{"id":7716,"date":"2018-07-30T14:25:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-30T19:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=7716"},"modified":"2018-07-30T14:25:00","modified_gmt":"2018-07-30T19:25:00","slug":"wherein-i-type-words-about-mega-man-x-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=7716","title":{"rendered":"Wherein I type words about Mega Man X again"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there\u2019s only one absolutely consistent thing in my life, it\u2019s my love for <\/span>Mega Man X<\/b>. And it\u2019s not just because I\u2019m a card-carrying fanboy of (mostly) all things Mega Man, but because I firmly believe that it is one of the best video games ever made. It is probably about as close to flawless as any game will ever come, and even after playing it seventeen million times, I still get a kick out of it on each and every replay. <\/span><\/p>\n

With the recent release of the <\/span>Mega Man X Legacy Collections<\/b>, I have now purchased this game somewhere between six and eight times, which gives it the top billing for games that I have purchased more than once. I fully admit that I have a problem. I bought the original cartridge on SNES, the <\/span>Mega Man X Collection<\/b> on Gamecube, the stellar remake <\/span>Maverick Hunter X<\/b> on PSP, the generally sub-par iPhone port, the Virtual Console release on 3DS, and now the X Legacy Collection on Switch. I can\u2019t recall for sure whether I bought it on Virtual Console for Wii or Wii U, but I\u2019d say that the likelihood for at least one of them is pretty high.<\/span><\/p>\n

The X Legacy Collection has added a couple neat new wrinkles to the mix. In fact, it it hadn\u2019t I probably wouldn\u2019t have even bothered writing this thing. The smallest, but most mind-blowing thing of all is something I discovered when poking around to see if I could change the control layout (you can\u2019t): if you have a special weapon selected and press L and R at the same time, it\u2019ll automatically unequip the weapon and put you back to the X-Buster. This is a huge revelation because I thought you had to scroll through them all individually, or use the pause menu to swap. It\u2019s not really a game-changer, but it\u2019s a fun little trick that I never knew about, despite having played through the game so many times.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another neat thing is that the X Legacy Collection includes pre-release trailers of all the included games. Though nearly all of them are in Japanese, it\u2019s still cool to see that footage of earlier versions of the games, and pick out all the things that changed. I\u2019ve only watched the MMX trailer so far, but I was delighted to see enemies that didn\u2019t make it into the full version, little graphical changes, and some level layouts that got changed around slightly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lastly, you can choose to play either the North American or Japanese versions of all the games on the collection, and astoundingly enough, I\u2019ve never actually played a Japanese version of any Mega Man X game. So I decided to check out <\/span>Rockman X<\/b>, and to my surprise, there really weren\u2019t many changes made for the localization. Aside from the edited logo and text boxes being resized to accommodate the different languages, it seems like the only thing that changed are the bosses\u2019 names. And maybe –<\/span>maybe-<\/span><\/i> they upped the drop rate for health pickups in the North American version, but it\u2019s impossible to really know without looking at the actual code. It just seems like they aren\u2019t quite as plentiful as I\u2019m used to.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Note: The Cutting Room Floor<\/a><\/span>\u00a0reveals a few other itty-bitty changes that I would have never noticed, and says nothing either way about drop rates.)<\/span><\/p>\n

I said before that I think Mega Man X is as close to perfect as any video game is ever going to get, and I stand by that. Part of that is owed to its simplicity; it\u2019s harder to get things wrong when you\u2019re not bloating your game with superfluous features and systems (see nearly every sequel). But most of all, I just don\u2019t think that there are very many things that you\u2019d write up as problems. The only major one is that the final boss is too hard. Compounded by the fact that it\u2019s a string of three fights in a row, the final form hits so hard that only the best players will be able to defeat it without draining all four of their sub-tanks. Combine that with the fact that he\u2019s got a tiny hitbox that is only vulnerable to the least practical weapon in X\u2019s arsenal, and you\u2019ve got a real pain in the butt on your hands.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aside from that, my other complaints are relatively minor: when you use a password, neither your sub-tanks\u2019 stored energy or your progress through Sigma\u2019s fortress are saved. The sub-tanks are a minor pain, since you can grind health pick-ups fairly quickly to fill them again, but the lost progress in Sigma\u2019s fortress is a little harder to swallow. The levels are short -maybe five minutes each- but it\u2019s still a pain to have to blast your way through them again if you started making your way through and had to take a break.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, I think that\u2019s about enough of a spiel for today. Lord knows that I\u2019ve already published enough material about Mega Man X that I don\u2019t need to go on for another thousand words, though I\u2019ve never written an actual review. And it\u2019s not like this is going to be the last time I write about it either. I just thought it would be fun to go over a few unique little nuggets of info about the game that not everyone would be aware of. With the X Legacy Collections absorbing all my thoughts lately, I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if some more writing about the rest of the series pops up in the near future.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If there\u2019s only one absolutely consistent thing in my life, it\u2019s my love for Mega Man X. And it\u2019s not just because I\u2019m a card-carrying fanboy of (mostly) all things Mega Man, but because I firmly believe that it is one of the best video games ever made. It is probably about as close to … Continue reading Wherein I type words about Mega Man X again<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,20,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mega-man","category-retro-gaming","category-video-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7717,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7716\/revisions\/7717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}