Gaming Review -- Mega Man X

Hello everyone, hope you're having a great day, and welcome to my review of Mega Man X! This franchise is probably one of the best known video game series of all time, and for some reason you just don't see any new ones coming out anymore. Any person who's even dabbled in playing games has probably, at some point, played one of the Mega Man games, and probably also remembers getting extremely frustrated at the high level of difficulty that they're notorious for. As a kid they were some of my favorites, and even though I might not have finished all of them, I still had a good time, and still enjoy playing them today. All the unique levels that were each challenging in their own way, all the well designed bosses that each had their own theme, and the different weapon you could earn for defeating each one. All these factors came together to create a series of some of the most beloved video games ever made.

Mega Man started out on the NES way back in 1987, the series is developed by Capcom, and has seen many sequels over the years. Even after the release of the SNES, the series stayed where it was for awhile, and there were six original Mega Man games released for the NES. Those original games in the series are classics, no doubt about it, but they have controls that are limited and stiff. That's one of the factors that always made them so difficult, just trying to control your character was hard. Capcom needed to switch things up a little bit, and in 1993 they finally did.
This was sort of a reboot for the series, instead of just making something with the same style, but better graphics, they made a lot of significant changes. Now you're playing as X, an entirely new character that's sleeker and faster with a more futuristic looking suit, as well as some new game mechanics. The foundation of the series still remains intact, most of the gameplay is focused on running around dodging incoming attacks, and shooting back with your arm cannon. But now the controls were a lot smoother and more responsive, fixing a lot of what frustrated me about the NES games. In addition to that you can now dash forward or back, jump dash up walls, and switch weapons on the fly with the shoulder buttons. All these improvements on the controls make Mega Man X one of my favorite games in the series.

The graphics look amazing even for a Mega Man game, the backgrounds are full of detail, everything's very colorful, and the design of X and all the enemies are excellent. At the beginning of the game you still get to choose what level you want to go to, and they're playable in any order. As with any Mega Man game, it can help to know what order would be easiest, so you might want to quickly reference a guide of some sort. After beating a level you get a new weapon for your arm cannon. You can then use this new weapon at any time from that point on, making some levels and bosses much easier if you know what does the most damage. This helped me a lot on my latest playthrough and made it much more fun, I felt like I actually had a fighting chance of beating the game.
One of the best parts of any Mega Man game are the bosses. They usually each have their own theme that makes each one unique. You had Fire Man, Ice Man, Wood Man, Metal Man, but in Mega Man X they changed it up to all animal based ones. So now instead of fighting other men similar to yourself, you fought a Lizard boss, or an Elephant boss. I actually really like this minor difference for some reason, I'm not sure why but battling with the animals is just more interesting. And of course the entire level leading up to the boss shares the same theme, with all new obstacles and enemies to overcome.

One final thing that was added into this new series was the ability to go back through previous levels and try to find hidden upgrades for your character. Some would extend your health bar making you harder to kill, some would upgrade your arm cannon allowing you to charge your attack even further, usually sitting in plain sight but just beyond your reach. You can only get to them once you have the right weapon from defeating one of the bosses. This is a neat little bonus that gave me a reason to go back through some levels I had already beat to try and find some of these.
Playing through this I found it to be pretty tough even with all the improvements, especially towards the end of the game after you beat all the main bosses. If you're playing this on the Super Nintendo I think the only way to continue is to write down the code it gives you, and type it in at the beginning. I played it on the SNES Classic which allows you to create save points at any time, which made the whole thing a lot less tedious. Honestly I've never been that great at these games, so I need all the help I can get. Still though, I really enjoy playing them, and this might be my favorite one. If you've never played one of these games before, this is a good starting point that's better looking, and easier to get the hang of. I give Mega Man X an:

85