22.
The Capcom love continues. Mega Man X is a wonderful example of how to revamp an old formula while not throwing out everything people liked. Truth be told, I love the MMX series more than the main series overall if I was simply comparing the whole franchises to each other. I've only ever beaten three MM entries legitimately whereas X3 and the two X-Treme entries are the only MMX games I have not completed. It's a damn solid series overall and brought a lot of fresh ideas and a change of setting to make it stand apart from the other spin-offs and sequels in the Mega Man franchise.
Set a century or two after the final events of Mega Man, whenever that was going to be, an archeologist named Dr. Cain uncovers an old lab belonging to the famous Dr. Light which contains Dr. Lights final magnum opus, X. X is the first robot built with free will, but fearing the possibility X could turn evil, Dr. Light had him sealed away and tested internally to make sure that X was endowed with a strong moral code that would prevent him from starting a robot uprising. He passed of course cause Dr. Light couldn't build an evil robot if his life depended on it. X's advancements were so great that Dr. Cain, foolishly reverse engineered his design to build a new series of sentient robots called Reploids with the help of X. Unfortunately, Dr. Cain failed to understand why Dr. Light had X sealed away and it didn't take long before Reploids starting rebelling against humanity. These rogue Reploids called Mavericks, saw the rise in the Maverick Hunters, a special Reploid Police force that neutralized Mavericks for the sake of humanity and non-Maverick Reploids. They were led by Sigma, Dr. Cain's most advanced creation and a very powerful and charismatic figure in the world. Then the worse case scenario happened, Sigma decided that the Mavericks had it right all along, humanity was not worth saving and had simply been holding back the Reploids as a subservient species. Declaring a revolution, Sigma defected from the Maverick Hunters along with several of his loyal comrades and formed an army to destroy humanity and us=her in a new age for machines. Feeling partly responsible for the rebellion, X volunteers to help Zero, the new leader of the MH, to stop Sigma, but can an "inferior" robot from the distant past stand a chance against this new menace?... Well yes, cause Dr. Light was a genius and the series pretty much establishes pretty quickly that despite being the oldest robot in the series, X is the most advanced.
Core gameplay remains the same with X having to choose to battle eight Maverick Leaders before getting a shot at the big bosses stronghold. New to the formula is the introduction of a prologue stage used to teach the player several of the new mechanics this series introduces. If you want a real cool breakdown of how well thought out the level design for this stage was, you should check out Egoraptor's Sequelitis entry on MMX. One of the biggest new features for the game is X's ability to now cling and slowly slide down walls which he can also kickoff of to reach higher elevation. This not only limits the frustration of of instant kill pits the series is notorious for, but it also allows the designers to expand the level design to incorporate this feature as you may find your self in a dead end only to discover you either needed to climb some walls to reach the next area or more subversively, that bottomless pit you passed two screens ago is actually an entrance way. X also doesn't begin the game with full health anymore, instead the series incorporate a Super Metroid mechanic where you need to find life containers to effectively increase X's life bar to full, which is a actually a pretty interesting design because it makes the early sections much more challenging than they normally would be, which is nice because X is also a bit better about designing the bosses in such a way that you can beat them with your normal weapon if you're skilled enough. No more Crash Man incidents where trying to fight him without the weapon he's weak to or four E-Tanks is a death wish. That is not to say the game isn't challenging, the game drops the one time E-Tanks for four permanent ones that simply need to be refilled if you use them which makes going after power-ups even after getting full health more useful. One of the most iconic changes is the introduction of X's Advanced Armor. Scattered through the levels are old capsule pods with an A.I. Dr. Light Hologram ho has sealed away various armor pieces for X to help given him some improvements to help fight the badguys. The actual main armor piece halves damage, the boots give you the dash move which replaces Mega Man's slide move from the main games, the gun gives you a third tier charged shot and the ability to charge sub-weapons, and the helmet... well it kind of sucks in this game but later installments give it some oomph.
Combining these elements with MMX retaining the modern (at it's time of release) ability from the MM series to go back to levels to pick up items you missed ends up giving this game a pretty open structure for advancing. There are upgrades you may not be able to reach until you find a certain other upgrade first, so the game kind of has an odd metroidvania feel to it despite having typical tight level design. One of the coolest features I loved in MMX and I am still flabbergasted as to why it never became a standard feature for the series is that defeating certain bosses before you should, can sometimes lead to major changes in another bosses stage. This is because the game makes it a point to say that the stages are interconnected as part of Siga's war machine which I thought was a cool way to tie in a neat gameplay feature to the story. So the one most people will see first is that by beating Chill Penguins stage first, it will lead to Flame Mammoth's stage being frozen over and thus you can avoid a lot of instant kill lava and frustration this way. It also gives you access to places you normally couldn't reach due to elemental hazards. Several stages have some interesting effects like this and it only adds to the game's interesting replay value of the stages to find the power-ups. The game also brought in the series trademark secret. In the first game, by fulfilling some requirement you can unlock the ability to let X use Ryu's Hadoken move from Street Fighter by actually performing the Hadoken move. This move was even an instant kill move though it can't be performed in the air. Another feature I love that was sadly phased out as the series went along was the introduction of power armors you could pilot in stages, which were similar to vehicles you could pilot in games like Contra or Metal Slug.
Structurally, X was a real cool advancement on the Mega Man formula which was growing pretty stale at the time. Course the thing that kept me coming back to the series, and a lot of others as well was the game's more mature story. MMX is not the light-hearted Astro Boy knockoff that is the main Mega Man series which was always kind of tongue in cheek about the Blue Bombers relationship with Wily. It's a pretty grim series that only got darker and more desperate as the series progressed as you should all know after reading the MMX4 entry on this list, but it all started here. The intro stage has you battle it out with a ruthless ex-Maverick Hunter named Vile who totally thrashes you and you have to be saved by Zero. In the first stage of Sigma's fortress you infiltrate it with Zero who goes on ahead but he ends being taken down by Vile as well and you now get to rescue him but even with all your upgrades the battle is still against you and the whole sequence gets resolved with a heroic sacrifice on Zero's part and X, in a moment of righteous rage, laying the smackdown on Vile and this sequences was awesome. Even Sigma's battle is interesting as he mocks you ancient hardware and waxes on about the superiority of Reploids over humanity. Unlike Saturday Morning cartoon villain Wily, Sigma comes across like Magneto, though in the early years where he was still very much a bad guy, and so you kind of can't fault him for his beliefs and his idea that what he's doing is right for Reploids, something that becomes more poignant as the series went on and especially cuts you to the core when you reach MMZero series and Sigma's worst fears come true. Despite how little story there is within the game, MMX presents itself as a darker interpretation of the MM franchise and borrows a bit from anime and Terminator 2 to present a more complex scenario where the villains may not be real villains and your own actions are debatable. A lot of this is poignantly made by the fact that X himself is described as pacifistic, and his adventures through the series begin to take a serious toil on him consciously and this works better with this moral grey area the game's scenario presents.
Overall, MMX is one of the highlights of the SNES and the beginning of one of my favorite franchises from Capcom. While only two entries made it onto this list, I honestly love most of the series with the exception of X7. Hell Command Missions is a super underrated JRPG for the PS2 and X8 was surprisingly good for a game made after the franchise killing X7. So if you want a cool action platform game series with some great characters, good level design, catchy music, and fun gameplay, I would recommend not only MMX, but the whole series.


Coming Up next: The dreams I've abandoned couldn't have come true, I have other dreams I haven't given up on. They still shine bright, they still light my way...