Mega Man X6

I've often said that any game engine can be used to make a good game and a real bad game. Play a round of Doom and then take a chance on a random fan-made wad (albeit chances are better for a good wad these days), play Super Mario World and then try a Romhack. It's all about design. A weak engine can still produce something worth playing with good design and a strong engine can turn up a pile of shit with bad design. Mega Man X6 is the latter example of design theory.

There are all kinds of problems with this game. Mega Man X6 is a really hard game, but instead of relying on well thought out challenges the game pulls out "fuck you" instant death traps left and right expecting you to memorize every inch of it. Gate's stages really test your patience and are practically intolerable.

X6 also has a terrible story to accompany it. Nothing new for Mega Man, but this one really asks you to take a hell of a lot of bullshit this time. We'll start with the biggest problem, Zero is back. Why is he back? Why does this game exists? Money. X6 had a ridiculously short development cycle coming out exactly 1 year minus a day after X5. Not only that, but without Keiji Inafune on board the project as well. He went off to Inti Creates, which is basically smaller developer that Capcom publishes for, to work on the Zero series.

If you read any article about X5 and X6 they say that X5 was supposed to be the end of the series and Inafune had to rewrite the Zero series when he heard that X6 was coming out. Just about 99% of these stupid sites copy and paste the same article from Wikipedia where the actual source of this rumor is not listed anywhere at all. For awhile I was actually starting to doubt the validity of this rumor because technically the next game Inafune is credited with is battle network, of which he is the producer, which came out the same year and that was an in-house development.

Luckily for you, I have found the quote of which this rumor originates. It comes from an interview with Inafune from the now dead retro faction website. Inafune says this:

"I was originally planning on ending the series at around X4 or 5," Inafune reveals. "I really expected that to be the ending. And so I was all happy... 'OK, done with X5. That series is now closed off, now let's start Zero. I'm really excited to start Zero series.' Here's Zero, you know, he's kind of dead, and you power him up and he comes back to life, right? In my mind, in X5, Zero died. And so I'd always planned to make Zero come back to life in the Zero series, but then X6 comes out sooner from another division and Zero comes back to life in that, and I'm like, 'What's this!? Now my story for Zero doesn't make sense! Zero's been brought back to life two times!"

The site is dead as I mentioned and you can't find the interview anywhere to my knowledge, but there is a good lot of evidence to support that this is genuine so I'm inclined to believe it myself now but keep in mind I haven't seen the actual interview page myself.

As bad as this game is though, it still has it positives, keeping it from being the worst official Mega Man game in the franchise. Trust me, there are a few that are much worse.

New Features

• The parts system has been revamped so that in order to gain parts you now must rescue reploids. Watch out though because the Zero Nightmare can actually turn them Maverick right before your eyes.
• The ranking system is now based on how many Nightmare Souls you collect.
• X gets his own sword through out this game.

Story

"Zero!? I thought you were dead!?"

"Nope!"

"Cool."

LATER

"Sigma! I thought you where dead!?"

"No you didn't"

"Yeah I guess you're right."

The End

Aesth... what you want more than that? Bah alright. Three weeks after the events of Mega Man X5, the Eurasia colony disaster has completely wrecked the ecosystem of Earth forcing the humans underground while the reploids help rebuild the planet. One reploid named Gate goes to Ground Zero (pun intended) where he finds a mysterious circuit board looking object. A week later he's gone maverick and hatched a plan to build a Reploid utopia with him as the ruler.

X has been having dreams related to Zero every night and is then called to the scene of one of the colony clean ups where a giant Mechlanoid has gone Maverick. X battles it but then he sees something in the shape of Zero come down and destroy it. Just then a huge Reploid named High Max shows up and fights X. He determines that X is a Maverick Hunter and stops. He is investigating what him and a guy he is with named Isoc are calling "The Zero Nightmare." Apparently a virus in the shape of Zero is going around infecting reploids, screwing up the environments and creating these little bastards called "Nightmare Viruses" which you will hate a lot. Isoc and High Max send 8 investigators around to world to examine the areas mostly contaminated by the Zero virus. Gee, what an odd number... 8...

Commander Signas sends X to investigate the areas as well but every time he meets an investigator they appear to be controlling the virus instead of stopping it. Furthermore all of the Maverick investigators are former Reploids that a former colleague of Alia built. That would be Gate our villain.

From here our story splits depending on what the player does. If you go out of your way to stop the Zero Nightmare itself, Zero becomes a playable character. He shows up saying "I hid myself away to recover." What the fuck ever Capcom. Anyway eventually Gate reveals himself and you can go battle him with X or Zero. You also can choose to not bring Zero back but that only slightly tweaks the story.

Anyway X or Zero fight Gate and we find out that what Gate found was a piece of Zero's DNA from the crash site. Damn that Zero virus making people reploids go crazy. After he is defeated, he activates Sigma who he had rebuilt for some unexplained reason. Sigma is like "pfft, I can't die" and then Gate dies. Zero and X are literally rolling their eyes when Sigma shows up, as if even they are sick of this games predictability. So you fight an unfinished Sigma who is the easiest fight in the entire game which is really disappointing when you've just finished all the other bullshit to get here.

If X beats Sigma and rescues Zero, the two of them bring Gates fallen body back to Alia and talk about how they are going to build a new future for Reploids and Humans.

If X doesn't rescue Zero, the same thing happens except Zero is hidden from Alia and X but within earshot. He laughs smugly that he has to do something before returning to the Hunters, and X and Alia wonder if they heard Zero. So this ending is Zero just being a lazy fuck the entire game.

If you finish the game with Zero, well this gets interesting... Zero meets up with some Reploid scientist. He feels responsible for all the troubles caused by the Maverick Wars because... you know... technically they are his fault and decides the only way to end them for good is to seal himself away for a hundred years in a capsule to purge the virus from his body. This ties the X series to the Zero series which takes place next canonically. But because Zero shows up in X7 and X8 this scene doesn't make sense until Capcom blatantly said in the complete works books (Classic series coming in October and X series in December) that this scene takes place some time after the X series concludes. In other words they can make as many X games as they want so long as this is what happens at the end of it.

Anyway, the story is terrible and in addition to its very poorly translated as well.

Aesthetics

X6 doesn't really have much in the way of improvements over X5. The levels are more diverse in look compared to X5 and X4 to be sure so I can't fault them there. There aren't a hell of a lot of enemies in this game though. Most of the stages are made up of the Nightmare Viruses, killing any chance of variety. The ones that aren't Nightmares are mostly X5 enemies you've already dealt with.

Some of the bosses look alright like Rainy Turtloid but a few feel all to familiar in design. Blaze Heatnix, Blizzard Wolfang for example feel like rehashes and High Max isn't particularly interesting looking. Commander Yammark feels a bit like a throw back to Gyro Man design wise and the Mother Nightmare is just a couple of Squares... bleh. Sigma looks cool in Zombie form, but he's disappointing in other ways.

X has a new armor in this game that just looks awesome though. The Shadow armor is a black ninja like suit that is completely different from standard X armors and is really the high light of this game, both visually and design wise. However this game doesn't do a lot to distinguish itself visually from X4 and X5 although it's not like it's a particularly ugly game.

Sound

The best part of X6 is the sound track. There are a couple of reused tracks from X5, but only with certain characters themes, such as Dynamo who makes a hidden appearance. Where to begin on my favorite tracks in this game, they're all so good showing that even in their shitty games Capcom dominates video game music.

I think my favorite is Blizzard Wolfang whose whole level is a diamond in the rough so to speak. Commander Yammark's music is also really a nice relaxing Jazzy tune that fits the level well. The boss fight music is good too without being over the top metal thrashing. Infinity Mijinion appears to be a tribute to "The Final Countdown" itself.

Few games I would say would be worth buying strictly for the music (ZX comes to mind), but the sound track in X6 at least add to the small list of reasons as to why this game is playable. Other sound effects are pretty much straight from the X4, X5 sound library.

This game contains the original Japanese intros which sound alright I guess, and the PSX version even has the original Japanese voice acting... which sounds terrible to to an English speaking American like myself who isn't a numb nuts Otaku, not that Capcom exactly did the other X games justice on the voice acting front for the US anyway, but hey Legends was good so it's not like they couldn't have put in the effort. They really just wanted to get as much cash as they could out of this one.

Design

The design of this game is developer vs. player to a point where the game is not fun. Some stages are great as I already stated with Blizzard Wolfang and I enjoy Infinity Mijinion's as well. Others...

Blaze Heatnix's stage is a series of mini-boss fights. You fight the same stupid mini-boss 5 times in a variety of arenas that restrict your movement more and more. The mini-bosses biggest challenge is his size as the bosses patterns are essentially moving in a straight line and firing occasionally at the player. These fights are so fucking boring and you have to do it every time you come back to the stage. Its tedious as hell.

Metal Shark Player's level is a nice way to lose all your hair until you learn how to do it, but CHRIST, parts of it are so long without check points in between putting all the really dangerous parts JUST before one. You are likely to die here a lot.

Ground Scaravich's level is also randomly generated from a set of about 10 or so different make ups all filled with Nightmare Viruses, really annoying enemies that shoot at you and teleport into you. You will hate these fucking things. To make matters worse, there's a piece of X's Blade armor in this stage that you might not find until multiple visits and the Blade Armor is REQUIRED if you want to finish the game with X. You'll either need it to get through Gates god awful fucking stages, or to get the Shadow Armor or Jumper part as alternatives to make it through that stage. What the hell Capcom?

Speaking of Gates stage, there are spikes EVERYWHERE. Just to start the stage you need to set down a block of ice from one of your weapons, jump on it, then with either the use of the Blade armor or Jumper part, scale your way up the stage in that fashion. OR you can go out of your way to get the shadow armor which makes you immune to spikes, but gets rid of your weapons and you'll have to make a really fucking tricky jump in Gate stage 2 if you go with that instead.

Another problem with the stages are the "Nightmare Effects." Essentially depending on which stage you just left, one of the other stages will turn red on the stage select screen indicating that a nightmare effect is taking place. It'll stay like that until you get it highlighted again. The Nightmare Effects are almost always stupid extra pains in the ass, such as little dragon flies blocking your shots, placing extra blocks in your way to fuck up the precision sections of the game and the worst of the worst, the screen goes black and lights up a small section of the window lights up blocking out most of the screen... UGH FUCK THIS NIGHTMARE!

Let's talk about boss fights though. X6 for all it's bullshit, probably has the best boss fights in the series until you get to the final stages. Each Maverick has it's own little gimmicks that make it a lot of fun. I tend to go at the stages in an order that minimizes the bullshit of the Nightmare effects, so I myself usually buster duel these guys. Metal Shark Player despite having the stage I hate most, is the coolest boss, a hammerhead shark who summons bosses from the SNES games to fight you. Awesome! Oh and his weapon summons Storm Eagle for you if you charge it!

The final stages are hell though. The Nightmare Mother as I said is a couple of Squares rotating around the room. Words cannot describe how horrible this boss fight is, check out HideofBeast's run through of it to see it. Next you fight High Max who is just an exercise in tedium. He's not particularly tough to dodge but he has a shield around him that gives him an incredibly small hit box that you have to hit with a charged shot, but that's not what does the damage. You have to hit him with one of X's special weapons or Zero's extra moves to actually damage him. God this fight takes forever.

Speaking of Zero, this game is hell to play with him, especially Nightmare Mother. Zero's design in X4 and X5 made him better at stages but tougher at boss fights. Well since X gets a sword and a suit of armor that makes him immune to spikes, Zero isn't quite as appealing as he once was.

It should be noted that you can power him up all the way this time as the heart tanks are better spread out. A few parts still require X to get though. Speaking of parts, you get them by rescuing reploids, which is actually a fun gimmick of this game and it stuck around for X7. If you let a Nightmare Virus touch a reploid however, they'll go Maverick and you won't be able to save them unless you reload the game. A bit annoying for anyone who wants to 100% the game in this respect, but for what it's worth most of the important reploids carrying things like extra heart tanks and parts are usually out of range of the Nightmares so don't worry too much about it.

This game also has an XTREME mode just like X5 and the bosses and levels will take new moves and setups into account. Unlike X5 though, X6's XTREME mode is actually really really really fucking hard. Don't even bother touching this one until you have a good idea of the bosses patterns and a general knowledge of where the items are.

Oh by the way, Alia's conversations are optional this time! HOORAY!

Playability

This game is hard by design, not by any fault of the controls like Legends 2. One thing that is annoying is you can't cancel a dash from the Blade Armor and on occasion you'll trigger it on accident and send yourself flying off in the wrong direction. That's a real minor complaint though and the rest of the game plays as fluidly as it's predecessors.

Extras

• Boss Order: Forget the weakness chain here. Get the annoying shit out of the way. Commander Yammark, Rainy Turtleloid, Infinity Mijinion, Metal Shark Player, Blizzard Wolfang, Shield Shelldon, Blaze Phoenix, Ground Scarab. This should avoid most of the annoying Nightmares during your normal run through. I usually mix up my runs through this game though so I may revise this in the future.
• You need Nightmare Souls to raise your rank. Raising your rank allows you to equip more parts. Nightmare Viruses won't drop new souls until you switch the Nightmare effects back on their stage after clearing it. The best way to farm souls however, is to get Zero, fight High Max, and then fight Dynamo. Use Meteor Rain on him and it'll stun him, then hit him with a buster shot and he'll drop a soul worth 200 points. You can do this three times during the fight for a total of 600 points per fight. I find the quickest way to get to him is through Infinity Mijinion's stage.
• Speaking of Infinity Mijinion, if you want to unlock Zero as soon as possible so you won't power up X to much, pick his stage first, then take the teleporter when it comes up. You'll fight Nightmare Zero whose weakness happens to be the Z-Saber so he's not an especially hard fight. Congratulations, you'll now have Zero who you can easily fully power up at this point.
• Mega Man Xtreme 2 gets a nod in this game when Alia mentions the Erasure incident.

X6 has a lot of questionable design decisions that make it frustrating beyond belief, but has a few saving graces to make it playable. There's no reason to skip picking this one up since it's part of the X collection now, but take your time with it and don't jump straight into XTREME mode if you value your sanity.

Playthroughs
X6 Minimalist Speed Run by HideofBeast (the most impressive run of this game ever done)