Mega Man Xtreme: Cyber Missions

xtreme...Xtreme...XTREME! You have to yell when you say the title and pump your fist! Xtreme follows standards of excellence that the classic series Mega Man game boy games had. Xtreme isn't quite a port, but it isn't completely original either. I like to think of this game as a show casing of the best of X and X2, and it brings back the old series tradition of mixing up weapons and levels for variety.

Story
This game takes place between X2 and X3, and recaps the basic premise of the X story at the start.

X wakes up one day on the highway from Mega Man X1. Confused, he comes across Vile (who he calls VAVA because the translators were lazy). He's shocked, as he had defeated Vile a few years ago in the first game, Mega Man X. After they fight, X wakes up in Maverick Hunter HQ. Someone has hacked the Maverick Hunter's computer, known as the Mother Computer, and infected it with viruses based off of the previous mavericks X had encountered in X and X2.

A special reploid technician is brought in named Middy to help out, while X goes and faces these viruses in the cyberworld. Meanwhile, the game reveals the hacker, named Techno, is conspiring with two other mavericks named Zain and Gemmel to stop X.

Zero is in this game too, but he doesn't really do anything story wise.

X comes across Zain and defeats him, then Gemmel vows revenge for his fallen comrade and runs away. X then confronts Techno and blasts him. As he does, Middy runs into the room and tells X that Techno is his brother. They find out that Techno was being manipulated by... SIGMA! DUN DUN DUN! Anyways, because Techno and Middy were brothers they share a CPU and if one dies the other does... yeah... that makes sense right? Plop, down goes Middy! So much for the supporting cast!

X confronts Sigma in the Mother Computer and defeats him. Sigma laughs and says "I'll be back" or something to that effect. X vows to protect the weak from the likes of Sigma, and the credits roll. BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

Middy appears on the screen and unlocks hard mode which has more story!

Hard mode essentially is the same story as normal mode, except it takes into account the previous events that just happened. Middy and Techno are dead, and Gemmel is out for revenge. X fights different mavericks this time, and instead of upgrades to his armor, Dr. Light's capsules summon Zero to do different attacks to help out. X defeats Gemmel in this mode and when you beat Sigma he moans "WHY DO YOU ALWAYS WIN! WHAAAAAN!" Then after the credits roll, this time Techno appears on the screen and unlocks extreme mode, which basically contains all the levels but no extra story.

While typical for a dumb Mega Man story, it is nice that hard mode mixes it up a bit.

Aesthetics

This game is for the Game Boy Color but you can play it on a normal game boy. The Game Boy Advanced wouldn't be out till next year, so this is about as good as graphics got on hand-helds in this era. The cutscenes are really detailed for a Game Boy game to be sure, although I do think X's sprite is a bit ugly. He looks a bit confused.

The levels are taken straight from the SNES games, and as such are downgraded visually to meet the game boy color's limitations. They do represent the levels well enough though, and the animations are fine.

Sound

The game contains mostly remixes of the original games' stages, which were fantastic on the original system, but not as good here. One weird thing that happens is that some of the music screws up a bit when you charge the X-buster. That's really a minor complaint though and otherwise the sound on this game is passable.

Design

Let's ignore the levels and weapons here, because aside from a few minor changes they are mostly the same, although the weapon selection here is all the useful ones.

As a whole this is mostly just a recreation of X and X2. All of the upgrades and items are in the places they were in the originals, and the boss patterns are wholly the same, although Spark Mandrill is a hell of a lot tougher I think.

The interesting part of this game are the different skill modes. Normal has you get all of your armor upgrades, hard has you get moves for Zero (which are mostly useless), and extreme has you get everything. You can enter hard mode after you beat normal mode, either from a new game or a new game plus. Coming into it as a new game plus actually makes hard mode easier than normal, go figure. Extreme mode just makes you start everything from scratch regardless but you have access to all 8 levels, giving you the standard difficulty for a Mega Man game. Really the only hard way to play this game is to choose hard mode without a new game plus, as you won't be able to upgrade X's armor this way.

Even so this game is easier than both X and X2, but it doesn't hold this game back. My only real complain about difficulty is that Sigma's final form is a mockery of his final form in the original game. He is really too easy in this one.

That said if you like X and X2 you'll enjoy this game, but there isn't enough here to separate it from the originals to go out of your way to find and pick this one up if you're not an enthusiast.

Playability

"A" jump, "B" shoot. Crap! There's not enough buttons to dash! Guess we'll just make Dash start, despite saying it's select in the menu!

You'll have to get used to the awkward position of the dash button or learn to double tap the directional pad for all your dashing needs. As if that wasn't bad enough, the dash in this game can be unreliable as it's not as tight as the regular games.

Also it bears mention that you'll automatically be dashing when you hike up the walls. This will help in boss fights, so they are aware of the dashing problem. Like I said though, this game isn't all that hard so it shouldn't be a huge problem for you.

Extras

• Remember the hidden capsule in X2 that gave you the shroyuken? Head there after you get everything in this game to get it and the hadoken again. Both moves are subdued though.
• Boss order: Normal mode, Ice Penguin, Storm Eagle, Spark Mandrill, Flame Stag. Hard Mode, Wheel Gator, Armored Armadillo, Morph Moth, Magna Centipede. Xtreme Mode, follow the same order so you collect the armor parts first.

Decent game, but if you've played the games it's based on it's not a must play.

Playthroughs
N/a