Mega Man Xtreme

"I Swear. Capcom Plays A Lot Of Sunsoft, Vice Versa, or Both"

In A Nutshell: Anyone who's ever played Blaster Master: Enemy Below should understand what my synopsis meant(and the similarities between Blasting Again and X4 are insane). Both are basically the original game in the series put into a blender, turned on full power, and stuffed into a jet-black Gameboy cartridge with uglier main character sprites and added features. Of course, there are differences between the two. These include Xtreme having save games while Enemy Below has a password and Enemy Below being made after an NES game while Xtreme was made after an SNES game.

Graphics: 8/10
This is a Gameboy ''blend'' of a SNES game, so you really can't expect the graphics to be as good. But despite that, the graphics are still kind of weird looking. Flickering of sprites was common like in Chill Penguin's stage when you got into the robot walker and walked onto a screen section where an opposing robot walker was. And lines of Spark Mandrill kept vanishing during the fight. There were some good points with the graphics. Those cut-scenes with the main characters(like Techno on the computer, X's closeups, etc.) were done pretty well.

Sound: 9/10
As with the graphics, this was downgraded from a 16-bit SNES to the 8-bit Gameboy, so I can't expected it to be as good. The music was good enough, but some of the firing SFX of X's gun could have used some work.

Control: 7/10
In the SNES games, you could set a button(default was A, but I usually changed it to the R button to increase the control) to Dash. While you can do that in this, it tends to make the control worse. The best way to try and dash is to press Left/Right twice. Another annoying thing is if your wallkicking and stop, X will be facing the wall and you can't turn him around(I think this only happens if you're in the middle of a wallkick. If you're on the wall and let go of the control pad, they fall off facing the other way, but I'm not totally positive.) This can really mess you up in the middle of a battle(especially the Sigma one)

Gameplay: 9/10
Most of the levels are set up like levels from X1 or 2, so if you've aced those games you really shouldn't have much trouble getting around this one. There are several difficulties for you to venture through, so it'll keep you entertained for quite a while(unless you go to a website and read where everything is, then that takes a little bit out of the lasting time of of the game.) The controls were a little rough, costing the game a little off the fun factor. If you ever see a copy of it, grab it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/13/02, Updated 06/13/02