Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 134: Mega Man X

Episode Date: January 15, 2018

USgamer's Kat Bailey and Capcom's Brett Elston join Bob and Jeremy to take a deep dive into what might be the single finest entry in the entire Mega Man series: Mega Man X for Super NES. A nonlinear podcast adventure!

This week in Retronauts, the episode so advanced it had to sit in self-diagnostic mode for 100 years. another jolly episode of Retronauts. I'm your amusing host, Jeremy Parrish. And with me, we have a wonderful cast of motley people talking about video games. Guys, just take this. I'm already having trouble. Hey, it's Bob Mackey, and I still don't know what a co-hanger is. Hi, I'm Kat Bailey.

I became a super intelligent being that is trying to take over the world. And this is a bubble crab super fan. Brett Elston. Bubble crab. That's the wrong game, buddy. I got to sneak it in when I can, though. This is a deep dive into Mega Man X, just Mega Man X. The first one, not the sequels.

No Duff McWailen or whatever. No, Duff McWailen. Damn it. I have to leave that. No, no, what was the Ground Scarovich, the Dung Beetle who attacked Mega Man with robot poop? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're not talking about any of that. We're talking about the good one.

We're talking about the one that is pretty much a perfect video game. I can't think of much about the original Mega Man X that I would change or alter or say, needs to be better in any sense. I agree. I think it's the best 2D Mega Man game. I stand by that. I like Mega Man 2 more because of nostalgia and I can basically like play Quick Man's laser grid in my sleep with my eyes closed because I'm asleep.

But I feel like Mega Man X is the best designed Mega Man game. It is the high watermark of 2D Mega Man game design. I'm not saying 3D because you've got Mega Man Legends in there and I love that game so much. But yes, Mega Man X is fantastic. And, you know, we've talked about Mega Man games in the past, but we mostly, actually, I guess it's been like two years, and Brett was here for that. That was back when the Mega Man legacy collection was announced. We talked about the Mega Man series and the Legend series as kind of overviews. We haven't really talked about X before, and we haven't done any single game deep dives into a Mega Man game.

But this, I think if any game can hold up to that scrutiny, it is the original Mega Man X. which came out in, I want to say, January 1994. It was right at the beginning of 94 in the U.S. And really kind of was a breath of fresh air for a series that was kind of starting to feel samey and repetitive. It just totally changed everything. And it really did feel like, you know, they could have called the super Mega Man. It's like Mega Man X, which probably would have worked better because everyone is like Mega Man 10, but I just played Mega Man 4. I was on those who played this.

And by the way, hi, I'm Kat Bailey. I'm also here about it. Oh, my God. You didn't introduce yourself. I thought she did. Oh, she did. You said you're going to take over the world or something. Oh, God, I totally did.

Yes. I'm bad at this podcast. Check the tapes. All right. This is boating well for the rest of the afternoon. You mentioned 1994, Jeremy, and I played this game. I played through it all last night and this morning. And seeing 1994 on the title screen surprise me because I thought this is an earlier game.

They waited a long time to make a Mega Man 16-bit game, which surprised me. Like, I forgot how long they took to make this game, which, which, Maybe it's evident how well it's put together. It's kind of surprising because it does, yeah, when I think back on it, it does feel like a game more. Like I think of it more is coming out at the same time as Star Fox, but it was almost a year later. So for whatever reason, yeah, it took that long. I think that's because the Nintendo Power cover prominently mentioned Star Fox, but I could be wrong. No, I mean, like just thinking back, like in terms of contemporaries for this game.

But it just seemed kind of inevitable, I guess. I guess I wasn't really paying that much attention to game releases, like, of the moment at that point. So it kind of snuck in right after Secret of Mana. But that's okay. Like, it was inevitable that there was going to be a super NES Mega Man. But this was not what I expected it to be. It was so much better. Yeah.

And the precedent that had been kind of set at that point was, hey, when Castlevania comes over, when Contra comes over, when all these other third party hits from the NES days come over, it's usually just, I don't mean this in a bad way, but it's like, it's the next one. It's kind of the same world, the same cast, you know, slightly remixed, whatever. but like it was more or less a super version of that whereas X was hey it's not Mega Man 5 or 6 it's a new timeline new characters like it just felt so much more than a lot of the other leaps from 8 to 16. Yes compared to Super Castlevania 4 which came out almost right away and it was essentially a remake of the original game with I mean the same characters I mean it was very different at the end of the day but I mean in terms of setting it was just another a more advanced version of the original N. Yeah. So because this is a Mega Man game, I'm going to handle this episode a little differently. It's not going to be a linear stroll through my bullet points. You have eight selections here. And you can choose from eight selections. I saw. But how do I use one of the selections against the next one? So can I read the mouse?

There you go. So I need the cursor sound effect here. I'll actually add the music in there. Bidink, butting, buting. Okay, so sure, Kat, why don't you read the eight selections all on a title screen or a menu screen? This is actually really cool. He totally made this like a total Mega Man X menu screen, but Mega Man History, the dev team, X, Mavericks, Sigma, the Stages, Zero in Game Mechanics. I think the dev team is weak to game mechanics.

Great. Is weak to game mechanics? Yes, I'm deciding no weaknesses. So we start with game mechanics right now. I don't want to make this decision. So we can beat the dev team with the makeupuster? Yes, exactly. I think that's a good starting point.

Okay, so dev team? Yep, I choose dev team. All right. The Mega Man X development team actually wasn't that different than the Mega Man 4 development team. This game came immediately after 4, and I think it was developed sort of in tandem with 5. But let's see, four was 1992, I want to say. Like four is 91, 5, 92, 6, 93. Oh, okay.

So this was developed contemporaneously with six then. Yes. The first teaser for Mega Man X was in, I think, a magazine that also featured Mega Man 6 in Japan. Well, the people who worked on Mega Man X, for the most part, didn't work on Mega Man 5 or 6. So I think, I think, you know, this was where the core Mega Man team. attention shifted and they let kind of like the young whippersnappers or maybe an external contractor even work on five and six.

I don't know exactly. I haven't looked at that closely into the circumstances of those games' creations. But as the Debt team, you have as the producer, none other than Tokoro Fujiwara, who was basically Capcom's golden child throughout the 80s. I mean, if you look at a big arcade smash from the mid to late 80s from Capcom, his name is probably attached. You know, Yoshiki Okamoto left the company pretty early on. So once Okamoto left, Fujiwara was kind of like the big name.

He designed Commando, Bionic Commando, Ghosts and Goblins, the original Mega Man. Like, those were all kind of his creations. There's always kind of this distinctive look about his games, a little, like, little squat, a little chubby, a little cartoonish. But also, like, punch you in the testicles hard. He formed a whoopi camp. He formed a wopi camp. He formed Whoopi Camp, correct? He did, yes.

Tomba, Tomba 2, and then nothing. Tomba has his visual style. Definitely, definitely. No, he's worked on other stuff more recently. I meant whoopi camp is defunct. Oh, yeah. That's where Swery started, by the way. That's right, it is.

So, Fujiwara, of course, had been the producer on the original Mega Man, and it sort of guided the series since then. And so it made sense for him to oversee development of this game. But what we probably need to talk about are the game designers, which in 1994 parlance is the directors. And there were four of them. That's a whole lot of people. So you have Masayoshi Kurokawa,

who is the designer on Strider and the planner on Mega Man 3. And I feel like his influence is very strong in this game. Like spiritually, it feels very similar in a lot of ways to sort of the cinematic platforming of the arcade version of Strider. And there are a lot of stages that really remind you of Mega Man 3

like Spark Mandrill stage is very similar to sort of the light dark of Sparkman. Spark man, yes. Thank you. Just take the drill off and you're good. So are any of these guys, are they listed as planners?

Is there a planner on this game? Because I usually associate that with the, what was kind of the director role of this era. No, there are designers, but no planners. Okay, interesting. So I'm taking the designers to be the directors. No, you're right about that. You know, the fourth director.

director here is Kiji Inafune, so he was like the co-director on the game. So that's pretty much what you need to know. Of course, Inafune, you know that guy, right? Oh, he's the money number nine guy. Yes, him. This was actually just his third gig directing a game. He had directed Ducktails for NES. That was the first time he had been the designer on a game as opposed to a graphic artist

and Mega Man 4. Then there was Shosuke, and I couldn't really find much information on this guy. Brett, do you know anything, Mr. Capcom? No. My data banks are not fully charged for that deep-a-dive Capcom Lord. So you're saying you didn't just have lunch with him last thing? No, I missed that. We're supposed to catch up.

All right. And finally, there's Yoshinori Takenaka, who was a co-director on Ducktails, the designer on Mega Man 3, and had planning on Magic Sword. So these guys were all, like, they had their hands in some of the biggest, most ambitious games of that. era for Capcom. There's, you know, it's, this game is made by some people who had a lot of experience and had been responsible for creating some really cool stuff. So I guess it makes sense that Mega Man X was very, very good.

I wonder if they had more time for this game because as much as we all love Mega Man 2 and 3, I feel like those games didn't have rush development cycles and are clearly, you know, missing some things or have a little bit of padding to them. And I just wonder if this was granted a little more time because it does feel like Like you said, Jeremy, the perfect Mega Man game. This has a much larger staff role than the NES Mega Man games. So I feel like you had more resources being thrown at it. And so let's see.

The dev team came over from Mega Man 4, which again came out in 1991. This game came out at the end of 1993 in Japan, beginning of 94 here. So that's probably two years that they had. I mean, if you look at their bibliographies, there is kind of this gap in there between Mega Man 4, where that stuff of, you know, like 1991 games and Mega Man X. So, yeah, I think that they were kind of, you know, really heavily invested in this game and took the time to make it worthwhile. I could be mistaken, but no, I think you're right.

I think this game had a lot more time given to it. And, you know, the NES games had been sort of annualized. It does feel like the start of an early Capcom tradition where if a series is stagnating or getting less interest, they will take a lot of time to sort of relaunch it. like Resident Evil that happened twice with that series. And this stills like a kind of a relaunch of Mega Man after 6. Right. And they kind of kept it going on the NES because there were still two more games or another game or two that came out.

I think also Rockboard, that's Paradise, came out around the same time on Famicom. So that's, you know, they hadn't given up on the 8-bit games. But those were very much like, you know, stamp them in the, stamp them on the assembly line and ship them out. It's the game of life or something, right? Rockboard? Yeah, kind of like that. Yeah. Whereas this was, you know, this was a chance for the devs to step back and say, let's really get it right. And they did. And it's great. And then it was annualized again and started to sort of stagnate. All right. So that's the dev team. Next up, next stage. Oh, boy. So we got the dev team.

So as a reminder, there's Mega Man History, Game Mechanics, X, Zero, Mavericks, the Stages, and Sigma. So who is weak to the dev team? I feel like the dev team is going to know all about the game mechanics. All right. So their knowledge would make short work of those game mechanics. So, that's reinventing the mechanics. Well, you guys know how Mega Man X plays, right? It's pretty much Mega Man, right? Hey, jump and shoot.

Yeah. And later, jump, jump, slide. It's like, no, wait, that was the original Mega Man. Never mind. Mega Man X doesn't slide. He dashes. That's a big change. So, yeah, they took the basics of Mega Man.

running, jumping, shooting, a forward momentum action, and, of course, capturing enemy weapons, and then completely rethought how they worked. The game feels a lot different than the NES games. The Sprite for X is larger on screen, which they also did with, like, Mega Man 7 in a way that didn't quite work, I feel. It's just a little, he's a little too big and everything feels too claustrophobic. But this one hits it just right.

It helps that the action is slower. X is a slower game than the classic NES Mega Man games. So you have a little more time to react and a little more time to kind of take stock of a situation and scoot around. One thing that really works about Mega Man X is much like Mega Man 9, actually, the weapons are extremely useful outside of just boss battles. Stuff like the Storm Tornado is a very effective weapon, just an all-rounder. but stuff like the Boomerang from Boomer and Wenger can be used to grab stuff and bring it over to Mega Man. And I think that the hallmark of a really good Mega Man game is one that puts just an extra bit of thought into the weapons that you get. I agree.

Like when I played these games as a kid, I would be weirdly conservative about using those enemy powers. Like, no, those are only for bosses. Because they had a bar. Yes. Even though they give you tons of power-ups to replace them and everything. But I think this was the first time I played through using these weapons. And I've got to say, I think the Flame Mammoth Fire, Flamethrower is sort of like the metal blade. It just kills everything in its path.

It's a very short-range weapon, but it just tears through everything almost instantly. It's so great. I love it. But, yeah, I was using my weapons creatively this time to figure out how to take out enemies without using the buster. And they do a good job of that here. I will also say that the buster works a lot better here than it makes. Mega Man 4. You know, Mega Man 4 introduced the charge shot.

And I feel like the games weren't about – the NES games weren't really balanced very well around charging. It just never quite felt right. Whereas this game, it really does feel like they took the overpowered nature of the charge shot into account. And there are times where it actually kind of works against you. Like you go up against Armored Armadillo and you think, oh, well, he's going to be really tough, so I need to hit him with charge shots.

So you charge up a shot when you first go into the room. to shoot him, and as soon as the action starts, you let go at the fire button, and your charged shot releases and hits him, and it dings him for one point of damage. And you're like, well, I could do that same amount of damage just by shooting him. So it forces you to play a different way. And you're constantly being forced to kind of analyze how you're performing and how your weapons are affecting enemies and say,

is there a better way to do this? And I think, was this the first instance of the weapons making a cosmetic change to the boss or affecting them in a visual way, like the electric spark for Armida would actually like knock the pads off and like, I think it is, yeah. Spark mandrel actually freezes. Yeah, you can tell when each

boss is being hit by it's, you know, the weapon that's strong against it because it does affect it in a different way. And it makes a different noise too. It makes it a distinct noise when you have, when you find out the weakness. Yeah, and the one I will say the one thing that is maybe questionable about the balance of this game is that

when you figure out that weakness, the bosses go down like, you know, paper Dolls. They're ridiculously weak and you can get them into like a stun lock and take them out without even them being able to perform actions. Like you know, Chil Penguin goes up to pull the chain at the

top of the ceiling and if you hit him with his weakness which is I think Spark Mandrill's weapon. Spark Mandel's for Armored Armadillo. I don't try to remember. Because I always start with Chil Penguin. I'm assuming flame mammoth. Yeah. Actually this game is kind of

screwed with your head in that the elemental weaknesses you think will work, never do. It's just like fire is not weak to ice. Spark is weak to ice. I put this under the bosses, but that's okay. We can talk about it here because, yeah, I do think that you have to rethink how you approach the bosses with their weapons and figure out which is weak to them. It's not usually about like elemental weaknesses because, you know, what is an armadillo's

element, I guess ground, I don't know, or a chameleon. What is that? Grass. Okay, that's not an element. So you have to think about like how. What does this weapon behave and how would it be of me to fight the boss with it? And so I feel like, yeah, okay. Okay, we can talk about this here.

So, okay, so you have like Spark Mandrill, who's weak to shotgun ice. And he controls the space in the stage. Like, he's very aggressive. He moves around a lot. It's really hard to stand and take a shot at him because he's constantly coming at you and forcing you to evade. And then when you try to stick to walls, he like fires a big charge spark that circles the room and knocks you off the walls.

So it's really hard to shoot him. But if you equip shotgun ice, shotgun ice has a secondary effect where when it hits a wall, the projectile explodes and reflects back in four directions. It like creates an arc. So if you are running away from him, you can shoot the wall and it'll splash back and hit him no matter where he is on the screen. So that's like, you know, suddenly it becomes this really, effective weapon. A sting chameleon likes to cling to the top of the stage, hang from the top

of the stage, and it's really hard to get a beat on him because he likes to move around and disappears. But when he does that, if you use the weapon that he's weak to, which is boomer-cohinger's boomerang, that has a pattern where it shoots forward and then arcs back upward and goes off the screen. Instead of coming back to Mega Man, it arcs off and shoots off the screen above you. So you can face away from him and the boomerang will arc up and hit him when he's on the screen if you're just running around on the ground avoiding his projectiles. So you start to think about, like, how does this weapon work as opposed to, like, what is the magical magic attribute to this game?

And suddenly, everything starts to make sense. And you're like, oh, wow, this is really designed to give me advantages over the bad guys. I think that plays into a thing that I really like about Mega Man X is that it takes the concept of optional difficulty even further than the traditional Mega Man games. and the way that embodied is in the optional armor parts where if you collect all of the optional armor parts you can become so overpowered

that you'll just rip to the game with ease but if you opt to not really power up you can have yourself an extremely difficult challenge which is really great for hardcore fans and that the seed of that was in the original Mega Man where yeah you could use

these really overpowered weapons to take out a boss and a few hits but the real harm mark of a great player was Buster Dueling, and I think Mega Man X takes that to the next level. There are a bunch of things that X adds to sort of the pantheon of skills. The first is the wall jump.

You'll almost certainly discover this in the very first introductory stage, which, by the way, is a new thing here, an introductory stage before you go to the stage select screen. We can talk about that later. But the wall jump is a lifesaver here because if you jump and you miss a platform, instead of just falling into a pit and dying,

a game over, you can grab onto a wall. And instead of just plummeting down to your death, you hold onto the wall and you slide down slowly and you can push yourself off against the wall and you can use that to climb shafts and things like that. You can use it. It's really helpful against bosses because it opens up a new dimension in boss battles. You're not just on the ground avoiding their shots. You're also like leaping up to the walls and, you know, climbing up to avoid the enemies who control the ground a lot. Yeah, as a kid, it reminded you. As a kid, it reminded me, it made me feel like, wow, this is like Ninja Guide and Mega Man, where I can do all the ground-based attacks that I had before, but, you know, like Ryu, I can now get on the wall

and this whole verticality that wasn't there before is now part of, not just the boss battles, but like the whole sense of the stages being not rooms that you kind of navigate and jump and hop and platform around, but instead these big open spaces that it's all about dashing while jumping and then while dashing and chaining those things together, like it just felt so fast and freeing. and then that kind of evolved into the Zero series where it gets even crazy. Yeah, this is probably the most satisfying

wall jump in a video game, I think. At least I can think up now. And every boss, except for Chill Penguin, and I think this game wants you to start with Chill Penguin, because why would you go through this entire game without the dash from that stage? But he is the only boss that does not have a way to get you out of the upper corner

by hiding in the upper corner. He's the only one that has no way to attack you if you wall jump up to the upper corner. And he's actually very vulnerable when you're up there to charge up a shot. And when you fire and your whole, holding onto a wall, you automatically fire away from the wall. So you can basically just cling to that corner and shoot him.

The most reason time I played this, you know, getting ready for this episode, I actually started with Armored Armadillo. And it turned out to be a huge mistake because he's really hard. But every enemy has a pattern and I did beat him with just the buster and no like health upgrades or anything. It's really impressive. Wow, I even got it on video. I should post that to the internet.

Yeah, we're talking about bosses. I feel like I'm heaping great praise upon this game, but this has some of the most satisfying boss patterns too. And we'll talk about that in the boss section. I'm playing Cuphead and I'm having a lot of memories about this. So I want to get back to what Brett was saying earlier about the kind of sense of verticality that the dash in parts. Not only does it give you a huge amount of just momentum, which is simply lacking in other Mega Man games. It also really opens things up a lot.

And so much of Mega Man X's pleasure is in finding the secret items and everything. and the dash and the wall jump are a huge part of it and combining those and it's really amazing and you simply could not do that without those things it makes the levels

much more interesting the dash on its own is not that interesting the wall jump on its own is good but not that interesting but when you realize the reason they changed away from a slide attack to the dash attack

is so that you can do air dashes like it doesn't make sense to slide in an air but a dash yeah sure why not you've got like rocket boots in your streaking across So being able to, like, climb up and jump off a wall way up at the ceiling and then dash across the top of the room to avoid an enemy. It's like, this really does open up a new dimension.

And there's so many, there's two things that strikes in me is one is the many leaps of faith you'll make where you're like, I think there's something all the way to the left here or all the way to the right beyond what I would think is a normal border of the stage. But like in Storm Eagle, you can right off the top of the stage, right when you start, you can jump to the left. if with a dash and like, hey, there's a sub-tank over here, and I wouldn't have really thought to do that if this dash wasn't encouraging me to go explore and just like jump and see what happens. Yeah, the new mechanics really add a lot to the game design.

Not only the way you play, but just also how the levels work. And the levels become a lot less like, you know, here's a hallway, here's a shaft. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The original Mega Man games, they become more like places. And we'll talk about that in the stage level, or the stage section. But

I did want to go back to the wall jump, just because I do feel like this is kind of where you see the influence of Strider come into the game. And it feels like this is where they got that idea right. Like the original Strider in the arcade, Strider could jump on the, or hear you, could jump on the wall and stick to it and kind of hang off and slash it stuff. But it was very much that Ninja Guidance style where you stick to the wall and you have to kind of push yourself away.

Here it has a sort of an energy and dynamism because you don't just stick to the wall. You do still obey gravity. and it's still pulling you down, but it allows you to make these tiny little hops upward. You're not kicking off necessarily against the wall to go the other direction. It gives you the ability to climb. And that makes a big difference

because it does give you the ability to scale surfaces and opens up different ways to approach levels. And it makes you say, like, I see something up there. Can I get up there? And you probably can. You might have to use the dash, but... And there's like some areas later in the stage, or later in the game,

like some of the Sigma areas where you're like, you'll see, well, that's too many spikes. I can't possibly navigate around that. And then you do it after like some trial and error as classic Mega Man would always force upon you. But when you do it, it just again teaches you, I can really experiment with this and chain moves together, which that's just not present in the old games. Right. So we mentioned the Dash, but we didn't really talk about like how it's introduced. But you don't start out with the Dash.

Whereas in Mega Man 3, you start with the slide. Mega Man 4, you start with the slide and the charge shot. Here you start out with the charge shot and the wall jump. So it's a different kind of sandbox of abilities. You have to go find the Dr. Light capsule that gives you the dash parts upgrade, and then you can dash. So it kind of lets you ease into the game before you get this advanced technique. And the dash works a little differently than sliding.

It's a way to get you forward with extra momentum. and it does cause you to sort of lower your height so you can go under certain projectiles but you can't use it quite as much to slide through gaps and so the levels are designed differently they don't have as many like low ledges and places where you have to slide

and kind of you know infinitely go back and forth trying to avoid spikes and things like that like in McMahon 3 it's a different feel to it and again like I really feel like the big part of the design is meant to chain into wall jumps

and sort of give you more combat options as opposed to navigation, which is what sliding is really for. I think we would be remiss if we didn't mention the Hodoken, which is an amazing Easter egg that you can totally get. That's in the Mega Man section. Oh, my apologies. It's okay.

There's a Mega Man section. Oh, Mega Man X. The one other thing in terms of game mechanics that I wanted to talk about is the introductory stage. Like everything else about Mega Man X structure, level design-wise, feels pretty much orthodox in terms of the Mega Man series, like you have eight stages, you can pick any direction, or pick to start on anyone, go through them in any sequence you want, there's an ideal sequence, okay.

And then after you beat all those, then you fight through the villains four final stages. But what's new here is the introductory stage where you start the game and it's basically in Medius Res. And it's a really cool stage because it has an element of storytelling that Mega Man had never had before. There was some storytelling sort of built into the arrangement of the stages in Mega Man 1 and 2 especially. Like if you look at that ridiculous Mega Man 1 box art, you see like Dr. Wiley's horrible-looking fortress and you realize like, oh, that's a gross depiction of what I'm actually doing, like the big bridge across the top leading between two tall structures. Mega Man 2, you're actually like infiltrating Wiley's castle, his skull fortress from beneath, like through catacombs and through like the, the main.

maintenance system. And when you stop to realize that, you're like, oh, that's kind of cool. But this takes it to a different degree and really, like, plays up the fact that, hey, there's more happening in this world than Mega Man fighting some bad robots. There's all kinds, like, people live in this world. Yeah. And they start to build an actual universe where, like, hey, this city has a name. I don't think they name the city just yet. Is it Monstropolis?

This is a new Monstropos. Monstropolis X. But, like, just that this is a city and this is a highway in that city and there's people and there's a commute that people have to go through. It's not just like all wacky fun, you know, cartoon robots fighting each other. They're not commuting. They're getting the hell out of there. They are going to get out of town.

But you're rushing against the flow of traffic as everyone tries to escape from a city under siege. And you're like, no, I've got to go save the world. It's exploding. Yeah, like the engine that idles when you blow the top off the car, the little detail of the engine just, idling in the sprite, but this opening stage, one, the music is excellent. Oh, yeah. And it services the on-screen action perfectly where it's this very driving move forward, but like a little more guitar shreddy than any of the Mega Man, classic games had been.

This is like the template for future Capcom music. It's so butt rock. And you never really had that in Capcom music before, but all of a sudden. Up to that point. Yeah. But I think at the time it struck me, again, as like how, you know, quote unquote, cool this game was where they really nailed

a cool feeling that was not synonymous with the Super Nintendo at all it was way more at least in America that was a Genesis thing and at the time I was thinking like

man this seems like it was a Genesis game at some point or like maybe Sega passed on this or something and it's just on Nintendo because like well that's where

other games were so we naturally gravitated towards Super Nintendo I felt like every game every third party game that wanted to be cool on the SNES really played up

the kind of the harsh guitar sound on the SNES Chip. I want to go back to the story, though, because I remember it being, giving the player a little more context. They really don't. I feel like that's all in the instruction book.

And the explicit storytelling they do give you, I find it hilarious that if you want to read the sort of introduction to the game, you have to read it while a siren is blaring and the screen is flashing and there's like eight paragraphs are telling you about things. It's like, oh, man, this could have been done a little better. But I do like, I think it's going more for atmosphere than for very explicit storytelling because... Dr. Light gives you all the context when you find his little capsules.

That's true. I mean, he just says, like, gomboree, Mega Man X, go for it. But he also tells you, like, why you were created and stuff. Yeah, yeah. And the beginning of the game is, like, you had to be frozen for 30 years because of things. And I feel like they would be more ambitious, but I like the atmosphere more than, like, who is Sigma? Who is this BobaFet guy? Like, there's no real context provided for that within the game, I think. Not a lot of context, at least. It's just enough to give you a sense that something, something possibly went down between the games

that you played on your Nintendo and what happened here, which is a whole other topic. But it was just enough to make you think, like, man, this got really serious all of a sudden. So that's game mechanics. Now there's Mega Man History, X, Zero, Mavericks, the stages,

and Sigma. We kind of talked about Mavericks a little. A little bit, but not fully. We haven't gone to that stage yet. We've seen it in the background. There's a hint of the stage that we have to fight. If you used the... I picked the last one, I'll defer. I'll defer.

Let's do zero because I want to know what the deal is with zero. There's a huge following for Zero, and it baffles me a bit. Maybe he is the Bishonan version of Mega Man with his beautiful. He's a beautiful man, number one. I remember reading, I think, Superplay magazine back when Mega Man X3 came out, and they were like, Zero is Mega Man's girlfriend. She's really pretty and cool. You can play as her now.

I mean, Zero. Maybe it wasn't Superplay. It was one of those British magazines that I saw at the grocery store, and I was like, huh. I can tell how... I don't think Zero's a girl. No. I mean, I can tell how they were trying to make Zero so cool. He is the kind of established veteran to the newly awoken Mega Man X.

I'm pretty sure. So here's my analogy. Zero is Mega Man's cool, older friend. He is the bucky to his Steve Rogers. I see. He is the tough guy who protects Mega Man X when he's a weakling, but ultimately dies so the hero can achieve his potential. He makes a noble sacrifice. And also, both of them star in a lot of Slashvick.

Oh, that's true. Also, he has a lightsaber. Oh, you're right. And I think that is one thing that a lot of people like. I always thought the Beam Saber was really rad, actually, and that's why I like Zero. And let's be honest, the character design is pretty cool. The hair is a little ridiculous. Actually, back in the old days, when the original Mega, when the original Mega Man X came out, I thought that Zero had a cape.

I thought that hair was a cape, not a ponytail tail. Why does a robot eat a ponytail? It was a head cape. Why does the pump robot need a cape? I don't know. But, yeah, so I... I don't know. Sigma has one, and it's really cool when he throws it off to fight you.

It's the same concept that goes into a lot of, like, aviation or military things. Why does a Gundam need a cape? Needs to look imposing. Lots of Gundams have cape. Shoulder pads. No capes. He has those. He has boob crystals.

He has long hair. Maybe, yeah, I can see where the magazine got confused. I forget what happens in the later X games. How do they reconcile him dying? Was he supposed to be dead forever? does he come back at the end of X? That's pretty much the entire plot of Mega Man X2. Okay, yeah. You reassemble him.

It's been a long time. The X hunters, three robots, go out to kill X by reassembling Zero and reprograming him. The funny thing is they didn't really need to reprogram him. They just needed to revert him to his original personality. Spoiler. That is the retcon that was added to Zero.

I really like that Redcon. He wasn't Mega Man X's his friend. Let's be honest. I think it's pretty cool. But he's a distinctive dude with a dark back, with a dark history. So I like Zero. Here, though, he's just like the sort of... He's the Roy Focker. Jeremy, watch your mouth.

There you go. Roy Fokker, sorry. Well, that's an interesting analogy. Oh, man, okay. But he doesn't like pineapple pie. That was a Robotech reference, kids. It was. Or Macross.

Macoros, if you prefer. And also, it's pine salada. Hello. So I have read that Zero was originally designed to be the protagonist of this game, that it was not actually going to be a. Mega Man game. And so that's why he's red and he, like, has a different sort of play style. But eventually, I guess the executives were like, you know, that's pretty similar to Mega Man.

So why don't we push him to the side and make a blue guy who's more like Mega Man? And so... What's it, Inofune, he wanted Zero to be the main room? I believe he designed Zero, yeah, if I'm not mistaken. They were like, no, it's going to be real different. And Zero is going to be the protagonist. They're like, oh, hold on. It's a little too different.

We need something recognizable here. Yeah. But, I mean, you can tell that there. was a lot of fondness for Zero because not only did he become a fan favorite, but he eventually went on to Star in his own series and ended up killing X as part of some incredibly convoluted plotline. It gets a little weird. The Zero games defy logic because you can't have a story with both a rebellion and a

resistance. I'm sorry. You're just making things so confusing. Star Wars does it. But I don't know. Yeah. So Zero starts out here just as like, you know, kind of the aspirational hero. And when he dies and Mega Man takes up his mantle, then you know, like, Mega Man has achieved his potential.

And that is kind of the whole point. Also from a mechanical standpoint, the first time he arrives to save you from Vile, Vile is kind of calibrating your powers. So that when you eventually fight Vial much later and you kind of kick his butt, you like, yeah, no, I'm strong, yeah. It's probably worth mentioning that Zero doesn't show up that much in the game. He's only there two or three times. But when he shows up, it's really meaningful. And his theme kicks in, which is very intentional classic. Well, that too.

It's got like wailing guitars. Like that is where you've got like peak Capcom butt rock for Zero's theme. It's ready to go. Yeah, I mean, that was kind of like how I calibrated the super NES mini versus original hardware. I'm like, can they do Zero's theme? They almost got it. It's pretty close. Back when Mega Man X came out, I likened Zero to Protoman.

because, I mean, same color. Yeah. Yeah, like the Big Brother character. Except Protoman is mysterious, and you're never quite sure what his agenda is. You're pretty clear what Zero's agenda is. Yeah, Zero's like the good guy. He's the hero. He's the rank S. Hunter.

And everyone looks up to Zero. But Mega Man's destiny is to ultimately, you know, ascend and even exceed the abilities of Zero. That's one thing I love about the way those characters play off each other. And it comes across maybe more later on. But the whole idea that X, well, this might be better for the Mega Man X. Might be. I'll save it. Well, it does play off of zero, so I feel like it's kind of sort of there.

Sure. Maybe the next stage we should take is X. Oh, great. Here we are on the Mega Man X section. But, man, what was my? Oh, they play off each other in the fact that, yes, Zero is this veteran who's been on a lot of missions and knows what he's doing and isn't afraid to take people out, take other machines out. but X is kind of this like walking arsenal that's also a pacifist. It's baked into his character to not really seek fights and want to fight and he really just gets kind of

you can sense this exhaustion in the character after numerous games that he's just like, I wish we had a better way to do this. Right. What am I fighting for? Yes. I think is the classic line. Yeah. More emotion, Jeremy. What am I fighting for?

What am I fighting for? Isn't that what it was? I think so, yes. The high quality voice acting of the 90s. This is not happening. I can't believe this is happening. Wait, Mega Man, you must not fight Dr. Waiwi. I guess that wasn't next.

So, yeah, so I think it is important to kind of talk about the relationship between X and Zero and how that evolved over future games. Because initially, like I said, X is just, or, yeah, Zero is just sort of like the Roy Foker character. But over time, you realize he's actually designed to be the Mega Man nemesis. And, you know, starting with, I guess, the, um, the, um, the Pocer character. Powerfighters, they started to say, well, actually, Dr. Wiley created Zero. And the idea was that he would destroy everyone. And, you know, when you get to Mega Man X, Mega Man's not there. Dr. Light is dead.

There's no role. There's no Otto. There's no Eddie. So maybe Zero pulled it off. But, you know, in the remake, Maverick Hunter X, there's all kinds of anime cutscenes added, like 20 minutes of cutscenes added. And they actually show Sigma. When he's a good guy, we'll talk about that later, discovering Zero sort of in a cave and he's like a raving lunatic and they put him down and then put him into service as like a good guy. I think you see some of that in X4 as well.

There's X4 or X5. He's having flashbacks. Blood on his hands. That's a next four. That's really really started to play up. Like there is a connection here that's deeper. And there's the W's flashing and stuff like that. Yeah.

Yeah, I thought that was really cool. Normally when they try to like explain what happened in. between things I get my eyes start to glaze over. Like, Clone Wars, I don't really even know what happened in the Clone Wars, but please laboriously explain them to this. And I feel like Dune did that with a lot of the prequel trilogy books. I don't need to know how this got here. But in this case, I just hope they never like...

I'm a sucker for lore, and I love all of the little tidbits. The thing is that there is a... It is possible to over-explain, and Mega Man, for the most part, has been pretty good about not doing that. Yeah, I think there's just enough, like, hey, you know why he built him, you know Zero went crazy, and, you know, he may be fulfilled his programming, and Bass was super mad about it. Yeah, they kind of lost the plot after a while. I slipped in a Bass, and nobody called me on it. It's okay.

Why must we fight? It's canonical Bass, I think. It is canonically Boss. Yeah, actually boss? Oh, my God. Shut up. Shut up. I was so glad they kept that for Mega Man Legacy Collection, too.

They didn't read up it. It's just the same crappy voice acting. What was I going to say? We're talking about... We're talking about lore, man. Yeah, and the in-between of like... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mega Man X-6 was where it went out the rails,

and they tried to introduce a robot with toilet paper rolls on his head who might have been Dr. Wiley's spirit trapped in a cyborg or something. Okay. And then they totally dropped that plot line in the future games. EZAC was his name. Wiley was resurrected as a toilet robot. Maybe, maybe, but they really hinted it that heavily and then just kind of dropped it. Oh, there's one, man, I'm blanking which, which X game it is, but it's like, yeah, Wiley, or is that literally what you just said?

Oh, there, Mega Man X-5, you do have the two routes, and if you take Zero's route, you can, you end up fighting, you end up fighting X, but also there's like a scene where basically the holographic spirit of Wiley is like, finally, you've come and you can see it. Achieve your true destiny or whatever. Yeah, and it's like they come so close to just, like, outright saying, it's Dr. Wiley, guys. I don't feel like they name him, right? They don't say, like, hey, it's Albert Wiley. No, but I mean, you fight through portions of Mega Man two stages, including Quickman's laser gauntlet, and there are big Ws everywhere.

So it's like, I wonder who this guy in the shadows is. Yeah. But anyway, that's later games. In Mega Man X, it's just X and Zero and Sigma, and that's good enough. And X himself is, you know, he's the main character. He's the main hero. He's a blank slate. And his entire gimmick is that he's the next generation model of Mega Man, created by Dr. Light.

But he has so much potential for power, he has limited infinite potential that he represents an enormous danger. So Dr. Light puts him into a capsule to run self-diagnostics and make sure he doesn't turn out evil and give him. In later games, it was retcon to the suffering. circuit so that he like basically he like is a self-flagellating monk of a robot it's kind of weird but doesn't he

isn't he the only one with self-determination that he can do what he wants yes and yeah I mean the contrast is in the original game rock decides to take on these powers because he has a strong sense of justice and he must fight for what is right

right but whereas I guess somehow this is different in Mega Man X has feelings so it's not the same. When you turn on the game, it gives you like a rundown of his diagnostics where he has 8 terabytes of memory, I think. I was just reading that today. I was like, wow. Not that much.

Yeah, it seemed like a lot at the time, but now it's seeming lesser and lesser. Well, that's in the same boat as when I realized when I was taller than Mega Man X, I was like, oh. And now the idea that he's only 8 terabytes of data, it's like, oh, wow, my heroes. I think in the movie Johnny Mnemonic, the amount of data can start in his brain is very, very small now. I think most flash drives are much. much bigger. One gigabyte of data.

That's all the data in the world. He is the next generation Mega Man. And one of the interesting kind of central premises of the series, I think, is that every robot in X's universe is based on X. Because even though Dr. Light went through the motions of a responsible scientist and said, what if X went crazy and killed everyone? I can't let that happen. He should do some self-regulation so that he's safe. Mega Man is, or X is, is dug up by a scientist named an archaeologist named Dr. Kane, who's like, I found the coolest robot ever. And I don't actually understand robotics, but I'm going to make copies of him and mass manufacture these reploids.

And so it's going to be great. It's going to be a whole revolution in the world. Seems like a great idea. Is this information in the game itself? It's actually in the manual, yeah. In the manual, but not in the game. It's in the game. That's the context that's missing.

This is back in the day when you got all of the context on the manual. I just wanted to know because I didn't read the digital manual on my Wii U. So, yeah, so we'll talk about this with Sigma, but he's basically like the ultimate evil X, pretty much, like the ultimate evil version of Mega Man. So the only robot in the series who's not based on X's design is Zero because he was designed by Dr. Wiley. Which, again, really suggests that something awful went down because if robotics had to kind of be discovered or this cool robot had to be discovered and it's buried, then I think not only it sends me down a path. If not only did zero succeed and lay waste to them, he went in bunkers and the world wasn't ready. And that put a lot of people in distrust of machinery and robots in general. And a century goes by or whatever.

And then they finally go, well, if you can mass produce easy labor, now I'm interested in robots again. As long as they're not themed after elements, please don't do that. No, no. I'll name them after animals and it'll be okay. Give them things, please. I like your fan in and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. Oh, great. I've got a pamphlet on it.

What's really, I don't know if I like it or not, but they really took this idea just like to crazy extremes with future Mega Man games. And Mega Man Legends, it turns out basically everyone is a reploid. Like human race, the human race died off and everyone's like a synthetic humanoid. And like Mega Man Legends 2, the guy with the Jesus dude you talk to is like the last living human being watching over the world from the Eden Space Station. and you kind of get hints of that happening in the Zero series. So they had like a pretty dark and weird vision for humanity. I was going to say, wow. Like the human race kind of vanishes over the course of a few millennia in the Mega Man games.

And it's all because of Dr. Light and Wiley. So it's probably better that in the Battle Network series they focused on the Internet as opposed to robotics. Got to jack in. That's right. So is there more that we need to say about X? We talked about the mechanics. How about his upgrades? We haven't talked about, yeah, as upgrades.

That's what we haven't really discussed. I suppose what I was going to say is, yes, and connected to the upgrades, the whole main thrust of the game, the arc is that he's growing. He's becoming better. And like I said earlier, it takes the concepts introduced in the original Mega Man of Mega Man is becoming more and more powerful and make that the core of the core of the game. Yeah, I mean, that's always like the core of a progressive adventure action game. Like you, your character starts out as a weakling, but by the end you have God armor and you're awesome. And this actually turns that into the text of the game rather than the subtext or what the implication. And, you know, Dr. Light's hologram actually speaks to you and says, I knew this day would come.

I'm sorry that you're being thrust in the battle, but it's cool because I'm giving you gear and stuff and you're going to be awesome. So please achieve your potential and don't be bad. That holographic capsule thing starts to wear kind of thin by Mega Man X6. And you're like, did Light really anticipate X would be in this many battles and need this many different kinds of armor? But, okay, sure. Put them all in one place at least. Yeah. Convenience.

Well, at the end of X5, one of the endings where X's like destroyed by zero or something, a mysterious shadowy figure comes and repairs him. And it's kind of implied to be like, Dr. Light's still alive. That's weird. Yeah, that's weird. So the idea that these things are hidden in a place where he will predict that this whale role. about's going to go bad. I knew that he's never met. I knew Chilled Pinguego would go nuts.

Well, Mega Man X and all the Mavericks already look like the coolest toys ever. I want toys of all of these guys. They are so great and toy-like. But getting the armor and the helmet of boots makes Mega Man's toy-like design even more toy-like and better. I mean, I think Bondi's

made a ton of X characters. I'm sure they all exist. Yeah. I want the different armor upgrades. They're very hyperposable. I want the octopus. Because I love how he points at you and then points the ground. Like, you're going down, buddy. It's so great. All right. So we've talked about X, and I think we should take a break and then come back and find out who is weak to X.

Hi, this is Dennis Miller, and I want to invite you to listen to my new podcast, Red Circle Sports, right here on podcast one. I'll be recapping the weekend's most exciting sports stories, and I'll bring them to you every Tuesday. Plus, hear me chat with some of my favorite sports industry guests like Rich Eisen. So be sure to subscribe to Red Circle Sports with me, Dennis Miller, on the podcast. Podcast One app at Podcast1.com or on Apple Podcasts. And don't forget to rate, review, and share. Be there or be square. Here are some useful car tips you might not be aware of.

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are $7.99 each. It's pandemonium. Bandastico. Carry out only. You must ask for this limited time offer. Prices participation in charges may vary. All right, so I've input the password, and we are continuing from where we left off last game. So, actually, let's revisit the X stage really fast. I think some people had some things to say. So we can do our second playthrough, look for the heart capsules. I have two things to add.

One, when we're discussing the story, I want you to put in a blaring siren for that entire time to make the Mega Man X experience complete. Number two, we went over the different parts he can get. So there are different parts hidden in various stages. There's three parts you can equip. I think you get an advanced buster, but they eventually will give that to you if you don't find it. Yeah, I think Zero gives that to you at the very end when he dies. Yeah.

Oh, geez, yeah. And you see half of his body, it's gross. But the boots let you dash. The armor lets you take more hits. And the helmet I found was really disappointing. I got it last, as I usually do in the game. I'm like, what does this thing do again? It's like, oh, yeah, you can kind of break through some ceilings, but it rarely ever happens.

I wish there was a better use of that. So I didn't even like the one in the Goonies where you can survive stalactites. Oh, that's right, yeah. Yeah, you can't protect him. But doesn't it help you with armadillo's, like, the last bit? It helps you survive the rocks a lot better. I think maybe that could be the one use. I don't remember, but it is fairly useless.

I love how I love how fully upgraded Mega Man X looks. He is so cool looking in a very toy-like 90s way. But helmet, let me down, folks. I just want to let the world down. I was going to say that one thing that I really like about this is the fact that as you gain the armor, it is added to the design. Yes, yes, exactly. They update the sprites. It's nice.

It's a really palpable, like, visual indicator of progress. And I am a sucker for any game where you have visualized armor. So I love that they did that in Magn Man X. Did that happen in other action games before? You saw that in RPGs. Like, I just played Drachen for Super NES works. I'm sorry. Oh, boy.

I survived. It's actually a really interesting game, but we'll talk about it some other time. Talk about the sickness. But your little character portraits do change to reflect the weapons and armor that you have equipped. But you don't really see that in action games because you have to draw like a lot more sprites than just a static character portrait. Yeah. Am I crazy in that I swear the helmet, there's the buster attachment that gives you a second, like a third tier of charge shot. Right.

But does the helmet also let you charge faster? I think that's a passive thing. Maybe. Oh, yeah, you totally do charge faster. I think that's the helmet, too. I might just be, like, connecting two dots that don't exist, but... If so I didn't notice, but I buy it still. It's like the Golem's Thinking Cap and the Discworld books.

Makes them smarter and faster. Yes. No, okay. All right, so on to the next stage. We still have four left. Mega Man History, Mavericks, the stages, and Sigma. So, take your pick. I believe that X and Zero would be strong against Mega Man history.

You think so? Okay. I hope that it doesn't defeat us and send us back to the beginning. Actually, there's not too much to say about Mega Man history leading up to X. We kind of touched on it before. But we have talked about the original Mega Man series on NES. At this point, there were five-ish games, and the NES games were kind of coming to their sunset, along with the NES itself.

X launched in 1994, which would be the final year of NES and Famicom games in both the U.S. and JN.S. Japan. So, you know, it was definitely time for a change and a move over to 16-bit games. But, sorry. Go ahead. I was going to say that putting it into context, Capcom was changing for sure. I mean, Street Fighter 2 had come out a couple of years before and become their, the big one, the big game, the game that dominated a huge chunk of the 16-bit era. How did you forget to bring up the Hadoken in the X section? Yeah.

I totally forgot to bring up. What you wanted to talk about? The one that I want to talk about. Okay. And of course, there's a tribute to that in one of the Easter eggs, which is the Hadoca, which is the way that you get it is that you get a capsule and then you have to die five times. And then I forget. Really?

There are various ways to do it. Yeah, it's like an Armored Armadillo stage yet I'm forgetting same. I'm forgetting some of the requirements. I thought we just had to go back to the stage after defeating Armored Armadillo and then. People were like go back and die in it five times. There is some thing about dying, I think. The speed runners kill themselves just five times, and then they can have the Hodokin. But the Hodokin, you have to be standing on the ground and then to do it.

But it's very hard to land. But if you land it, it kills anything in one hit. Even Sigma? Yep. Yeah. Even rangda bangda or whatever it's called? Rebenak. Actually, can you hit the rangda bangder or whatever it's called from the ground?

Because it's like the big wall in the background. I'm thinking of something else then. It was very much an awesome but impractical attack. But, I mean, if you could land it, obviously, you had some serious bragging rights. And also, it was a cool tribute to a game that at that time was white hot. Yeah, we're talking about Street Fighter. And as Street Fighter was taking off, Mega Man was sort of drawing less of an audience based on what it was doing and where it was. But this kind of feels like the Street Fighter, the Street Fighter Fying of Mega Man, making it more rock almost.

It's the Street Fighter 2 of Mega. Yeah, Street Fighter 2. Capturing that same spirit. It's not a fighting game, of course, but it's just like, again, the butt rock. the more kind of aggressive tone to it. The soundtrack even brings to Mind Street Fighter a little bit. I mean, the analogy even holds up because in, you know, like Mega Man 2 and 3, when Mega Man uses items or summons rush, he even wears red slippers, just like Ryu in the original Street Fighter.

Oh, you're right. Is there going to be a space to talk about the music in this game? Talk about it right now. I will because playing this again, I forgot how memorable this soundtrack is. It's so good soundtrack. It's so memorable that you forgot about it. Yes, exactly. Well, I mean, the tunes are not as apparent to me as Mega Man 2 in.

and one. But as soon as they started playing, I started remembering, oh, I know this entire song, I know most of these songs. My one problem is the instrumentation is not very good. I hate that,

I hate that, I hate that, like, guitar sample thing. And I know someone has had to abidify these songs online. I would love to hear arrangements of these songs in a more like NES sound

font kind of thing. Quality samples would have been okay too. I think this game uses a lot of like the default super NES sounds. Yeah, they're very muddy. doesn't have a lot of slap bass. Yeah, I imagine that was so abused back then.

There's a great, like, Mega Drive version of this, like a Genesis Up version of the X soundtrack that actually works very well. Wow, okay. I can totally believe that. I listened to it a lot over the summer. I forget the channel name or who posted it, but it's really good. And played on real instruments, these songs sound great, played on real electric guitars. I have the Mega Man X Rock Collection or whatever you want to call it, and they sound like they're designed to be played with electric guitars and like a real, real instruments.

But I think Mega Man 8 with its simpler, sorry, Mega Man NES with it simpler or less, less technological. advanced instruments, if you will, maybe communicated that this kind of stuff a little better, I don't know. So at the time, I did not have a Super Nintendo. I had a Nintendo, and the Super Nintendo was, wow, so amazing and technologically advanced and look those amazing sprites. And Mega Man X was one of the ideals. Like, I had to play that game.

And the few times that I did actually get to try it out, just from the second that the title screen starts, where you have the immediate sting and the super high-powered music that really gets you into it. The soundtrack to me was like, yes, this is what the Super Nintendo is all about. Look at how much more advanced it is than the Nintendo soundtrack. It's so driving and energetic and cool. I love this soundtrack. I think even on that title screen, you shoot the option you want with the command X.

Like, I'm a game start. I will destroy this text. Yeah, actually, I should have looked at my notes earlier. Rockman 6th debuted in Japan in November 1993, and this game came out there a month later. So it's really like a quick handing of the baton. And the difference between the two games is pretty extraordinary. Yeah, huge.

Another thing about the music that I want to point out, I don't actually think that the boss music's amazing, but when you walk in and the little like, the ominous music, which was definitely not anything you would ever get on the end. NES, always really stood out to me. And I was like, oh, man, I'm ready for this big fight. I love, you know, the guitar samples don't hold up,

but I love the, like, the synthesizer, stings that have the echoing, like, that's so, you know, owner of a lonely heart. I say what you feel about the guitars in this, but Spark Mandrill's theme is still one way all the time. Oh, yeah. And it's just, it is full on. Storm Eagle has a great one. I like Armored Armadillo, too. Very good.

Very guts manny. So we're on to the final three stages, Mavericks, Sigma, and the stages. So what's next? What's week to Mega Man history? Oh, go ahead, Brett. Go for it. You're the guest. I feel like it's time to talk Sigma.

We talked about Zero and X. Sigma, it is. I don't know. I don't know. I'm sorry. Remember when Sigma was an interesting villain. here. It was this game. I was going to say no, because I don't think he's very interesting.

So, I never like Sigma. I think he's really a good villain in this game and very well presented. Like I said earlier, he is the sort of like the evil id of Mega Man. He is Mega Man taken to his extreme in terms of power and in terms of like

what would happen if Mega Man went wrong. Well, here it is. And the final showdown where you come into Sigma's room and you have to fight his dog and then you defeat that. Like he's got his own rush. He has his own equivalent to rush. He is like evil Mega Man. But then, you know, you defeat the dog, and he appears, he throws off his cape, draws his sword, and a great battle starts.

It's really, really, like, in that one moment, you're like, Sigma is cool. And then every other game, you're like, oh, God, Sigma. And he doesn't have the, you know, Saturday morning cartoon plot line of, I'm going to build robots and take care of the world. I'm back. And now I'm back again to do my exact same thing. it's at least something that's more befitting of the tone of the game, which is like, oh, I think machines should be taking over the world and humanity's in the way, so we should have a freedom and you're all dead.

I robot am cool. You humans are not. This is right after Terminator 2, I might add. And robots taken over the world was very cool. It was white hot. The whole plot line now that I think about it, Dr. Kane, is basically like the dude from Cyberdine who found the Terminator Arm and is like, I'm going to reverse.

I'm going to reverse engineer this and create a robot system that kills everyone. I think my issue with Sigma is looking at a picture of him now that the entire game is full of these great animal robot designs, and his design is kind of uninspired. He's like, he's just a bald guy with a cape. It's like, what if Bert from Sesame Street joined Kiss? Yes, and shaved his hair. I was going to, I completely agree with you, Bob. The one thing I was never able to engage with Sigma as an interesting or villain was because I was biased against him. from the start because I didn't like his design.

The bald head thing just didn't do it for me. Yeah, the bald head thing isn't great. But again, I really like his overall design in that first battle against him where he is, you know, like a Mega Man size robot, a little taller. But it's like a one-on-one kind of thing. It really feels like the culmination of this game. Like, here is, you know, Mega Man taking on the antithesis of everything that he is and he has to overcome it with the power that he's accumulated along the way. It's a really great climactic sensation. You think that mirrors that fight a Mega Man one where you fight another Mega Man?

You fight you? Yeah. But you don't get that sense of like that copy robot just kind of appears, whereas the whole game, you feel Sigma's presence even when he's off screen. And you just feel like all these events are because of Sigma. Right. And so when you finally get this showdown going, you're like, oh, man. And also when X2 came out, it wasn't a given that they're going to do the Wiley thing. Yeah, they've got the X hunters.

And you're like, okay, so there's a different villain. I'm not going to get tricked a fifth time. Not this time, guys. Then you get to, it's not a six mega. So I'm going to make an admission. When Mega Man X came out, I wasn't actually a big fan of the fact that there was suddenly story, which is weird in the context of like,

but Kat, you like Canon and you like all these things. But I was like, what is this new story with the reploids and Mavericks and Maverick hunters? Like, what's going on here? And Sigma was kind of emblematic of that for me. I liked the old Mega Man story, is what I'm saying. It's a little more charming. It's a little more charming.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I was at that age where I still enjoyed the Saturday morning cartoon, and I wasn't looking for nuance. I wanted the villain with the big goofy mustache. He was going to rub his head and be like, ah, ha, ha, I'm back. Stomp his feet in the ground when he gets beat. Yeah.

I have to say that I really like what they did with Sigma in Maverick Hunter X, the remake for PSP. Like I said, they added something like 20 minutes of cutscenes, which normally I would just be like, what the hell are you doing? Do you want to say Chil Penguin give orders? But it really gives context to the world and like the kind of ideas that they sort of had in the background but didn't state explicitly. Like, yeah, you know, Chil Penguin is the commander of the 13th polar battalion and here you get to see it. But you also get to see Sigma as a hero as like one of the, you know, the Reploid hunters, the Maverick hunters, discover Zero.

And then you get to see him kind of fall into evil as he's corrupted by what Zero, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. virus code that he has inside of him. And you also get to see him kill Dr. Kane in a missile strike, which kind of, it makes me sort of interested to see what they would have done with future Maverick Hunter games because, like, Dr. Kane was around for a while. He was still a figure in Mega Man X3. He had some sort of minor rule. It reconded it?

Yeah. Is Maverick Hunter X the real canon? I don't know. It's not a very extended canon since the game apparently didn't do very well. and they never made a sequel to it. Could it be because it was on the PSP and it was ugly? It was, oh, I wasn't that ugly. That was like a golden PSP era, right?

No, it was, I feel like it was the wrong game for that platform at the wrong time. I think if that game had come out as a digital release in like 2008 instead of on PSP as a retail release in 2005. HD remaster. Yeah, I feel like it would have done a lot better in a different venue. Between those two, I played a lot of, well, I finished powered up and then, you know, played through it numerous times. this, I think I played once, like, played through once and was like, yeah, I'm good.

But it had vile mode. What year was that? 06, maybe. 06, 07, I think. Yeah, that was 06. I mean, we did a PSP podcast maybe two years ago, and it was kind of stunning to realize, like, oh, this thing had like 18 months of relevance in the U.S.

And that was kind of it. And I think it ended, I think this game landed after that window had closed. Yeah, it was just, it was the wrong platform at the wrong time, and it kind of helped kill the Mega Man series. I mean, they, you know, Capcom rebooted it with Mega Man 9. But it was sort of the, end of like a technical and technological advancement for the franchise.

I think we got Mega Man X8 after that and that was where X-9 was there an X-9? I can't remember. Geez. No X-9. X-8 was PS2. It's all boring together. Yeah. I thought was before.

Oh, you're right. You're right. Yeah. So Maverick Hunter X was kind of closed the door. So this is like the beginning and the end of a great era. We haven't even gotten a Mega Man X collection in the same way that we've managed to get Mega Man legacy collections. I imagine that'll probably happen in time.

Can we get one on PS2? Yeah, we did. We did. Okay. Yeah, it's nicely done, and it has a couple of cool bonus games in it. Yeah. I think it has, is that the one with Battle and Chase? Yes.

The problem is that there's, what, two and a half good Mega Man X games, and then after that, I don't know. One and four I love. I think they're both. Four are amazing, and then after that. There are some good Mega Man X games, some poor Mega Man X games and some great ones. And I think it covers a spectrum. Some point a couple years ago, I played through two, a bunch. oh, it was when we were doing

a lot of those virtual console releases, and I was like, I was interestingly tied in for like, file all this paperwork, talk to Nintendo, get all these things done and make sure the team in Japan knows what we're doing. And in the process of that, played through all of the games as we were submitting them, and played through X2 again a couple

times, and for the first time finished Mega Man Extreme on Game Boy Color. I forgot about that. Yeah. And that, do we have to talk about that one? I don't want to. It's like a retelling. Yeah, it's like just a re- Yeah. And it's kind of like Rockman Mega World or, you know,

the Rockman World games for Game Boy? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of like that. Because it blends X1 and 2, and then Extreme 2 blends 2 and 3. Yeah. But I ended up finding out that I in my, I think I played through X2 once as like a teenager and was like, okay, I'm good, I don't need to play this ever again. And then when I played X2 again a couple years ago for all this virtual console stuff,

I was like, actually, there's a lot of stuff in here I do like. I don't know why I was in my head I was like really down on this. I think X was such a dramatic departure for the series, and then X2 came out, and it was so much more of the same. And we were like, oh, they're just back to their old tricks. They changed the context, but now it's, you know, just rehashing the same things over and over again. Everybody was really down on it when it came out back at the days. And I never saw three until, you know, years later when all the rental shops started closing down. And then you, like, pray on them like a vulture.

I'm like, oh, I'll give me all those. everybody was like, three is really hard. Yeah. Yeah. It is really hard. I've never finished it. So, anyway, Sigma, we're going to wrap things up for him. But they dredged him up too many times.

And by the end, like, each time he appears he's more pathetic because he's like breaking down and having a harder time reviving, which is an interesting idea. But it's not very satisfying to fight a boss, a final boss who like can't even form a sentence anymore. It's like, what if, what if 45 were the boss? Yes, Mega Man X-5. He, like, takes over the Statue of Liberty equivalent. I mean, there is such a thing as overusing a villain, and there should be a point where you finally defeat the villain, they have a graceful exit, and then you can totally refresh the series

by bringing in somebody new. And that might actually be one of the problems that both the original Mega Man and Mega Man X ultimately had. X-8 tries that, and I forget the name of the other villain. interesting. Okay, great. But you need to have a good villain. I can't remember either because it's not interesting.

It's also possible to introduce a villain that everybody hates. I mean, so it's a two-part thing. You also have to introduce a good new villain. Yeah, Command Mission did that too. Oh, yeah. Totally set the storyline 100 years in the future and totally dropped Sigma whatsoever. Like, he's just not there. But I don't remember who's a bad guy in that was either.

I don't either. I just don't really care that much about X's storyline. It just drug on too long. It's mostly interesting for... It's mostly interesting for how it creates a lore for the zero games and the legend games. Yeah. I mean, it's a huge part of it as, like, setting a base for all of it. And then I do love that, that PSP animation.

It's like 20 minutes, and it's all on YouTube at this point. The animation is the best part of that game. It's very pretty. It's very well done. To see Sigma and all of them before it all goes wrong. It's actually really cool. And I don't think it overstays it's welcome at all. Like, it's just enough to make you go, this seems interesting.

You don't have to watch the anime, for one thing. It's in a menu up front on the title screen, and you can watch it there. And if you want to, you can, but you don't have to. You can just jump into the game. So these aren't cutscenes. It's like a featurette or something. I didn't know that.

It's called the Day of Sigma. All right. So two final stages to go, and that is Mavericks and the Stages. Kat? I believe it is time that we talk about the Mavericks. Yeah. Mavericks are great. There's no more man's.

Mavericks are animal-based robots with Metal Gear codenames. And not a week one in the bunch. I mean, I think they're all pretty great. Yeah. They all have really cool designs. I love all of them. And there's still a hint of cuteness to all of them, which I like. They all have like goofy reactions, like, chill penguin especially.

Oh, yeah. I love them mugging for the camera, too. Yeah. Yeah. And Bob mentioned launch octopus, who when you select him or when you go to fight him, you come into his room and he points at you and then gives you like a year going down with his tentacles. It's like it's you don't think, how can an octopus give you a thumbs down? But he totally does it. He does it.

How the hell does he do it? It's obvious that the designer, the graphical artists of Mega Man have been waiting for the 16-bit consoles to come around because they were always trying to do really intricate and interesting designs on the NES, but obviously, I mean, the sprites were limited. So here they just go crazy. And one of the big things, I mean, we were talking very briefly earlier about how Mega Man or X himself has a bigger sprite compared to the original games. But some of the, one of the big things about the Super Nintendo was, suddenly you had. these giant sprites, right? Like, Flame Mammoth is huge and so detailed and so expressive and so interesting. And they have a lot of fun with the Mavericks.

There's a lot of mid bosses. I guess that's a stage thing. But just, you know, the midbosses in Mega Man was always kind of a thing on the NES. But you always had to fight these big cartoon robots against a black background because the robots were the background. That's just the limitation of the NES. Here you don't have that. So you have big sprites that fit more naturalistically into their environment.

and look more like the other robots. So it's just like you're fighting little guys, and then there's a giant bee gunship dropping little robots at you, or there's like this slime thing, stretching all around the screen and getting bigger edge of kill it. The slime thing was such a cool effect. Everybody would always use that to highlight how good Mega Man X looked. It was so good.

And I love all the little – we did allude to the – well, we straight up talked about it. But the little touches like when you go in a boss room and that little – dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, that music comes in. but what was cool was some of them like Spark Mandrill sticks out of my mind where the room is dark

and you can see all the lights on him Yeah, Sting Chameleon is invisible Oh and he's invisible, yeah but I just love that he's the thing lit up in the room and then the lights come on and then the lights come on and like oh man this guy's huge

And the cloaking effect for Sting Chameleon was really cool So I recently wrote an article as of this recording that I consider the Super Nintendo the best system ever made and one of the reasons I think is just because

so many of its best games just hold up And Mega Man X is just a great example of that. This game looks phenomenal today. Like, I was playing it on my S&S classic and going, oh, my God, this game looks so amazing. It's so artistic and expressive, and the Mavericks are a huge part of that.

Yeah, we kind of alluded to this, but I love the morphological variety in the Mavericks. You have Chill Penguin, who's smaller than Mega Man, and then you have Flame Mammoth, who is, you know, an elephant, and therefore huge. And, like, each character, each enemy uses its body, in a sensible way. Like, Chill Penguin

does not pose much of a physical threat, but he creates barriers and then dashes around the screen at really high speeds. Whereas Flame Mammoth pretty much just like stands there, but then he jumps at you and like his body is the weapon

and it's really hard to avoid him. I think he's the only battle arena that scrolls. No, Storm Eagle also. Yeah, there's some cool arenas in these. Most of them are just a box. It's not just a single room all the time. And it's not just a chill penguin

dashes at you. He does the little penguin on the belly slide. And on top of that, he creates little iced penguins. It's like totally the penguin from Batman Returns. So this is where I say that Chill Penguin is my favorite, maybe one of my favorite bosses ever in like the entire series. Because, I mean, I like penguins anyway. He's always the first one that I fight, so I fought him a million times.

It's a fun battle. I like any battle where it's encouraging me to do a buster duel. I love Chill Penguin. I don't remember which Mega Man fan site it was in the 90s, but there was a column, like a humor column published there called Irregular Fiber for the Maverick Hunter. No, fiber for the Irregular Hunter because Mavericks are called Irregulars. So he like, you know, makes a constipation joke. That's a good localization, by the way. That's not column.

It's a well-chosen, yes. But he really loved Chill Penguin and really played up like the idea of chill. Like he's, you know, like the pimp of Mavericks or Irregular's. as the case may be. But all of them have great personality. I like that each of them fights in a very different way. And sometimes you get like little flashes that remind you of old Mega Man games, but they're done in different ways.

Like Flame Mammoth, his one sort of projectile attack is that he flings oil at you and this glob of oil lands on a conveyor belt and you have to avoid it. And then if you, you know, as you're fighting him, he'll toss flames at the oil that'll cause the oil to create a geyser of flame. Which, you know, it's really reminiscent of Fireman and Heat Man for Mega Man 1 and 2, but it adds sort of a different element to it and also gives you a little bit more broadcasting than Fireman where the flames would just, like, show up at your feet and you couldn't dodge them. So it's really thoughtfully designed and kind of plays up like, what are the logistics of causing gouts of flame to arise from the ground?

Well, he's setting oil on fire. So, you know, like his entire stage is an oil refinery, basically, or like a factory. So it all makes sense. And all that's up, man. So how do you feel about the fact that, I mean, it's really hard to do almost any damage to Armored Armadillo? You beat him with the buster. That's awesome. And no capsule upgrades.

But for the most part, like, if you want to beat him, you really do kind of have to use the actual attack that will knock his armor off. Yeah, I don't even think he's the hardest one to beat without, without, um, Do you think it's sting chameleon? Stingameleon is a complete bastard. He's really hard to reach without the boomerangs. Boomer Coanger is also really difficult because he dashes. I mean, he's like, he's basically quick man, but like bulkier and he doesn't, he's totally ground-based. But he uses the same basic attacks, lots of boomerings and lots of dashing attacks, and he really crowd you and forces you to avoid him.

What animal is boomer co-wanger? It's a bull. It's a bull. A beetle, okay. Oh, beetle. I thought he was a bull. A bull, huh? Beatle, yeah.

Yeah, he's like a stag beetle. He's got the horns. That's one of the coolest attacks in the game is where he, like, dashes at you. And if he catches you, it's not like contact damage, which I'm not really that big a fan of in games. Yeah. But in this case, it's not just contact damage. He grabs you with his Stag Beetle horns and tosses you in the air. So it's like, oh, yeah, I'm going to take some damage from that one.

I also notice you mentioned contact damage. It's not as extreme in Mega Man X as it is in Mega Man, the eight big games. I feel like you got a huge chunk of your life part taken out if you touched the boss. But in this game, it's not. quite as extreme. Except Armored Armadillo. Yeah, I guess it does vary. There's a real disparity in damage dealing with that one.

But I didn't feel as punished when I touched a boss as I did in previous games. Flame Mammoth, I feel like it's underrated how hard he is because I often go to him right after Chill Penguin because obviously his stage is frozen. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But Chill Penguin's weapon doesn't work on him. You assume, oh, obviously, chill penguins. Yeah, I saw. on fire? No, that's not the case. Fire melts ice, cat. What are you thinking?

Whatever. So I'm just assuming that I can take him out and you're like, no. And he, that damn conveyor belt is so annoying because it makes it really hard to avoid his very large body that is landing on you. And yeah, he does the Gutsman thing where when he lands, it creates a seismic ripple that causes you to lose your balance. So you fall down and you fall down on a conveyor belt that pulls you toward him. So yeah, it creates a new form of danger that you couldn't have on, you know, the original Mega Man. I have unlocked the mystery of Boomer Coanger that is not a mystery at all because it's widely, this knowledge is widely available.

Apparently, his name comes from the Japanese Kuagata, which means stag beetles. So I guess they didn't change his name for, I guess, it's a better pun. I don't know. That was a mystery for 12-year-old cat because I'm just going, yeah, Stingameleon and Armored Armadillo and Boomer Coanger?

I think they kept it because Boomer Ring, Boomer Co-Wonger. The pun works. It works so even if you don't know what it is. How did you deal with, I'm Tengu Man? I love Tengu Man. But did you know what Tengu was? And by that, well, first of all, I loved that he was like, I'm Tengu Man.

But also because by that time I knew what a Tengu was. Monster in my pocket. I was a little more up on Japanese lore by that time. I knew it because of Romna one half. One thing I also love about the Mavericks, and this is, to me, this is like a signature Japanese thing in games, comics, TV is organizations. So it's not just that we have a bunch of bad guys. They have a name. They're Mavericks.

The people who are after them, that's another organization. They're the Maverick hunters. And we also have a logo for the Mavericks as well. They all agreed on what their logos is going to be. It's like a Sigma with a thing. It looks so cool. There was a key chain of that logo for years.

And it was like a every time like we'd be using them for giveaways. And every time I'm like, I want to take one of these. But it will be very obvious when I'm walking around. What you're saying is they all got together in committee and voted us. And it was probably a cell. one vote and probably launch octopus was being a bit of a dick, you know, like he is. I mean, have you looked at that guy? He doesn't have a voting up, right?

He doesn't only vote down. So he's not a reploid Maverick, sorry, but I do think we should mention vile in this section. We kind of can't mention that he's like calibrating Mega Man. But that is with the role he plays. He shows up at the beginning of the game at the end of the introductory stage and completely trashes you. It's kind of like the Ridley fight at the beginning of Super Metroid. Like, if you're really good and know the pattern, you actually can get him to a point where you technically win.

But then he uses a cheat attack and stomps you. Those games both came out the same year. So someone was thinking like in the same terms, that same sort of anime drama. Like I can't beat this ultimate powerful enemy. So, you know, you do like Ramma one half and you go back and you run away and you train. and then you come back and you fight maybe unfairly. But here's the twist is that you still can't beat his right armor at the end. Like you need Zero to come in and make his heroic sacrifice

so that he can get him out and then you can beat him. He's presented as a formidable foe in this game. And playing up to that part, I was kind of surprised, and I knew I had seen this before, but when you talk to dying Zero, there's blood coming out of his mouth. So these robots are full of blood. It's red. Oil can be red.

They didn't censor that, though. Well, as we all know, blood equals mature in video games. That's true. This was a mature Mega Man. I just like the idea that all these robots are just full of blood, just switching around in their bodies. We just put it in there. How have we not talked about ride armor yet?

Well, I guess that's for the final stage. Yes, let's talk about the stages. All right. So here we are, wrapping it up. We're finishing the chain of weaknesses. Talking about the stages. So there's eight of them, plus the introductory stage, plus the four Sigma stages, and all them are different from each other. They are.

And a lot of them are very different than anything you saw in the NES Mega Man games. They really took this opportunity, like I said earlier, to play with the idea of level boundaries and how the flow through the stage goes. Like, Boomer Coinger is just a tower. Like, it's just nothing but climbing, and you're really making use of your wall jump and climbing ladders. On the other hand, launch Octopus stage is kind of like a series of two big boxes. And you can actually take a high route and find, there's like oil refineries that you can climb on top of. Or you can fight your way through underwater. And if you go underwater, then you fight some mini bosses,

and there's actually secrets hidden beneath the mini bosses once you defeat them. So it's like they tried to do that a little bit in Mega Man 6, where there were some like alternate routes, but it kind of sucked. It wasn't that interesting. Whereas here it feels really organic. Like it encourages exploration and repeated play to kind of, you know, get the most out of each stage. And as I was saying earlier, with the dash and the wall jump and everything,

that dramatically increased the scope of the stages and encouraged you to explore in a way that you really didn't in the other Mega Man games. But another, I think, important aspect of Mega Man X that is really revealed in the stage design is combat is a much bigger thing in this game. You spend a lot more time fighting actual enemies than you do platforming.

I feel like platforming is a much bigger thing in the original Mega Man. Yeah, there aren't as many cheap enemies appearing at platforms here. There are a few places where you're going to jump and something's going to come out of nowhere and hit you and knock you into a pit, but it doesn't happen as much. Yeah, and in the original Mega Man, you spend a lot more time jumping around blocks that are flashing on and off or single blocks and trying to get around through it.

Whereas a Mega Man, it's much more, like, actually straightforward, and you're just ripping through stuff with your Megabuster or your Storm Tinnado shots or that kind of thing. Or you're getting in your right armor and punching things. Yeah. It feels like for the first time, because the original Mega Man was still like, oh, we have a lot of arcade talent here. So it's a game. We know how to make games that just, like, beat you up a lot. And by the time they get to the X series, a lot of the design has shifted to like, well, let's just make a game that's fun to be fun to play.

And you can actually exist in the stage and not be punished constantly. There's also a few stages that are kind of built around set pieces that break from the formula, which I feel like would, they're good here, but they would become a problem in later Mega Man games. Like, I really like Armored Armadillo stage or on these little mine carts for a while. But when I play a Mega Man game, I don't want to play a shoot-em-up. I don't want to play an auto-scrolling thing. And I feel like they got a little too into that in some of the later games in a way I don't like. Yeah, X2 starts that with the ride machines. But what is a ride armor?

You keep ridgedy. What is it? Well, I mean, in this game, you get a mex suit that you can jump into, which is. Robots and robots, I don't understand. This is against God. Yeah, you're controlling a robot. I mean, it's like the Pluto and the Yes, but whatever

You're driving along and you're punching And the first time you see a right armor is when you see violin one And it's very strong He's rocketing it around the stage And you're going, oh my God, this guy is so tough But then you get in the Chill Penguin stage And look, there's a ride armor for you too And you can punch the little pill boxes

And enemies can like hardly stop you And you're like, yeah, I'm so strong So, right armors, they are there to kind of empower you, especially early on when you are not that strong. Because this game has actually a very, very early on. Like, you have a very low health bar. Yeah, it's pretty small. You're very vulnerable. So the right armor really mitigates that a lot if you kind of go in the correct order.

I don't think we mentioned that Mega Man sort of has Zelda-style heart containers that you find one in each stage to extend his health bar. They're like the Tin Man's heart. They're like a little robot capsule with like a valve on them. And the energy tanks work differently, too, in that you don't just pick up full energy tanks. You have to kind of grind for power-ups to fill the energy tanks instead of just getting a full one. Sub-tanks. Sub-tanks. Super Metroid would do that also with its reserve tanks the same year.

What's going on? And they look very similar to. Great minds think alike. They're these big, like, lumpy, like, battery things, too. They're really cool. And this was, you could go back in the stage. You'd beat it and you could go back in to. search for, well, use one of your new weapons

to affect the stage in some way and then find a heart container that you couldn't get before. And that was a huge, that was a huge part of its appeal was that, I mean, we already mentioned, you know, you beat Chill Penguin and you go in a Flame Mammoth stage and now it's frozen, but there's other things like you would find

explosive capsules that had the little fire symbol on it. And if you had beat Flame Mammoth, you go, oh yeah, I use my flames, and I can get into the thing, or I can use Boomer Quangers thing to collect the item, and that was a really cool extra dimension that was simply not

in the previous Mega Man games. Did we talk about how, and if beating some stages will make different stages, some stages different, I feel like they had more of a plan for that, and it only executed in a few ways in this game. There's like two stages where it actually happens. It's the flame mammoth and the Falcon guy. Yeah, yeah.

Storm Eagle. Yeah. What happens? I can't remember. I don't remember, but I know it's obvious in the Flame Ameth stage. I don't know what killing Chill Penguin has to do with. Oh, doesn't the airship crash or something? Something like that, yeah, I forget. Which, by the way. I love Storm Eagle stage because it's like you're climbing to the top of an airport, like a civilian

airport structure and going across scaffolding to fight your way to the command carrier that Storm Eagle has taken over to wreak havoc upon the landscape or whatever. And one of the best arenas that you're going to know, too, it just works really well. It's a small thing, but I especially love the shattering glass. That's great. In Storm Eagle stage, it's very cool. It's just, man, all these little details just like. It's just reinforcing everything we've said in the beginning.

If they clearly had a lot of time to work on this or clearly put as much of their hard work and thought into it as it could. And this is what happens when the influence of the graphic artists is so outsized that you get all of these amazing details in the look of the field game. And you could tell that they were just in heaven because they were working with the Super Nintendo. There were so many details that they could put in that they couldn't do in the original. I can use more than three colors. Oh, my God.

He can be more shades of blue. Yes. Yeah. So I feel like we've pretty much hit on all the points. I have a huge number of listener mail letters, but too many to read right now. So I'm going to reserve those for a separate micro or something. I don't know. Thanks everyone who wrote in, but there's just not enough time to read all of these letters.

And I don't want to slay in there. Somewhere somebody is very disappointed. They'll get their day in the sun. I wondered why you brought all these things in here if you're not going to read them. All these sacks of mail. What's going on here? I'm Santa. This wheelbarrow's in my way.

I'm the Santa bird. Yeah, so any final thoughts on Mega Man X? First, let me ask you, do you think it's possible for Capcom to create a Mega Man game of this quality again? And if so, what would it have to be? Yes, I do think that you could. Brett, I realize this is kind of a loaded question for you since I'm saying like, Brett, why don't you do it? Is your employer still any good?

I mean, I think that that possibility is always there. Because, like, man, I feel like I had an analogy for this earlier where something hadn't been made in a long time. And then everyone kind of started to think it couldn't be done. And then when it was done, it was like, oh, wow, actually. Oh, the Star Wars prequels. Oh, that was it. Really, really set me up. Man, I don't know.

It kind of reminds me, like, you know, Metroid was gone for a long time. And then when it came back, it's like, oh, well, you can do it in first person. That's not going to work. And then it's like, oh, actually, you can. And it was great. And then we also got Fusion, which was, can they ever make one as good as Super Metroid? We could argue that. But I think Fusion was, like, very smart in what they, they didn't try to do the same game again and invite direct comparisons.

But anyway. But they got them anyway. Yeah. I mean, I just was supposed to be, there was supposed to be a first person X game. It was, like, in development or something or in planning with a Spanish studio. Not Mercury Steam, but apparently that's like the thing to do now is like, hey, Spaniards, can you bring back our ailing series? Oh, the Spaniards. I think that there actually was a game that was every bit as good as Mega Man X, and it's called Shuffle Night, which I think is the spiritual successor to all of those types of games.

I love Subal Night. It's amazing in a different way, in my opinion. I love Shovel Night, but I feel like its levels drag on a little too long for their own good. I actually would like the levels if they were like maybe two-thirds as long as opposed to as long as they are. It kind of drags each stage. That's something I think X does really well. is give you just the right amount of level content. I got to the end of Azure Striker Gunbolt and really liked it,

but I feel like it's somewhere between the X and zero games. It's not quite a Mega Man X spiritual successor, and it's not totally zero. But, you know, a big part of what made X so interesting was that it was a technological step forward. I don't necessarily want to see a Mega Man X game that looks as good as Grand Theft Auto 5 or something. But it needs to do something other than, you know,

revisit the sprite art of the 8-bit era of. Yeah, I don't know. How did you guys feel about Sonic Mania? Like, I thought that was, I had a great time playing it, but I had a chance to play it yet. It looked really good. Yeah, it's like, it's kind of doing hey, we made a new old game, but there's all these tiny little touches that it feels old game plus. And it had so many

great moments. Like the, when you go into what was it the second level where the giant Dr. Robotic appears? So cool. But is that the best Mega Man X can hope for is rehashing the best bits of the 16-bit era? Metroid has moved beyond that. Metroid Prime 4 is coming out soon.

Mario Odyssey is coming out soon. So what you're saying is not just a tribute, but a step forward to the series. Something as significant as Mega Man X. I think Capcom is especially good at this. Because I mentioned before, they have a great knack for sort of clearing the table and restarting a franchise when they realize things need to move in a different direction. We saw it with Mega Man, with Mega Man X.

Arguably, Legends did the same thing, although it was not a commercial success. And I feel... It was a creative success. Yeah, exactly. And it wasn't a evil happened twice, and it's about to happen with Monster Hunter. I hope it's successful. But I feel like Capcom, they realize when they have to say, okay, we need to change everything to stay relevant.

And I feel like, unless there's some baggage that is unspoken, I feel like it's still possible. Like a better 3D Mega Man, I think is still possible. Well, what would that look like? I actually can't conceive of a, I mean, quote unquote, modern Mega Man, like a modern take on Mega Man, because it's so grounded in that time period. Yeah, but I think that gives it a lot of... The 7 and X8 had a lot of troubles moving into 3D.

I think the obvious answer is to make it a Metroidvania or something to that effect to really open it up, get rid of the original structure, and kind of go in that direction. Yeah, I mean, Zero and ZX did that to a great degree, 01 and ZX advent especially. X7 and X8 were 2.5D games like 14 years ago. I feel like we have reached the point where we can make a 3D Mega Man game that is bigger scope than, like, I'm trying to think of a third-person action game that is about a character that uses mostly projectiles. Ratchet and clink. Oh, there you go. Yeah.

I think using the Ratchet and Clink template would work really well for Mega Man. And I can't take credit for that. Nick Marigose, friend of the show, made that comparison a long time ago. He was like, why haven't you played Ratchet and Clink? It's basically Mega Man in 3D and it's amazing. I mean, those games are all the same, but they're all great. Yeah. But, I mean, take that as a stepping off point because it does do the third person.

you know, ranged combat really well. It adds a challenge and gives you the ability to switch between different powers and get upgrades. It really does fit the Mega-Man rubric a lot. So, yeah, I think 3D action games, maybe they'll come back into Vogue with Odyssey, Super Mario Odyssey. Like, you haven't really seen a lot of those lately, but maybe the time is ripe for those to come back. Everything comes in cycles. Really want another Slink Cooper, man. Wasn't there some news about it?

Sly Cooper recently. There was something on U.S. Gamer. A movie? There was an anniversary recently, and we were talking about whatever happened to Sly 5, sadly, it did not happen is what it came down to. Yeah, but it was an anniversary recently. That was Sanzaru, right? They were working on 4 and

something else. They did the collection and 4. Yeah, yeah. And then they came on and said, sorry, it's not going to be another one. Oh, by the way, Sly 4 ended on a cliffhanger about what-ups? Well, maybe we'll get like a soft reboot and now Sly will have a beard and a sun, and it'll be really heavy and emotional

and stuff. And Murray is putting a capsule to weigh his reasoning capabilities for 100 years. Well, you know, Murray because, you know, he's been relegated to a wheelchair, his parts can be the slow walking bits in the game where the narrative plays out. Oh, Bentley's in the wheelchair. Oh, Bentley, that's right, yes.

He's on the wheelchair. I mean, furry acceptance has never been greater on the internet. That's true. Now is the time. I mean, I swear to God everyone I know online is a furry. And I mean, I mean, Mega Man X was the original furry action. That's true. That's true. These robots may not have fur, but they are furies. I love all the cute robots in this game.

Yes. Okay. So I want to see a Mega Man X revival, and I want it to not follow in the steps of the most recent X games. I want it to be a clean slate, which I think would happen because Fujiwara is no longer there. Inafune is no longer there. No one's there. It's a chance for people to step in and do something new. And I love Intecreates, but I don't want them to work on it.

I want it to be a fresh take. I mean, they had a good decade with the brand more or less. And I like what they're doing with AdiFoon. Treasure Striker Gunbolt and Mighty Gunbolt. Those are a lot of fun. They're very much the spirit of that classic Mega Man. But I would like to see something different. I don't want X-9.

Like that plot line is just, no, just stop it. Just stop, please. Give us something fresh and new. Make us feel the way we did the first time we played X. Sure. I would be okay with revisiting the series with in an HD style, like really nice HD-2D art. And I think really phenomenal craftsmanship is timeless. and I think that there's still plenty of room

for new and interesting ideas within the formula that Mega Man X and the original Mega Man had. So in that regard, if they came out with Mega Man X-9 and they really put a lot of care and thought into the level design and how open they were

and how much there was to find and the boss battles and I would absolutely be all on board that. It's just a craftsmanship thing and that's the reason Mega Man X holds up so well. It's crafted so well And in fact this conversation Has actually made me go

Wow I guess Mega Man X is the best Mega Man game It actually is Which I did not have that opinion Even really going into this conversation But after doing a bunch of research And talking to you guys

I go wow Yeah Yeah they really killed it with this game Clear the runway for this hot take everybody Whoa Cuphead is the new Mega Man I rest my case No it's the new Gunstar hero

Don't frown at me I made my decision I'm dying on this hill. Mega Man is more about the joy of kinetic motion, and Cuphead is very much about memorizing very specific patterns. I was just thinking of Kat's idea of just like what a glorious 2D Mega Man would look like, embracing Inafune's anime art style you would see on those boxes. Like making a game look like that, that's what I want.

A cuphead comes the closest to that sort of idea. If they could pull Inafuna away from level 5 and just be like, okay, don't work on the game design, just draw for us. Let us turn this into animation. Cuphead borrow us from those 30s cartoons, that Inafune is drawing from because Tezica drew from them. It's all a great chain back to this great art style. 4K, we can actually see the, wait, oh, yeah, the Inafune fingers, that's it.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yes, the two middle fingers together. That thing, man, that's so hard. Yeah, I think because he wants to draw like... Spider-Man? No, I think he wants to draw like four-fingered Disney-style characters, but four is kind of like a number, like, it's got some cultural... Yeah, it's got some cultural stipulation.

So he draws characters with five fingers. but effectively only four by merging the two middle fingers together. But yeah, Cuphead looks so close to original Mega Man. I love it. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. I was always thinking more Bosco. But I am looking forward to reading your review of Cuphead because...

Oh, no, I didn't know I was writing one. I assume. Look forward to maybe a micro about that. Okay. I'm kind of into it right now. Okay. Yep. I mean, I figure if any game would appeal to you, it would be Cuphead.

Mr. Animation Buff. Mr. Dark Souls. Whoa. Now, I'm the one who didn't make a Dark Souls comparison. No, I did it. We got it. All right. So reviving Mega Man X is the Dark Souls of Game Design.

Thank you. All right. It's come full circle, and it is time to end this game. Watch the credits roll. Hooray, we beat all eight stages. for indulging my really stupid idea for the arrangement of this episode. It was fun, even if it was stupid. This has been a Retronauts podcast starring us, the Retronauts.

I'm Jeremy Parrish. You can find me on Twitter as Gamesbite. You can find me at Retronuts.com where I write and blog and create videos and publish books and other things like that. Retronauts, of course, is supported through listeners like you who go to patreon.com slash Retronauts and give us a little bit of money each month so that we can create this podcast. And there's something in it for you. If you give us $3 a month, you too can enjoy fine podcasts a week in advance at a higher bit rate with no ads. That's pretty cool. But if you

prefer just to get your free content, that's okay. You're supporting us too because this podcast is ad supported on the public feeds. Check us out at iTunes or the podcast One Network. Bob. Hey, everybody. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Serwell. I have another podcast. That's right, Jeremy. I betrayed retronauts in the entire brand. It's kind of retro. It is, actually.

It's like a cron gaming for cartoons. It's a retro TV podcast. Of course, it's Talking Simpsons every Wednesday on the Lasertime podcast network. We're going through every episode of The Simpsons in order. I don't know when this episode is going up. We'll probably be at the end of season six going to season seven. And every episode is a new episode of The Simpsons, and you can find that at TalkingSimpsons. Or if you go to our Patreon, we have our own Patreon.

That's Patreon.com. That's talking simpsons. You can get a ton of bonus podcast. Too many of the lists here. but we're also going through the critic, and probably by the time this comes out, we'll have done most of the critic in our Talking Simpson style. So that's another incentive for you. Basically, give us both your money, Retronauts and Talking Simpsons.

It's a great arrangement. Brett, do you have a Patreon? No, I don't have a Patreon. What's going on? But you can support the two aforementioned Patrions. That would be great. What do you do for a living, Brett? I read emails 400 hours a day.

No, it's been back at Capcom now for about six months. but I took a year and a half off and was over at the laser time side of things for a while. But I've been back now since April. And on the Mega Man side, Legacy Collection 2 just came out recently so you can revisit all that Doctville. I really enjoyed it.

It gave me new appreciation for 8, which I had always been sort of down on. But playing it again, I'm like, you know what? This game is actually really good aside from the jump, jump, jump, slide slide. Yeah, I went in, like, I've always loved 7, finished that again.

And when I started 8, I'm like, I don't think I like this game. game. And then by the time I was done, I was like, I was wrong. I put this to the side when I was like 18. I was like, I don't need this game anymore. And now I'm vindicated. It's always, so you're always I've always been on the Mega Man A-Tree. I think

what got me finally was Frost Man. When I saw him come on the screen, like this Sprite rules and I wish every game looked like this. I like Tengu Man. Not as much clown man, but I do like Tengu Man. I didn't appreciate at the time that they scaled the sprites down proportionally to the screen. So you have all these like really beautiful

beautifully drawn sprites, but they're much smaller on screen. So it creates a more cohesive world. It's just a gorgeous game. Anyway, so yes, Mega Man Legacy Collection 2. I keep meaning to write about it for Retronauts.com, but I will at some point I can say now that it's quite good and I really enjoyed it.

Kat. Hi, I'm Kat Bailey. You should go check out my website, usgamer.net, where we cover all of the happenings of video games. I have two podcasts. One is the US Gamer podcast. I'm not on that one, but it's really good anyway. You should go check it out. And if you want to hear me some more, we talk

about RPGs on Acts of the Plug God. We're doing a really cool thing right now. We're doing a, as of right now, the Final Fantasy 9 report where we go episode by episode. We are playing through it and talking about each section. Do you have someone playing through to get the secret sword?

No, we are not doing that. Someone should have been the sacrificial lamb for that. My God, that's crazy, but no, Nottia's not finished Final Fantasy 9 crazy enough. And it just came out on the PS4 as of the recording of this episode. So I said, guess

what? Here's a code. We're doing it on the podcast. Let's go. So go check that out. Axe blog out, find us an iTunes, Stitcher, and everywhere else. And that's it for this episode of Retronauts, which the epilogue ended up being really long. That's like an Assassin's Creed staff role. My God. We'll be back

next week with another cool podcast. And some Friday will be showing up with micro-podcasts every other Friday. One of them might even include your letters about Megamanax. Look forward to it. I'm going to be able to be able to be. I'm going to be.

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It's pandemonium. Bandastico. Carry out only. You must ask for this limited time offer. Prices participation in charges may vary. The Mueller report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town.

I guess from what I understand that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine, Susan Collins, says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear knowing that your choices will directly affect. the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout have

been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.