Mega Man X Review
Mega Man X Review
By Michael Soderlund
I had planned to review the new Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, but then I never got it, so I decided to review a much older game where you shoot things.
Mega Man X was released on the Super Nintendo in 1993 by Capcom. It’s known as Rockman X in Japan, and it is considered to be one of the best games of the time. But enough introductions. LET’S REVIEW IT!
GRAPHICS – For the time, this game looked amazing, and while it’s not HD or 3D, it still looks good. You can tell what everything is, there’s plenty of color in the levels. The characters animate nicely, for example, some of the bosses who have taunting animations before they fight you.
SOUND – The music in this game is amazing. Every single tune will stay in your head for years after you first play it. The SNES instruments might sound a bit off if you don’t like old game music, but the songs are extremely well composed. My personal favorites are Spark Mandrill’s stage and Boomer Kuwanger’s stage. The game’s sound effects are standard for a Super Nintendo game, there’s not much to say there.
GAMEPLAY – This is where Mega Man X shines most. The game has a ton of stages. First you play an intro stage which introduces the basic gameplay to you. After this stage you get a choice of 8 levels. You have to beat them all, but you can do it in any order. At the end of each level is a Maverick. The bosses. Each one is weak to another Maverick’s weapon, which you obtain after beating one of them. For example, Chill Penguin is weak to Flame Mammoth’s weapon. The only thing you’ll need to know is who is weak to who, and who is the easiest to take on with your regular weapon. There are collectable items to increase your health, power, and defence, which you’ll want to find to beat the last stages. Speaking of which, when you beat all 8 Mavericks, you gain access to the Sigma (The bad guy)’s castle. You have to play these stages in order, but if you need to refill your health/lives you can go back to Maverick stages between the Sigma levels. With all the different orders and ways you can play the game, there is a TON of replay-ability. What about difficulty? It’s arguably the easiest in the X series, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s not. The final castle, and even some of the Mavericks will give you a lot of trouble your first time. And the final boss is extremely hard to kill.
STORY – Like most games at the time, Story isn’t a big focus, but there IS a plot twist which I won’t spoil. The story involves a Reploid (Robot who can think for himself) called Sigma trying to take over the world and kill all humans with the help of his Maverick army. Mega Man X and his friend Zero won’t have this, so we need to stop him. Mega Man X is still weak though, and is defeated easily by a Maverick called Vile. The aim is to power X up, and to “become as strong as Zero”, which is technically optional, but it makes the game a lot easier. So you go to Sigma’s castle, kill him. Day is saved, right? Sigma will never return in any of the 7 sequels, will he?
OVERALL – This game is still amazing 19 years later. Probably better than a lot of games released today. If you have a Wii, you can get it on Virtual Console for 800 points, or if the Wii isn’t your system, you can get a not as good version (touch controls, uggghh…) on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Or just buy a SNES on eBay and play it how it was meant to be played. It’s well worth it, and the SNES is quite cheap to find.