Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 464: Mega Man Zero

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

The early aughts were all about 3D games on consoles, but the humble 2D platformer didn't vanish: it merely migrated, and 2002 gave us Mega Man Zero. Stuart Gipp and Brian "Protodude" Austrian dissect this action classic and lament its bananas difficulty. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

You're listening to Retronauts a part of the HyperX Podcast Network. Find us and more great shows like us at podcast.hyperx.com. This week on Retronauts, I know perfectly well what I'm fighting for. Thank you very much. Hello, friends, and welcome to a very futuristic episode of Retronauts. I'm your host, Nadia Oxford of the Axe of the Blood God RPG podcast. Joining me are two fellow Mega Man Sickos, Brian of the Rockman Corner and Stuart of this very podcaster, so I'm told. I want you both to say hi. In fact, I demand it.

You start first, Brian, since you're our very special guest. Hey, folks. happy to be here. Oh, hello. Yes, I didn't take that as a cue. I'm Stuart Chip. Nice to be here also. And Brian, you actually run,

well, I know your best is proto dude, because you run a Rockman Corner, which is a Mega Man blog. How do you describe it? Like, you know, a Mega Man News blog, Mega Man Everything blog. Gosh, whenever I want to call it a news blog,

there's always something that's not news I get to talk about on there. I would say it's like, And all things, Mega Man blog, I've been doing it for the past 14 years, mostly a one-man operation. But I guess, like, as you get older, you get more people coming in to help you out. Yeah, yeah. As you get older, you kind of need that help to kind of help your creaky old bones. But Jesus Christ, 14 years, like, I feel like I've known you for a long time.

And, of course, I have. But even so, it's like, to me, you're, you come from the middle of my Mega Man career. Like, I started so long ago that I just, uh, I don't want to call you a young child because it certainly aren't, but yeah, I'm an ancient, you're an ancient, we're all ancients. What about you, Stuart? Are you an ancient? I guess so. I'm not really sure. I mean, I played Mega Man one on the, any Earth spec when it was relatively new. Does that, does that count? I don't know. I didn't get to play any more Mega Man until I had, I think, a PC capable of emulating it. So that was a while after that. You didn't play that awesome Mega Man 3 Doss game or Mega Man Doss game?

No, we didn't. I mean, over here in the UK, I don't think he was as big a deal as he was in the US. And I didn't have an N.S. I didn't have a super NES. So what was I going to do, play the X games. I guess, yeah. They were like rarer than hands to, so I didn't get any of them. Even when I started collecting PS1 stuff, I couldn't find them. So I didn't get to play anything until I was emulating it. And then I just ate it all up and devoured the whole series, basically, from there on. Yeah, that's really interesting thinking about it, because as you said, overseas, the Nintendo NES wasn't such a humongous deal as it was in North America.

Did you just decide to try Mega Man on a whim and say, hey, this is really cool? A friend of mine had two on his NES, which I really rarely got to play, because it's basically, as soon as I got into it, they bought a PS1 quite surely off to it. So it was quite a leap, I know. But then when I did get into it,

it was just a case of, I remember liking Mega Man's. So let's look into this, finding out, it sort of came to me at the perfect possible time because I was getting really into like drawing instruction. There's a lot of inspiration there. But I remember being at school and everyone else was into, I don't know, brand new games and I was printing out like sprite sheets and pictures of all the different Mega Man 7 bosses and thinking about how cool they looked. And then, of course, in the present everyone says those spreads look really goofy. So I don't know. They're still near and they're good for tattoos. Or at least the first one is

like, I mean, Brian, I think you and I are, our Mega Man histories are probably similar in that we both had the Nintendo maybe or to Super Nintendo and just played Mega Man and said, hey, this is really cool. Like me personally, I didn't start with one. So you have one off on me, Stuart. I started with three. I happened to buy it like on a whim because it was like for sale at some independent video store. And it was like 20 bucks. I said, oh, okay. I remember, you know, getting game pro and video power over on US stations when I could. And I'd watch it. And I remember. hearing a lot of Mega Man. I said, oh, wow, this sounds cool. I played it. Hey, this is cool. I played four next. I played two after that. I think I went to five and I went to one. So I've really been all over the map. How about you, Brian? Oh, wow. You know, my first exposure was on a field trip to the library in preschool. Amazing. And I saw, I think it was a Nintendo Power with X2 as the cover story. And I, at that age, like, my parents would not let me have video games at all, you know. Yeah, it was one of those kids. But my cousin had a Super Nintendo. So he had

X-1. And yeah, the first game I played was Megaman X-1. But the first one I owned was X-4. My grandparents went on my parents' orders. And they got me a play for your grandparents. And you have the last laugh because now you're like, well, take that mom and dad. My life is Mega-Man now. Pretty much. I showed you. I actually. in my mind I can envision the Nintendo Power cover for X2 was actually really badass so I'm not surprised to pick it up like it had that kind of blood red

display of Wheel Gator stage I think it was and X is dashing towards the camera it's a pretty badass What we're actually gathered here today to do with today to talk about, what we're actually gathered here today to talk about, one of several, one of several, Mega Man series spinoff, and that is the Mega Man Zero series, which is a continuation of Mega Man X, and we'll get into that. We will talk probably mostly about the first game, but I do want to touch on everything, because this is going to come out wrong. There's a lot to touch when it comes to Mega Man Zero. The story in particular is quite fascinating. I think it's definitely the best

in the Mega Man Series, barring maybe legends. But Mega Man Zero, released in 2002, it was a really a quintessential 2D platformer for its time. And like most 2D platformers from its time, it was parked on the Game Boy Advance. Fortunately, it kind of thrived there. In fact, Mega Man in general thrived on the Game Boy Advance thanks to that and the Mega Man Battle Network series. And Mega Man Zero still has a pretty hefty fan base who, you know, made up for people who enjoy things like getting flogged with whips braided with bits of metal and bone because damn. It is an infamously hard game. Infamously hard series, although the first game is certainly known as the hardest.

Now, Brian and Stuart, we just talked a bit about how we got into Megaman and X. What about zero? Was that just kind of a natural progression? Like, holy crap, here comes another continuation of the X series. I got to get my hands on this. Or was it even maybe the sirens call of really hard gameplay that got you into it? It was that natural continuation. And it was kind of an enigma.

The English release wasn't like announced yet. And all we had access to was like the Japanese ROM. Oh, right. Watching fan base kind of try to figure out what's going on, you know, where's X? What's happening? But, yeah, even without English, it was really hard. Stuart, how about you? Yeah, I was on, I was aware it existed because I was on the old Mega Man BB.

Oh, you were? 2000. I was, yeah. We must have run into each other. I probably punched each other. Definitely. I can't remember what my username was or anything like that, but I was definitely on there.

And, yeah, as Brian said, the GBA, unfortunately, well, fortunately, depending on who you are, had Visual Boy Advance come out, like, almost immediately. So I was playing this on the Japanese run as well. Of course, I did delete it after 24 hours, if the police will look. Oh, of course. The place will come to your door otherwise.

But, yeah, playing this game. seeing, well, I was, how old was I, 87 in 2097, but young. Young enough that this meant the world to me, because sliding up, slashing a robot and a half and seeing, oh yes, a load of blood fly out of it. That was pretty cool. Coolest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. It's like your fan fiction's becoming real, like suddenly there's blood in Megam and then violence and extreme misery and despair.

And this was when Mega Man fans were kind of eaten good because, as you say, there was Bethel Network running. But I think there was still the X-Series running as well, kind of, like X-7 and X-8. And I believe maybe X-6 was around this time. X-6 came out around 2001, I think. I was just married to my husband. Oh, so we weren't necessarily eating good when it comes to the Mega X-Series.

We had substance, but not exactly the quality. But no, I mean, I played this as I did all of them. It was like I played the Japanese round. And then when the English room came out, I'd play that. And then when I actually got a game of advance, which was way later, I did buy up all the cartridges. Though I think some of them may have been dodgy because I got them off eBay and I don't know anymore. But no, this is some of my favorite stuff ever. This might be my favorite sort of series ever.

I mean, comparing the story to legends, I mean, the only thing I can say in its favor is that this actually ends. That's true. And legends probably never will. I'm sorry to say. Oh, sigh. Yeah, I don't think Megamans never getting off that moon. And gosh, we could do a whole podcast about that. It's probably already been done.

But I think another one needs to be done. It's got like an actual start and finish. You know, it's very satisfying. Very cathartic. It does, you know, thinking about it, so does Battle Network. Battle Network had a distinct end. So, I mean, Capcom could finish things when they wanted to. Just sometimes they really didn't want to.

Case in point, as he said, legends, case and point, Megamon X. To this day, every E3 season, I sit and I wait. And I just think to myself, this will be the year that they reveal Mega Man X-9. And it's never going to happen. Oh, God. After the X legacy collection, when they did the sort of one final secret thing. And the Legacy Collection, too, had that hint for Mega Man 11 in it. Yes.

That you could have been forgiven for thinking that that was going to be the year. But unfortunately, no, no, it wasn't. Yeah, I just like, I think it was Mega Man X-8 came, was revealed at E3, 2004, I think it was. And since then, I've just been, like, waiting, like, you know, kind of, like, Bart in Camp Krusty holding the dolls saying, Christy is coming, Prusty is coming, except for me, like, Megynx is coming, Megynx is coming, it's never coming. But I don't care. I'm still going to, still going to hope, just out of habit. One day. One day, one day. Stewart, you were mentioned the blood and, like, the splatter of blood. They took that out of the U.S. version. They did. It's still not in, I want to say it's still not in the legacy collections, but you can obviously play the Japanese versions. in those, but obviously fans

have edited the English script into the Japanese game, so you can download that run, but you definitely shouldn't, unless you delete it after 24 hours. No, no, you don't want Capcom to go out of business. You would be personally responsible. That would be bad. Don't do it. I don't think I played the Japanese

ROM, believe or not, but I did download the English ROM. Like, in 2000, early 2000, I had zero money, so I just downloaded a lot of Game Boy advanced games and did my best that way. But, yeah, So I downloaded GASP, Mega Man Zero One. I did eventually get it.

And yeah, I kind of got into it because, like you two, it was natural progression. I was still really deep into Mega Man X. I was part of the Mega Man BB. My nickname was Red Draco. I don't know if you remember me from that name at all. It does actually ring a bell wordly enough, but yeah. I did post there a lot. I got into fights with some people.

It was a really interesting environment. It was really interesting environment. If you ever have a chance, go to usgamer.net, and I still have a lot of, like, I wrote about me moderating old communities from way back in the day. And that was always a, that was a gas. Like, imagine social media except it's smaller, much, much smaller. So it's not too terrible, just slightly terrible. And now you understand why social media is terrible. So just for a brief intro about what Mega Man Zero is specifically, like, where it fits. As I said, it's done in 2002. It was commissioned by Capcom for, from Intercreates, which I don't think Intrcrate's had much of a name going for itself until it kind of got a hold of the Mega Men Zero series and was allowed to, almost like, it was given almost free reign by Capcom with a few exceptions.

Number one, of course, Inifune wanted Zero to be in there because Zero had zero. has to exist everywhere in the Inifuniverse. And also, I can't remember if it was Capcom or the team to create that wanted to kind of make the divide between good and evil, a little bit more blurred than it was in the X games and the in the original series. So that's why you have, just from the very start, it's a very interesting premise where Zero Awakens in a future that's just completely trash because that tends to happen in Mega Man games. And he finds out that his former partner, Mega Man X, is the bad guy, quote unquote, bad guy. And of course, you're like, if you know anything, the slightest thing about the Mega Man series is say to yourself, wow, what's that all about? And so you just kind of set out and see what happens. How did you guys feel when you were like, holy crap, X?

I was, I thought it was neat. I thought it was a cool twist until we learned it was a copy. Yeah. Okay, well, still neat, but gosh, I mean, I think that was the original premise, too, that they were going to, it was going to be X. And I think it was like a couple months before they shipped the game, they decided to change it up a bit and they made him a copy. They didn't want to make X a villain marketing purposes, whatever. But no, I really love the, just the idea behind it, the duality. of Eurofighting's best friend,

a copy of his best friend. It's so anime, but the best kind of anime. Were you surprised to it or how you spoiled yourself? It was, I mean, it was surprising, but being relatively cynical,

and I was just like, well, I mean, this won't really be it, because there'll be some excuse for why it's not. I mean, having said that,

I don't want to, actually, I don't want to jump ahead, but there are things that happen in this series that are quite shocking, irrespective of that. It also kind of makes sense,

in a way, the X might become like that if you follow his arc. Because, I mean, in the, in the X games around that time, he's going, he's trying to be sort of full pacifist, but these terrible things keep happening. It keeps getting worse and worse. And there were all manner of reasons why he could turn bad for any manner of reasons in the universe, why that could happen. So it wasn't unfeasible, but I guess I was just too cynical for that. But it was still cool.

I still liked it. yeah they were originally going to make him the bad guy as we just went over and I can't remember the reason why Brian you probably onto something with the marketing but also I think they thought it was too cynical to make him the bad guy even though as he said Stuart it really does make sense uh his many attempts that pacifism fail and they fail spectacularly by the time we get to the L4s which we will kind of touch on in a bit and I kind of like the I'm very split on the idea like on one hand yeah it's it's raw it's it's it's powerful in its own way, but it's also kind of sad. Like, X is a very beat-on-upon character, and that just seems like it unravels everything he was, everything he was meant to be, everything Dr. Light intended for him. And it's cool, but in the long term, maybe it wouldn't have been the best idea. So I don't really hold any grudge against Integrate slash Capcom for saying, okay, you know what, he was a copy this whole time.

Ah, we're joking. Yeah. I feel like a lot of people, when they line up the protagonist, of the Mega Man games. They always say, like, oh, X is boring. He's very... Right. He's the Superman, they say.

Exactly. So had they gone the route of, if he was not a copy, and this was legit X, and he went to that more villainous route, I feel like people's perception of X as a character would have been a lot different. Right. It could have led to some more interesting character development. I don't know, but, yeah, it's a shame, honestly. I wish we could have seen that.

Yeah, he was involved heavily with, say, at the end of X-5, he tells one of his underlings he's going to create Elysium or, I can't remember he used the word Elysium or Eden or something, but it was implied that at the time when he said that, we thought, okay, he's going to be, this is the lead into the legend series because the Megamand Legends 2 has Elysium and also Megamon Legends 1 has Eden. But no, it actually turns out he was talking about the formation of Neo-Arcadia, which is the city that Zero kind of fights through or outside of into. And it's supposed to be a paradise for humans. It really, really sucks for Reploids. And when actually you start the game, Shell, the scientist, wakes up Zero and says, yeah, your friend X is going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs and he's killing all the reploids. and reploids live in the Arcadia

like a miserable life, all the humans kind of like lord over them. And things do suck for humans in the Arcadia eventually by the fourth game. Maybe we'll get into that if we have time. But yeah, I thinking about Mega Man Zero, I think one of the things that made it unique as well

is that I don't recall ever selecting the eight bosses, do you? Like the infamous Mega Man menu stage. You get that in the subsequent games, but not the first one. It was not the traditional menu, but you can sort if there are some missions

that you can choose the order of I think so there is that but it's not really the same thing it's like it's interestingly sort of similar to oh no no I'm actually getting confused no it is

to that thing sorry I was going to say it's like Mega Man X one but then I remember no that's just the wild the Sigma stage is so you're pulling it's yeah it's just a menu basically it's not the same as it used to be it wasn't too distinct of you know you didn't know

what boss would be at the end of that route which like you said like a list of missions it was kind of like a crapshoot in your first playthrough in so many ways in so many ways that game on the first playthrough is brutal

crap shoot but yeah yeah and it's if you screw up and you will it's not very forgiving but you did have your standard robot bosses and the thing was very interesting about the Mega Man Zero robot master There was a slash, you can't really call the mavericks.

I mean, to us, they're mavericks, but to the humans, they're heroes. They're all kind of based loosely on, like, religious figures. You have Anubis, the god of judgment in Egyptian myth. You have Hanuman, of course, the monkey god from Hinduism. I'm trying to remember who else there was. There was also the elephant, Ganesh, yeah. These were great names, aren't they? That's so cool.

They went back to the Japanese naming. Seriously, when I was like in my early teens, mid-teens. this was the coolest thing ever. This game on every level was just unimaginably cool. The whole idea of having bosses designed off to like mythological figures is just awesome. All the names are awesome. All the blood of error is awesome. All their attack patterns that are so extreme are just so cool.

This game just ruled. It was so good. Now with hindsight, I have some problems with it, but I loved it. And I still do love it because it was so important to me. But yeah, sorry to interrupt you. I just got excited about Megamensero. No, the whole point of this part. to get as excited about Megamon Zero as possible.

You don't understand. This whole series is just like the peak of action gaming for me personally. I don't think it's actually the peak of action gaming, but for me it is like everything is just chasing this, everything that came after it, like all the things that look like they're going to be at like Gunn Vault. They're just not as good. Yeah. So good.

So good. I was actually going to just kind of, to segue into that, just, did you guys find it too hard? Because infamously, the game, one of the reasons is considered so hard is because you have your rank that you're rated with every, at the end of every stage. And if you use cyber elves, you're kind of like helpers, like your sub tanks and whatnot even, like they, your ranking goes down. And I can't remember if there's any benefit for getting like the S rank and every. stage, but I sure as God never did. I don't, I'm not sure if there is in this game. There is, I think the only unlockable thing is the Jackson elf you can get by using all

the other cyber roles. Right. Um, I, I know that if you have a high rank, the bosses have additional, at least one additional attack, I think. Oh, right. Right. Um, which I think is a kind of a, maybe a bit of a flaw because it's adding like risk without the reward, so to speak.

But then I guess the reward is you get to say, look, I've got a big A or big S on my health bar. I mean, this game is very formative. I think the rank thing is rubbing up against some of the other systems, like the whole leveling up system, which is just a complete misfire for me. Like, the later games, I think, just give you all your moves.

Like three and four, just like, yeah, we know that was stupid. Forget it. It never happened. Brush it under the part, so to speak. But in this game, it just means that, like,

I know you're not supposed to do this, but every time I play this game through, once I've done the first mission, I go back to the state of the first mission, and I just swipe those constantly respawning spike tower things until I get a full max level of the sword. Yeah, I think I do that too. Which is a really cheap way of doing it,

but it's also way more fun to play with those moves than it is without. It's still nails hard even when you have all your moves. So it doesn't feel like cheating. That's not cheating. No, never. Well, cheating's using the GameShark like I did. Well, I mean, you say that, but I mean, I was using safe states. I was using save states. I think we're all safe scumming.

It wasn't until I got them on cartridge that I had to actually, you know, get good. And even then, like, the best I could do is an A rank, the S rank, like, no. I mean, maybe back in the day, yes, but no, not anymore. Not when I tried to get back to it. I'm not getting S ranks anymore. Those days I can't. Yeah, my reflexes are mush. There's no way.

You're talking about like, you know, your, you know, your A and your S beside your safe state. I'm like, look at me. I have a D and I'm so proud of it. But I was kind of playing more for the story. and Stuart, your talk about, like, you know, the extra attacks brought to mind the generals, Fafner or Fephner. It was always mass-translated, so I say Fafner, Harpua, Leviathan, and Phantom. He was a freaking coolest. But I think about how, yeah, the Fafner in particular had a extra move called, shoot, what was it, like, basically it was all based on the Sodom and Gamara thing.

he had the canon's named Sodom and Gomor and I'm like, oh, that's so cool and edgy. So I understand where you're coming from, but yeah, that attack hit hurt pretty hard. Some of them, I don't think it's so much in 0-1, but some of the A-slash-S attacks actually make the fights easier, which I think is quite funny. So I guess that's a reward.

I mean, I know a particular example, there's one that's a boss called Death Dance Mantis or something in the third game. And his attack is he drops a boulder and then slashes it in the three pieces, and the three pieces kind of go at a short angle towards you. And if you're on the wall, it can't hit you. And it's just like two free hits. And I'm just like, thanks, game, for rewarding me. I mean, I think this game, this first one, has a bit of an issue with its difficulty,

which is that it punishes you for mitigating it rather than mitigating it too much. The later ones kind of figure that out, and they let you use the elves to an extent without ranking penalties. But this game is just like, you use an elf. No, you're done. Like, forget it. Your ranks toilet. child you're done yeah and this game like i mean just i don't think this even has sub tanks without

punishment the later games have yeah you're right sub tanks and this one it's just like no you've got that one small health bar and if you do anything about it then we're taking the ranks away from me i totally guess yeah i guess the solution is to not care about ranking but it's really hard when after every mission it's like f you suck you're terrible go to hell you're not saving the world at all In fact, one of the things that really was a huge criticism and it still lingers to this day is that if you failed at a stage, you could not retry it, as I recall. I'm not sure. You could get game over.

I think you could choose to give up and that would erase it. But I think you could just say, no, I'm not giving up or something like that. I don't think it was quite as extreme as that. But I might be mistaken because I have never failed at the stage because I'm just too skilled. Of course you have. You recall, Brian, because I don't. I think you had a limited number of retries that you could retry. If you ran out, you were forced to go back to the title screen and restart your save over.

Like you couldn't respect for the mission. You had to go to the title screen. Yeah, that was something else. And if I recall correctly, like you're like before each stage, you were kind of given an incentive to do it. Like, oh, hey, this reploid did I be crushed by a garbage compactor? you better get him before he's completely messed to a pancake. And you fail. And then Shell's like, oh, yeah, he's dead.

Sorry, next stage. Give him to try. There was actually an escort mission because, of course, there was. And I remember laughing my ass off because you're escorting like this hurt reploid back to base throughout the desert, which is just crawling with every enemy you can imagine, especially these eagles, which keep dive boning him. And every time he gets dive boned, he kind of cowers and, like, try to protect him. himself and I'm just sitting on the sidelines laughing my ass off as he's getting pecked away by like robot vultures it was great I remember the sound he makes distinctly yeah I'm going to see if I can recreate the sound that level oh man that level sucks I really hit that level I mean it's one thing that's an escort mission it's not the thing that the screen is so zoomed in that you cannot possibly see those eagles coming no you can't see a thing I swear they designed it for some kind of development

kit that had a much larger screen in this day. They must have known that it was impossible. The later games got better for that. They were still hard, but they didn't have these things dive on you in every level, which you couldn't possibly see coming. Like, even level two or level, like, the first main level, you've got these

rolling spike ball things, and they're so fast that they're on you as soon as they've appeared. And it's like, they take, I think, like, a full combo to kill. So I'm like, what do you expect me to do? You've got to jump the internet on the screen, or you're going to take a hit. It's,

man, that game does not let you off easy, even at the start. I think it's the trash compactor level is the first real level and it's got Aztec Falcon as the boss and Aztec Falcons really difficult. Yeah,

yes right, you're the dick. And you've got nothing. You're not going to be leveled up to have a charge attack by that point unless you really are just standing there and losing rank. So God knows.

Oh, man, memories. It makes me, it always makes me think like, you know, who are they trying to market the zero one and two in the u.s the marketing was very much you know like it's mega time you know all that stuff oh god that commercial he's called the blue bomber kids he's blue yeah it's speaking as a kid at the time like this was frustrating as hell like nowhere near as as like as like i don't know x4 x5 was but like you know what were they expecting just you know

kids can't play this it's just so hard yeah as I said I saved scum although I was glad I did because personally going into near Arcadia the first stage that's one of my favorite Mega Man stages ever especially one of my favorite Mega Men boss stages because it's it's pretty much like we get very few glimpses into Neo Arcadia within that game or any other game and you kind of come from the wasteland which is of course blasted away by the elf wars which again we'll get into in a minute And you get into, you come into like this garden that apparently belongs to X. And you're like, wow, this asshole has like a whole ass garden.

And like you really get the impression that everyone outside near Arcadia really is suffering. So I just like that kind of visual storytelling in a game. And as I recall, there was that that stag beetle or something boss that kicked my ass. That guy's cool. It was pretty cool. The whole stage is very cool. I love music. I'm going to keep saying that about everything in the game.

That was cool. because it was. I sound like butthead or something. That was cool. It just was such a cool game. And Neil Arcadia, the buses of those stages were just so awesome and interesting

and different and strange. Yeah. Like the rainbow devil was just the cool, the best imaginable take on the devil concept from the Mega Man series. The standing sort of Golem thing made out of constantly color-changing slime. Just such a great idea

as a take on the yellow devil, the black devil, all those bosses. Really interesting. He knocked out of the park with these designs. They're just incredible. Is that the artist? I couldn't remember their name and I felt guilty because I have the artwork and everything. I really love the art from the series. So the artist is Tarunapayama and he has a very distinct style that kind of carries on into the Gunvolt series today.

But I think most people still remember him. for Mega Man Zero because it's just, well, for one thing, Zero's design changes completely, which is a very controversial move. Yeah. I'm still not sure how I feel about it, especially when it's revealed in Mega Man Zero3 that zero is actually in a new body, but his old body still looks like the Mega. That was such a weird twist because of that. They could have made that look like maybe even the PlayStation 1,0.

And that would have made more sense. But no, they opted, they chose top two. They fully doubled down. And I kind of respect them for that. Continually, what? Continued, indeed, yeah. I know we're kind of sipping ahead here to Mega Man Zero 3, but God damn, I sort of cool fight when you're up against Evil Zero.

And his quote in Japanese is, I am the Messiah. It's like, God damn. Again, that's so anime, but the good type of anime. I wish that was the kind of thing we had in Mega Man X when Zero went Maverick. and like just lost his mind. It could have been so much cooler and it was kind of cool in Zero 3. So I'm glad they made it up a bit.

Eliminate Clutter and embrace the freedom of HyperX wireless gaming gear for PC and console. Power through all the great monthly PlayStation Plus games with the Cloud Stinger Core Wireless for PlayStation. enjoy lightweight comfort with reliable wireless freedom, so you won't miss plot points when you head to the fridge. High-quality HyperX wireless products can be found at most fine retailers, as well as online at Target, Best Buy, and Amazon, or you can shop for them directly at hyperX.com and HP.com. O'S! We're the Spirit Hunters, and we're a show that treats Hunter Hunter

and Yu Hakisho's author as the center of the universe. Some weeks we do linguistic analysis. The Chinese meaning of this character is to smelt or refine, But so the changed meaning, in Japanese, it means, to temper. Other times, we get absolutely smashed. So we take one shot every time. Yuske uses the Raygun. One hour later.

This is the least coherent episode. I think your heart is hot. Check us out at the HyperX Podcast Network. In a world with too many comic book podcast, and not enough deep dives into your favorite superheroes. One podcast stands as a... shining beacon in a world of pain and darkness. Yeah, yeah, darkness.

Yeah, lots of darkness, a bunch of dark stuff. Superhero stuff you should know. That's us. Andrew, why are you talking like that? I'm the movie voice guy now. I'm the new movie voice guy. And it's time for you to listen to superhero stuff you should know. Uh, so we have, like, unused concept art, unmade scripts, unmade superhero movies, all check us out at superhero stuff you should know.

Ben, you should do a movie voice, guy voice, guy voice. Uh, I would, but I think we're out of time. Superhero stuff you should know, part of the HyperX podcast network. Part of the HyperX podcast network. I just said then. Eliminate clutter and embrace the freedom of HyperX Wireless Gaming Gear for PC and console. Power through all the great monthly PlayStation Plus games with the Cloud StingerCore Wireless for PlayStation. Enjoy lightweight comfort with reliable wireless freedom, so you won't miss plot points when you head to the fridge.

High quality HyperX Wireless products can be found at most fine retailers, as well as online at Target, MicroCenter, Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart, or shop directly at HyperX.com and HP.com. So we're talking about the So we talked about the difficulty. saved scums me most of it. Zero two, as I recall, really kind of gave us some mercy. It also went back to a more traditional setup where you had your Maverick menu and he chose from it. It also was an al-a-2 was kind of an allegory for the Iraq war. And by God, I know writers who use subjects and they're all powers. That was, that had to do with, first of all, you had the

character elpeggio who was zero has been in the context of things zero is gone for a while after the events of megaman zero one he's kind of revived after a very hard fight by x he does kind of he does come back to us as real x but we find out he's he's a cyber elf and cyber elves are kind of harder to describe in the context of this game like they're their programs that reploids can use to enhance themselves. There are a whole thing that start this whole war and by God is confusing, but the important thing is that X is one of these cyber elves and he watches over zero, but zero is still gone for a long, long time.

In comes Elpeggio, who should be called Elpice, but they didn't translate it properly. I love that guy. Oh, he's so great when the opening of Zero, too, when Zero finally comes back and Alpezeo is like, I want to shake your hand. And Zero is just like, no. No, no. I'm good. But 02, as I said, it was a little bit more forgiving.

I think sub-tanks came back, if not then, then in 0-3. They learned a lot from 0-1's mistakes in the second game. And to the point that I think that 0-2 is a great example of Capcom, again, one-upping itself from a first game to a second game to get with a Mega-Man 2, get it with Mega-Man Legends 2. Megaman X-2, I still think the first one's a lot better, but Mega-Man 0-2. also kind of helped establish the story for Mega Man Zero. And, well, let's try to get into it here.

First of all, a lot of people don't know that Mega Man has a timeline. You guys knew that, I'm sure. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it makes perfect sense and has no holes in it. No holes whatsoever. Tider than the Hoover Dam.

Go and weep, Zelda timeline. We have a winner here. So, as I said, it takes place after Megam. man X, that's easy enough to suss out. But before, like, kind of in between the events of Mega Man X and Mega Man Zero, a lot of people don't know what happened besides, here's Neo Arcadia and they suck. There was a whole war called the Elf Wars. And what that was is, I'm going to have to really son this up quickly, but because long

story short, it deserved its own damn game. It tells you how the Maverick Wars became the Elf Wars, which then became the end of the world and the use of cyber tech, you know, the use of the cyber elf technology. Basically, the Sigma virus, which causes all that havoc in Mega Man X is sealed within the quote-unquote mother elf. And that significantly reduces maverick attacks. But here comes Dr. Weill, a human scientist who is named Dr. Vile in Japan. So they kind of painted themselves into a corner there, given, like, Mega Man X has vile. So that's pretty fun.

Yeah, I never knew if he was meant to be Dr. Veal as in Wiley or Dr. Vile as in Vile. I never really got that. yeah i people have speculated on dr wheel being dr wiley because dr wiley does appear in the x series as like me you know who cyber ghosts as well as like in in actual bodies and he's a major part of x5 which was which was incredibly cool so he does haunt the series dr wiley has haunted the series from the start and by god he's a boatman and megaman legend let's drown that bastard right now before i can start shit again he really looks like so resigned in magmael legend's like i don't want any trouble now. I'm just a boat salesman. I hate to see and everything in it. We actually had

an incident in the Mega Man BB, Mega Man Outposts Mega Man, one of those sites, one of the really, really old sites where someone, the proprietor of the site, was writing about Dr. Weill, you know, just blah, blah, he's just character of blah, blah, he does that. Apparently there's a naturalist, a doctor named Dr. Weill, and he wrote to the site saying, stop calling me an evil scientist and we were mightily confused for a second until we realized what had happened and then we just lost our shit. Oh my God, that's hilarious. It was great.

They received a letter later from Mega Man saying, excuse me, while I have achieved many great things, I have never been in the eclectic. Sorry, that's just a rubbish joke ever. Oh, that would have been great. Writing him back is like Dr. Light, I am the father of robots. How dare you? But interesting thing, again, about Mega Men Zero is basically our big bad is a human, like in, well, the first game, really, for a series, rather. But Dr. Wheel basically wanted power to make a new world order, blah, blah, blah.

He corrupted the mother elf to turn Reploid Maverick on a massive scale. He was granted her permission to restore order with the blessing of the government, and he used Omega. Again, that's the copy of Zero's body, bringing everyone under subjugation. and X and Zero had to unite to explode him because it was a lot and unfortunately most of the Elf Wars and all of this supplemental stuff is told through radio dramas

which are all in Japanese and that goes for a lot of the story for Megam Zero sadly like did you guys ever get desperate enough to kind of listen to them and try to suss out what they were doing there? Yes, there's a lot of screen. I understand. No, I had the soundtrack's spot.

didn't know Japanese, so I just go, oh, hmm, of course, yes. Yes, quite. No, they're actually, actually really interesting. If you look at the Mega Man knowledge base or the Mega Man Weiki or whatever it is now, they do have translations of them. And at first they were kind of rough. I think there was basically machine translations, but I think people have gone back and smoothed it over and made it much more readable. And what's really fascinating is that something I, am a little bit regretful that they didn't include in the Mega Man Zero series, the collection that just came out, I would have liked to see some of these supplemental radio dramas and stuff kind of, you know, translated. It has a lot of great art that is, we have some low resolution images of some of it, but not all of it. And I would have loved to see that in the collection. I would have loved to see like the translations of the story because when you get to the last story or one of the last ones, it tells you all about how effectively after Mega Man, zero four there is actually peace between rep boys and humans and it's a lasting piece as far as we know

to the point that like both species kind of become one in megaman zx and i'm sure we'll get into that in a moment but it's a it's a shame that we there is an actual ending a peaceful ending to all of this war and megaman x never really gets to see it zero i don't know what happened after four nobody really knows so yeah i think that would have been a good conclusion what about you guys i long i like think of zero four as being the conclusion. I mean, that is, I guess, but I mean, I'm not crazy about the

biometal stuff in general in ZX because it feels like they're digging him up after his death. I mean, there was a lot of talk back when zero four dropped that he wasn't dead. He was like in the shadow, in the distance and the final picture. And he's not in the shadow.

Yeah. Dude's dead. He's a corpse. And the ending of zero four is just so perfect on every level that I mean when you mentioned about Dr. Real being human the fact that he pulls out as his like almost trump card at zero like ah you can't kill me because I'm a human I'm one of the humans and zero is just like I don't give a shit and it's the best thing ever in the whole series just that moment of just I don't care yeah it's like the perfect like mic drop and then the mic drop ends with him killing him

death. So, yeah, it's flawless. But anything after that, yeah, it's, it almost cheapens the kind of, uh, I don't know what to call it, the tragedy of it with, with, like, with that lovely song that they took out of the English version because the sky. Oh, they did. Those bastards. Um, just like, I think that's the last image you get is her looking up at

the stars of just like, after just like ugly crying for like four minutes of credits. She does. She cries with all. Yeah. Yeah. This is, uh, um, just a kind of inform no doubt baffled readers this is we're talking about shell the heroine i suppose of the series she is the human who wakes up zero and basically begs for his help immediately so zero doesn't even have time to like get like sleep out of his eyes and she's like oh god we're being pursued by by mavericks help us and so he does and there's very quickly a relationship kind of like

established between them that's uh well it's not exactly mutual i think but she definitely has the hots for him. As a lot of humans have the hots for the robots in these games. And I totally understand why. That's a very realistic part of this game. Now thinking about the way that the internet culture is these days, everyone wants to boff robots. And I'm pretty sure Shell grew pretty close to zero. Yeah. Yeah. We aspired to be her. We all aspired to be her. She, Shell is also interesting because she is, what, 14? And she apparently created copy X? Oh, something like that. Like she was in a test tube, like a test tube baby to make be really smart or something. And then yeah, she built him. Yeah, because as I recall,

Entercreates made her at, should be 14. And then they realized, oh, she would have been like six years old and she made copy X then. And so instead of aging her up a bit, they just said, oh, okay, no, she would genetically engineer. She would be super smart. Yes, she created to make an ex and she was six. I mean, it turned out to be evil, so it certainly done that good of a job, I guess. Yeah, it all went kind of badly because I'm trying to remember why she created

copy X. I think his ex disappeared shortly after the founding of the Arcadia, and he was, of course, a symbol of hope. And so she made copy X to kind of replace him and hope nobody would notice, like, when a parent places dead pet with another one. Here's your problem.

Someone set this thing to evil. Evil. So that's when things went badly because I understand it, Neo Arcadia was relatively peaceful for humans and Replites alike until a copy X said, hey, you know what, y'all, y'all jerks are the problem, like pointing at the reploids. Like, you're the ones who go a maverick and you have gotten a maverick for many, many years. So therefore, we are keeping a really close eye on you and will probably kill you if you give us half an excuse to do so.

And that's when things started to really suck for reploids in New Arcadia. A lot of them fled. That's why a lot of fled with Shell. She was kind of established a base on the outskirts and helps them however she can. And it's all kind of useless until Zero comes and turns the tide of the war. And, yeah, I understand why she fell in love with him. I mean, who wouldn't either cut such a dashing figure, even with his like two-word dialogue, two-word sentences. All that's silky hair, too.

Oh, that's silky hair. What is it with Zero on that hair? To this day, here's a little bit of trivia for you. Many, many years ago, like back when I was on the Mega Man, like, not even on the message, This was before it. I had a good friend who wrote into Capcom, USA, of course, asking, why does Zero have hair? Like that. Is he a girl?

And they responded, no, he just doesn't cut his hair because it's a symbol of strength. He's based on the Vikings. And that's complete bullshit. But it's a really cool reason. I like that. I think the real reason is, you know, if they're saying, it looks cool, buy my NFTs. Oh, no. I'm sad now.

I love how everyone forgot about Mighty Number 9. And they're like, NFTs, this guy's gone too far. I had to review 90-number-9. That was the bridge too far for me. I genuinely quite like Mighty Number 9, but we'll save that for bad games. We love Volume 2. Oh, God, I want to be part of that.

I got to hear this. That's got some off-screen deaths, you know. Not all the backers did. Never mind, that's not funny. Feel free to cut that. that wasn't funny I think it's kind of funny it was kind of funny

I still caught myself off because I felt back Okay, so let's talk a little bit about zero three. Like, why is it, why is it your favorite out at all? I'm like, I'll go into my favorite in a second, but you tell me yours first. Oh, gosh. For me, it's definitely the music. And I don't know, everything just at that point, Capcom kind of streamlined the gameplay, the systems,

and it just feels very solid. and from a story standpoint it's just come on like it's the best it's perfect and that was zero three right zero three yeah yeah i i give it to zero three although that this is kind of it's kind of one of those things where it's my old opinion and now with reflection i saw one to like was it my favorite now i think it is as as brian said it's the first one where they really overhauled the set systems because too well it was a big overhaul they still kept in the whole leveling up thing which was a pointless waste of effort, energy. This game just removes it like,

now forget it, you can charge from the beginning. We'll just rebalance the game to fit around. Yeah. It has the coolest boss's mavericks, like Cubot Fox Star, which is the sort of Nine Tails boss, has probably the coolest attacks I've ever seen in any game ever, I would argue. Just so much fun to avoid, to learn and avoid. There's one which is, I don't remember the exact name,

name, but it's like a Cerberus, it's like a three, three-haged dog. Yeah, that was an awesome design, which almost like has these, the sort of two other dogs that almost like are his arms that kind of almost unscrew from the arms and then come at you. Yeah, yeah, the shoulder pads. Yes, it's, sorry, the shoulder pads, yes, you're absolutely right. It's ridiculously cool. He looks a little bit like Frost Man from Megham Fanon, which is weird, but his name is Tratista Calvarian. Jesus Christ. I'm not surprised like a, it sounds like, I don't know what it sounds like there's who else is there

there's a bunny I love the rabbit oh yeah I remember the bunny the bunny the bunny is cool especially because you spend the level chasing after them as well which is fun that's right he just kind of hops away from he's like

shoulder the white rabbit oh yeah I never realized that that's a pretty cool reference but yeah it's just a great set of bosses and interesting bosses like the I think blazing flizzard for some reason that's right

whose tail you can cut off which is just a cute little thing it's like cutting the trunk off of Flame Mammoth and Mega Man X it just turns off one of their attacks I think the whole thing just feels I think it's the shortest one you can blitz through it really quickly

but that's rubbish because it has way more bosses than the others it must not be the shortest farmer I don't know why I think it is it's just so breezy and kind of almost chill to play because it's not quite so insanely difficult maybe it feels shorter because there's so much variety in there

because you re-fight several 0-1 mavericks in it you fight Hannah Machine and a couple of others so yeah there's a lot going on in that game oh what a cool game oh yeah oh go on sorry no I was going to think another

another reason why it's great is it has the whole secret disc system which is just a really fun thing to have in a game it's almost like having trophies in Smash Bros but it's just like look at all the cool things you can look at and you get like little bits of information and a lot from them as I recall Yeah, really cool system.

Just a top-tier game. The only thing about, the only things about it that I don't like are, it's probably one of the more annoying ones to get high rank on because a couple of the stages have quite a fiddly mechanics based around their missions. Like the rabbit, children in a rabbit stage, is really difficult to hit the switches before they get destroyed. And the boss, who's like an eel whose name I forget,

you have to memorize the color of some door, these nine doors that were arranged in certain patterns and go through the right doors otherwise you get punished and that's not really fun to replay but other than that it's pretty much top to bottom great I think

I also don't like the fact they lock some of the mini games behind the most absurd possible requirements like getting 100 points on every single stage no one's doing that unless they're out of their minds and by the time you've done that you've got what this rubbish mini game where you chop logs

it's not worth the hassle For that, if you prove you've done that, you should take a picture of your GBA, you send of the Capcom, and they just give you $1,000 or something. It's not worth it. Give you $1,000 or they make it. They'll make a new X game for you.

That'd be great. Was 03, I think I reviewed that for OneUp.com, RIP way back in the day. Was that the one with Hellbat? Yes. Okay, so that was, I remember his music was so awesome. Yeah, that was.

It was a really great soundtrack for all of the games had great sound considering the GBA chip was it really worked with the chip and didn't try to do that horrible thing where they would take SNES scores and shove them into the chip and re-release it as a GBA port. That was pretty sad, but no.

Yeah, they had really great bespoke soundtracks. I'd argue that the 04 soundtrack may be overused the certain guitar sound that didn't work for me, but it had a weird, kind of do do do do do kind of sound that I wasn't crazy about but yeah but otherwise no it was great they're fantastic soundtracks and I think they've been fully like remastered re-recorded and everything so oh yeah they're very enjoyable to this day I think that the intro for the intro bit for

Mega Man zero two when he does that whole thing we throws off his cloak and says let's go the intro that the music there is iconic like that is basically his theme like the theme of the series almost and yeah that's a that's a great moment i actually went left the first time i did that and just kind of kept killing the endless stream of robots that come for you until zero says this isn't fun anymore yeah i love that it's like a little e-stroke that you immediately found it's just like nope that's the sort of thing that uh yeah that's i was trained to do that by donkey con country always go left always exactly donkey con country thank you very much always go left get that one-up balloon and see that that that letter from kroll saying ar har har i

kidnapped your banana hoard or whatever the stupid thing i did i think actually my favorite was zero And you're absolutely right. I think that 03 plays better. But I think 03 and 4 link up to really give you information about what the hell is going on in this world. And that's also important. 03, as I recall, had a sunken library. And I'm like, wow, this is some heck of the dolphin shit right here because that's, I don't know if they were inspired by, but man, it sure did remind me of it.

And that's when you learn about the elf wars and the rest of it. And one thing about Zero's story, I have to say, the first game's not translated very well, is better in subsequent games. but it's still a little rough because they had to fit a lot of text in those little stupid boxes and they didn't really use a good font for it but how small can you make it too they were kind of trap between the devil and the deep blue sea

but zero four I think did a really good job with his localization that's when I mentioned earlier about how Neo Arcadia sucks for reploids by the time you get to zero four it really sucks for everybody because Dr. Weill has he came back he's been like infiltrating in government the whole time. Ha, ha, ha, evil. And he, having always wanted that new world order,

he finally starts going about and setting that into motion. So the game starts with humans fleeing from Neo-Arcadia in a caravan. And they've heard that, and this is a really good callback to a Megamon X game. In X5, when the Eurasia colony fell, it kind of, I guess it's nature systems or whatever, kind of spilled out and started kind of rebuilding the nature in that area so the humans have an oasis that they are going to run to in the wasteland. And they're being pursued because, of course, Dr. Wheel's like, no, everybody has to be under my rule. And that's when you meet up with zero and zero like helps the caravan. And you don't, for a, for a series, and I'm talking about the whole series, a whole Megamon series,

for a series that's supposed to be about the conflict between robots and humans. You never see humans in the series until, you know, barring no Dr. Kane, Dr. Light, who had Dr. Wiley, until finally you get a whole settlement of humans in Mega Man 04 and they're like, you helped us, but we still hate you. We hate all reploids. And that was a really, really cool twist. I love that. Yeah. It's interesting you say that.

Like, we really don't see any humans like throughout X whatsoever. But yeah, everybody's kind of being a dick. Everyone's a huge dick when you arrive and they get better because you help them more and more. and you do find some friendly ones like I'll get into this in a second but there is a way to link up the entire Mega Man timeline through one character practically

and in Zero 4 when you talk to some of the humans in the game like they will talk about their relation to the particular character and how their grandparents interacted with him or whatever that character is Andrew who goes back to the first Mega Man X

sorry Mega Man Zero game and I forgot all about it that and it's like I'm learning it for the first time again and it's really cool. Sorry, I couldn't not react to that. No, no, because he is a really cool character. I wrote a whole thing on US gamer. If you want to go back and read that sometime, he's the guy you go to if you want to put the timeline together, not perfectly, but the way it works is that in the first game, he tells you he fell in love with a human. They lived together for a while and she got older

and he didn't get older because he's, he's a reploid, but he designed, he basically remodeled his body to become older so she could you know they could she would stop resenting him and she died but he stayed old unless you i think in magma's zero three you can make him young again like if he used the uh the e card but uh sort of puts a bit of a um but like it stops to the whole story doesn't it yeah pretty much but uh char remember in in zero two like he tells you about like how he met this woman and this is obviously before everything went to hell for new arcadia then he kind of goes on to describe how he taught children like he taught human children and and you meet some of the descendants of those students in 04.

And yeah, he's just a really fascinating character in that he links everything up. And he's even mentioned in the ZX series because he mentions him thinking in Mega Man X, in Mega 03 that he was a baker. And in Mega Man ZX, you find someone who's great, great, great, great, great grandfather worked with a Reploid who knew how to bake bread really well. And apparently, for some reason, Andrew knew how to bake bread really well. So he just like a really neat. callback to a really neat link to the whole timeline and I don't know if this is true or not but I heard that he was like named after the character from bicentennial man which I've never seen RAP and Robin Williams I've never seen it did you guys see it no I remember seeing the box like a blockbuster all the time

cool but I think you're right a viral tweet going around from Japan that drew that comparison yeah because I think the movie, like I said, I never saw it, was about a robot who falls in love with a human, and he changes his body so that he can be with her. I think he became human instead of vice versa. But either way, in fact, I think in Gun Vault, he's got a reference where one of the characters says she's watching movie or reading a story about, you know, a robot who fell in love with a human and they couldn't be together or something like that. And so it's just like, damn, anti-creates loves this guy. And I kind of love them because they love this guy. he wasn't in zero four though like I said you met some of his descendants but you did have the heroine for that story who was nej and she was in love with one of the reploids in charge of wheels nonsense in zero four

and he since they're on opposite sides like he kidnaps her to try to get her to see reason and she tries to get him to see reason and eventually this character named craft which is a funny name Yeah, it's a funny name. Just nukes all of Neuracadian and kills millions. And he thinks he's killing Whale in the process,

but he's just like, I'm not going to be bossed around by anyone anymore. And just that's the end of that. And there were some survivors, and they all went over to the Area Zero, as it was called the Oasis. But, Dan, that's kind of hardcore. And it's like your boyfriend gets so infatuated with you

that he just nukes the entirety of human and robot civilization. Good job. I like that game a lot. It's a really cool game. I think my, the only thing I would say that's, so it's detriment and maybe I'm being unreasonable. I think that the character designs were actually done by someone else this time around for this one game. And you can kind of tell because they're all really dumb, like there's a chicken in there. No, no, I love them.

They're all based on mythicalical characters. Yeah, like I assume that's like a cockatress or something. That's a copatress. There's a minotaur. No, I'm being unfair. They are cool. They are cool. They just seem at least a bit more dumb than the other.

They're not quite as cool looking to me. Or their attacks weren't quite so fun to avoid. Plus, I'm salty because there's one called Fenry Lunar Edge, who has just one attack, but I still can't touch. Oh, no wonder you're pissed up. You're playing this game for like 20 years. Is that the butterfly one? The butterfly one is a fairy based as Cytania, the fairy queen.

So that's another reference to, well, Shakespeare in this instance. But, yeah, she's a fairy queen. The one, Lunarge is like a wolf, ice wolf guy. He has this, they have this one attack where they jump all over the screen. And every time they do, they launch projectiles in different directions. And it's just, it's really hard to dodge, especially when you're playing on the hard mode with the difficult weather. So the floor is governed in ice. I think that was also the game with had a Pegasus.

But it was like, help, I have no arms. Like it had spikies. That was kind of dumb, I have to admit. It had like spiky appendages instead of like hoofs or something. normal. Yeah, and shot lightning everywhere. And then also there was there was wind in the arena that could blow you strip the platforms if you're playing on I should probably explain the hard mode actually. The way the game distinguished the missions instead of having missions again, it just had like you can either play easy

mode in which the weather is pleasant or you can play hard mode in which the weather is like the kind of weather that makes it harder. But they were actually more interesting than that because it was more like salt titanium stage. If you had the hot whether their gimmick was it was so hot that it would, you'd have like a little gauge filling at the top of the screen and we've got to 100% you start taking damage. Right. Unless you go into the shade.

And basically on hard mode, that gauge would fill up like much quicker. Or there was less shade. It's something like that. But the other ones were all along the lines of like, this area has got platforms that are semi-invisible, but when, whether it's snowing,

you can see them because there's snow on them. I might be completing that with Mega Man 7. That's just an example of it might be real. but I thought that was an interesting way of just saying like okay forget it forget all this complicated nonsense just pick normal or hard they also made it so that you could use elves to a much more significant degree than the previous games which I was very grateful for because it made it feel like it was actually worth getting those energy crystals for once right no for sure in the previous games you're constantly getting them in three you could have your satellite elves

but that's it I think anything else and you get punished Two and one, it's just like, don't use elves or bad rank. No, no elf. I think three, it was it three that had cyberspace where you could use elves without penalty? Yeah, but I thought that you got penalty for going in cyberspace, apart from that one time when you have to go to fight the secret boss. I don't remember. I might be totally wrong about that. I might be totally wrong about that. But it was kind of weird. It's always weird when someone says, cyberspace and makes it a story point because it sounds so 1995 and dues by this point, we're in the 2000s, please stop it. I mean, we were doing Battle Network, and that was all cyberspace stuff. That was kind of cool, though.

Yeah, that's true. I thought it was going to be a reference to Battle Network, but no, it wasn't. I think the only interaction that they had was one of the games could link up with it. But that might not even be true, to be honest. I can't even. It was Battlenock 4. As if the Zero Series couldn't get even harder, they now make you play Battle Network 4. I'll jack into your squirrel if that's what it takes.

Maybe that should have been the intro for the episode. Megam, going off topic for half a second, Mega Man Battle Network is so weird, because I remember playing it and being like a stove hooked up to the internet, that's so stupid, whoever thought of that? And like, in this day and age, some teenagers like, hi, I hacked my Twitter account from my refrigerator because my mom took away my phone.

So that just kind of happened, I guess, of all the weird, stupid, pointless things. There you go. Yeah, I hate to say it, but everything in the Mega Man series is eventually going to come true. I mean, it is actually how the Battle Network series Like, who's going to carry around a device like that?

You look like a dark, stop it. And it's like, oh, look at smartphones. What do you know? Zero four, we covered the bosses. We covered the weather system, which was, that was something else. We covered the story. And that basically, if you want to say there's an ending to the Zero series, it's Zero4 because Zero goes to fight Dr. Weill up in space on Ragnarok, the weapon that basically nuked everything. And as you said, Stuart, it's great because Wheel's like, ha, ha, this is my trump card.

I'm a human. You're going to hurt me. And Zero's like, yeah. Yeah, so what are you going to do? Do the laws of robotics apply in outer space? Like, it's just, I don't think they do, especially not against a genocidal maniac. Can I also shout out, and this is very spoily,

the final battle with Vial or Wheel, whatever his name is, at the end is, first of all, it's ridiculously cool the first phase when he's summoning the zero-three bosses to have a go at you. Yes. And shooting asteroids from space at you. It's really cool boss design. But second, the scene where he gets, I don't even know what happens to him,

he gets hooked into something and turns into a giant final form version of himself. On the Japanese version, because they still have the blood. When he's got all these wires going into him, every single one of them is shooting blood out of it. It's the most gruesome thing I've ever seen in a Mega-Man game, especially because they start going at such rapid speed that it's almost just like, it's crazy. And it's still cool, even though I am a fully crone man now who should know better. It's actually kind of creepy when you think about it because, yeah, we saw blood in 0-1, but that was when he cut up a robot. This is a human just pumping his blood and springing it into outer space.

That's insane. Old man, you know. Old man sprang his blood. And he's immortal. As I understand it, Liel was made immortal as punishment for his many, many sins. And not only that, but he was, they replaced his brain or they installed chips into his brain to make it impossible for him to forget what he had done. So he couldn't even have the option of, like, piecing out and being like, I'm going to just forget this.

It might be worth mentioning the ridiculous zero fist thing from the zero arm from this game as well, where you can just... I forgot about that. Oh, yeah, you can just grab your enemies and rip their weapons off them, basically, when they're defeated. And then you can start using their weapons, although they're more or less almost entirely useless except for very specific situations. So they mostly just turned it off and used the shield again. Yeah. If Indile, you still have the shield in this one. That thing was useful.

Nobody ever talks about the shield. It was really useful in these games. Can you reflect bullets for goodness sake? I do have to say that I found a lot of the gimmicks in the Zero series. And each game had a gimmick was not very useful. It's actually very cool in the first game how you start off like a pretty weak. You just have your gun. And that's when you fight the golem that kidnaps Shell.

And you get the saber and stuff really kind of heat. up after that. I just never changed from the saber, but 0-3 had like, no, 0-2 had the swinging chain, I think it was, that was, I was like, oh, cool, this is going to be like Castlevania 4, where you can swing like a maniac, but no, it's extremely limited. Never used that. I don't think I used to shield much. I was always just very much a charge-up your weapon with the lightning element

and do your best kind of player. The other weapons, like the triple rod was the one from three. They all, to me, felt like very specific situational, there's a cyber elf you need to get by using this thing here, like the way you can only get it by doing a triple rod jump, then a double jump or something like that.

But for fighting the actual bosses, I think I have seen videos of people doing ridiculous combos with them where they just take enormous amounts of health off the bosses without even seeming to blink. But I couldn't be bothered figuring that because the charged saber was a good enough for me,

basically. Yeah. I think wasn't the triple rod that could also bounce like pogo, pogo, pogo. Yeah, that's the one. That's the one from three, yeah. It can bounce you up in the sky, and then if you have also double jump, you can get some of the hidden discs with it, I think. Some of the really well hidden ones. Right. So that might be

that might just be misremembering because I haven't played that game for a long time. Not to get 100% anyway. Yeah, for sure. 04, yeah, so it ends with, as you said, Shell Ugly crying for four minutes during the credits, which I shouldn't be laughing because it's actually a very sad

ending. It's really moving. It's really moving. That whole game is really half for me to play because I just start getting upset playing. Everything that happens, you just know where it's going and you know that there's going to be all that loss of life and it's just genuinely really, really quite depressing. But also, I guess, kind of hopeful. It's just like, if you think of Zero as being kind of a death seeker, it makes more sense, I suppose. Yeah, he's always been kind of like that. But it's, for me, it's very kind of full circle workers at the beginning of zero one when he's revived he doesn't say anything she she just the show i keep pulling her seal because that's what i used to call her and i think everyone

did yeah when all she says is help me please and then it just says oh your mission started you know you've got your mission it's a very narratively almost kind of full circle to have him at the end just kind of say actually i don't care about any of what you're saying yeah i'm just going to smash you to pieces and then oh it's perfect it's a perfect series i'm just going to say it now Even with the things that aren't perfect, it's still perfect. I understand that sounds like completely because, yeah, you're right. Zero's mission, like, whereas X has always been like about the good of humanity, the good of everyone, probably to his detriment, zero's always been like,

I have my friends, I'm going to protect them, and the rest of you can all F off. So he's kind of, I guess, a libertarian, but a cool one with a sword. I love that. But, I mean, it makes sense in the context of his world because it is what gives them the strength to say, I am who I am, and I'm not really. bound by any roles, especially not your lame-ass rules, old man, and that's the end of that. You do see, in one of the CD dramas, as I said, there is a follow-up that kind of talks about how everyone found a lasting piece, and there's

actually, apparently, this is interesting to me, there's apparently a baby boom outside of Neo-Arcadia, and I'm thinking to myself, where people are not reproducing in the Arcadia, was Dr. Wheel just watching him, and everyone just like, no, no, we're not stragging right now, and then when he was gone, whoop, time to breed. So maybe That's what happened. Wait, when was the baby boom in the... After zero four, they're surviving humans move out to the area zero. And apparently the pantheon hunters, the ones who actually spend most of the game chasing you,

they become carers for children. So that was kind of a funny. Oh, that's nice. Oh, see, that's sweet. There's a nice ending for the Pantheons as well. That was a good redemption arc. It is. If you go to, again, the Mega Man Wiki and look up, I think it's called like Eden Dome at Sin and Rebirth.

It's structured like a newspaper article talking about the future. It's talking about where things are now in context of the past. It's an interviewer who talks to Nej and Nez doesn't really give him anything except picture of her and craft together, which is really sweet. And just talks about like, you know, the children who are born now don't know what Near Acadia was. And whereas the old timers think of New Arcadia as a paradise, the children are like, why? This is a paradise where we're living right now. So it's just definitely a good wrap up. I encourage you to go ahead and seek that out.

In a nutshell, I suppose to wrap up. I'll ask one final question. How do you feel about ZX as a follow-up? Yeah. Yeah. I just, I feel like it's pointless. It doesn't really add or continue on much of anything, anyone's growth. Not to mention, you know, no one's really in it.

A shell is presumed missing or dead. But, you know, beyond like some of the boss designs, some of the robot designs, it's just it kind of feels like a step down in almost every manically plot everything it's just it's a step down and I often wonder like what was the point of the entire of ZX other than having a traditional Mega Man game on the DS I don't I liked X Advent better

it was better ZX I it felt to me like there are so many things I didn't like about it for I mean for the game itself, I think, as I actually mentioned this on a recent episode, I think, it has the worst map ever in any game I've ever seen. Oh, that's pretty bad. In terms of actually helping you find where you're going. Yeah. You've got to draw your own map

or you're just going to be lost the whole time, basically. And also not telling you where you need to be going as well. It's just, it's like, oh, you need to go to area F4. It's like what the hell is an F4? But what it struck me as was a little bit like Capcom going

okay, well, these Battle Network PETs are selling kind of well, maybe there's another little thing we can make that, you know, it's like these little, the biometals, they're almost like little toys that can transform you. Right. And that felt a little bit kind of like if they had done better that they might have

been going for that kind of market, I don't know. Also, on a law level, it kind of sucks that they canonically bring zero back from the dead to be carried around by you know, some guys to transform into like, a copy of their armor, more or less.

I appreciated the gameplay when it was actually just letting you kind of get on with it and just play some levels. That was fun. Because it was still kind of the same basic thing. But the fact that they felt they had to put kind of a Metroidvania spin that really didn't work for me. Right. That kind of bummed me out.

As I mentioned, I like Advent better. I thought it was a much more enjoyable game. A lot of people criticize it for its success and it has lots of transformations. that are almost completely useless, but I really like that. I love stuff like that. It's silly stuff. It's fun. But overall, yeah, I just almost just kind of wish they hadn't made them

because they almost cheapen the zero series by association. I'm just glad they didn't call them 05 and 6, I guess. So I can completely give them. Plus, also they ended it on a damn cliffhanger that's never getting resolved. And the zero series ended. There's no need to have done that. That's right, yeah. I played through Advent as the human girl.

I can't remember her name. It wasn't Ayl. It was, well, whatever. Venton Ail was, I think they were the first game. I can't remember. Yeah. Ash, thank you. Great Ash, that's it, yeah.

And that was strange because you have Master Albert, who is, of course, an allegory for Dr. Wiley. And he's like, yeah, you're my, like, distant descendant. And it's like, oh, okay, that's weird. But I will give it credit for finally, or at least, trying to link everything up to legends where there's a secret ending where Thomas

one of the majors of the group or sages of what they're called is like this world needs to be erased and that implies that Megamad Legends like that's how everything kind of became well reset. The whole theme of Mega Man Legends is reset, reset, reset, reset, rebirth.

So I guess that was a nice little sort of lead in, a little bone we suppose I suppose we got. If I think of it that way it makes it a lot more If they were never intending to follow up, it was just meant to be a little a carrot on a stick for Legends fans. Yeah.

Or one way or another, the timelines all lead to Mega Man on the moon doing nothing and never being followed up on. It's so depressing. Yes. Ultima Thule, Terminus. There it is, Mega Man. I mean, I don't know.

I feel like I got a feeling, I got a little creepy feeling on the back of my brain that Legends, something's going to happen with it. I feel like it's coming. If they were bold enough, to do another Mega Man game. I think they'd, but Enifune was, Legends was his baby.

And if they touched that, that's real. That's definitely forbidden territory. Yeah, but I mean, again, my to number nine, NFTs, you know, let, just let, nah. I mean, NFTs, like, forget it, man. We can, we can touch Legends now. He isn't.

It's all gone. His hands are sullied. Yeah. Enormously so. Yeah, that's basically all the time I have for this episode of Retronauts. Thank you guys so very, very much for coming on. It was definitely a pleasure recalling all of this pain. Fond memories of GameShark days and MacMan Beebe.

Oh, good times, good times. Okay, so let's promote some stuff. Brian, you're the guest, so you get to tell us, you know, where you come from, where you're going, sell it. Yeah. If you want to learn about the latest Mega Man News and stuff you don't really care about, like Mega Man underwear and Mega Man G Fuel, head on over to Rockman Corner at www. dot rockman hyphen corner.com. God damn. Mega men underwear.

It's just the world we live in, eh? I know. Does it come in women's? I don't think I would. Not even I'm that sick. Stuart, how about you? Well, I kind of know where you come from, but tell the folks at home. Yeah, I guess the main thing I do is retro knowledge.

You can also see my game's writing in things like retro game, a Sega Power magazine. And, oh, wait, I can't announce that. I nearly announced that we're not supposed to announce. Yes. Keep doing that a lot lately. It feels like I'm doing it on purpose to seem more interesting than I am, but no, I genuinely am not. Yeah, and you can find me on Twitter at Stupacabra,

and you can see all my terrible opinions that will immediately make you on. Follow me. You have some pretty, I have to say that, Ball and Wonderland take was a little bit, a little bit of a no. I was so, people were so mad about that. It was almost scary. I mean, I say almost because I'm just like a white dude. I was never going to get it as bad as, you know,

anyone who didn't fall within that sort of category. But two solid days of just pure. Two solid days. People sure. That's a lot of energy to waste about getting mad and balance in the world. With hindsight, I don't regret saying I like balance. I still do. But I do regret saying I liked it better than Bowser's Fury.

That's what you said. They got everyone pissed. Okay. That I remember now. Because while it was true on my end, I shouldn't have said it. It's that Gammarge thing. It's true. but you shouldn't say it.

It's true. We shouldn't say it. Yeah. But if you think this episode is cool, we have a lot more content like it. Just visit Retronauts to Patreon at patreon. At patreon.com for slash Retronauts for access to media that's less depressing than a never-ending robot war that ends on the moon. And we'll never get off the moon, probably. Support us at the $3 level to receive early access to weekly episodes.

Support us at the $5 level to get episodes a week early as well as two exclusive episodes a month. Support us at the magic number of 64 for the opportunity to, set a topic for a Retron's episode once every six months. As of this recording, there's only one spot left for that tier. So, eat it up. As for me, I am Nadia Oxford. I am the co-host of the Acts of the Blood God RBG podcast. We talk about Arbordes all the new Eastern and Western.

Please support us at patreon.com forward slash Blood God Pod. You can also follow me on Twitter at Nadia Oxford. And here's a little cool bonus. My husband and I both wrote the Mega Man Robot Masters Field Guide and the Mega Man X. Field Guide, which both are on Amazon, and you should buy them because I think they're really cool. Until next time, try to find a way to get off the damn moon. Thank you.