The funny thing about them originally wanting to use X as the main villain in the Zero games is that X had very little character development in his own series. There wasn't a whole lot of dwelling on why X ever became a Marverick Hunter in the first place, let alone setting him up to become a bad guy. Inafune spent half of the X series developing Zero, and completely neglected giving X a personality. Honestly, Copy X actually had a better reason to be a bad guy than X would have.
As for all of the talk about how the games past X5 betrayed the original creator's vision, or whatever: since when was the plot of the X series ever that consistent in the first place? I mean look at some of the random plot direction changes used in the series:
-Zero was brought back in X2 because
the X Hunters had collected his head, leg, and torso parts, despite the fact that Zero had died no less than 5 feet away from X, with legs that had been blown to bits. Why the Dr. Cain had his control chip, but not his head, is not explained.
-In MMX4
Sigma is back with no explanation, despite the fact that Dr. Doppler's anti-virus program had deleted him in the last game.
Really, the X series was already loaded with huge plot holes and inconsistencies. I don't really think that there was some grand plan that X6, X7, and X8 crushed; particularly since X6 and X8 still reference and set up the Zero games.
On the contrary, I think X6 and X8 actually had better writing and created better villains than most of the other X games (possibly X4 excluded).
edit: On the topic of X8, I really liked the game. It actually redeemed Axl quite a bit, by explaining who he actually was, giving him a unique gameplay style, and demoting him from X replacement to X and Zero's rookie sidekick. I also really liked the Neutral Armor's mix and match Armor effects. The game is crushingly hard though, and more or less requires farming Metals to buy up upgrades. Once you collect up enough stuff though, it isn't too bad. However, the two Ride Chaser stages are pretty bad, and the "midboss" of Gravity Antonion's stage is pretty much impossible. I have never survived that trap, and I don't even know how it can be done. If it wasn't for the fact that you can replace it with a certain alternate midboss if you go tackle the stages in the right order, I would have never beaten X8.
One thing you mentioning X6 and X8 together is that it reminded me of X7.
I never played the MMX series past X4, but I've heard rumblings that X7 was unbelievably horrible. Can anyone fill me in on just how shittastic that ended up being?
One thing you mentioning X6 and X8 together is that it reminded me of X7.
I never played the MMX series past X4, but I've heard rumblings that X7 was unbelievably horrible. Can anyone fill me in on just how shittastic that ended up being?
-The gameplay was terrible. Just looking at how slow the walking speed is... yuck.
-Level design was a mess. The combination of 2D and 3D simply didn't work, and it made stages take bad Sonic game levels of length to go through. They managed to top X6 as the most untested game in the series. Not to mention that's it's all incredibly boring.
-It introduced the equivalent of "Sonic's shitty playable friends" to the series in the form of Axl, of which only he and Zero are available to play as for at least 50% of the game. You can't play as Mega Man without having beaten half the game.
-BURN BURN BU-BURN TO THE GROUND. BU-BURN TO THE GROUND.
One thing you mentioning X6 and X8 together is that it reminded me of X7.
I never played the MMX series past X4, but I've heard rumblings that X7 was unbelievably horrible. Can anyone fill me in on just how shittastic that ended up being?
Other than the oft-mentioned "you have to unlock X" issues, X7 on the whole suffered from simply sluggish and unfun gameplay.
One issue in particular stands out in my mind: rescuing reploids. When rescuable reploids were first introduced in X5, they were just one-time collectable extra lives. X6 tried to make them more interesting by adding the tension of having Nightmare Viruses that could perma-kill these rescuable reploids. In X7, any attack that can damage the player will perma-kill a civilian reploid. This includes the stages where the player has to deal with giant enemies pursuing them, and it happens with attacks that are off-screen. This means that if you don't play through a stage perfectly on your first attempt, you can easily permanently lose civilians. And you need to rescue 64 of these civilians (or was it 32?) in order to unlock X before beating all 8 Mavericks.
So I just watched the XOver offscreen cam vid- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKq22PkCweI
...and it still doesn't tell me much about the gameplay, aside from the basics.
...although I sorta like the concept.
While I agree with X7's shortcomings, I'll give them credit for at least trying to make the gameplay work in 3D, altho they could've gone with how Legends did it >_>;
The whole thing about having to unlock X in X7 really annoyed me. I really tried to like the game but it just had so many things that annoyed me - the pace felt pretty slow going at times so much so that I started getting bored with the game, this usually never happens when I play a MM game through for the first time (well, there was Battle Network 4 but that was down to the rate of random encounters...).
The bosses were starting to really feel uninspired, heck after X4 it seemed that the ideas for bosses started to go downhill bar a few standout ones here and there (I personally really liked Rainy Turtloids design and boss battle in X6).
Still, I've played far worse Megaman games than X7 to be fair. Has anyone else played the Wonderswan Rockman and Forte game? Now that game is proper bad. The level design at points can be really bad/cheap. Then there are the bosses for the game - Compass Man being the most memorable along with Time Men (yep, a 1 on 2 boss battle). Then you have the final boss Rockman Shadow who is basically Quint from the Gameboy Megaman II and is a complete pushover to beat.
I've also never fully gotten into the Battle Network games. I've finished the first game, beating all the optional bosses (getting a couple of the boss chips was a nightmare) but I've never gotten around to doing the same for the other BN games. The only exceptions being Network Transmission for the Gamecube and the Wonderswan Colour Battle Network platformer both of which I really enjoyed.
The Gamecube game was tough to love at the beginning, being able to get killed by the first couple of bosses in just around 3 hits did take a few tries to get through but after that I really got into the game. I liked the idea of S Ranking the bosses (spent many hours working out the best chipsets for the job) and loved the optional Bass.exe fight at the end of the game.
The Wonderswan Colour one is an under rated gem in my opinion. The branching paths in the levels is a neat tough as is the different boss battles depending which routes you take. Plus the additional end boss battle for the second playthrough was a good insentive for replaying the game (I've never managed to make it to Bass in survival mode though). My only complaint is the way battle chips are used, assigning them to the second d pad was really unintuitive when in a heated battle. I ended up just not using them at all and beating the game with just the default buster instead for as much as I could which in itself ended up being great fun.
The
That sounds more like the Gate Lab stage 1 in X6 where you had to either use that "No-Spike Damage" Armor, or do the most perfect air-dash you've done in your life.
Man, just remembering it is frustrating.
Although, I didn't think X5 or X6 were really that difficult, for normal playthroughs.
Well, okay, Mega Man 2 on the Game Boy (not the NES game of the same name, obviously) had some pretty shitty music. Like, Sonic Chronicles-level bad, except unlike Sonic Chronicles, which was just hilariously impotent (ask Professor Beef, he'll tell you), all this music was high-pitched, shrill, and kind of painful to listen to.
At this point in the series, the idea of "sentient programs that float around as masses of energy" is a pretty well-established part of the Mega Man franchise. First there was the floating purple Sigma heads, then there was the Nightmare Virus, then Cyber-elves. And in the Battle Network/Star Force continuity, we have various alien EM entities and Wizards. Heck, even Duo can be classified as a similar kind of existence depending on interpretation
I don't really get the complaints about cyber-elves being too cute or pokemon-like either, since the Mega Man franchise is loaded with mascot characters. The Classic series in particular has Rush, Eddie, Tango, Beat, Auto, and a ton of cute looking enemies.
Aside from Metaurs and Baton-tons you'd be hard pressed to find any enemies in the classic series that look as cute as the cyber-elves. Aside from having an idiotic name, they were clearly designed to add a Pokemonesque "cute collectable" appeal to the game. And regardless of how cute some of the characters in the Classic series are, the fact is that the X series had no nothing of the sort and it was not even as dark as the Zero series.
Well, okay, Mega Man 2 on the Game Boy (not the NES game of the same name, obviously) had some pretty shitty music. Like, Sonic Chronicles-level bad, except unlike Sonic Chronicles, which was just hilariously impotent (ask Professor Beef, he'll tell you), all this music was high-pitched, shrill, and kind of painful to listen to.
Aside from Metaurs and Baton-tons you'd be hard pressed to find any enemies in the classic series that look as cute as the cyber-elves. Aside from having an idiotic name, they were clearly designed to add a Pokemonesque "cute collectable" appeal to the game. And regardless of how cute some of the characters in the Classic series are, the fact is that the X series had no nothing of the sort and it was not even as dark as the Zero series.
Nothing comes close to the awfulness of Sonic Chronicles:
Well, okay, Mega Man 2 on the Game Boy (not the NES game of the same name, obviously) had some pretty shitty music. Like, Sonic Chronicles-level bad, except unlike Sonic Chronicles, which was just hilariously impotent (ask Professor Beef, he'll tell you), all this music was high-pitched, shrill, and kind of painful to listen to.
Sheepman is prob. my fav. Robot Master of all time.
My fav. Navi from the .exe series would be...Fireman...yeah I know this sounds weird and random but for whatever reason I like him.
Could someone post that fanart of Roll, Blues, Rockman and Sheepman walking in a field?
Sheepman is prob. my fav. Robot Master of all time.
My fav. Navi from the .exe series would be...Fireman...yeah I know this sounds weird and random but for whatever reason I like him.
Could someone post that fanart of Roll, Blues, Rockman and Sheepman walking in a field?
Sheepman is awesome screw the haters. Well...except for Ruby Spears sheepman and his weird muscles. Sheepman was all cuddly before they got ahold of him! How am I supposed to cuddle this.
I dunno. I find it weird that if you make a Rockman fan video everyone loves, you don't embrace that. It's obviously going to be annoying as hell when people keep asking you about it, but flat-out saying "No, this isn't Rockman related!", when clearly it used to be, is kind of weird.
Oh well! Let's carry on with actual Mega Man discussion
Man, I didn't even know that Mega-GAF was going to be more than just joke posts about cancellations and the actual thread being a drinking game for number of times said cancellations and joke posts occurred.
The Megaman franchise is pretty much one of the bigger things in my gaming life so I have a lot of love and appreciation for it. I'll probably be in this thread a lot.
Man, I didn't even know that Mega-GAF was going to be more than just joke posts about cancellations and the actual thread being a drinking game for number of times said cancellations and joke posts occurred.
The Megaman franchise is pretty much one of the bigger things in my gaming life so I have a lot of love and appreciation for it. I'll probably be in this thread a lot.
I thought this was sort of appropriate http://www.2pstart.com/2010/03/11/heart-man/ . I remember seeing this comic linked in a MM10 thread or something. Unfortunately... Megaman never recovered.
It may not really be a plot hole depending on when exactly Sigma was revived in X2. As the later parts in X4 and X5 show, Zero was the original carrier altered by a confrontation with Sigma, who, as the X1 manual explains, used to be the lead Maverick Hunter. Zero was Wily's legacy just as X was Light's. Neither were Reploids.
Doppler's attempt failed because he didn't destroy the source.
The whole theory was dumb anyways. Classic and X are 100 years apart, I cannot imagine Zero waking up and killing everyone for that long of a timeframe. Not to mention he was awaken after X was.
Also I hate the very idea of the Classic series having a bad end. It's just not right
this thread reminds me when I marathoned MM series. Having only played the SNES games, I got a PS2 and the MM collection edition. After that, I went through X4,5,6,7 and 8.
X6,7 and 8 were so bad I can't remember playing them.
On the other hand I loved how story focused X5 was... one of the little touches that I really liked was how powerful Zero really was and you get to see it when you fight against him:
The whole theory was dumb anyways. Classic and X are 100 years apart, I cannot imagine Zero waking up and killing everyone for that long of a timeframe. Not to mention he was awaken after X was.
Also I hate the very idea of the Classic series having a bad end. It's just not right
Well, going back to the X1 pre-title intro and X1 manual, Dr. Light just got too old as he was making his final masterpiece of perfect AI. Given how robot wars waged for much of his life, he had X put in a testing capsule for a period that would extend well beyond his natural death. Dr. Cain later found Light's lab in an archaeological dig and tried to use Light's notes to build the first Reploids.
This thread is a winner, though a little bittersweet. I literally grew up with this series its shame that this along with so many great IPs have struggled for what ever reason to find any ground in recent years. I'll definitely be checking back to this thread. Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the lack of for 000 Protoman a little disappointing.
These days, I don't even really think there should be a connection between the X series and the Classic series. The X series is simply too irreconcilably different in tone from the Classic series, and the connection between the series only consists of the fact that Light built X and Wily built Zero. As such, I like to think of the X/Zero/ZX continuity as separate from the Classic continuity.
For one thing, the Classic continuity is loaded with crazy stuff like ancient super-tech civilizations, time travel, evil energy, and more alien robots than you can shake a stick at. I mean, Shadow Man was built with ancient alien tech. For that matter, the kinds of crazy stuff Wily can do, such as
building an orbital elevator in MM10
, is on par with the best efforts of the entire world of MMX.
Trying to transition from the Classic series into X series would end up betraying the basic tone and fun of the Classic series too much.
These days, I don't even really think there should be a connection between the X series and the Classic series. The X series is simply too irreconcilably different in tone from the Classic series, and the connection between the series only consists of the fact that Light built X and Wily built Zero. As such, I like to think of the X/Zero/ZX continuity as separate from the Classic continuity.
For one thing, the Classic continuity is loaded with crazy stuff like ancient super-tech civilizations, time travel, evil energy, and more alien robots than you can shake a stick at. I mean, Shadow Man was built with ancient alien tech. For that matter, the kinds of crazy stuff Wily can do, such as
building an orbital elevator in MM10
, is on par with the best efforts of the entire world of MMX.
Trying to transition from the Classic series into X series would end up betraying the basic tone and fun of the Classic series too much.
The X series is more "serious" because of how world has changed into more of a warzone. Classic being more lighthearted is because wars haven't plagued the world yet, so it still makes sense to connect them given how the story elements are already there.
Classic definitely works because of how carefree it is as a whole. No need to dwell on more ambiguous themes and intricate personalities. The games are more important.
Legends, I feel, translates the blue-sky atmosphere of the Classic games while successfully weaving a dark undercurrent into the story. The series makes great use of its setting, which allows for some interesting episodes in each plot.
Sheepman is awesome screw the haters. Well...except for Ruby Spears sheepman and his weird muscles. Sheepman was all cuddly before they got ahold of him! How am I supposed to cuddle this.
Man, I didn't even know that Mega-GAF was going to be more than just joke posts about cancellations and the actual thread being a drinking game for number of times said cancellations and joke posts occurred.
The Megaman franchise is pretty much one of the bigger things in my gaming life so I have a lot of love and appreciation for it. I'll probably be in this thread a lot.
Thats why I was hesitant on making the thread, but i'm glad everyone proved otherwise.
So if everything just sorta ended peacefully after Dr. Light and Wily passed away...what happened to Megaman, Roll, Rush, Protoman, Bass, etc.? They just got sealed away, put in a robot museum, or eventually shut down?
Or are all the various universes connected together? And what ever happened to all the money in Wily's swiss bank account?
Sheepman is awesome screw the haters. Well...except for Ruby Spears sheepman and his weird muscles. Sheepman was all cuddly before they got ahold of him! How am I supposed to cuddle this.
You know, I was considering putting together something like this for the 25th anniversary, but I never found the time.
I hooked up my SNES right after Isaac hit us and the cable was out, been having a lot of fun playing my original X1 copy with that snappy, light as a feather SNES controller.
