There is a certain irony to me making a
new video on Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X. Technically, I discussed this game
back in my review on X1 from 2016, and in the spring of 2018, I did a whole
video on the game to make up for it, one where I laughed at how bad my 2016 portion
was. But…the 2018 video was literally audio I recorded at like 3:30 in the morning while
suffering from a cold, truly the worst thing you could possibly do for a video. But luckily,
I am not as arrogant as to make fun of old work while being a goof in a completely different
fashion anymore…I think? As I have said before, I don’t see the harm of the re-review. If you
think you’ve grown and have more to say/want to do a more definitive job…I say, why not?
Mega Man Maverick Hunter X, released for the Playstation Portable in 2005 was a remake of
Mega Man X, the Super Nintendo classic from 1993. This game came hot off the heels of Mega Man X8…I
mean that literally, depending on your region these games were released within months of each
other. This was back in the 2000s when Capcom was launching Mega Man games like a machine gun every
year, but anyway. Sony released the Playstation Portable in 2005, their first move into Handheld
gaming, a logical choice given the fact that they just had two of the best and most popular home
consoles of all time. The PSP didn’t reach the audience that the Nintendo DS did back in the day,
but the sales were still quite good on the PSP. The team behind the X series knew they wanted
to make an X game for the Playstation Portable, but had to decide on whether or not they wanted
to make a full on X9, or just reboot the series. Given the chance for a new audience on PSP, they
decided to go back and retell the iconic origin story of Mega Man X for a new age, thus giving
us Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X. Even though the developers had intended to take advantage of a new
platform to expand their audience with this one, it unfortunately didn’t work out. Maverick
Hunter X, and the later released remake of Mega Man 1 titled Mega Man: Powered Up both
were considered financial failures by Capcom, despite being met with overall positive reception
from critics and fans. Although I will admit, I have still never played much of Mega Man Powered
Up. I really should get to that at some point, it will get it’s own video when I finally get
to that Classic Mega Man Retrospective. But I am going to look past the sales aspect of this game
right now, because I want to focus on what makes the game so good on it’s own merits because this
is definitely one of the best Mega Man games.
I have a lot of respect for this project,
because it first overcame the issues facing the Mega Man X series before this. I mean, if
you have seen the previous X videos I have done, you will know that Mega Man X1, X2, X3 and X4 are
some of my favorite games of all time. Definitely my favorite side scrollers. I thought X5, X6, X7
and X8 all missed the mark for various reasons, even though X5 and X8 can still be enjoyed
in spite of that fact. Hell, X6 can as well, I have come to realize over the years. So to make
a really great game after all that, is already a job well done, but then, they made a game that
stands on it’s own…as a remake of Mega Man X1. One of the most iconic and high regarded Mega Man
games to ever be released. So, today we are gonna discuss how the game plays, and how it’s aspects
compare to the previous games in the series.
One of the first questions that comes in mind with
most remakes is…what is it going to look like? In the case of Maverick Hunter X, I find it
interesting to look back and use this game as a case study for how far handheld games had come
in just a few years. Last week, I covered the Mega Man Xtreme Duology and in those two games
we get a plethora of assets from Mega Man X1, and the other two SNES X games reinterpreted
for the Game Boy Color. That was back in 2000 on hardware from 1998, and they had to downsize
everything to this extent. But here we have the PSP five years later and Mega Man X received
this absolute glow up. Visually speaking, Maverick Hunter X technically falls into the same
pitfalls as X8, where I said many of it’s assets looked really low res and pixelated, even on PS2
I thought it just looked unappealing on the eyes. However, MHX has the added benefit of releasing on
a handheld with a significantly smaller screen and resolution so it’s not as much of a bother. It
would absolute distract me more if I upped the internal resolution on an emulator like I used
to, but when played at native resolution, many things will look out of place like this plane at
Storm Eagle’s level that is just a PNG keyframing across the background, but most everything works
just fine. I love how many visual details they added to this game, like how these copter enemies
will laugh at you if they hit you, I never noticed that before! Stages will have details added to
increase the immersion, like how beating Storm Eagle’s level still causes his ship to crash into
the factory of Spark Mandrill like the original, but at the start of the stage, this is clearly
communicated with…the ship wreckage being right there. In the original, you’d just have to put
two and two together to understand that taking down this ship is why the power isn’t working. I
like how the first Sigma fortress stage becomes covered in spider webs the closer you get to the
boss, foreshadowing the fight against Bo-spider, something the original couldn’t do. They added a
toll both to this part of the intro stage. A toll both. That doesn’t have to be there…but it is,
and all of it makes the world feel more cohesive. So when talking about the game fares as a
remake visually, I’d say the job was well done.
But let’s get down to brass tacks, the gameplay.
By this point, Mega Man X gameplay was pretty much nailed down. Mega Man Maverick Hunter X is exactly
what you’d expect. You run, you jump, you shoot, lining your shots up with enemies is the most
important thing as you avoid their attacks and the obstacles laid out in front of you, at this
point, I think I have given this speech on the fundamentals of Mega Man like 10 times in my
YouTube career, so I shall get to the point. Maverick Hunter X plays like X8, I can definitely
see how at the beginning of development it was a tossup between a full on sequel or a reboot of
the series because fundamentally, this is still the spiritual sequel to X8. Although, because
it’s a remake of X1, X cannot air dash at default like he could in X7 and X8 because…he can’t even
dash on the ground at the start, because that was unlockable in X1. And of course, X8 specific
mechanics like the two armors and the team system are not in but that goes without saying
since this is a remake of X1. But of course, they did bring in conveniences from later games
into the X1 experience like full button mapping being available from the pause screen, and not
just the main menu like the original game and you can escape to the stage select without having to
beat the stage first which is also quite handy if you want to get some items before tackling a boss.
But, when compared to X8, the biggest difference for me is the handling. Now, this is small, I
know, but it is still the biggest gap between the two for me. Everytime I talk about X8, I mention
how smooth it controlled and I still maintain that X8 feels the best to play of any X game. This
game is styled after that one, but I just find that dash jumping off of walls for example,
is less smooth than X8 where you had a real flow to your jumps. Here, it’s like everything
just feels much heavier to do. this is a really weird thing to discuss, and I can’t be certain
this is even true, that’s just what it feels like to me as someone who has played both these
games for years and years, has always noticed some kind of a difference in how they handle, but
could never put it into words, I think it’s that MHX feels slightly delayed compared to the snappy
controls of X8. I can’t prove it with X’s actual controls, but the one area I can prove it would
be the charge shots. I have always thought X took too long to charge his shots in this game. I made
this point in my last video on this game. But now, I have the math because I compared the footage in
my editing software. In the Super Nintendo games, it took X roughly 70 frames to reach his full
charge shot, and then roughly 150 to get to the third charge shot level. In the Playstation
games, your default rate was about 60 frames and 45 for X8. In MHX it takes about 90 frames for the
full charge shot and then 210 for the third level. This usually throws me off when playing since I am
expecting much faster response time because I am used to the other games. But I am only saying
this because it’s something I notice as a big fan of the series, this is really nitpicky stuff.
MHX doesn’t suffer too much from these differences from the other games, especially X8, because
I’d play this any day over X8. If you watched my recent video on that game, you’d know that
for me, the big pros of X8 more or less end with the handling, the level design and item game
didn’t do it for me. Here, we don’t have to worry about the level design because MHX faithfully
reconstructs the levels you remember from X1, basically shot for shot, which is quite good
because these are levels I already enjoy.
What has changed that is worth talking about
is the item game. That’s the part of talking about Mega Man X that gets me the most excited
because 100%ing these games and finding different, more efficient ways to do it is one of the
biggest reasons why Mega Man X1, X2, X3 and X4 are all some of my favorite games ever made.
The other games all fumbled the ball here with X5’s backtrack oriented design, X6’s alternate
routes making player routing really pointless, X7 being…X7, and X8 just being too convoluted for
it’s own good…and that’s coming from someone who thinks Mega Man X3 is an amazing game for pete’s
sake. Maverick Hunter X brings it back to square one, you have eight heart tanks to collect that
expand your maximum health, four sub tanks that refill your health when they have sufficient
energy, and four main Dr. Light capsules where X can upgrade his armor. The Foot parts give you
the ability to dash on the ground for rapid bursts of speed, the arm parts allow you to charge your
shots to a third level and charge your special weapons, the head parts give X the ability to
smash blocks with his head and the body parts reduce the damage X takes by 50% and together
they make up X’s First Armor…yadda yadda yadda. All this is from X1, but what has changed
would be the way the items are arranged, and these are slight mix ups, but they
have an impact on how players approach MHX. The Foot Parts are acquired in this upper path of
Flame Mammoth’s stage, instead of being given to you in the middle of Chill Penguin’s stage, and
this is the one change that could have actually made routing in MHX superior to the original. If
you play X1 with my stage order, you’d start with Chill Penguin, and then have to come back to this
stage to use Fire Wave to get this heart tank. Getting the foot parts instead of the arm
parts at Flame Mammoth’s stage could have cut this entire stage revisit out of the game,
but there is just one problem. The subtank in Flame Mammoth’s stage was something you could get
with the foot parts alone in the original game, but now…you need the head parts, something
located in Chill Penguin’s stage that requires the foot parts to get. If they had just left this
subtank the same as the original, you actually could…not counting the Hadouken, get through X1
without backtracking, like in X2 and I think that improvement would have definitely given MHX a
lot of points from me at least. But instead, how I play this game is: Flame Mammoth first,
Chill Penguin, backtrack to Flame Mammoth for that subtank, then I go to Storm Eagle where the
Body Parts are now…if you are feeling ballsy, you can go to Sting Chameleon’s stage at this,
this is where the arm parts are now and you can make it to this heart tank with a charged shotgun
ice. I do these two stages either third or fourth, it doesn’t matter which though. I then went to
Boomerang Kuwanger…which I did in the original game, but that was to cut down a backtrack
on the sub tank in Spark Mandrill’s stage. Here, a least backtrack run requires going to this
stage before Spark Mandrill because the heart tank in that stage is no longer reachable with a dash
jump, you need Boomerang Cutter. After Kuwnager, I go to Spark Mandrill, then Armored Armadillo
and end the game on Launch Octopus, and finally, revisit Armadillo’s stage for the Hadouken. This
item has been changed for the better, since in the original you had to reach the end of the stage
and willingly jump into this abyss a few times before the capsule would appear, but in the
remake you just need to reach the end without taking damage, which I think is fun as you charge
up Rolling Shield or Chameleon Sting and then equip another weapon like Storm Tornado or Fire
Wave and just tear through the enemies. Although, like the original, I hate how when I go to fire
the Haduken, sometimes the game will fire a buster shot first and that will hit the enemy, activating
their iframes meaning the hadouken won’t hit them. All in all, the item game in MHX works, and
I think the remixed elements like the new capsule locations are good changes, however
I just think it would have been cool if they redesigned it in a way where you didn’t have
to backtrack at all, because the way it is…they made changes to item location, but it doesn’t
produce a meaningful change in the experience.
But there is more to this game than even that,
once you beat it, it has a lot of extra content. Such as a harder difficulty mode. This sees
X taking more damage than he does in normal mode and also gives the bosses more difficult
attack patterns. For example, Chill Penguin will do this attack where he fires Shotgun Ice and it
ricochettes off the wall like it does when you get that weapon from him. Usually when I revisit this
game, I tend to just play it on hard just for the sake of the extra challenge, it helps make the
experience stand out from the original more. I also like how you get different dialogue between
X and the various mavericks on hard mode. On the first run, they make X sound more like what you’d
expect…where he tries to be nice before a fight, but then on hard mode he’s ready to
reduce the mavericks to scrap metal! It was so cool because I used to play
this game all the time on the PS Vita, and suddenly on one playthrough all the dialogue
was changed, it was the neatest of neat moments.
The team behind this game wanted to add some
kind of new element that would really stand out. Of course, they thought about including a Zero
campaign, however they felt like the idea would be, by this point, predictable and not that
exciting as a result. Playing as Zero was a selling point in both X3 and X4 and by the time
of MHX’s release, you could play as Zero in well over half the Mega Man X games and had his own
series on GameBoy Advance. No, they wanted to do something new. So instead, we got a playable
campaign starring the ex-Maverick Hunter, Vile, coming in with a brand new gameplay style. This
review is actually the first time I ever fully completed Vile’s story in this game and I will
say…it’s an interesting mode. I use that word because I enjoyed my time with it now that I’ve
made a dedicated effort to finish…after 7 years of owning the game, however it’s also not so fun
that I’d play it again. How it works is that you play as Vile through the intro stage, the eight
maverick stages and the first three castle stages. Battling X at the end of the intro stage, and
First Armor X and Zero at the end of the game. Vile was set free from jail by Sigma to help
cause chaos in the midst of his rebellion, but Vile doesn’t like the fact that Sigma views X as
crucial for the evolution of Reploids and wants to prove he’s the best by taking down Sigma’s forces
himself, only to get beat by X and Zero anyway, once he thought he had the upper hand on them.
In terms of the gameplay, Vile cannot dash, nor can he charge his shots. Instead he comes with
three weapons, finger bullets, a cannon that fires into the air, and bombs that he drops from his
knees. All of these attacks can be activated from the air and from the ground. By defeating bosses,
Vile will get a ton of new weapons from each one, but you can only equip one hand gun, one cannon
blast and one knee bomb at a time, but as they progressively get powerful, they cost more points
to equip. So you have to decide which ones you want to take with you that stays at or below your
max point capacity, like the skill shop in Sonic Generations. I was partial to the ice hand gun,
and the blue napalm bomb. It’s a good idea and it creates a lot of customization, however, if
I feel like playing Maverick Hunter X again, I am just going to do it as X. I mean, Vile’s mode
starts off rough. He just does not have the health or mobility to survive the early game enemies, but
once you get past that, there are other things I didn’t like, such as the altered level design.
Like this series of moving platforms at the end of Armored Armadillo’s stage where I could barely
see what I was doing and died like 3 times. I also didn’t really care for the remixed
item locations. That’s not the worst idea, and in some levels I am fine with it, like Chill
Penguin’s where you find the ride armor at the end of this path and use it to smash the igloo at
the start to grab a heart tank. Roughly the same idea as X’s playthrough, but a little different
for variety’s sake. But other ones are annoying like trying to bring this ride armor to the end
of the path of platforms in Storm Eagle’s stage, or are just stupid like needing to think of…not
destroying this submarine, and instead jumping on top of it’s weapons and finding a platform
that carries you over to an item. I was never gonna think of that without a guide. I did like
how some items had multiple methods of approach, like how I think I was supposed to use the ride
armor to get this item in Sting Chameleon’s stage, but it exploded and I shot the boomerang weapon
into the air which grabbed the item for me. Although on that note, I thought the ride armors
were a little lame. Vile and his ride armors are iconic and yet you only ride them for about
30 seconds per every time they appear, but if you take damage that time goes down even more. So
all in all, this was an interesting mode to play, but like I said, you won’t see me trying it again
anytime soon. But, to the credit of the devs, it was cool and unique to play the story from
a villain's perspective, doubly because Vile just has this “I’m evil and I love it” energy
about him in this game and I am here for it.
Generally speaking, I thought the story
was really well done in this game. That’s another thing you’d hope a remake would
nail. In the case of the original X, the game had a limited story for the sake of keeping
the pace going in an action platform shooter, and because copious amounts of dialogue in
platformers wasn't a common thing back then. MHX takes the origin story of X and does a lot of
great things with it. For starters, X has dialogue interactions with all 8 of the maverick bosses and
we get to see what their personalities are like. Prior to playing this game, I never would have
thought Launch Octopus’ personality was that he was like Squidward Tentacles if he was more
snoody and yet here we are. X has a history with all of these bosses you fight, because in
X1, each maverick was a former maverick hunter, having joined Sigma’s rebellion and X does not
want to fight old friends like this but he has to. I like how X has the same voice actor he did in
X8, not only because I think that this is just the best voice X has ever had, but because we
get to see a different side of X in this one. By X8, X is just an entirely calm and collected
powerhouse, even if he hates all the fighting. But here we see a much younger X who doesn’t have
all the power he will later, but a massive drive to fight the maverick hoards. But is otherwise
still the soft spoken hero we’ve come to know in the previous games. The best part about the
whole story is what they did with Sigma. It’s no secret that I think the X Series using Sigma
in every single game was an absolute mistake, it devalued the new villains each game would
introduce by having Sigma show up at the end and it also lead to Sigma becoming more of a circus
clown himself than a truly menacing bad guy, something I want to expand on in next week’s
video. But obviously, when remaking Mega Man X, of course Sigma is the main antagonist and
this is by far his best appearance of all time. For starters, when interacting with the
other mavericks, we see how Sigma was able to manipulate each and every one of them to his
side in different ways, just by the way they talk about him. Chill Penguin joined Sigma because he
got paid and figured it would be more interesting than being a Maverick Hunter anyway, Armored
Armadillo on the other hand is just loyal to Sigma, former commanding officer of the Maverick
Hunters. Sigma played into Launch Octopus’ vanity by propping up his artistic talents and the list
goes on. But the game makes sure to show how Sigma really feels about these reploids he dragged into
his war when you first fight Launch Octopus in the castle stages. Sigma brought all 8 of these
reploids back to life just to be cannon fodder for X before he can reach Sigma. He doesn’t give
a damn about any of them, he just says what he needs to get what he wants, and X gets this.
Which is part of why he hates Sigma so much. The team behind this went above and beyond by not
only packing the story full of details like these, but also included a full 20 something minute movie
called “The Day of Sigma” that shows the events shortly before the game where Sigma was still
the charismatic leader of the Maverick Hunters, and what it was that caused him to want
to rebel against and wipe out humanity. He used to see X’s pacifist tendencies as a flaw
in X’s design, but Dr. Cain, who discovered X and used his blueprints to create Reploid kind, tells
Sigma that this sensitivity is actually what makes X so stand out from the rest of the reploids, it
makes X basically indistinguishable from humans, convincing Sigma that reploids can evolve
to become the dominant species on Earth, and X growing to his full potential is a core
part of that, which Sigma seeks to make happen at any cost. Capcom actually included The Day
of Sigma in the Mega Man X Legacy Collection, marking it as a prequel to X1. The Maverick
Hunters Field Guide even references it, so that could lead someone to believe
that it’s canon to the mainline X series, with or without Maverick Hunter X as a game. The
story between the two games is basically the same, so I guess you could look at this version of
X1 as canon to the series if you wanted to, however I just choose not to. For starters,
Sigma’s motivation for going maverick in the remake is so tied to X and his potential when, in
games like X2, X4 and X5, it seems Sigma doesn’t really care that much about X, his backstory and
motives are so tied to Zero in the mainline games. In fact, Sigma’s iconic scars were something X had
done to him in the Day of Sigma, which directly conflicts with X4 showing that it was Zero when
he was first discovered. It’s not that this is impossible to reconcile, but I just don’t regard
MHX stuff as canon. The biggest reason why is that Dr. Cain gets blown up in Sigma’s missile attack,
but aids X and Zero in X2 and X3. The man is literally on life support in Day of Sigma and says
he has prolonged his life for as long as he could. I just don’t think he’d survive this attack,
but hey, no body was shown on screen so by comic logic, anything could happen after that.
But I totally get why people would ignore those tiny points to regard the film at least as canon
because the characterization is great throughout. The movie highlights how far Sigma is willing
to go this early on in his time as a Maverick. The original Mega Man X starts with the Central
Highway under attack, but through this short film we have the backstory that X and Zero failed to
stop Sigma at the missile base where he launched all the missiles on the city at once, giving
you some context for the start of the game, and the same sense of urgency X
feels having to put a stop to Sigma.
Which all comes together at the end of the game.
The castle stages have been mixed up somewhat to include whole portions of maverick stages brought
back right before you fight that boss again, which I thought was a nice touch. Makes the refights
feel less random as you start Stage 2 for example in a cavern which of course, ends with the refight
against Armored Armadillo. One of the better changes is that you find Vile at the end of Stage
3, and see Zero’s death here as well. I think it’s better to place this right before the final battle
against Sigma as that gives the player, and X yet another spark in the battle with Sigma, as opposed
to the original where it happens at the very stage of Sigma Palace Stage 1. If you didn’t get the
arm parts from Dr. Light, Zero will give you his, and this actually has a different effect than
Lights, doing respectable damage on the bosses, so that’s pretty cool. When you reach the final
boss, you can use the Hadouken on him, which I believe was technically possible in the original,
but very rare to do, here it’s pretty easy. However if you decide to face the final boss,
it’s a pretty good reinvention of the old boss as he actually moves the arms of the mech
instead of the hands just floating in the sky…although points off for how these lasers
just poof off the screen. But it doesn’t matter, defeat Sigma however you see fit, and you
will get the ending, and this one, has always been one of my favorites in the X Series.
You see a flashback to when Dr. Cain first found X and then Dr. Light’s final message
plays, after having finished creating X, but having to seal him away because he’s going
to pass away before X will be fully finished. The final message of Dr. Light was how
the original game opened up, but it’s much better at the end where you really hear from
the actor how close he is to the end of his life. The thing I like about this ending is how X
doesn’t say a word throughout it. We just hear this message from Light about how X will bring
about a new age for the relationship between humans and robots, and how he will fight for
the good of all people, over footage of X in the wake of Sigma’s defeat. I just like how X is
someone who always continues to fight for justice, in the face of any loss or tragedy, even if those
things weigh on him alot, because that’s just what he does. X was victorious against Sigma, but
his best friend Zero didn’t survive the mission, you get reminded of that fact when X looks at
Zero’s bike in the garage. Sigma, the leader of the Maverick Hunters turned on humanity
and took the best of the Hunters with him, so the group is no doubt in shambles. In spite of
all that, X is still going to carry on the fight because X is, as Dr. Light says, the world’s
hope. A great way for the remake to go out.
But what does it all mean? What do I think of Mega
Man: Maverick Hunter X? Well, it’s really strange with me and this game. I think it’s great…they
had the challenge of remaking one of the most popular Mega Man games of all time and the result
is a game that stands right alongside it. But I guess that begs the question of if it’s better
or not. The weird thing about the game is that it does almost nothing wrong. It adds new features
and modes, it greatly expands upon the story and characters and yet…I almost never come back to
this one. Is it one of the best video game remakes of all time? Well, that sounds like a dramatic way
to describe the game, but I really can’t think of much that I’d have wanted them to do differently,
I just feel more passion for the original X. I have pretty much equal nostalgia for both. Back
in 2015, I played the hell out of Maverick Hunter X. I am talking about “I brought my vita to
school and managed to play it during art class, and then played it all the way through again
while we waited for the school open house that night” levels of playing this game often. Road
trips, my go to become Maverick Hunter X. This really is a game that I love, but X1 just
does it for me in a way I can’t describe. Doesn’t help that I have had less incentive to
revisit it over the years. As I have gotten older, I almost never play games portably. What’s the
need when I am the one taking myself everywhere I go? You know? So the appeal of being able to
take X1 on the go doesn’t work for me anymore. Also X1 came out on 3DS in 2016 so then it became
a toss up between which handheld I’d even want to bring somewhere for Mega Man X action. Nowadays,
we have The X Legacy Collection on the switch and that I have played in the limited amount of
times I have brought my switch somewhere with me, and MHX just wasn’t on that. I get that these are
all outside factors when thinking about which game I prefer, but the simple fact is, MHX is a game
I love that I just don’t really revisit besides maybe, one run a year at this rate. But every
time I do, I love the experience. I played this game three times for this video alone, and when I
was finished, I almost felt sad I was done with it because it was so good. And I guess that’s always
been the sad fact about the remake, it has always had a criminally small audience compared to X1,
which has always been a readily accessible game in pretty much every console generation. I mentioned
at the beginning that MHX did not sell well, and neither did Powered Up, and so, Capcom just
decided to scrap the plans of remaking other Mega Man games on PSP. I always hear the PSP get blamed
for this, like, if it was made as a DS game it would have been better, but, there are PSP games
that sold well, and DS Mega Man games that didn’t. The series was pretty oversaturated at the time,
and it seems great games like this got swept under the rug. Which is a shame, because I
would have loved to see a Maverick Hunter X2. To really see this version of X become the badass
from later games, the original X2 without dialogue showed how formidable X was just six months
after X1 alone. Man, it would have been awesome, but alas, that is the world we live in. What I can
say is, at least Maverick Hunter X was a fantastic game, regardless of how well it sold. Definitely
my 5th favorite X game behind the first four. Without question. But that’s basically all I want
to say for today. Stay tuned because the Mega Man X five years later project is going to end with
a new video on X Command Mission next week. Honestly, I have no idea what I am going to say
about that game, but I will think of something. And then, the final X review I will do until
we get a new game, or…X Corrupted drops…will be on X Dive and that will be that for Mega
Man X. Hope everyone looks forward to it. In the meantime, thank you all for
watching and I will see you next time.
