games episode, and then just all talk about Bino. Oh, man, we are talking about totally different Bino's here. Yeah.

Well, I understand, but that's the second. That's the entry point. Oh, okay. Thank you for that, actually. That's an entry point from our leader. So that's very generous. That's all I'm good for. Also, Biff O' Bear, I swear to God, it blocked that motherfucker out.

And he came back because of memes, and I'm just like, dear God. He's a beautiful bear. No, he's not. His feet are a weird monkey feet. Victor Hunter, why don't you say hi before this goes completely off the rails? Hi, I'm Victor Hunter, and you learned Shipuga, Shipuga, Shipuga, the girl that's hard to get. That's really good, actually. The voice acting in Megamon X4 for the Zero's moves, they live in my head to the day.

You got Shepuga. That's a big one. Actually, there's a lot of voice acting bits that live in my head from that game. I really love that when you get soulbody, it sounds like you're saying, you've got soul, buddy. Hey, you got soul, buddy. You got that way here every time. And I'm like, thank you, game. My fiancé said that I played through Zero's story last night in preparation.

Oh, my fiance said that whenever he says, you learned, she thought it sounded like he was going, you learned blank. Like he was reading from a prompter or like he forgot his script or something. Victor is a voice actor so he can kind of understand these like these subtleties in the language. And I can absolutely see that being the case because the way I understand it is that with Mega Man 8 and Mega X4 in both cases are dealing with voice actors who I think are just Japanese people who kind of know English for the most part and are doing their best. Yeah, I feel like it's English speakers who happened to be nearby. the studio like the famous hey janitor go in the closet and record this on a little condenser mic thank you yeah exactly exactly yeah uh it was pretty much the best they could do back of the day i think that's one of the things that really attracted me to megman legends was that holy crap these are actually

really good voice actors for the first time and very canadian yeah that actually reminds me very quickly um the voice of megaman volnut was cori severe did you ever know him victor did you ever meet him No, where is he from? Canada. He's extremely Canadian. Well, Canada's a big place, Nadia. He's from three places that people live. He's from Trana.

He is from Toronto. He actually was on a Canadian show that lasted for two seconds, and it was really good called Nexus, I think it was. How good could it be in two seconds? It must have been a hell of a couple of seconds. It was a real intense two seconds, but what I mean is like I don't... It was 15 minutes of fame condensed into two seconds. It's hardcore. It was such a small Canadian bit that I wrote something for it in my, like, proto blog before Live Journal was even a thing.

And the producer of the show was like, wow, cool. Thanks for writing about our show. Oh, early internet fun. I will say that, Nadia, you've taken us there. The Japanese voice of Mega Man Vulnut is, of course, Mayumi Tanaka, who is also known as the voice of Luffy in One Piece, or, as a voice. as the voice of, oh, my gosh, what's her name? One of the Sakura Wars girls. So there's your Sakura Wars connection.

We have done six degrees of Sakura Wars here on Retronauts. My job is done. This is what Victor does to us in Acts of the Blood God, which incidentally is the podcast that I co-hosts. It's an RPG podcast, Old New Eastern and Western. And Victor is our producer and often one of the hosts. And he connects everything to Soccero Wars, and he's very good at it. Congratulations, man. Thanks.

Can the whole rest of this episode just be us doing that? Because that sounds quite fun actually, naming things. Just some loose free association. Yeah. Yeah, sure. I've never been more acutely aware that I didn't grow up in a Commonwealth state than I am at this moment. You're the outlier today. I am.

You are. You're the American. But you are from North Carolina, so that's close to my heart. I am not from North Carolina. No, but you are in North Carolina. You are in. There's a difference. That is actually true.

My husband is from North Carolina. I don't swallow my words so you can tell I'm not from here. That's a good way to put it. That is a good way to put the accent. So Mega Man X-4, which is something we came here to talk about, released as Rockman X-4 on August 1, 1997, localized to great comedic effect as Mega Man X-4 on October 3rd of that same year for the PSX. It also came out on the Saturn and PC a little bit later.

This is interesting. Also on mobile phones in Japan as separate adventures, one for X and one for zero. I should have looked that up. I don't know if that's a feature phone or the way you're shaking your head, Parrish tells me you know something about this atrocity. It had to have been a feature phone. I don't think I ever saw it myself, but there were so many action games,

especially adjacent to Mega Man released for feature phones. And every single one of them was just an exercise and, like, why would anyone do this to themselves? What would possess a person to say, I need my Mega Man fix so bad? But I'm going to use a feature phone to play through this extremely challenging and pretty elaborate 2D platform action game. That's all about timing, responsiveness, and reflexes. It just says 2011, though.

That's what I'm wondering about the 2011. By then where feature phones kind of dead, but a feature phone market in Japan. In fact, I've survived a long time in Japan. It would have. Retronauts, actually. I've done a Retronauts episode with Rockman Cosmo about feature phones, Mega Man in particular, the games that were kind of trapped there. He's done a lot of work since. I'd actually love to have him back on the show about that. I've recorded lots of Retronauts episodes with the help of a feature phone while I was in Japan

before you could go international. You know, I'd have to go to Japan and rent a feature phone and get like a 30-minute international calling plan that would last me for the week for $100 or so. So, bad times, bad times. Yeah. It is so crazy to think about how that really was not that long ago. I remember in, God, I don't remember what year it was, but in like 2000, whatever the hell it was. And I was up for a job as the Nintendo DS guide for About.com back when that existed. And I was so, like, eager to find out whether or not I got the job.

And I was on a train to OdeCon. And there was, like, nothing in the way of Wi-Fi back then. but I spent the money to look up my email on my feature phone and see if I got that job. And it was such a disaster. I couldn't even manage it. So I just went back to playing Final Fantasy 4 and my DS. That's what year it was. Whatever year Final Fantasy 4 came out of the DS.

Yeah, I remember one time landing in Japan, this was when they first started letting you take a data plan with your smartphone. And on the tarmac at Narita International, I was like, oh, I should check and see what people are saying. on Patreon. So I logged in and the Patreon app sucked 75% of my data for the week in the first two minutes. I was like, what the hell? What is wrong with this app? So yeah, we've come a long way. But all of that is to say that we probably should have looked up whether a Rockman 4 on phones was a feature phone game. They did put out Mega Man 2 pretty early in the iOS days. So it might have been something along those lines. But the fact that it was Japan only suggests that it is, this feature phone. I'm starting to sound like

the zini. And, you know, I'm going up against Rockman when death is on the line, which is not a good idea. Yeah, I don't know if either of you saw this interview that I linked to on schmopulations, or if you've read it before.

But it's really interesting. We have it with the interviews with the producers of a couple of producers of the game, one of them being Yoshinori Takenaka. and, of course, KJ. Inafone is another producer, which there's a gentleman, isn't there? What's he up to now? What's he up to now?

Getting kicked out of level five. I like Inafune. Yeah. Man, there's a man I'd love to see you get some kind of redemption arc, but he might be, it might be past his time. My team number 10. It's coming. That 3DS version is still listed some places. No, unfortunately, a while back, my copy, my pre-order got Canada.

sold by Amazon. They said they won't be able to get it. I put it on Blue Sky, and it went moderately viral. And do you know how much money I got for that? None. Which is how much money you spent on, uh, oh wait, did you actually spend money on, on the DS game? No, I didn't, to be fair. No, just the PC and PS4 versions and Xbox. So everything worked out, you know, zero sum. I liked it. I'm sorry. I liked it. I thought it was all right. Yeah. I think, I think my number nine is just fine. I think it's fun. I think Ray is really fun to play as. I think it's better than most of the

ex-games, to be honest. But, you know, that's a podcast. I'll fight you over because, yeah, I hated that game. I had to review it for U.S. Gamer, and I was just like, this is, this is so unfun. This is the least fun. I think I thought it was just fine. I like, I like the core idea behind it. I think it's fine. I gave it a 2.5, so I didn't blast it, but I was just like, wow, this is the most, like, unreal ass asset game I've played

in a long time, thanks, KJ. Nafune. But anyway, the MegamadX4 team, apparently, was kind of rowdy. Like they, according to the Smopulation's translation, like they said when it comes to parting and drinking, we're second to none. Which, maybe that's just typical Japanese game development behavior. I don't know. But to say that you are number one in drinking and parting and you're a Japanese game developer, that's a pretty big claim. So when you're saying, when you say that, you're suggesting implying that when they designed, zero with long blonde hair and those crystals on his chest, knowing that some foreigners would

misinterpret that as breasts and think zero was female. Like, they know what they were doing. They were trolling. I actually never thought zero was female. Like, if you think, I know that must seem weird to you, but like when I saw his, whatever the hell that yellow thing was, the back of his head, I'm like, oh, he has a cape. I didn't think that was hair. And it wasn't until zero three.

I was reading a fan fiction And someone mentioned it's his hair And I'm like, holy shit, it's his hair And as for the crystals I'm like, well, everything has crystal boobs And Mega Man X apparently Yeah, I mean, that was the era of Rob Leifeld's Captain America

So nothing out of the pale Unit And you know, I kind of know what it's like to have a chest It's like a prue on a boat So anyway It's a good way to get people out of the way When you're just like In a rush

And you need to walk like death And you're like, get out of my way. You just kind of got like the bow of a ship getting people out of the way. It's pretty, of course, you have to be my height for it to work. Tomb Raider 1 Laura Croft in real life is what you're saying. Yes, especially the jagginess and the corners. Thank you. One thing I brought up here, actually, because I'm kind of a, the way I do my notes just to give me an idea is I wrote here, get equipped with shit to talk about.

And that's the format I generally favor for a really old retro kind of like game like this, where you just want to talk about what's cool about it, what you liked about it. And, you know, let's start with the music, which was composed by Toshi Hikai. Horyama, who did the soundtrack for Mega Man X and for Mega Man X4, and I find that very interesting because I feel like they have two very different sounds. Yeah. I put down one of my favorite songs in the game, the Split Mushroom Stage. I think that's great.

But do any of you have any comments or favorites about the music compared to the other X games? I see you have a note here, Parrish. I mean, it's Cynthia where the Mega Man X original was kind of heavy guitar, kind of rock-led, it seems, in places. It's not my favorite, because, and I hate to say this, because I don't like the games that much, but X-5 and X-6 have such a bang of soundtracks.

Yeah, I agree. They're just insane. And there was some good stuff in here. Like, I do like the boss battle music, and I like the music when you fight the big dragon thing. Eregion, I think, Eregion or something. Eregion, yeah. At the beginning.

But a lot of it, for me, is just kind of there. Not that I don't enjoy it, but it's just kind of, there. And it all has a similar sound, I think. There's not much variation, so it kind of blurs together for me. That makes sense. Yeah. What about you, Parrish? You kind of mentioned the same thing, especially with X-6 and X-5 having great music. Yeah, there's like this weird inversion in some of the Mega-Man games, like where the quality is disproportionate between the game and the music. Like, Mega-Man 6, okay. Mega-Man X-6, genuinely terrible. Dreadful, dreadful game. It's pretty bad. Clearly thrown together.

in like 20 minutes just to get something out the door. But both of them have just phenomenally good soundtracks. X6 has no business having a soundtrack that good for a game that crappy. X5 is good and the soundtrack, great. X4 probably, objectively speaking, is the best of the PlayStation trilogy. Kind of like X5 more just because it's weirder and more adventurous. But just in terms of a game you can pick up and play. and everyone can enjoy. I feel like X-4 is a crowd pleaser, but it definitely has the least interesting

of the PlayStation soundtracks. It just, like, nothing about it sticks in my memory. If you, you know, like put something on like a YouTube playlist, I'd say, oh, yeah, yeah, I remember that. I remember that. Then when it stopped, I'd be like, what was that? I just totally forget it. Just doesn't stick in my head. Yeah, I don't think I could hum you a tune from X4, the way I can X, you know. There's nothing that really sticks in my head. And I think part of that is I, especially when it's stuff this rock and Prague and some metal influences, I tend to enjoy that stuff when it's a little lower fidelity. Like I prefer the Prague via an NES or a Super Nintendo more so than I do,

the more literal versions of it on PlayStation or later even even like I like some Mega Man Zero stuff a little bit more than this with its crunchy guitar samples like I tend to go for the

lower information zone when it comes to these kinds of composition that's interesting but I like it it's there it's happening but I think these X games are also so full of sound design elements. Like there are sound effects. There are explosions. There are shots being charged.

There are slashes sounding. There are a lot of things happening in the sound escape of these games that I feel like it kind of gets in the way of even knowing what you're listening to sometimes. That sometimes happens with the Mega Man games. Like Mega Man 4, I think, has one of the best NES soundtracks, but that charge sound, dear God. It just, yeah, you never hear it. Well, it cuts, it actually cuts out one of the audio channels for the music. Yeah. There's only five sound channels on the NES, so one of them has to go away so that you can get that warbling effect.

So it actually degrades the music. Yeah. I think it's interesting, you know, both of both Stuart and Victor have mentioned the crunchy guitars, the butt rock of the original Mega Man X games on Super NES. And they had the opportunity to like bring that so that you have, you know, like real guitar sounds on, on PlayStation. And they didn't really capitalize on that, which I think is a shame, because as much as I like them, the Super NES Mega Man soundtracks, I do think that they suffer somewhat from the Super NES audio chip sampling quality. Like, overdrive guitars don't really sound like guitars on Super Nias. They kind of sound like a bumblebee stuck its ass and a dolic ring modulator.

and kind of get the idea, but it's also really strained. So they could have finally, Mega Man X could have finally realized the butt rock aspirations of the series on PlayStation, and it didn't. Big loss. It should have used the bees, butt.

I feel like the compositions for X, the original, they make that work, like, somehow, because in X2 and 3, they have some quite good tunes, but X2 has the, this weird, like, I don't even have had to know it. It's like, it's like, what are you doing? And then an X-3, you just get the same jong, jong, jong, jong, jong, over and over again in almost all the songs. And it

just, it just makes it kind of feel kind of flat. And I do like some of the, like blast on it, I think, is great. But it's just not there. An X-4, I think, it has some good stuff, like I said, but it also weirdly, it has this kind of early game CD music. Red Book Audio kind of sound to it, which is weird because this isn't that early for PS1, right? This is like three plus years into its life. It was a couple of years, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, this is 90s. It seems like this had been figured out, but I don't want to dump one, because I do like a lot of the tracks. I just would always go for X5 and 6 over it, that's all. Yeah. X6's intro, I don't know what's going on there, but it is ridiculous, like, how good that song is when you start that level and it has that incredible rolling drum, like, holy shit, what's going on? Wow, it seems like.

really fools you. Like, it makes you put your guard down, and then its absolute shittiness just punches you right in the stomach so hard. And you are so unprepared. Your defenses are down. You don't see it coming. It's brutal. Just brutal. It was a bit of a smack. Sound design as war crime, in my opinion. Are you doing podcasts about X5 and X6? Because I'll save it. My anger for those. Oh, yeah. You're preemptively invited to my podcast about the other experience. Anger. Anger about X5? X-5 is so cool.

I like X-5. Me and Jeremy, we're on the same page. I love it when me and Jeremy are on the same page. It's great. It's very rare. So this is kind of mean, but I did say one song I remember is a song that plays when Zero kicks Iris's ass. Because that's called, I think it's called, oh, shoot, something love. It has kind of a dark name to it, and I just kind of like that.

But that was a good song. Tainted love. Love tap. Using a green sword to kill the person that you look. See, it's even got the little robo beeps in it. It kind of does, yeah. But, yeah, so that was, that's the song I remember most in split motion stage, like I said. But yeah, definitely Mega Man X5 and X6, even X8.

I mean, this is an X8 podcast, but there is a gorgeous, gorgeous song in X8 that comes out of nowhere. And it's when you're in the Maverick rematch room. The hat. Just this beautiful. It's acoustic guitar piece. I'm like, what the fuck? But I listen to it when I'm swimming and I love it. I think X-A is X great. Yeah. I like that. I like that very much. Okay, so where were you all in terms of, like, when this game came out, like, with the Mega Man fandom? Were you already, like, me, an established fan, or were you just, like, seeing it in a magazine and you said, holy shit, this looks good? Parrish, I kind of know where you were, but you may as well start.

Yeah, I was there watching Kennedy get shot. I remember it. I was there Gandalf when Kennedy got shot. Sorry. I got my where were you when questions mixed up. Yeah, I mean, obviously, if you know me, you know that I started playing Mega Man with the first game before it came out, before the sequel came out. So I'm an old sucker. So, you know, I had gone in on N64 and after about six months said, well, that was a mistake. So I traded that for a PlayStation. And I bought Tomb Raider, Swikidon, Mega Man 8. And Mega Man Mate kind of made me say, you know what, maybe this style of game has had its day and doesn't need to be around anymore. And maybe this is just stale and bad. And then I played Symphony the Night and realized, oh, no, actually, 2D gaming. Very good. So it was kind of hard to get me excited about X4 because I didn't like the X series as much as the classic Mega Man anyway. And Mega, you know, Mega Man 8 had really let me down. And X-4 does have some of the problems of the original, or not of the original, but of Mega Man 8, which is just that I think audio, or not audio, but optical disk technology of that era didn't really fit the kind of compact 2D style of gaming. Like, it's really

disruptive to have to load a new section. And there's just that kind of intrusive, awkward silence when it transitions between stages or sections of the stage. Everything just doesn't quite feel right. It feels all a little disjointed. Like the gameplay, the art, the music, the voice acting, everything is just a little off. So I was a little gun-shy with X-4, but because I'm a big dump sucker, I still bought it anyway and enjoyed it. So that was my shaggy dog story. That's nice.

we got we got some love out of the mega nine eight hate but i kind of understand we're coming from for i don't hate eight like actually david and i are kind of streaming it every other week for now on our stream but he's good at it does does playing it make you jump jump jump yeah i'm like you know what you can play like usually we kind of trade like with games like i'll play this level you play that level but i'm just like you go ahead and play i'm just not a big eight fan i don't like the way it feels i don't like the art style we're talking about the music i really don't like the music very much, except for the stage-like screen is classic. But I do like electrical communication, which got cut out of the U.S. version anyway. So, eh. I will say, though, Paris going back to, like, you know, N-64 regret. Nothing made me feel N-64 regret, like, back

in the day when they used to have attract screens to actually attract you to buy games outside of game stores. And I see the intro for Mega Man 8. I'm like, oh, shit, maybe N-64 can't do this, man. And to make it worse, then I saw the intro for Wild Arms. And I'm like, oh, well, I made the right trip.

I love Mario. Mario's all right. How do you feel about Mega Man and Bass? I know you would love that game. I know you must love that game. You must love it. You must love the Game Boy Advance Edition that everybody detests. What if you have all the problems of Mega Man 8, but then shrink the screen proportion or dimensions.

So everything is really cramped. And then do it again for Game Boy Advance. That sounds brilliant, right? It does. I think it's way better than Mega Man 8 But that doesn't make it top tier in the franchise or anything I just thought they had a lot of fun things And they're like finding your little data CDs

To learn about all your different robot masters and stuff Yeah I thought that was especially cool But those CDs actually I was going to plug Because my husband and I wrote the Mega Man Robot Master Field guide Which uses those CDs as kind of a background

For a lot of the character profiles there Their likes and dislikes? The various likes and dislikes. There's some interesting ones there. I always liked how Snake Man likes Toad Man, but Toad Man hates Snake Man. That's just very cute. Too real. Very nature-based.

I like that Top Man's expression was, you churn me right around. Which, sure, man, I'll take it. I'll take any pop culture reference. Like a record. Like a record, baby. Music composed by Nausci Mizuta of Final Fantasy 11 fame. So there's my other. everyone take a drink there's okay i knew you're going to break out sacchar wars but i didn't expect a final

fantasy 11 reference so good job thank you but uh yeah just briefly i i just like pop culture references and video games like when what's his name uh stone man or brickman says you're another brick in the wall than a megaman 11 i'm like yeah that's the shit i live for anyway oh boy victor where are you like ff 14 Isn't that whole thing just the wall? Like, I think it's just Final Fantasy 14, colon, the wall, basically. Where were you, Victor, when Mega Man X-4 came out, and were you like, oh, my God. Are you just like, oh, I know Mega Man?

I like Mega Man. Those are my two options. Oh, my God. Or, oh, I like Mega Man? Yeah. That's the only options that are valid in life. So, did not have a PlayStation. I was a primarily Nintendo kid.

However, my friend did have a PlayStation, and he did own Mega Man X-4. Seeing that game being played was not only the first time I had played a Mega Man game. Oh, really? It was the first time I had played a 32-bit game. Oh? And it was the first time I had seen a game with full-motion video anime cutscenes. Oh, you must have lost your game. your mind?

Mega Man X-4 was possibly the coolest thing I had ever seen in my life up to that point. I thought everything about it was incredible. We were early internet adopters, so I used all of that power to look up what Mega Man was and why I, there were four of these games. I had never heard of them. Some of them were on the Super Nintendo. I had a Super Nintendo. Why wasn't I playing them? X4 was my gateway into Mega Man, and it is truly, it's like the platonic ideal of 90s coolness to me still.

That's a good way to think of it. I love it. How many, how much games did you play when you're younger? How did you miss out in Mega Man entirely? Very few games. Oh, okay. I lived in a pretty small town, and I didn't have any magazine subscriptions yet. I don't think I subscribed to Nintendo Power until 98, probably. But, yeah, I had a Game Gear, and I had a Super Nintendo, and those were kind of my things. And I didn't, something, I guess something about even going to the rental shop and seeing Mega Man games.

I think here's what it is I remember one of the only Mega Man boxes being on the shelf of the microplay rental section was Mega Man Soccer And I I already spent enough time being forced to play real soccer As a kid As a kid who desperately wanted to be making art

And doing plays I already got forced into enough soccer I wanted nothing to do with soccer But you love Soccera Tyson. I love Sakura Tyson. There we go. Oh, yeah. Explain that one, Victor.

We call it football a Tyson. But, yeah, Mega Man never grabbed me until I saw this. And then I was all in. I've been a Mega Man fan ever since. The Mega Man Soccer thing is so funny. Like, did your parents not throw you into hockey like every other Canadian parent? No, no. I don't know why.

I don't, I, I think we just lived pretty far away from where any rinks were or, obviously, I, I didn't show much aptitude for it either. I don't know. I, I, I played defense in soccer and I would, like, duck and hide from the ball. It was just, it was just not, it was not my seat. You wouldn't be much good at the puck anyway, so, yeah. I don't think so. Thank you. What about you, Stuart? What was your entry into Mega Man?

To Mega Man. Yeah, I've talked about it before, so I'll be brief. but I had a basically when I was a little kid I had a friend who had the first Mega Man on NES and I was so young that I couldn't even remember it as sort of the kind of phosphorusy kind of the intro scream where it's going it's like the most sensory assault thing imaginable when you're a kid but you couldn't get anywhere in it

and I had that a friend of mine had another friend of mine had two and four which kind of puts pay to the lie that there were no NESs in the UK because I knew like two people with them And then I just sort of didn't think about it for a long time Because it's like, where you move on You know, I didn't have like a Super Nintendo I didn't have like a PS1

I didn't really get anything until PS2 So everything I got sort of vicariously But when I got the internet I don't know how I came about this exactly But I found out about Sprite comics Yeah I love comics Okay, I love video games

Those two tastes that taste great together And I saw the Mega Man X4 sprites in these comics And I'm like This is the coolest, like what the this is amazing these look are so cool they're so detailed

compared to what I know from magazines from like Mega Man X and stuff and I didn't get to play this game until 2000 and I want to say six when the

Mega Man X collection came out right yeah I couldn't get them in the UK they were just I didn't have a PS1 you know you couldn't get them

anywhere in second hang because they were rare as like hen's teeth and when this compilation came up for me it was like oh my God I get to play

X3 PS1 version X4 X5 and X6 and Battle and Chase, you know, but we don't care about that. So I play X-4 and X-4 and X-5 and X-6 for the first time, and I'm just kind of seeing all these things I know from Sprite comics in context now. That's funny. And it just feels kind of weird.

Like, I can't play this game without thinking about my crappy Sprite comics from when I was a kid because that's what the characters are. I'm like, that's not that rebel. That's my guy. That's, uh... That's Bob and George. I was going to say Bob and George. That was Mega Man 7 sprites, Jeremy.

Come on. I actually was just watching a thing about Bob and George and the cataclysm theory, which was put forth by them saying that Zero killed the whole Light family and going into the X series. And Inifune himself said, no, Zero wouldn't do that. And since it's Inifune, I don't know if that's still valid or not. But, yeah, I just found that very interesting. I don't know if that was the Sprite comic you were reading because you're right. Bob and George is mostly Megaman 7, but they did bring in Zero. I didn't read it myself, but I just remember the fandom going crazy about certain things.

And that was one of them. Because I found out about, like, the, well, you know, emulation. I found out about, like, what was called Mega Man BB at the time. We've talked about it before, I think, what became Mega Man Network, obviously. Which my husband runs now. Yeah. Yeah. That was, like, the first place you'll find me on the internet.

I think I was maybe lurking. I may have posted a bit. I don't know, but it was just kind of intimidating. But there I was seeing these sprite sheets of, like, every animation of these extremely intricately animated and drawn. I love the idea that you and I would probably cross streams. back in the day. Like, we must have known each other from back in the day. And God, did I fight with some people on that board? It was some really great times. I just remember the, I want to say, LBD Night Train. That's David, right? Yes, my husband, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember seeing that name on BB and then years later being on sort of other forums. I'm talking like, probably over a decade later and seeing that name again and just being like, what?

Holy crap. The wall is so small. He's followed. He's a small world. Yeah. extremely solid. And now here I am. World famous. Wow. You are. You were the world famous Stewart. It's just, I think it's, I just find it like, it really is just odd to me to play these games and only really think of early internet rather than the games themselves in the context that they were.

That is really interesting. It was, they never quite feel right to me for that reason. But, yeah, it's a weird journey in, but I had to wait for the collection. I think, um, for all of. the bad that the internet has done, I think it will always remain a net good because of the spriters resource. Yeah. God bless.

I don't think there's anything I've used so consistently over the past like 25 years on the internet. It's incredible. And that's absolutely where I went and looked at these sprites. And my dad's a commercial artist. So we always had Photoshop really early on. So for as long as I've known about Mega Man, I've been editing Mega Man Sprites and, like, playing around with pixel art. And just Spriders resource was incredible.

It's an amazing place. They also just did like a big update recently. They updated the site for the first time with some new tools. Did they get rid of all those really intrusive, annoying pop-ups that appear every time you click any page? They're real. They've gotten pretty. Bad. They're bad.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're rough. It's not quite fandom level, but it's bad. No, no. I think the Spiders resource.

I'm sorry, there's a slightly tangential. It operates on two levels. And one of the levels is a secret level, which is that they host all the CGs from erotic visual novels. And I feel like that might be driving a lot of the traffic that keeps it open. That'll do it. Which used to be in zip files that you'd need to download and can now be previewed, thanks to their update. Yay. Wow. That's pretty cool. Things I didn't know about.

Speaking for myself, you know, in terms of like early Internet and Mega Man, like, to me, it was kind of the same story. Although by then, I already knew about Mega Man. I was like an established fan, like 1990, whenever the hell it was. I played Mega Man 3. And I had played Mega Man X, of course. I adored it. Mega Man X2. I was a little bit disappointed in. I found it was just like, you know, it's great if you're really into like the little bit of the more difficult action games. but I felt like music-wise, story-wise, it just didn't really, you know, grab me the way that Mega Man X did, so it's off Mega Man for a bit. But you'll appreciate this, Victor.

I was watching Canadian video game show Video and Arcade Top 10, which ran until, we're just going to steal Crash Men's theme and call it the theme song. Who's going to care if we're Canadian? But, yeah, so they were doing. It's letter time. I adapted that for Blood God, by the way. Yeah. But, yeah, so they were playing Mega Man X3 one day. And I was like, oh, you know what? This looks pretty good. So I rented it from MicroPlay. And I, around the same time, my school was one of the first schools in Toronto to get online. So I used my power of Internet to look at Mega Man stuff because I had to Mega Man X again. And this was right before X4 was announced. So I was really in there for the start of the hype. And I remember, I don't even know how that person found out, but the first

webpage I visited about Mega Man said, yeah, we learned in Mega Man X3 that X is going to have to kill Zero because Zero was created by Wiley. And I was like, whoa! Because I didn't know that, even though it kind of hints at it in previous games, but somehow

this person got confirmation. So when Mega Man X4 came out, everyone was like, okay, this is where we're going to find out about Wiley and Zero. And we did. We actually had some really fucking incredible cutscenes, like in the beginning, where Zero has that dream about him killing everything, and that's probably the only really good cutscene in that whole game. Like, the rest of them are kind of a little bit low budget.

But, yeah, so I was not just there for, like, the announcement, but also, like, the previews. And back in those days, the internet could only do so much. So I was reading a lot of game magazines still. I remember GamePro had, like, a really big preview. Interestingly, when the game came out, it taught me a lot about how people review things. because GamePro, when they did the PlayStation review, they're like, wow, this game rules, five exploding heads everywhere, you know, whatever it was. And then someone else did the review for the Saturn version, and they're like, wow, this, why are we playing 2D games in the great grand future we live in? This is a 3.5 out of where the fuck.

And they must have gotten their messaging wrong because you're supposed to say that about a PlayStation game. And Saturn, you're like, oh, opulent 2D, I love my pixel child. I love my 2D baby. Yeah. You can't see us, but we're rocking our sweet pixels like children. No, you're actually right about that. But yeah, they just did not like this version of the game. And I thought to myself, but how could one reviewers say this and the other reviewers say that?

And that's when I realized, wait a minute, reviewers are human beings with different opinions. And guess who always got told by so many people, why did you write the game this way when this magazine raid it the other way. I don't understand. Aren't you a hive mind, you stupid idiots? I heard that Imagine Babies is better than Godhand, according to IGN. I never played

it. I couldn't tell you. Maybe. Yeah, so the real hype, I would say, in media hype for Mega Man X-4 came from PSM magazine, which was three baby issues old at that point. And they put X-4 on the cover

drawn by American manga wannabe artist. I say that with respect, Adam Warren. He's really good, yeah. Yes, no. Like, his dirty pair stuff is phenomenal. I love it. Yeah, great. I love it.

Yeah. And then the hype line says, Mega Man goes 3D, because it also has a preview of Mega Man Legends or Neo or Nova, whatever was called at the time. But it's a little misleading because you've got the Mega Man X4 art with Mega Man and Zero looking pretty cool

about to shoot you in the face with the ex-buster saying, wow, 3D, Mega Man X in 3D, that's so crazy. Well, that is crazy because it didn't happen. Sorry, kids. But nevertheless, they gave it a nice, loving, gushing glow up. And that's probably the reason why I bought that game was because I was like, oh, if PSM says it's cool. And they're the unauthorized people who can say the truth about PlayStation without constraints. they must be telling me the truth. So, yeah, okay, it worked.

That was a PSM back in the day. They had some great covers. That, was it them who did that Symphony the Night cover with Alicardo Maria? Because that was brilliant. Probably, they tended to have pretty good covers. Sometimes it went a little cheesecakey, but, you know, they were like, hey, 13 years old kids, why don't she buy a magazine? When they weren't doing that, pandering to the, you know, the very young, teen crowds to me who were like titties wow um their their covers were great yeah

Interesting thing about me also being like really jammed in with the hype. I had a couple of friends. I'm still actually really good friends with them. But one of them was the gave me for the first time the voice clips from the game. Like that was the first time I'd heard them. It was zero saying that same dream again, which was kind of blur. It made no sense because at the same time they had that claxon going on in the background. Like they're saying like Maverick Attack and it's like, okay, can't understand that.

But it was also Sigma saying you have enough power to destroy them talking in general. I'm like, oh, man, that's so cool. The voice acting was hot garbage, but you didn't even realize it because, holy crap, you're hearing voices for the first time. So is General the same guy who promotes those insurance policies, the General? Because he kind of looks like a little, like the modern, you know, the commercial general kind of looks like a little CG robot. So I'm wondering if they just like kept upgrading him until he became the leader of Replif Force. Is this a mascot for an American insurance company? Because I might not know the reference.

Sorry. Sorry, I forget Commonwealth. My bad. We do have an insurance guy who looks like a little knight, but I don't think we have a robot yet. But General would be a bad. See, you're dealing with medieval armies. We're dealing with modern armies. That's the American difference.

Oh, yes. You're dealing with the rail guns and stuff. I'm an insurance mascot. I have a rail gun. but I'm going to blow your house away if you don't pay up sure it would what a nice house sure would be ashamed of it got railgunned I wanted to point out though

something that was something that was really funny when I was again absorbing these really in these like early bits of Mega Man X4 this was back in the day when at home we had internet but it was like one line dial up God help you if your dad

lifts up the phone because if this there was a person sending me the death of iris that video oh my god spoiled her and that was 5k a second over my phone line and my father like who had a lot of clients you pick up the phone and call them without thinking about it like it was just like oh my god oh my god i feel like a a rabbit in the shadow of a hawk if i move i'm dead but eventually the download did come through everything was fine so i watched the scene the infamous you know what am i fighting for for the first time. And first so I'm like, well, that's not really good, but it's cool to see it. But what made this the scene so funny is that the person who recorded it, I think they're recording off

their monitor or something. It wasn't a, it wasn't a need of feed. And when Zero's running towards Iris saying, you know, Iris, Iris, you hear someone in the background saying, yeah, because I think whoever was recording the thing was like talking to someone over their shoulder. So it was just really funny to hear Iris say, yeah, and it really masculine voice. Sorry, that was, this is a really stupid diversion. I had to get that out of my system because it was really funny. I would download those

cutscenes from some Mega Man fan site in my really small, real media type videos. And I remember getting the double transformation scene and watching that and being kind of like, is this allowed? Can they do this? Is I allowed to have this? Am I going to jail?

You know, for Mega Man, that's in terms. That's kind of bloody it in touch. It's wild. Yeah. Yeah. Why is their oil red? Actually, the, it was a game's done quick that just happened recently. They did Mega Man X-4, and this was the first time for a lot of people seeing these cutscenes.

And a host of Axel of Blood God and friend of Retro Nuts, Kat Bailey, says to me, what's going on with that robot who transforms? Like, why did he turn into a jester? Why did he kill all this people? I'm like, I don't really have a good answer for you. Just it's Mega Man. And yeah, you're right, Stuart. That was kind of intense for a Mega Man game. And it was rated E.

It was, ratings were weird back then. It wasn't blood. It was oil. It's okay. It's okay. No one died. It was just robots. It's called double, like for double agent, presumably.

It made me think that there should be one who's just called like traitor. Yeah, right. It's me. Trader bot, your friend. They do that a lot with the Mega Man games. Just like make someone like, I'm death. dealer. How you doing? Oh, Reddips. Fucking Reddips.

Hell yeah. Now we're talking. I actually wanted to talk about something very briefly that Stewart brought up before I forget, because this is something that's been on my mind lately. Stuart, you mentioned the Maverick at the opening stage, the dragon. His name's Aragon, Aragon, Erigan, something like that. Now, here's the thing. Eregion. So that could be a reference to J.R.R. Tolkien's city of elves.

or it could be Capcom trying to say irregular dragon because irregulars are what Mavericks are called in Japan, unfortunately. But then I think to myself, Capcom comes up with weird literary references once in a while, and you wouldn't expect it. Like, there's a fantastic Kurt Vonnegut reference in Breath of Fire, too, where you have these two warring families, one same Kilgarde, they own the same trout. I love that. Same game. You have a reference to flowers for Algernon of all the goddamn thing. things. So I guess why not have a J.R. Tolkien reference in Mega Man. It makes a shit ton of sense in retrospect, but at the same time, irregular dragon. So I don't know. That's just talking.

It could be that someone was really hungry for pasta sauce and they were like, um, oregano. I need to remember to get that at the grocery store. I'll name my dragon oregano and then I'll remember. I like that. I think it's a typo and he's meant to be called egregion, like he's egregiously sized or something. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, when I think of his name, too, I think of Aragon, which is like that really awful fantasy series. I just made a lot of people angry.

Yeah. Do you think they're making a reference to the 2002 young adult fantasy novel Aragon? Absolutely. Absolutely. One thing I wanted to kind of bring up, because if I don't, someone else will, is that Mega Man X-Forg came out in a time when Sony of America was really not into 2D games. And I was looking more into this because I had heard. like the tittle-tattle is that oh, Capcom

wanted to bring out Mega Man X-4 to the West and Sony said no, we don't want 2D games to look old and stupid and Capcom said, well, if you don't let us bring out Mega Man 8 and Mega Man X-4, we won't give you Resident Evil and that kind of swayed them. But I was looking into this

and here's the thing, like, it's not quite the story, but also at the same time Sony really didn't want 2D. Bernie Stoller was going to burn stole her so yeah imagine the world where they made that and sony just called their bluff and said okay we don't want or isn't evil then imagine the world everyone would have been blown away when resident evil two hit nintendo 64 oh my god actually wasn't resident evil also on saturn they were

doing a lot of cross yeah they were really trying they think they had like this policy i read somewhere where if they had the game on the playstation on the satan then there had to be some difference between them I got, like, there had to be some exclusive thing on that. Yeah. So they added extra stuff to the Saturn version. Oh, technically it's different on PlayStation. Thanks, guys. In the PlayStation, was it in the manual?

They put like a little crappy history of Mega Man, like in the back of it. It was like a quote-unquote art book or something silly like that. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of them weren't even game changes. It was just little pack-ins and instruction booklets and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I think that story is totally apocryphal.

Does that mean true? that, yes, absolutely. It's like apocalyptically true. That's what apocryphal means. So my understanding is, it's been a long time since I've talked to anyone knowledgeable about this. But Sony absolutely put the cabosh on the PlayStation port of X3. They were like, you are not bringing this super Nintendo game to our shiny, beautiful system in America. We got it.

But I don't, I don't, I don't, yeah, I know. because you didn't have so many of America. They were like, yeah, we don't want it. We don't want it. We don't want it. But it had fMP that you couldn't get on Super Enia. So clearly it was better. Yeah, I don't think that there was really that much pushback on Mega Man, X4 especially,

because it had a lot of content to it. You know, if you want to believe the story that you had to have something 3D in a game in order for it to get PlayStation, you know, there's 3D elements. There is. So, yeah, I think this was, I think that's kind of been blown up in the telling. Now, in the very early days of PlayStation, like 1995-96, Sony of America was very, very resistant to 2D games. But even then, you got like Adventures of Lomax. So, you know, it wasn't like a hard and fast rule.

You got Rayman, even though that was also on Saturn and Jaguar, wasn't it? Jaguar. Yeah, it was, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, so all of that is kind of overblown. Now, there were games that did not make the cut, like, PS1 ports that didn't make the cut to PSP in America because Sony was like, this is not a system for old games. It's a system for new games unless they're like, you know, downloadable only for, you know, the PS1 archives. But yeah, I really don't think this was a game that was, that they tried to crush or suppress despite, despite all the hand-wringing and fear monitoring. I mean, This was mongering. This came out here three months after the Japanese release. It wasn't too long, yeah. Yeah, it's not like it languished in localization hell for years.

No, nothing like that. Three months is a pretty quick localization turnaround time for that period. So I think maybe we were just kind of used to Mega Man games coming out pretty much day and date in the U.S. in Japan at the time. And this had a little more localization involved, a bigger screen. voice acting, you know, they spent at least a day on that. So, that accounts for the delay. Did 8 and X-4 come out roughly the same time, or was 8 previous to X-4? Eight came first.

Yeah, I came first. I was going to say, it seems like it would have been a while since there was a Mega Man game in that case, or at least one that got to the worst, since X-3 was 95, I want to say. 95, yeah. Yeah. If there's 8 in the middle, then, yeah, I'm talking complete. Bullocks. Thank you.

One thing you wanted to kind of bring up, and this is a really big thing about this game is that the gameplay and story split between X and Zero, you're looking at effectively two very different games here. And I want to say, I don't know if this is true when you all can call me out on it, I feel like, okay, so with Mega Man, you got your traditional,

sorry, with X, you got your traditional Mega Man gameplay, where you're shooting from an arm cannon, you're collecting enemy weapons, and they're mostly long distance and, uh, et cetera, et cetera. Whereas zero, you are using mostly melee attacks. You're using a sword. You are learning katas from enemies versus like,

actually absorbing their power. So you do a little bit of that too. So I don't know if this is the first instance of an action game, really making that split between melee and long distance, but it's a split I've always loved ever since. I am always going to prefer melee because I was always a big zero fan but also I just really like up-close battles

I like in X4 how Zero has the spin when he jumps with the saber that's really cool I think it's called the Skywaltz so who did you prefer were you an ex person

or were you a zero person Parrish are you still there I think your camera pros no I didn't freeze I'm just trying to think there were games like this that made that spoke before I preferred X, actually.

To me, it doesn't feel like a Mega Man game if you're not doing shooty, chargey stuff. So I need some of that. And I like having the option to switch over to zero and take care of guys up close. But when you've got to commit one way or the other, I want to have X as my guy, even if he's kind of like, his personality is kind of dopey. He's not as cool as zero. but I just, I like the game feel better. It's more Mega Man to me. I mean, his personality is going to get a lot dope here as the series wears off.

Yeah, I mean, he's kind of got the Cyclops effect. It's like, why are you the main guy? I like Zero because I played the Mega Man Zero games before this one because of the aforementioned timing issue. But I always felt, and this might be incorrect, that Zero felt like easy mode to me because everything was reliant just on basic sort of positioning rather than aiming and positioning.

And it's kind of easy to kill all the bosses without even using the cut, as I thought, with Zero. But it's not, it's too simple for me in a sense. And whenever I play it nowadays, I would generally pick X and try and do the X game. But I just like Zero, I just think Zero is really cool. I think Zero is dope as hell.

So I want to play at Zero. Yeah. Victor, do you write this novel in the notes? Because I love it. Yes. Yes. Okay. Please, please talk. Zero's important. This is, this is, it's not the first time Zero is playable, but it's the first time he's got a unique move set.

X3 was like, we don't really count X3, do we? No, not, no, I was really disappointing. You get one life and that's it. Yeah. This is cool. I want to ask the, the group, and feel free to mull it over as we're talking. But like, what other slashing or sword-based? Action Platformers were doing this before X-4.

I mean, I think of like... Strider. Stryder. I wrote a Ninja Guideon, sort of strider and Shinobi. Shinobi and like Canon Dancer came out like a year before this. Is that the dog? No, that's a shadow dancer. That's Shadow Dancer.

Not Canon. Which is totally different. That's more of a Shuriken game than a sword game. Oh, you're right. Yeah. Shinobie is great because it didn't. introduced contextual control changes. Like, if a guy's up close, you'll just automatically switch over to your stabby bits.

Otherwise, you'll toss weapons at them. Interesting. Yeah, that's, I love the way that feels. Just to be willfully obscure, there's also a run-saber on the Super Nintendo. Sure. You mean Strider Jr.? Yeah, Strider, not as good. I think what Zero does here is, it's a perfect mix of the sword play.

and the athleticism, because with, like you guys were saying, Mega Man X, you have to position yourself, you have to shoot, and Mega Man X shoots in one direction, give or take. You know, you'll get special weapons that have different arcs. You'll get a, you'll get some parabolas, you'll get some up, down, you find things later on to sort of manipulate the axes on which you can control space. Zero gets to control space right from the get-go. He's got wide arcs to his slashes that can be anti-air.

It's the first time you can be walking down a slope and hit the thing slightly below you without too much trouble. You know, he's got so much control over the space around him. And canonically, zero is a higher ranking hunter than X. He is. You see S-Hunter? Yeah, even when you boot up five after this, when you see, select your characters, it labels Zero as an S-rank hunter, and I think X is a B-rank hunter. X usually has around B.

Yeah, despite having saved the world as many times as he has. He has the potential to be S, but he won't. Yes. It's kind of like how Ryu has never actually won the Street Fighter tournament. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Since the original. Yeah.

But Zero, yeah, he just controls space in a way that I don't, I mean, I know I had never played anything that felt this athletic and acrobatic and and like I had mastery over what was on screen, which is, yeah, a totally different feeling from X and, and in some ways a lot easier. But I think that's kind of by design because Zero is as badass as he is. So I think I think the way he feels is incredible. I mean, obviously, because they made a whole sub-series about it. right like yeah yeah they evolved it from uh this game to sort of the zero series just really briefly like how they made it more kind of character actiony for zero when you know you've got combos

you can end or interrupt or continue with different moves it's like such an interesting expansion on this the fact you can go into a boss fight and take half the hell forth with one combo if you know what you're doing it's very hard to do but it's intentional like it's not a glitch it's not a bug if you can do it it means you're good uh i can't do it but it's uh It's cool that you can. And you can see how they looked at this and went, okay, this could be a whole thing. And they knew they wanted it to feel like you were agile because they could have just made the default attack one slash and then the enemy enters hit stun and you've dealt four pips of damage or whatever. But they purposely made it a three hit combo that feels incredible before the enemy enters hit stun.

Like you get to see those little bits of. of damage rapidly decreasing. It feels great. It's so good. So, yeah, I can't think of another game that predates us that had this kind of fluid. You are basically the sword god kind of action quality to it. But I do think that any game that creates characters, like one character that is melee focused and one that is projectile focused, ultimately traces its origins back to

Monster Party for NES, where Mark... He used to baseball bat and Bert the demon that he could transform into attacked with ranged strikes. That is my TED Talk. Thanks for coming. I guess I'll give it to you. I guess I have no choice. But Inifune never really made a secret of how much he liked zero. And I always felt like X4 was zero's game to the point that I don't know if you've ever seen the Saturn cover art for X4.

Yeah. Where it's just zero standing kind of half shrouded in darkness and he's got his saber just glowing in the dark. I'm like, oh, shit. That's amazing. But it gives you an idea of what they were going for with X4, especially, like, I made a joke way back in the 90s, early 2000s about how when you look at the intro for X4, it's a lot of zero. And then they kind of throw in like six seconds of X shooting his buster because they had no idea what to do with this guy otherwise. Because it's zero. I mean, X has a plot line with Double, who is the Maverick who, oh, my God, we had no idea.

idea he was going to be bad. His name was double for God's sakes. Reddit's part, Reddit's precursor. It was okay. It was fine for a story, but Zero was the one who had the romantic tragedy. And that was kind of a big deal in I mean, it was

a big deal for me because holy shit, I loved stupid sappy-ass stories. Here's a stupid sappy-ass story about a robot in love. Oh, God, it all went wrong. I love that. So I feel like Zero definitely got the lion share of what x4 makes it special to me anyway i mean like stewart was saying look at their

sprite sheets zero zero's combat style lends itself to so many more frames of animation and interesting dynamic poses like there's so much love put into his sprite sheet that is it's it's you know dozens and dozens more frames of animation and detail than than x and when you're moving on to the playstation why not do something thing that's going to show off your pixel art even more. I guess with X, it's like, okay, well, he shoots a weapon. It comes out of his arm cannon either way. Zero, again, you've got all these cadets he got to, you know, animate.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that kind of fits the characters because Zero has like a personal stake in this story. He's really out there trying to figure out like, what's going on? Why are all these bad things happening? What can I do to turn it around? And X is like, I'm a cop. Time to kill all the guys who might have done a bad thing.

It's a little, like X, come on, grow on. This is when the Mega Man story, like sometimes they succeed with their story a lot of time when they don't, but they were trying something here when they had that intro, which actually was pretty cool with the General and Sigma. And for some reason, Sigma's entertaining and an interview with a Reploid who's just like the Rim Reaper. and, you know, Sigma says to General, like, the hunters, they just kill people who don't obey the humans. And that's a good point. And no one ever really goes back to it. And so, the General's like, fine, we'll make her own country with, like, blackjack and hookers. And that didn't go well either. Yeah, the crux of Zero's story is that he has to put down his girlfriend who's misguidedly yearning for an ethno state.

I didn't realize this game was so relevant to the modern era, but now I don't want to talk about it anymore. I think on top of the story, getting more sort of involved, it also helps that they've, even though it's fairly rudimentary, they've given voices to the Mavericks you fight as well. Like, in the ocean, when you run into Magma Dragoon before you fight him, they sort of tried a bit in X-3 with Mack and his incredible quick term on you. Like Mac, wherever you've been

Who cares where Mac's been? Who is this guy? With Magrid Dragoon, it's more sort of like, oh, you know, you've got to get out of here. Everything's exploding and shit. That's not the exact dialogue. But it's nice that before the fight, and this is something that would carry over into the zero series

and the rest of this series as well. There is a little bit of back and forth, like, why are you doing this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And sometimes they have reasonable points to make, I think. But it adds a little bit more tragedy when it's someone who's like former friend who's now you've got to fight and kill, even though it's very rudimentary stuff, I do appreciate that a lot.

Is it, like, Storm Owl, who brings up Storm Eagle, too? Is that, like, they, they, I don't want to say that this is like the first Mega Man X game where, you know, story matters, quote, unquote, because story can matter however big or small it is. You didn't find Dr. Cossack's tale and poor Kalinka. I love Kalinka. The story always matters as much as someone cares about the story. But this is really, and especially with the ice level, you know, seeing frozen chill penguin and stuff in the background.

This one is really like, yeah, it's, it's, this is a game that is rewarding people who've been paying attention. That's a good way to put it. Did they explain what happened to Green Biker Guy in this one? I'm going to cry. I'm going to cry. Please don't bring up. Greenblank. No, my favorite thing about the story in Mega Man X-4 is not the cutscenes. It's not the dialogue. It's the Maverick Stage Select introductions, where it just gives you like this little snippet of text about the circumstances around the battle you're going to have. Like, what's his face? Who escaped to the city. It's just like this tiny little evocative fragment. And if that's all they gave. you for plot in Mega Man X-4, it would be so, such a fascinating game, it would just leave so much to the imagination and just intrigue you to, like, create your own stories around this thing. And, you know, then they had to give you zero screaming into his oil-blooded hands

and whining. But, you know, there is this, like, kind of carryover from the 16-bit era where it's like, we don't have a lot of space to tell a story. So let's make these little fragments count as much as possible and give these robots you're going to fight some kind of personality that exists beyond just, you know, their sprites and their weapon. It doesn't mean that after you beat the introduction, there is that sequence where you have to just tap really rapidly through loads and loads of text as it individually introduces each of the stages to you. Yeah, the sound.

God damn it. Stop it. Yeah. I mean, the X-4 also joins. Metal Gear Solid 2 in the pantheon of games that secretly have a prequel on the Game Boy Color? Right. Because, like, we don't know who Iris is. Like, why does she matter all that much?

But if you've played Mega Man Extreme 2 on the Game Boy Color, that's Iris hasn't. Yeah, yeah. That's Iris's introduction. But, yeah, who doesn't wish they could occupy a laboratory and attack? whoever visits the good old reploid lavatory dear god they did not try whatsoever but there was actually kind of a cute line in that game where like zero says something like oh hoping to give irish too much of a hard time colonel's going to kill me like he didn't just to paraphrase like i thought that was kind of cute yeah uh there's actually a couple of cute lines next four where uh first of all

when you go up against frost walrus is zero he's like who's this blonde kid you know to sell him shut up and i was like okay so what is hair this whole time it has been hair Also, when you go up against split mushroom as X, I think, uh, split mushrooms like blah, blah, my boss is telling me to do this. And X says, who's your boss? And split mushroom says, take a wild guess. And of course, it's, it's Sigma. Speaking of, I really hate the Sigma.

I think it was my least favorite final Sigma. I like Rim Reaper Sigma. I think he looks cool. I hate that last thing there is like, he's 50 parts, like, scattered around. I don't know what's going on there. It takes so long to kill him. It does, doesn't it? Even if you know what you're doing.

even GDQ it was taking a while to get him down it's like 30% of the whole length of the game yeah they applied a decompression algorithm to him and then he spread out all over it I guess it's probably still not as bad as the battle body

from X3 actually now that I think about it that was absolute garbage to this day when you can only hit like the one pixel when I see that sprite I go into a rage I just hate that thing because I fought that as a kid. And I'm like, okay, his head. It's tiny. It's stupid, but I can reach it. And every time

you're trying to fire it his head, it goes clink, clink, clink, and nothing. You have to fire it his shoulders. And that will get the head. It's such a bad hitbox. It's just the most awful boss. But yeah, I will take X4's boss like any day of the week over whatever the hell that was. The best thing about that is once you beat it, you've got to do that horrible climbing segment when if you die there, then you have to fight it again. Some X-6 stuff. Right there. Yeah, but when you, if you clear that in X3, you get to see X say damn. And I've never seen a video game character say damn before because I didn't play Bion at Commando.

So that was neat. Yay, X had a bad word. It would not be the last damn in a Mega Man game. No, I think there was one in X4. I think Zero says damn. Yeah. As Bass says damn in Mega and 7, for some reason they started cleaning all that up. Like, oh, no, damn.

We're all going to die because Mega Man said, damn. I think Lan says it in... I said quite a lot of bad words during X-6 and X-7. Yeah, I said my share of bad words. Yeah, but Lan also drinks whiskey on an airplane. Are you going to treat him as a child's standard to live by? Battle Network 2 had the weirdest fucking localization. Holy shit.

To this day, I want to know what happened. It's crazy. Go drink your mother's milk. Holy shit. I love how the collection came out and it's like you got the screen that's like, look, we know this shit's off the chain. Don't worry about it. Are we going to say, yeah, it's like, yeah, we're sorry we had a grown woman have an orgasm in front of a child while not battling him. But I don't remember that part.

What a game. You sure this was in the game? Snake Man's Operator. Was her name Miss Millions? I don't remember. Oh, yes. Yeah, she was Victor's type. Victor, you know her name.

but she has an orgasm in front of land when she's... Wow. It's a weird game. I love that game. games we love. Back to Expoor. Because I think as we wrap this up, because I have a meeting to go to, because life sucks, I want to talk a bit about the Mavericks. This is not my favorite staple of Mavericks, but there are some good ones here. First of all, Victor, you mentioned Storm Owl, and we were talking about the voice acting, so when I

see Storm Owl, I immediately think Storm Owl, because the way he says it specifically has been memed on the internet. Has the H in there. And I was a little bit mad about the that we have Storm out when you already had Storm Eagle. But I forget, was he, like, kind of imitating Eagle? Like, I know Eagle was his superior at some point or something. Yeah, they were part of the same Air Force. I mean, which makes sense.

Yeah, I can't remember who's superior to who or the timeline. I'm sure that's expanded upon in some supplementary material somewhere. I know a bit of, like, in the manga, Yoamoto's manga, which was, you know, just a big source of inspiration for myself as a writer. Eagle was allied. He was very close with zero, which they actually transferred into Mavercounter X. They became friends in that. And Overdrive Ostrich was a good friend of Eagles. And he had a bad accident that caused him to stop flying.

It gave him PTSD. He wouldn't fly again, which he shouldn't fly or an ostrich. I would love to play Hideo Kojima's Mega Man X, where we get like fully fleshed out monologues from every. single one of these mavericks that explains their backstory as they lie dying in front of us. I want to play Yoko Taro's Mega Man X. I mean, Solid Snake could be a maverick name, you know. I think Sharky has mentioned that. All of the Foxhounders, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you beat a boss in Drebben calls. Yeah. The thing is, though, whenever someone says Revolver Aescelot, if you ever look at a video of an Oscelot on YouTube, you will notice something. Half the comments are references to. Archer and the other half are references to Metal Gear Solid.

There's actually a little cute little Canadian-made nature show that I watch on YouTube that talks about animals. And when they got to Ocelots, they had that line about how Ocelots are proud solitary creatures or however Ocelot says it exactly in the game. That's how they said it. So I appreciated that. Stupid, foxier, piss cat. Do you have a favorite amongst the Mavericks before we wrap this up? I want everyone to talk about their favorite Maverick in this game. Cyber Peacock.

Definitely cyber peacock is a good get. I like the idea in the stage very much. It's challenging but not too challenging but getting the A ranks or the S ranks or whatever it is to get the power up. That was like one of the first instances we see of like cyberspace

becoming a part of Mega Man but it became part of like other games too after that because the internet was still pretty new and exciting. The only issue I have with him I mean I like if you use Soul Body on him It's just incredibly predictable, but that's kind of a problem with all of the mavericks and in the series, once you have their weakness weapon, you can just lock them into a pattern.

That's not true of all of them. Magma Dragoon is pretty difficult, no matter what, I think. But Cyber Peacock is just funny to me. I'm sorry, I go for all of funny, and Cyber Peacock is the most ludicrous one, apart from a split mushroom. If you were on the Mega Man Network, do you remember a guy named Cyber Peacock? He used to do, like, the funniest flash videos and like... Honestly, vaguely, yes, I do. Because he works for the Pokemon company now.

Oh, wow. If you see a video of, like, a promotion from the Pokemon company, there's a good chance he did it. But I still talk to him. He still has the funniest shit. Like, or he did have the funniest shit back then. But, yeah, Sarah Peacock, good Maverick. Um, and I love that stage because, because like you say, that's sort of the introduction of, like, a ranking system that would become very, very important in the zero games. And I think sort of speaks to X4.

and the X series broadly, especially the early ones, that they really are about playing through them a million times and getting good at them. And they're sort of about stage mastery, especially with some of the things that are miscibles, like the upgrades that you get from getting good ranks in Cyber Peacock. You know, there are things that you will probably miss your first time, but that you will learn to get good.

and discover secrets because of getting good. They kind of did it over with, I think, Optic Sunflower and X-Aid, but in that version it was almost ridiculously hard to get the A-R-X. Yeah, they did that with him. I like music in that stage. Oh, yeah, it's great. And I think, like, the Cyber Peacock fight, when I, it's been, I don't know, maybe five or six years since I've played through X-4 until last night.

but I was I was blown away by how perfectly tuned the boss fights actually are like I was in a boss room and I'd get hit by something once and remember ah I know exactly how this works or even if I didn't remember there was something like there was just muscle memory that that made me dash in the right places and especially mastering cyber peacocks that if you get really unlucky and you're in that missile phase a lot. Mastering the like knowing where to bait those missiles to then dash along the wall and jump over and maybe even get a hit in. It feels great. Like you can brute force your way through these fights, but perfecting them feels so good and so attainable. Like when you get those rhythms into your body that let you get an extra hit in where you hadn't before, it just is a incredible. All of these fights have moments like that. So I think I think they're all fantastic, except Frost Walrus. It's so easy. Frost Wallis is obviously the Starter Maverick and big, slow, kind of boring. You're

right. Do you have a favorite, Jeremy Parrish? Oh, you called me about my first name. That's weird. I know. I can say it's definitely not Jet Stingray because his stage consists of an auto scroll. And that's stupid and bad. I like Webb Spider just because I love the way the announcer says, Web Spider. That's very... That announcer is very enthusiastic. I appreciate them.

He loves him some Mavericks. He loves him. But, yeah, there aren't any Mavericks in this game that necessarily individually make me think, like, oh, this is the coolest thing. Nothing really blew my mind. But they're all okay, except Jet Sting, Ray. Yeah, I agree. Jet Singray, just to bring it up briefly, that was, I'm sure there's been other, yeah, there have been other scrolling games, sorry, levels in Mega Man games, but that's, when they brought in the speeder bike levels, like, it is so bad an X-5.

I'm sure we'll get into X-5, but yeah, that's just, I don't think Mega Man games need auto-scrollers like that, not as like a, I kind of liked how an X-2, you had the bike, and if you knew how, if you know how to use the bike, you can do some really cool shit. But you can totally ignore it and be fine. So I kind of wish they would go with that again. How do we go from ride armor in Mega Man X to this crap? You know, I blame Mega Manor 8 with its auto scroll sections. The developers were like, wow, people really hated this. Let's do more of it. Thanks.

I feel like jump, jump, jump, slide, the speeder bike sections in X5 is all a warm-up for gigabolt manor manor war in X8, which is the worst one. That is such a bad stage. Do you a reticle. It's not like it's that hard. It's just total garbage. Just give me a reticol. I'm not asking for much.

Just get me out of this hellhole. Jesus Christ. Yeah, I agree with you there. But not my favorite stable of Mavericks, but I don't hate them either. Magrant Dragoon looking like Akuma is pretty funny because until that point. Doing Hadoquins and stuff, right? Yeah, he's doing Hadookens. He says it and everything.

I like it when Capcom crosses over. I think, you know what? No more Marvel. No more Marvel. universe, let's have a Capcom universe. Let's have a Capcom crossover movie or Victor's grimace of pain that just happened right now, listeners. And fond of the fact that with Magma Dragoon, you can get into the battle with the right armor, that feels very cool. That's really cool. That was a big coup back in the day.

Coop, if you will. You've mentioned them, but I know I've done mine, but I just want to mention that I do like split mushroom for bringing back the Gemini Man thing, kind of, in a more interesting way, I'd say. He had a really interesting state. He was actually like despite his stupid-ass name. He was probably one of my favorite Mavericks. He's fun to fight.

He has good music. He had that really cool stage effect with the staircase that Capcom loved so much they had to keep doing it. Where is this place? It seems like it's a got a bit of a structural problem, but whatever, it looks cool. But yeah, we have been talking about Mega Man X-4 for some time. And I will definitely be bringing guys back for further X-Ex. games, which I am laying claim on. All Retronauts, listeners beware. But until then, this has been

a lot of fun. Does anyone want to kind of just briefly wrap up what they, you know, talk about what they're up to, what they've done? I know we've done it before, but I like doing it again at the end. Jeremy, you go first. Sure. You know, I am still trying to figure out what I'm fighting for, but I do think that Retronauts is a worthy cause, also my work at limited to run games and making YouTube videos and books based on those. So anywhere on the internet you can find me, but most

conveniently at blue sky is jperish dot blue sky.combe. And you, Victor? I'm going to betray the maverick hunters and hide myself inside a volcano. But if you want to find some of my work,

I'm over with Nadia on the sister podcast Acts of the Blood God, which is all about RPGs over there with Kat Bailey and Eric Van Allen, as well as our sister to that sister show, Charlene Dropouts, which is our Final Fantasy 14 podcast. Yeah, head on over there, patreon.com slash blood god pod. Sounds good. How about you, Stuart? Mostly retranos you'll find me. I've read a book called All Games Are Good, which I might add,

and I'm not going to blow smoke up my bottle here, but it is the best book ever written on any subject. arguably. So please buy a copy. You will not be disappointed, especially not with me flanging out and play that. I'm also working on a bunch of other stuff that either I can't talk about yet or is nothing to do with the subject whatsoever. You can find me on blue skystereach up or bluesky.com. And I will mostly just post drawings of people I've made up rather than talk about video games. That's okay. You don't have to talk about video games all the time. But right now, we are talking about video games as we wind up. So let us not forget to mention this is Retronauts, as Parish mentioned. It is a Retro Games podcast

supported by you, the listener. Thank you. If you enjoy our work, please support us at patreon.com for us slash Retronauts. A mere $3 gets you access to episodes a week early and add free. $5 gets you all that plus Discord access, plus two bonus exclusive episodes a month for a cool ultra-64 dollars a month. You get all of that, plus the opportunity to set the topic of a Retronaut show once every six months. Holy cow, what a steal. As for me, as Victor kind of already said, I'm from Axel the Blood God podcast all about RPGs, old and new, eastern, and western. We stream, we talk, I actually write a

weekly newsletter for it. You can access it all through our Patreon at patreon.com for slash Plug God Pod. Thank you for listening. And until next time, you are fighting for everlasting peace. I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.