The Zero Series

With the introduction of the Mega Man Zero series a new developer put its hands on the franchise. Inti Creates, a group made up of ex-Capcom employees has been very kind to the Mega Man fans, creating some of the best titles and most consistently good series of the franchise. Sure, they also made Mega Man's Battle Chip Challenge... but nobody's perfect.

It should be noted that in Mega Man Zero: The Complete Works, Inti makes it perfectly clear how dedicated they are to the official time line, and Zero and ZX are meant to nicely bridge the gap between Mega Man X and Mega Man Legends. They really wanted to try a lot of ideas, and with Keiji Inafune himself heading up the Zero Project, they really had a lot of free reign. One of those decisions was to make X the villain of the series.

Now a lot of people think that the Capcom execs pulled the plug on that idea, but the Complete Works book accounts that the developers themselves decided that vilifying X might not go so well with the fans who were used to X being a hero. The X series was still going on as well, giving them more reason to work away from the idea. According to the book, the change came in a month before the game was released... geeze.

The Mega Man Zero series takes place about a hundred years or so after the conclusion of the X series... whenever the hell that will be. As you'll recall at the end of X6 we see a scene where Zero seals his body away to purge himself of the Maverick virus. This is the lead in to the Zero series. Yes there was a rewrite in the Zero series to accommodate X6, but we've already covered that.

As you'll recall, Zero gained strength from the Sigma Virus in X5, probably because it originated from him. Scientists at the time figuring Zero had anti-bodies to protect him from the virus (fuck if I know how that works in a machine) extracted his mind out of his body while they studied his chassis. Eventually they created the Sigma Antibody Program, which would fix the infected Mavericks. This program would give way to a new kind of sentient being called a Cyber Elf and this Cyber Elf would be known as the Mother Elf.

Well along comes some jerk named Dr. Weil who steals Zero's body and the mother elf and starts a war that wipes out most of the reploids and a little over half the humans. This was known as the elf wars.

During this period Zero would revive and fight alongside X against Dr. Wiel. The details of this are established as the series continues. After their victory against Wiel, Zero tells X that the only way to stop the blood shed is to seal himself away for eternity. X tries to stop him, but Zero reassures him that this is the right thing for humanity. Zero would be sealed away for all of eternity, and X would go on to found Neo Arcadia, a paradise for Reploids and Humans.

However, 100 years would pass and an energy crisis would bring about destruction and a bloody tyranny. Innocent Reploids would be labeled Maverick and "retired" left and right with nothing stopping the ruling power. This is where the Mega Man Zero games would begin.

Mega Man Zero is a rare series in that it only has 4 titles and all of them follow the main narrative. No spin offs, no remakes, and no ports. The ZX series is like this as well, but while that series is still on going, Zero actually concluded before becoming a giant mess like some of the other on going series. The titles in this series are:

• Mega Man Zero
• Mega Man Zero 2
• Mega Man Zero 3
• Mega Man Zero 4

That's it. Simple, isn't it?