Topic: Capcom Announces Mega Man X Compilation

[Karl Castaneda #2]

Relive your favorite moments in the X series.

X MARKS THE SPOT AS CAPCOM® DEBUTS THE LATEST BLUE BOMBER COMPILATION WITH MEGA MAN® X COLLECTION    

E3, LOS ANGELES - May 18, 2005 ? The famous blue action hero returns in this latest installment to Capcom’s growing Mega Man anthology with the planned release of Mega Man® X Collection for the Nintendo GameCube™ and the PlayStation®2 computer entertainment system. Mega Man X Collection revisits the celebrated Maverick Hunter with the library of classic Mega Man X games (Mega Man X through Mega Man X6) from the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and PlayStation game console. Witness the beginning of the futuristic version of the blockbuster franchise and experience the never-before-released-in-the-US Mega Man PlayStation game: Mega Man Battle and Chase. Mega Man X Collection is scheduled for release throughout North America this fall.    

“Building upon the success of Mega Man Anniversary Collection, Capcom now delivers an even more incredible compilation of games from our premiere videogame icon.” said Todd Thorson, director of marketing Capcom Entertainment. “The Mega Man X series of games has revolutionized the long standing Mega Man franchise. Combining them in a comprehensive package is simply a fantastic value.”    

In the Mega Man X Collection, Mega Man X must thwart Sigma’s army of renegade reploids and their evil plan of destroying the world. Faced with intense challenges, X, his robot partner, Zero and Dr. Light must band together to intercept and prevent the forces that threaten total annihilation. Mega Man X Collection features a retrospective of X’s humble teenage beginnings on a 16-bit system to its initiation into the 32-bit era. Players will be challenged to prove their gaming skills once again as they battle through each subsequent adventure while unlocking a host of bonus features and artwork. This collection continues the tradition of delivering a universally appealing and high quality product at a superior value.  

[Ian Sane]

Are those Atomic Planet idiots working on this again?  They couldn't fit a bunch of NES games on a Cube disc so I question their ability to fit three Playstation games.  Hopefully this time they won't goof up the controls for no reason.

I already have Mega Man X for the SNES so I don't know if I'll get this since I hear that the first game was by far the best.  Anyone who has played them want to give me a quick 'n' dirty review of the other games in the series?  Is it worth it to get this for X2-6?

[JonLeung]

The X series has always been declining.

X is classic.

X 2 and X 3 are still pretty good.

I played X 4 and X 5 and was like...okay, so...?

I haven't played X 6, X 7, or X 8 (though X 7 and X 8 aren't on this compilation) and I don't feel like I'm missing much.  I may play them one day, but I'm not in a hurry to.

(X: Command Mission (also not on this compilation), since it wasn't a now-generic X platformer but an RPG, was refreshing.  The opposite of Network Transmission, an RPG made into a platformer, that was also refreshing.))

There are some plot twists, but overall, the X series story seems to get more confusing and convoluted, introducing more characters that you don't really care about.  I would like to play them all eventually, when I next get a Mega Man fix, but sadly, these games aren't as good as they once were.  A compilation at least makes it quick and easy to snatch up the first six either way, for those of us who would want to play them.  For me, that would only get me X 6.  Oh, and Battle & Chase.

That Mega Man Battle & Chase game they have as a bonus - you'd think they'd've stuck that on the Mega Man compilation.  Seeing as how it's not quite "X".  I guess they thought the arcade games were enough of a "bonus", then.  I wouldn't have done it this way.  I would've made better game-clear bonuses, as well.  I most certainly wouldn't have mixed up the A and B buttons, or at least allowed different control schemes if there was any doubt.  It really shouldn't be that difficult.  Let's hope they redeem themselves with this X compilation done right, too bad the original Mega Man had longer lasting appeal than X.    

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Indeed.

X is truly a classic.

X2 was a worthy follow-up.  Gotta have "both."

X3 was lacking in polish in the stages, animations, and music, but it's an even bigger adventure than the previous two, and still a good time.  It's as if X had the most attention paid to it during development like how Street Fighter II turned out.  But at X3's stage you could tell Capcom was cutting corners.

X4, had better sprite graficks, whatever, but the controls weren't nearly as fluid, Zero's game was noticeably harder (less balanced), the stages were less interesting than any on the SNES (one stage was completely on-rails), bosses had attacks that were considerably cheap (especially in the last battle), X's upgrades were so-so (running out of ideas?) and one "temporary levitation" upgrade gave me control problems, screwing with my dash-jumping and whatnot.  Hiding the upgrades weren't so creative.  The music was tragically generic and subdued.  I don't remember one theme from it.  Overall it lacks the genuine soul of the SNES games and i don't want to play it again ever.

X5, I saw my brother playing, seemed way more generic and rehashed (audio, video, gameplay, creativity) than i could believe from Capcom.  I'd lost all faith in the X franchise at this point.

~~~~~

If you had a pc with a decent gamepad, plus a good S-video or component video TV-out adatper, you could get a better Mega Man anthology using an emulator with the nice screen filters like "Super Eagle" or "Super Sai 2X" or something like that.

Mega Man Network Transmission is the best (and i mean it's a wonderful, great game, as far as old-school Mega Man is concerned) Mega Man game since the SNES games, I believe.  I'd say it's a better tribute to the classic series than Anniversary Tragedy was.

[KDR_11k]

I can give you a spoiler: Zero dies! Then he dies again! Then he dies permanently! Then he comes back! F#ck, this guy is more persistent than Jesus!

[ruby_onix]

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Are those Atomic Planet idiots working on this again? They couldn't fit a bunch of NES games on a Cube disc so I question their ability to fit three Playstation games.

To be fair, they didn't have a problem with NES games. They had a problem with six PSone games that had no business being PSone games. Also, when Atomic Planet slashed the remixed audio out of them, they technically weren't slashing anything that was in the NES originals.

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Hopefully this time they won't goof up the controls for no reason.

This compilation will further highlight Atomic Planet's ineptitude and lack of foresight. The "dash" button is vital in the "X" series, and their MMAC setup just isn't going to work. And I learned the hard way that the PS2 controller with it's "pressure sensitive" buttons is not a suitable alternative. I haven't heard anything about how the recently-released Xbox version controls, but I imagine it's the best version of MMAC available.

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I already have Mega Man X for the SNES so I don't know if I'll get this since I hear that the first game was by far the best. Anyone who has played them want to give me a quick 'n' dirty review of the other games in the series? Is it worth it to get this for X2-6?

Megaman X is a classic. I loved the Megaman series, then Megaman X came along and kicked it's a$$.

X2 was not quite as good. You know how Zero "died" in X1? The plot of X2 is that you're on some quest to find his parts (which were stolen) so you can rebuild him. It's good for "more of the same".

X3 came late in the SNES's life. They rushed it and it lacks polish. There was some sort of gimmicky thing where you could play as Zero for some sections of the game. It had a very low print run and is considered rare. It was ported to the Sega Saturn and PSone, both of which are also quite rare. More of the same.

X4 was on the PlayStation and I think the Saturn too. The game has well-done anime cutscenes that reveal the plot. They gave everyone voices. Unfortunately, X has the voice of a girl, or maybe a ten-year-old Japanese boy (the same voice as Megaman has in Megaman 8 on the PSone). It's really annoying. He yells "Hup!" every time you jump, and "Pow!" every time you shoot. He never shuts up. I seriously wanted to kill him. Fortunately, Zero has a cool voice. And he's an entirely playable character, as there are two quests in the game, X's and Zero's. Both of which have a different plot. Zero's plot is much darker, and reveals for the first time that the Megaman X series is the future of the Megaman series. After playing through Zero's quest I found myself able to tolerate playing as X, just to see the other side of the game's plot. Zero's short-range attacks completely changed the dynamic of the game, to the point where it didn't feel like another Megaman game, but it felt like Capcom had made an all-new Megaman-quality entry into the 2D gaming field, after so many years. I enjoyed it.

In X5 there's some asteroid/colony/whatever on a collision course with Earth, so you have a time limit in which to go through all the stages and collect parts to build a big honkin space gun to blow it away. Because of the time limit, you can't keep entering and exiting stages and using continues like you could in previous games (which I found restricted my ability to "play around" and have fun). They changed X's voice actor, and he is MUCH more tolerable now. There are various different "suits" for X hidden in the game, with different benefits, and you actually still have X's upgrades from X4 available to you right from the beginning. I haven't played it much (I only got it recently), but the English translation really lacks polish. Big spoiler: Zero dies in this game. It's supposed to be the lead-in to the Megaman Zero series. But...

Capcom decided to make X6 against Keiji Inafune's wishes. They also decided to revive Zero, because he still had some good milking left in him, and Capcom can never turn down a chance to milk something. I don't have this one, but I want to get it out of morbid curiousity. Everyone says it blows.

[nitsu niflheim]

I will pass, every game after the first one just got bad.  and X7 was horrible, so bad I'm not even bothering with X8.  

[KDR_11k]

and reveals for the first time that the Megaman X series is the future of the Megaman series.

Really? My MMX manual already said that. Light tells you in X1 as well (He says "When you read this I'll be long dead" making it clear that this is the future).

[ruby_onix]

Yes, Megaman X is set 100 years farther in the future than Megaman (Megaman is 20XX, Megaman X is 21XX), but it was unknown if the two series shared any common bond.

In Megaman, robot technology was made by the collaberation of Dr Light and Dr Wily. Dr Wily then tried to use the robots to rule the world, but Dr Light converted one of his two lab-assistant robots into a fighting-robot to stop him (Rock became Rockman/Megaman).

At the start of Megaman X, Dr Cain finds X (made by Dr Light) in a capsule, undergoing 100 years of dreamlike testing to ensure that it's not possible for him to ever go insane (called "Maverick"). X still has a few years left in his hibernation, so Dr Cain makes some basic scans of X and releases the technology, and the entire world gets populated with robots (called "Reploids") derived from X, which nobody has ever bothered to test for insanity (too tedious), before X ever wakes up.

Megaman X might have been the sequel to Megaman, but the Megaman X series never seemed to have a past beyond X1. Dr Light's holograms never mentioned anything. X never mentioned anything. X might not even be Megaman (his name is different). Plus this robot technology of Dr Light's was somehow "new" to the world, a hundred years later even.

Megaman X could have been an alternate future. It might have been what happened if Dr Light hadn't had Dr Wily's "help".

Or perhaps, the entire Megaman series and his endless fight with Dr Wily was just part of X's hundred-year long dreaming test, which simply faded from X's mind like a dream after he woke up.

But no, the Megaman X series is the direct sequel to the Megaman series. Unlike other reploids, Zero was not derived from X. Like X, Zero was also found in a capsule (by Sigma). Zero was made by Dr Wily. Zero was a bloodthirtsy psychotic badass until the heroic Sigma punched him in the jewels hard enough to give him amnesia. Zero is the carrier of a virus that drives robots to insanity, which would later get blamed on the infected Sigma. Zero ended the Megaman series somehow. X was made/converted by Dr Light as a response to Zero.