Together Retro: Mega Man X

[noiseredux]

I found the first major difference in the DOS port. The mid-boss in Spark Mandrill's stage is totally different. Y'know the bubble thing? Well instead of stretching out and stuff, he just comes at you bro. He's brutal. So much harder. Wow.

[Nyukki]

The text screen at the start where Dr. Cain logs in to X's capsule and runs diagnostics? That's totally in the US version and is super cool.

Oh yeah, super cool indeed, just really confused me cause it took me so many attempts to get the game running, when something finally booted up it looked like some sort of Windows CHKDSK hardrive error thing. I realised I was OK when it started mentioning dates way in to the future and stuff about robots.

[Flake]

I found the first major difference in the DOS port. The mid-boss in Spark Mandrill's stage is totally different. Y'know the bubble thing? Well instead of stretching out and stuff, he just comes at you bro. He's brutal. So much harder. Wow.

There are two versions of that boss in the original game as well, depending on whether or not you'd cleared another bosses stage - Storm Eagle, I think. Is this third iteration on top of those two?

[noiseredux]

I found the first major difference in the DOS port. The mid-boss in Spark Mandrill's stage is totally different. Y'know the bubble thing? Well instead of stretching out and stuff, he just comes at you bro. He's brutal. So much harder. Wow.

There are two versions of that boss in the original game as well, depending on whether or not you'd cleared another bosses stage - Storm Eagle, I think. Is this third iteration on top of those two?

oh good question. I have NOT beaten Storm Eagle yet. Perhaps I should do that?

[alienjesus]

I found the first major difference in the DOS port. The mid-boss in Spark Mandrill's stage is totally different. Y'know the bubble thing? Well instead of stretching out and stuff, he just comes at you bro. He's brutal. So much harder. Wow.

There are two versions of that boss in the original game as well, depending on whether or not you'd cleared another bosses stage - Storm Eagle, I think. Is this third iteration on top of those two?

oh good question. I have NOT beaten Storm Eagle yet. Perhaps I should do that?

I beat the bubble boss prior to visiting Storm Eagle's stage too, and it definitely did the stretchy thing. It does sound different, but maybe it's just the opposite way around?

[Flake]

I found the first major difference in the DOS port. The mid-boss in Spark Mandrill's stage is totally different. Y'know the bubble thing? Well instead of stretching out and stuff, he just comes at you bro. He's brutal. So much harder. Wow.

There are two versions of that boss in the original game as well, depending on whether or not you'd cleared another bosses stage - Storm Eagle, I think. Is this third iteration on top of those two?

oh good question. I have NOT beaten Storm Eagle yet. Perhaps I should do that?

It depends. In my opinion, Spark Mandrill's entire level is the most polarized experience depending on whether you tackle it early or late. Tackled early, the level is a freaking nightmare and the mid-boss is harder than some of the other mavericks. The level is designed to discourage players from hitting it early though given that both of the power ups cannot be obtained without some type of upgrade or weapon.

In late game, the entire affair becomes a joke. With Storm Eagle beaten, the factory gets crazy easy (despite the increased blackout effect) and the ice cracker makes Spark Mandrill boring to fight against.

[noiseredux]

Tackled early, the level is a freaking nightmare and the mid-boss is harder than some of the other mavericks.

This is a relief to hear. I must have always done Storm Eagle first back in the day, because I totally did not remember this level (or the midboss) being so difficult!

[Flake]

Tackled early, the level is a freaking nightmare and the mid-boss is harder than some of the other mavericks.

This is a relief to hear. I must have always done Storm Eagle first back in the day, because I totally did not remember this level (or the midboss) being so difficult!

Most people do Storm Eagle early on. There was a lot of care put into the game design to guide new players into a certain path that fit well into the boss weakness order, even from the boss select screen.

If you look at the first place the player is going to lay their eyes, the top left of the boss select screen, you see Armored Armadillo, Storm Eagle, Chill Penguin and Launch Octopus. With the exception of the Helmet Upgrade and the Heart Piece from Chill Penguin's stage, all of the upgrades in these stages are obtainable from the start. A new player is very likely to go to these stages early on and even if they are not successful fighting the boss, they can still walk away with 3 heart tanks, the dash boots, and two E-Tanks.

If you are successful, those stages affect the difficulty of many of the arguably more difficult stages.

Megaman X has absolutely brilliant design.

[MrPopo]

I actually didn't find Spark Mandrill's stage to be too bad when I tried it first the other day; it's the Mandrill himself that's a bastard. His attack pattern is incredibly hard to deal with without boots; if he double charges you you're going to take a ton of collision damage because you can cancel the first but the second goes off when he's invincible and leaves him far enough away from the wall that you can't jump over him. You gotta hope he decides he's going to spend a lot of time on the ceiling, which is dodgeable.

There are several stages that get changed based upon earlier stages you complete, which I thought was a really neat feature.

[BogusMeatFactory]

So I have beaten all the robot bosses and am moving on to the Sigma stages. I have 2 E tanks, all the upgrades minus the hadoken and three extra hearts. Should I spend time grabbing more of these to tackle the Sigma stages?