Possibly Good News for a US Operation Shooting Star Release?

Kotaku has a story about soaring profits at Capcom, thanks in part to Operation Shooting Star among other high profile Capcom franchises. The stories I had read about Operation Shooting Star had the game in the bargain bins after a month, but it looks like Capcom has managed to turn a nice profit with the price drop after all.

As you might be aware, there are currently no plans to bring Operation Shooting Star to America or Europe, but I think these new sales numbers are a good sign for English speaking Mega Man fans. Being how the game is relatively inexpensive to make, it stands to reason Capcom could turn a profit in the US as well, but I think Capcom is going to wait until after Mega Man 10 comes out in March before making any new moves with the RPG section of the series.

Mega Man 10 is practically a foregone conclusion to be a block buster, and there is no doubt that the release is going to generate some buzz among all gamers, long time fans, lost nostalgic gamers, and new comers alike. A good time for OSS to hit would be right in the wake of when Mega Man 10's sales start to decline, a good month or two after release. This would be right at the height of Mega Man's popularity again, and a close follow up with Zero Collections would have the blue bomber churning out cash all year long. After that, Capcom will likely pursue Star Force 4 or Battle Network 7, or possibly OSS 2 (god help us if it's the last one).

I was right about Zero collections, and probably half right about Mega Man 10, so I'm going to make a prediction about Operation Shooting Star. Operation Shooting Star will receive a US release after Mega Man 10, and possibly after Zero Collections. In the wake of its release, we'll know what direction the RPG section of Mega Man will be going afterwords. While I'm at it, I think Zero Collections will be good news for ZX 3 as well, and I personally think this is what Inafune was talking about when he said he wanted to go a new direction with Mega Man in the live broadcast. We'll see though.

Read more at Protodude's blog.

The Future of ZX

There hasn't been much news on ZX in a while. There was a rumor floating around for awhile that a third game was going to be released after Star Force 2 called ZX Extremus, but this turned out to be nothing more than that, a rumor. Instead of a ZX3 we got a Mega Man 9... which when you think about it is actually a nice trade so I can't complain.

Still it's been a couple of years and even Mega Man 9 wasn't in development all that long. Undoubtedly Inti Creates will be making more Mega Man games soon and the ZX series isn't in the same boat Legends 3 is. That said, with Inti Creates asserting the most control over the 2d games it's hard to say if ZX won't get benched because of the other series. Capcom has hinted some creative interests in Mega Man 10 and the fans have been pushing for X9 as well and Capcom isn't exactly ignoring them either. Inti Creates will more than likely head up either of these projects, and the possibility is very strong that if Legends 3 ever does get made it'll be an Inti project. ZX is interesting but the following behind the other games is just bigger.

I don't think ZX is dead though. Advent ends on a cliff hanger of sorts and it's likely the ideas for ZX3 have already been floating around, the project just needs to get rolling. When that happens I expect to see the series continue to tie into Legends and I suspect we'll see more of Prometheus and Pandora. Vent and Aile will probably show up in some form or another as well but I suspect that Inti will be trying to tie in another set of protagonists like they did with Advent. I also think the series will jump ahead another few years as Advent gives me the impression that ZX wants to span quite a large amount of time with quite a number of characters. Also if Inti gets to create X9, I think we'll know for sure where Axl falls into this whole thing as well.

If other Mega Man series continue to distract Inti Creates then we may not see another sequel for quite some time but my gut tells me that ZX is going to try and wrap itself up like the Zero series did and probably before a new hand held console is made but there's no way to no for sure at this point. I don't think the next game will be a ZX game, but I think we'll have a better idea of where this series is going by this time next year.

Mega Man ZX Advent

I don't know about this one. It's a good game and all but, it's quite a decline from ZX and to me, it's not one of my favorites. There's a lot of good design decisions in this game and most of it isn't a pain in the ass in difficulty compared to ZX. Mostly though it seems this game has a lot of little things that bug me about it and very little of it has to do with gameplay. I'm going to try to not nitpick this game to death as best I can, but I will stress my points as to why it isn't as good as ZX.

New Features

• Two New Characters: Grey and Ashe. They have different stats and attacks and slightly different stories.
• This game has a lot more forms in it. In addition to ZX and the Guardian forms you'll also be able to take the forms of the pseudoroids you defeat.
• The map has been designed to not be such a pain in the fucking ass this game. Thank god for that.

Story
Mega Man ZX Advent has the big problem of talking way to fucking much. The whole game is blah blah blah blah blah on and on and on. You'd swear you were playing Battle Network or Star Force with how much these characters drone on.

So your first choice is between choosing Ashe, a human treasure hunter searching for some missing Biometals for the government, or you can choose Grey, a reploid who wakes up in a mysterious laboratory and has no idea who or what he is. Now the majority of the games story is the same. Ashe or Grey meet up with Model A and end up on a quest to discover who they are.

Anyway if you play as Grey, Pandora from the first game shows up to wreck your shit and the bridge Grey is standing on collapses. The hunters (basically treasure hunters) want Grey to come with them to Legion (the world government) to get some shit sorted out. Tell you the truth I can't remember all that well as it's been a year or so since I last played as Grey. Anyway on the train to Legion HQ, Pandora shows up with Prometheus to fuck up Grey and the Hunters when a Biometal, Model A, jumps up out of a crate and Mega Merges with Grey. Pandora and Prometheus decide that Grey can go on living and keep Model A for now, but Grey still has to deal with a Psuedoroid on the train.

If you play as Ashe, you'll start in a much cooler level as Ashe is chasing down her... "booty"... in an air ship with a group of hunters. She's looking for the Biometals for the bounty Legion has placed on them, but Prometheus shows up and fucks her and her crew all up. She survives and they get the Biometal anyway somehow... they really don't explain how that happened... Anyway she gets on the train and tells about her life story how when she was young she was the only survivor of a maverick attack and has no idea about her family or home town or anything about her. Then Prometheus and Pandora show up and insert what happens to Grey but this time substitute Ashe.

Anyway Grey/Ashe get called to see the Sage Trinity (the world leaders) of Master Albert, Thomas and Mikhail and if you've caught the reference good for you, this is the first of so many throw backs that even a huge Mega Man nerd like me gets sick of them. Anyway Albert turns out to be evil and has a bunch of Model W's through out the world collecting people's bad feelings and he's having a bunch of Mega Men kill each other in what he calls the "Game of Destiny" where basically the last man standing is king or something.

As the game progresses we find out that Albert has infused his DNA into reploids and the survivors of maverick raids (I guess through blood transfusions) to build his army of Mega Men which he will pit against each other. These are the ones who can use Biometal... which confuses me because I thought ZX said that Ceil made the biometals... I probably got lost in the 90,000 lines of dialog though so my bad.

Model A we find out was built by Albert as a means of storing the data for A-Trans or something, which is the ability to transform into just about anything, and looks a hell of a lot like Axl from X7 and X8, enough to not be a coincidence but the storylines of X and ZX aren't fleshed out enough to draw a real connection just yet, so for now this could just be another stupid throwback. On the other hand it could be Axl in a few given sequels but only time will tell.

Vent or Aile show up along the way as well depending on who you play and are there searching for the stolen Guardians biometals who are now in the hands of some other ass hole Mega Men playing that Game of Destiny mentioned earlier. We also find out Prometheus and Pandora are stuck working for Albert because they'll die if they don't and they plan to kill him, but Albert tricks them into wanting him dead and wanting revenge and stuff so the W-Cores can absorb all their hate and whatever and activate Albert's final form "Ouroboros" which will make him a god or something and bring about man's next step in evolution by killing everyone for some reason.

Grey turns out to be a reploid copy of Albert and Ashe turns out to be his daughter. They beat him and Model Z blows up on the air ship. Yeah, thought I'd just toss that one in there. Everyone's happy game over.

Then if you beat it on expert mode or a third time after completing it with both characters, Master Thomas turns out to be a bad guy and calls back the evil Mega Men to presumably take over the world... that he already rules? Fuck this game is stupid. Honest to god this is my best guess as to what the story is trying to tell me because it's really complicated as fuck and incredibly stupid. ZX wasn't particularly great either but you'd be surprised how much voice acting can affect your opinion of a plot.

Aesthetics
Advent is a lot more dull and darker in color than the Vibrant and bright colors of ZX. The stages aren't quite as varied as they were in ZX but are adequate. The stages of ZX definitely had more personality though, going through burning buildings and amusements parks for example, but Advent has a lot of factory like places. There's a few decent looking stages such as the floating ruins and the highway stages but everything in this game is very drab looking.

This game probably houses the biggest collection of the stupidest looking bosses in the series. Sure, there's worse out there, like Tornado Tonion or Wire Sponge, but this game has a lot of really weird looking bosses. You've got a mohawk wearing fire dog thing, an time stopping ice crab fish thing, a giant queen bee, a flower, a electric hedgehog, a guitar playing... skull thing, an oversized frost crocodile and roller skating care bears. They all just look silly and half of this shit you can't even tell what its supposed to be. Quite a step backwards from the dangerous and sharp looking bosses from ZX and Zero. ZX conquers this game visually.

Sound
ZX has some of the best music in video game history and I'm not afraid to say it. It's so good I don't think it's fair to really hold Advent to the same standard that ZX set, that said, Advent has by far an inferior sound track. It's not terrible but there's hardly anything memorable in here besides the hand full of reused ZX soundtracks.

In addition to the music however, ZX Advent also features voice acting. Not only is the voice acting god awful, the sound quality is so bad it sounds like it's coming in through a CB radio. I have to say I'm not really sure why Capcom didn't contact the Ocean Group for this one. I'm sure Lucas Gilbertson would have done the 5 or six lines for Model Z if they asked him. I have no idea why Capcom would go from decent voice actors to incredibly bad ones, nor why they would make them read their lines in different tones through a single sentence.

Design
Enemy placement in this game is much better, allowing players to have some breathing room and more reaction time than ZX which pretty much littered hundreds of enemies on the screen and laughed at you as you tried to dodge them over hundreds of pits and spikes. For that alone this game is a million times easier. The stages themselves are alright but there are a few tricky platforming sections here and there, such as the waterfall stage which has retracting spikes that can fuck you up, but overall not quite as difficult as ZX.

Something that bothers me about this game is that you don't receive the model ZX form until about halfway through the game and unfortunately it is by far and away the pretty much only useful form in the game. Most forms are relegated to stupid gimmick uses, such as Queen Bee being used to pick up barrels or Buckfire's form being used to break blocks. There are very few reasons to switch away from Model A until you get to Model ZX and then you'll use that the rest of the game. The boss fights are especially easy with ZX as a rolling air slash attack will pretty much take out most bosses no problem.

The bosses still retain weakness in elements and certain areas of their body, but gone are the level victories which power up your biometals. Instead this game you collect the upgrades like you would subtanks or life-ups. You still get E-crystals but now you just use them to buy teleporter areas, and you won't find yourself needing many E-Crystals for that even. On beginner mode, they aren't even used for this, making E-Crystals almost pointless to collect. Overall this game is a lot easier than ZX but I find the first game more satisfying to play.

Playability
There aren't many problems with this game control wise. Some of the forms can be confusing in how you're supposed to apply them but Model A tells you what to do when you get the form and there is a handy list of moves always available for you. If you've played any Mega Man game this one shouldn't be a problem.

Extras

• Probably the best place to farm for extra lives is the Oil Fields. Once you have some ability to fly there are about 4 of them in the area.
• Keep giving the digger E-Crystals in Hunter Area 4 until you can get the sidequest to get the blue prints. After that, the guy you do the quest for will sell you E-tanks.
• Beat the game once to unlock a special 8-bit Mega Man bonus game. Silly Inti, a new 8-bit Mega Man game would never work!

Despite the flaws with Advent, most of them are superficial and some are just coming from the comparisons to ZX. ZX Advent is a solid game and worth adding to your DS library.

Playthroughs
N/A

Mega Man ZX

Jesus I forgot how much of a pain in the ass this game can be. I mean, it's a fantastic game, one of the best in the franchise, but holy fuck can it go from pleasantly challenging to stupidly frustrating real quick. 90% of this game is very solid, and 10% of it would make the designers of X6 blush with how stupid difficult it is, especially in the way of bullshit instant death traps.

ZX continues where Zero left off in terms of gameplay and story, but Inti Creates went back to a more traditional look graphically. We've got all new characters, all new powers and an all new um... even more futuristic setting, but at its heart, this one plays just like Mega Man Zero. Get your Z-saber and buster ready, but this time we'll be able to take advantage of X and his guardians abilities too. Let me tell you why this is one of those games all Mega Man fans should play.

Story
There are two characters you can choose from here, Vent and Aile, but for what it's worth their stories aren't any different from each other save a few choice dialogs. My last play through was with Aile since I had already played through with Vent and fuck if I can remember the tiny differences between them.

Anyway Vent/Aile is a package dealer for a company called Giro express, working for a man (Giro) who rescued him/her from a Maverick attack about 10 years ago in which he/she lost his/her mother. Side note: You play as one character or the other and can basically interchange Vent for Aile or Aile for Vent in any place in the story. To save my sanity from continually typing he/she, I'm going to assume you are playing as Aile.

Anyway it's about 100 years after Mega Man Zero, the planet has recovered and the difference between reploids and humans is very minuscule. Humans take robotic parts and reploids age and die. You can tell the difference by a red dot on reploids heads. Anyway, Mavericks are pretty much anyone who doesn't follow the truce between man and machine.

Anyway while delivering a package to a group called the Guardians (a maverick hunting force) Giro and Aile are attacked by mavericks. They get separated and a giant snake mechlaniod is attacking the people Aile has to give the package to. The package is something called a Biometal, Model X. The Biometal appears to be sentient and decides to help Aile by merging with her, producing an X-Buster on her arm and giving her dashing and wall hiking abilities and basically making her into Mega Man X. She takes down the snake Mechlanoid, but Giro is still under attack. She asks if she can continue to use the Biometal to go save him and the Guardians agree.

She runs off to save Giro who apparently has his own Biometal, Model Z, which resembles Zero. Anyway they head back to base, and the leader of the Guardians Prairie (who is played to be Alouette from the Zero series) talks about how they were looking into the recent Maverick raids and found a lab that used to belong to Ceil who apparently had disappeared. In her lab they found the Biometals which contain the consciousness of some legendary heroes (X, Zero, and the Guardians) and they were hoping that if they analyzed the data in them, it would explain the maverick attacks.

Well just then a Maverick raid happens on the highway... the one from Mega Man X that gets used in just about every game. Aile is determined to stop the attack because of what happened to her mother and runs off to stop them, Model X in tow. Giro follows her and tells her he's going to help. Well he runs off ahead and Aile comes up to him lying on the ground in front of some mysterious people. They appear to be controlling Giro and they have him fight Aile. They're both attacked after the fight by the three people. One man identifies himself as Serpent, the user of Model W, and head of Slither Inc, a security company that protects most of the city... yes, it's going to be one of THOSE stories...

The other two are Prometheus and Pandora, his underlings and they blab on about how only certain people can use the Biometals, and how those people are called Mega Men and how they will build a new world where Mega Men rule and how they are going to sacrifice everyone for Model W. They leave Aile and Giro who are to wounded to move to be killed by the Mavericks closing in on them. Giro tells Model Z to merge with Aile to protect her, even if it means it will end his own life to come out of the transformation. Giro dies and turns into a Cyber Elf and floats away. Model Z and Model X merge together as the Mavericks close in and merge up with Aile, forming Model ZX and now you know where the title comes from. Now that we have the premise of playing as X and Zero down, lets gloss over the rest of the game.

So basically Ceil discovered amongst the wreckage of Ragnarok from Zero 4 part of Dr. Wiel's core. When examining it, some of her reploid companions would have head aches and start to go Maverick. Ceil was afraid of what this core would unleash and created the Biometals as a counter measure to destroy it. Serpent however took the Biometals and split them in two and gave them to his Pseudodroids (these are reploids that can regenerate thanks to the power of the W-Core). Ceil goes missing and many of her resistance members are killed by Serpent. Serpent goes on to form Slither Inc and people see him as a hero because they don't know this shit that he's doing.

Aile goes off to retrieve the rest of the Biometals so the guardians can get to the W-Core and eventually we find out Pandora and Prometheus are using Serpent to unleash the W-Core's true power by going maverick and the W-Core gains power through the suffering of reploids and humanoids and blah blah blah, and the reason that Aile survived the Maverick raids is that Serpent purposely wanted to use her rage against him to fuel his power or whatever. Listen, I got really lost somewhere here...

Anyway, Aile defeats Serpent and he starts going on about how the destiny of Aile is in her blood and blah blah blah they are setting up a sequel and talking about the main villain. Slither INC HQ blows the fuck up, and Aile sees Giro who says fight for justice, then she sees the Guardians and the game ends.

Well, I'm glad we're back to needlessly complicated and strange plots again. I was getting worried for a minute.

Aesthetics
The backgrounds and stages are very detailed and you'll always be seeing interesting things to look at. The environments are varied and you'll be traversing power plants, volcanoes, snowy plains and cities getting bombed to holy hell by your enemies. There's always something to catch your eye in this game.

It reminds me a great deal of the PSX X games, but a lot more detailed. The bosses are unique in design and attack patterns and resemble the Zero styled bosses in how sharp and dangerous they look which isn't surprising as this is by the same team. The other characters are a bit softer in their design and resemble more traditional Mega Man looking characters.

The game is accompanied with quite a few animated cutscenes and still images as well which compliment the game quite well. While their are certainly more graphically superior games on the DS, this one looks good for what it's trying to accomplish.

Sound
Easily one of the best Mega Man tracks in a long time, in fact, one of the best video game sound tracks in a long time. ZX is one of those few games where just about every song kicks ass and it's the best sound track since X and it might be as good or better than Mega Man 2, and trust me this is coming from someone who isn't really a fan of techno in any way. I showed this soundtrack to a friend of mine who is mostly into rap and he thought it was good. The soundtrack is worth buying and the Gigamix track is great too.

There's a bit of voice acting in this game as well but it's in Japanese. It sounds ok I suppose, I'm not one much for judging foriegn acting, but I suppose it's better than having a really bad dub. Honestly though, this game is worth buying for the music alone.

Design
As I said in the introduction this game is tough and parts of it can be really tedious, but as a whole it's a fantastic game. So basically you have the controls of Zero making their way over as you have a Buster gun and a Z-Saber most of the game. Aile/Vent will collect new biometals throughout the course of the game which have different moves and abilities and are based on the four guardians of the Zero series. Model H has the ability to hover and analyzes enemy weaknesses, Model L is good for swimming and finding hidden items, Model F has directional aiming and Model P sticks to ceilings and has a radar. Some are more useless than others, but there are a lot of situations where you'll need one form or the other.

The stages are really though and there are tons of enemy placements in just the right spot to send you flying off into a bottomless pit or bed of spikes if you get hit. Most of these levels are challenging enough that you'll need a few extra lives to get through, but the Volcano stage is just relentless in how frustrating and annoying it is. In that stage you race across the screen with a flood of lava chasing after you in one of the most frustrating instant death stages ever made. It's especially bad if you're trying to get the hidden Sub Tank in this stage as well.

A lot of the design is pretty redundant, although to be fair, mostly in the parts of the game that are optional. One set of missions sends you to the same stage 6 times in a row to get a Sub Tank and another mission has you transferring a letter between 2 people about 6 or 7 times and it can get exceptionally boring. Most of the game isn't like this though.

The boss fights are really interesting. Most boss fights have an elemental weakness which you can take advantage of by activating your Biometal's overdrive, but in addition to this, the boss also have a specific part of their body that is also a weakness. This spot is where they house the Biometal you have to take from them. If you take advantage of this weakness you'll beat the enemy faster but damage the Biometal which costs E-Crystals to repair. If you go out of your way to avoid damaging it the fight is harder but you'll be rewarded with a fully repaired Biometal.

There's other small touches here and there that are nice as well such as the side quests that sometimes award bonus items that boost your abilities or how the large power ups in the game can be slashed with your sword to break them up into other power ups, letting you choose what you need when they drop. This game can be stupidly hard so having all the help you can get is welcomed.

There is one giant problem with this game though and that's the map system which is confusing as fuck and unless you have a guide you'll spend too much of the game lost as all hell. Honestly, I wouldn't play this game without a different map because the in game one is pure shit. Once you know where everything is (you know, after you've done it before) it's not as bad, but games shouldn't be designed around you already knowing what to do.

Playability
Some of the special moves you can do with your Biometals are a bit confusing and I recommend reading some sort of write up on gamefaqs about just what all your abilities are as the game itself doesn't really tell you. Besides the difficulty which even on easy can be relentless the game is mostly no problem to pick up and get going. If you've played a Mega Man game, or more recently a Zero game, you won't have many problems.

Extras

• Mission Order: I went straight from top to bottom each time I played and it works out well because the first stage has a Sub Tank in it. Trust me on this one, you'll need it.
• Talk to the towns people to get sub quests, sometimes they have nice rewards like the extender chip that increases your invincibility time after getting hit.
• On the bottom floor of the Guardians Base a reploid girl will sell you E-Tanks for 200 E-Crystals. There's no reason not to pick one of these up in case you need it for the tougher stages.
• Your spinning jump slash attack can rip enemies and bosses apart in a lot of situations. To execute it, hold up or down while attacking with the saber in mid air.
• After the game is over, you can go and fight Omega from Zero 3 and take a biometal from him for a new form. If you clear the game with both Vent and Aile you can keep Model X as well.
• If you own Zero 3 or Zero 4, stick it in the DS as well and you'll unlock the ability to fight those bosses in the game.
• There's a 1up in the Green door in town. This is a great place to stock up on lives before attempting a mission.

Mega Man ZX is a tough fucking game but so satisfying to play. If you're a Mega Man fan don't miss out on this one. If you're new to the franchise you'll find this one might just be a harsh introduction but still worth a play through. Get yourself a map and enjoy the tunes. If the difficulty is a bit too much for you, there is ZX Advent which is much easier until the final stage, but I personally think this game is better.

Playthroughs
N/A

The ZX Series

We've finally left the last generation of consoles behind for good and now are up to the current generation. Following up the Game Boy Advance's Mega Man Zero series is the Nintendo DS's Mega Man ZX series. 200 years or so into the future Reploids and humans have put together some ground rules. Reploids have to have life spans around 100 years or so, and humans are going to start integrating mechanical parts into their bodies so the distinguishing features between reploids and humans are going to start to blend a bit. You can still tell if a person is a reploid or not by a little mark on their forehead, but the difference between the to groups is virtually negligible.

Mega Man ZX is a very transitional series with the real intention behind it to tie Legends back to the main series. You have the seeds planted in Zero, and they are nurtured in ZX. We're going to find out where the Mega Men Units come from and we'll start to grasp how carbons came to be.

The series has had two antagonist per game, and all of them different people. The way the game goes is one of the characters will get a hold of a Biometal, which contains the soul data of the past heroes (X, Zero, the guardians). The biometals have the ability to merge with someone to take on the form of one of those heroes, as well as some unique ability they each possess. When merging with a Biometal, known as MEGA Merging, weapons will appear in the characters hands, they'll be able to dash and jump higher and the like.

As far as gameplay goes, it's very similar to the Zero series with a few extras mechanics and a more open world. Players have different forms to make use of at different times and they have their intended uses (although a lot of them aren't very good), and the series has some of the best music of the franchise hands down.

There's only two games in the series and so far no news on a third. I doubt the series is dead in the water, but Inti Creates got distracted with the new Mega Man 9 game and they're making some remix albums at the moment. I've said repeatedly that title for title Zero is the best series in the franchise, but that's only because this series is just starting. Hopefully we'll see a new game in this line very soon.