Mega Man X - Deepish Dive

This is not going to be too deep a dive into Mega Man X. I don’t think I have it in me to do an analysis as long as the one I did for Mega Man Zero, if for no other reason than MMX has less story and much less complicated weapons systems. This is mostly a chance for me to point out a few things about the game I haven’t covered in any other pieces.

Powerup Placement

As I said in my general review, MMX does a great job of hiding its secret powerups, because it places them in locations that a veteran NES Mega Man player would dare not tread. Sting Chameleon’s stage just so happens to have two great examples, and they’re both next to each other.

Early(ish) on in the stage, we come to this spot here:

You can see there is a bit of ground that slopes downward. If you dash and jump off from here, you can hit the green wall that is above X in that photo. Climbing up will bring you to a secret ledge above, where you will encounter a miniboss:

This fella has a weapon weakness, but I prefer to go here early on to get the upgrade. That makes this an X-Buster only fight for me, and that makes it a knock down, drag out ordeal. This miniboss has a ton of health, and while his attacks are easy to predict, they hit hard. This fight is a test of endurance. How long can you go without making a mistake and getting hit? Can you figure out how to hit the enemy with a steady stream of damage? It’s one of my favorite fights, and fittingly, this test of endurance rewards you with the chest armor upgrade that boosts your defense¹.

Now let’s go back to our starting point in the first photo. See that pit to the left? It actually scrolls downward to reveal a secret cave:

There’s a bit of a problem though - the entrance is blocked off. Thankfully, we have the leg armor upgrade, so we can use that to break the blocks.

But now we have another problem: the cave is too long and wide. Even with a dash jump, we can’t reach the upgrade.

There is one more thing we have to do now - beat Launch Octopus. Clearing his stage will affect Sting Chameleon’s by flooding it with water:

Since all Mega Mans jump higher in water, this gives our jump the extra boost it needs to make it across.

This is arguably one of the trickiest powerups to try and obtain. I remember it being one of the last ones I found as a kid. So many things need to be in place before you can get it. First you need to find it, which requires you to do something that years of NES Mega Man games trained you not to do - fall into a pit.

Next, you have to know (or figure out) that the leg armor upgrade can destroy bricks like the ones blocking the cave entrance. This ability is only ever used to find one or two powerups, so you’d be forgiven for being in the dark about it.

Lastly, you need to understand that some of the stages can change over time, and to go back to Sting Chameleon’s stage, and determine exactly what parts of the stage were affected.

In my opinion, what makes this particular powerup “deliciously devious” rather than “ridiculous and frustrating” is that it is unique in its difficulty. If the development team adopted this approach across all the stages, I don’t think I would think very highly of it. But they have enough leeway to get away with it once. It’s that overall sense of balance that helps make this game shine. It knows when to get really tough, as well as when to take its foot off the gas.

The Hadoken

Okay, so there is one other powerup that’s even more obtuse than Sting Chameleon’s Heart Container, but it’s more of an Easter Egg than it is a standard powerup. Missing it doesn’t make the game harder, while getting it doesn’t necessarily make the game easier.

I’m talking about unlocking a super secret Dr. Light capsule that grants the ability to perform Ryu’s Hadoken fireball from Street Fighter. The move is a one-shot kill to everything in the game; that is, provided you can hit anything with it.

In order to do the move, you have to input the same quarter-circle input as in Street Fighter, and the fireball itself is fairly slow. Getting the timing right, especially on bosses, means that in most cases it isn’t worth your time to actually use it.

But that’s besides the point. The craziest thing about the Hadoken is the process of getting it. It sounds exactly like the kind of fake secret that my friends would tell me about on the playground. First, you need to have all of the weapons, and all of the powerups. Every Sub Tank, every Heart Container, every armor upgrade. You also need to have full health, and I believe all Sub Tanks need to be full.

Once this is done, you go to Armored Armadillo’s stage and ride the mine cart that takes you to the boss chamber. The cart launches you over a wide chasm and lands in front of the boss chamber. To get the Hadoken, you have to jump into the chasm and die, and you have to do this about four or five times in a row (which means you need to collect a few extra lives before even trying this stunt). Then, and only then, will the capsule appear in the ledge that rests above the boss chamber door.

The thing about this secret is that even today, I’m not sure if anyone is 100% certain about what conditions do or do not trigger it. For example, do you have to jump into the chasm from a certain place (I always do it from the ledge that the capsule will eventually appear on). Do you just need to ensure you have full health when you die? I’m not entirely sure. When I replayed the game recently, I unlocked it without issue, but as a kid it took me hours to finally nail it, to the point where I believed it wasn’t real.

Weapon Usage

MMX Sigma Stages are masterclasses in testing the player’s familiarity with alternate weapons. Early on the first stage, you have to climb a series of moving platforms.

What makes this so tough is these little pink flying robots. The developers knew exactly what trajectory the player’s jumps would take, and so placed these robots so that they fly onto the screen on an intercept course that will collide with you at any point in your jump. Destroying them is easier said than done. You have to jump up and aim, but if you jump in place, the platform will move out from under you.

So how do you get past this? The solution is to use the homing missiles. They take the pink bots out in one hit, and you can fire them from a standing position.

Here’s another challenge from later in this level:

You have to climb your way up a long vertical shaft lined with enemies. Specifically, these three particular enemies show up several times at different heights along the shaft.

Again, this is a case where the developers knew exactly what trajectories the player would take to climb up. Trying to avoid any one of these enemies will leave you vulnerable to the other two. You can get through this part by simply climbing and taking a lot of damage, but even that is easier said than done. Some attacks will simply slow you down, but others will knock you down. Get hit enough with those kinds of attacks, and you’ll never make it up.

So what to do? There are multiple ways of getting past this part, but my favorite is to use Sting Chameleon’s weapons. When fully charged it makes X invulnerable, at the cost of being unable to fire; an acceptable tradeoff for this particular encounter.

Environmental Stuff

There are a few environmental touches I didn’t get around to mentioning in my last discussion on the topic.

Flame Mammoth’s stage is some sort of incinerator, where husks of dead robots are destroyed. In this shot you can see two bots that appear elsewhere:

In Sting Chameleon’s stage, we start off in the forest:

But end the stage in much darker, creepier part of the forest:

Whether this is meant to imply a change in location (that is, deeper into the forest) or the progression of time (perhaps it’s now dusk), I appreciate the attempt to suggest that these stages are not just static window dressing.

Launch Octopus’ stage doesn’t have a ton of good environmental storytelling, but it has a lot of fun scenery. At the start of the stage, it isn’t entirely obvious why Launch Octopus is in this particular region of water. Early on we encounter an oil rig/platform, but it’s small, and clearly not the centerpiece upon which the stage is built around.

Going further into the depths, we begin to see glass tanks filled with magma:

As well as some glass thanks that are broken open …

Lastly, in the boss chamber, we find another tube that looks to be rising up towards the surface:

I guess Launch Octopus found himself an underwater volcano. This does not necessarily makes narrative sense, but in this case it doesn’t have to. Years of pop culture taught me that villains naturally gravitate towards volcanoes of all shapes and sizes. It’s a goofy cliche, but I’m willing to embrace it.

Other Tidbits

I love some of the custom animations and sprites used when certain bosses are hit with their weakness. Spark Mandrill gets frozen and has to break himself out of the ice:

While hitting Chill Penguin with the flamethrower causes him to immolate:

There is a part of Sigma Stage 1 where you find these little spring thingies, as well as a bunch of trip lasers:

Jumping onto the springs will cause you to launch into the trip laser and be shot. However, dashing onto the first one will cause you to bounce across a series of several springs until you are safe at the other side of the gauntlet.

Lastly, I love how the end credits play out as X runs along the highway from the intro stage. It is by far the most beautiful background art in the game, and it is a joy to see it free of the earlier chaos and destruction.