If you've been playing video games for a long time, there's a good chance you've played one of the many, many Mega Man games before. Mega Man X was the series' debut on the SNES and took the classic formula and added a few tweaks to freshen things up a bit.
You can tackle most of the stages in any order, defeating bosses, stealing their weapons, and using them to defeat other bosses. Each boss is weak to a specific weapon, so once you defeat one boss, the rest can be easy as pie if you know what you're doing. This guide will avoid jumping around too much, but feel free to explore on your own, visiting levels and fighting bosses in whatever order you like. This guide is just one of many possible routes through the game.
Controls
- B - Jump/Wall jump
- Y - Shoot (Hold to charge your weapon)
- A - Dash*
- L - Cycle back through weapons
- R - Cycle forward through weapons
- START - Pause/Open pause menu
*
I strongly suggest mapping Dash to one of the shoulder buttons. Cycling through your weapons in two directions without pausing is useful, but it's less useful than being able to dash while shooting. If you're playing the Wii U Virtual Console version, you can map Dash to ZL or ZR and leave the weapon cycle buttons alone for the best of both worlds.
Story
Some time in the 22nd century, archaeologist Dr. Cain finds a capsule containing a robot with an exciting new feature: The ability to think and make decisions for himself like a human. Created by Dr. Light many years ago and sealed away until his willingness to follow the first law of robotics (to never harm a human) can be guaranteed. This exciting new technology is used to build a new generation of robots, called "Reploids," that think and feel like human beings.
Unfortunately, this new level of free will allows some Reploids to become "maverick" and rebel against humans. The original Reploid, Mega Man X, is a Maverick Hunter, along with his more advanced partner, Zero, and must take down the eight animal-themed Marvericks before going after Sigma and bringing peace for about five minutes before Mega Man X2 happens. Whoops! Spoilers!
Weapons, Items, and Upgrades
X has more ways to improve than ever before. Aside from the eight basic weapons you'll collect from the bosses, there are also upgrade capsules left behind by Dr. Light that will upgrade X's various body parts for different effects.
Each of the eight main levels also contains one health upgrade, and four of them contain energy tanks you can use to store excess life for later. You won't be able to collect them all the first time you visit each level and you will have to backtrack if you want to collect everything. This guide will help you track down every single upgrade and item this game is hiding!
Passwords
Eww! Yes,
Mega Man X uses passwords instead of a proper saving system. On the one hand, this means you'll have to deal with passwords every time you want to save or load if you're not playing a version with save states. On the other hand, this gives you the option to be lame and skip parts of the game by using passwords found by other, better players before you. But there's no need for that! I've got your back. Stick with me, and we'll get through this together.
NEXT: Walkthrough
