It's Mega Man! It's Zero! No, wait, it's another spin-off in the Mega Man universe!
Although Capcom made some big announcements for Nintendo platforms at E3, the only playable, new game on display for a Nintendo system was Mega Man ZX for the DS. Fortunately for DS owners, it looks to be in fine shape.
Judging from the name one would think the game features Mega Man X, or at least Zero. Nope, it instead features two spunky kids living hundreds of years after Mega Man X and Zero roamed the earth. Sure, Vent and Aile are uninteresting tween anime characters, but as part of a special ops force they can combine their metal suits with biometal scraps they collect, which are essentially chunks of metal holding memories of X and Zero's ancient powers.
The demo has two levels on display—one for the guy and one for the girl. The boy's straightforward level was clearly an early stage set in an amusement park, complete with a giant UFO catcher room and a giant metool mini-boss. The girl had to trek through a much more treacherous futuristic power plant with saw-weilding, kid-crushing baddies and traps. While the characters had different biometals, their basic gameplay remained the same. Without an equipped Biometal the character has no offense but can crawl through tight passageways. Tapping X freezes the action and brings up a ring of biometal scraps the hero possesses. After selecting one and pushing X the hero will transform, assuming the powers of a robot from yesteryear. The hero can wall jump, dash forward with L or a double-tap on the D-pad, and attack with the main (Y) or secondary (R) weapon. I have not kept up with the Mega Man series over the years, so I could not recognize the powers available in the E3 demo, but the forms usually involved Zero's light sword or Mega Man X's blaster along with a flashier secondary weapon (each of which has its own power meter). These attacks included everything from a punch to scattered balls of energy.
Mega Man ZX may introduce yet another variation of the Mega Man universe, but it looks like it will have the same challenging platforming and combat fans of the series expect, with some extra variety to boot.