Mega Man X

"X, it's not smart to play in highway traffic! Then again, playing safe was never the point."

Mega Man started off about a robot boy of the same name. Known to many as the "Blue Bomber", his work in life consisted of stopping the nefarious Dr. Wily's plans to take over the world and use Robot Masters for his schemes. Spanning six games on the NES, Mega Man would protect the peace time and time again. The era of 200X and 20XX became highly popular among many gamers and Mega Man quickly rose to fame for being a great platforming adventure where you blast enemies with an arm cannon, use boss powers, pick the stage, and listen to some really good music while doing it. Unfortunately, Mega Man started seeing a bit of a decline after the first trilogy, and Capcom needed to revamp the little guy into something cool and send him to a new life on a new system.

1993 rolls around and the SNES and the Genesis are duking it out in the console wars. This is a great time during the life of the competition to release this new era of Mega Man. The new game, Mega Man X, is about Dr. Light's new creation, the character of the same name, as he struggles to fight the army of Mavericks, robots who defy the will of the government or Maverick Hunters. Many robots of this new era are called "Reploids", who are able to think on their own. These characters make up most of the Mega Man X universe, and the Mavericks are basically the game's Robot Masters. As X, your job is to stop the Maverick war and bring peace to the world.

Gameplay in Mega Man X flows a lot better than what it used to in the NES days. Where stiff controls and limited movement may sometimes land you to an early grave in a wall of spikes, Mega Man X offers higher jumps and the ability to dash and jump, giving you control of more abilities and using them. Most of the game's aesthetics are built upon its predecessors. Your primary weapon is the X-Buster, which is the same as the post-Mega Man 4 Mega Buster, so you can fire it, but also charge it up. The point of the game is the same type of platforming gameplay, pick a stage, kill a boss, get its weapon, and make it to the final boss. All of that is already very good, made better with new enemies and even the ability to use Ride Armors, small battle mechs. What separates Mega Man X from the rest, however, is the exploration. The content you discover through the stages will give you reason to play them several times. You can pick up new Armors that boost your abilities, you keep the sub-tanks you find, and the Heart Tanks that you find in each stage are more or less the same as the Heart Containers (read: Container, not Piece) that you find in the Zelda titles, which boost your health up by one. Basically, on top of classic Mega Man gameplay made better thanks to a superior system's technology and better handling, you also can explore each stage.

Visually speaking, Mega Man X is what you'd expect from a 16-bit title. Expect the sprites and level of detail that jump from the 8-bit era into the 16-bit world. Mega Man sprites were very simple, with his big black eyes and well-crafted yet trademark helmet and blue outfit. X's detail, thanks to the SNES, allows you to see more pieces of his armor put together, as well as when you get armor upgrades, which show how strong he can become. The vibrant color schemes work well with the level designs, some of which include a snow base, a flying ship base, a mine, and a forest. Aside from the good stage design, the sprites move very fluidly. X's animations are detailed as you see him run, jump, fire blasts, and even take damage, in which he covers his face with his arms. Animation gets an A+, especially for the first time you meet one of the stage bosses, Launch Octopus, who taunts you before battle.

The audio used in the Mega Man tracks takes the series in a new direction. Original Mega Man music was largely progressive, often with fast beats that, if you noticed, it seemed Mega Man's running sprites would step to at the right time. While a lot of these catchy types of tunes still remain, Mega Man X seemed to adapt power metal into its genre of music, notably in stages like the highway and Storm Eagle's Stage. What makes this great is that the variety of Mega Man X music mixes with its best of the old while ushering in the new era, which Mega Man X builds its style on. The X series is a bit more oriented at being the "cool" of the franchise, its style offering new characters and situations that you would not find in the original Mega Man series. The progressive and speed metal mix into the soundtrack so well that it's often highly regarded as a favorite soundtrack among many people who played the SNES back when the game first came out.

Mega Man X is a special game. It was the first in the series to feature character development not seen in other games. While Mega Man 5 came close and opened up to Protoman a little closer, main characters, like X and Zero, are the heroes who are crusading against the Maverick war, fought by Vile, a war reploid, and Sigma, the Maverick Leader who wants to create a new world just for Reploids by destroying the human race. Reasons are shown and struggles, such as X wanting to become stronger and protect the world, are fleshed out in dialogue among the characters. It's not long and boring, it's an action game that gives the characters an extra dimension besides "save/destroy the world and go home".

This game is the start of a new era for Mega Man. Even with the start of the X series, however, the original Mega Man series continued with Mega Man 7 being released a year later and Mega Man 8 afterward. Even though Mega Man 5 featured minor exploration elements of finding the letters "Beat" and Mega Man 6 gave you two pieces of armor, they didn't give you as many things to do or things to find. Some of these require that you beat the stage first, triggering an event in another stage, and these influenced the later "classic" Mega Man titles.

Once you beat the game, what is there to do? Did you collect all the items? While there are several other Mega Man X titles to play, this retains the original charm that set such a high standard for its series that it's widely regarded as the series favorite. Arguments flare up among which of the the titles is the best, but Mega Man X considered by many as a true favorite and is never absent from these discussions, nor is it ever lowly placed in the rankings. The catchy music, things to do, and cool bosses will bring you back. It's a challenge that's not grueling to push you away and fear it once you're done, but it's also not a cakewalk, as you may want to take this "walk" again someday.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/08

Game Release: Mega Man X (US, 1993)