Megaman X: As I said earlier, X was a first for me, introducing a darker world than any previous Megaman game, and backed with an incredibly innovative soundtrack, good game mechanics, and a very well-rounded boss weapon arsenal. And so it is, for that reason, that I hold this little tribute out in my LJ. I remember Dad and I were completely blown away with Megaman X's opening stage the dynamic lighting of the stage that would brighten or darken as X approached streetlights, the enemies blowing holes in the concrete, and crashing Bee-Copter enemies taking out entire spans of a bridge, ended with one hell of an awesome fight and cutscene and aligned with some of the most iconic music I had ever heard. Contrary to my original concerns, I wound up loving Megaman X, playing through it more times than I'd care to count, and growing 100% enfatuated with the series as a whole, an affair that carried on for much longer than I'd care to remember. It was heavy stuff for a bunch of games where you basically run towards a given direction and blast the hell out of things. The storyline had changed as well instead of simply thwarting the umpteenth scheme of a mad scientist out to rule the world, the new robot, Mega Man X (or simply X), inhabits a dystopian world full of renegade robots, computer viruses, political intrigue, and a recurring villain named Sigma whose plots become more and more devastating. The bright colors and "Fill-in-the-Blank Man" boss robots were gone, replaced by a darker, grittier world and a gaggle of homocidal anthromorphic robots. Reading through the manual and backstory of MMX, I was amazed - Mega Man X took place over a century after the familiar Megaman games, and went in a very different direction in terms of everything from art design and character concepts to plot. I had heard that X represented a dramatic new step in the Mega Man series, but I had no idea that it was the beginning of a new series in and of itself. My dad, at the time, was a huge fan of Megaman himself (he prided himself on the fact that he beat MM3 no mean feat for an NES Newblet), and his present to me? A copy of Megaman X. Part of me groaned I had heard. Things, about this game and I was in no hurry to play it after MM6, but I played the nice guy and played it. It was mid May, and my birthday had just come up a week previous before Dad showed. All bits of information I gathered indicated that I wouldn't like it that much. I didn't like Megaman 6 much either (the Mr. X stupidity was a pretty dead-on indication that Capcom was starting to crank these out), but it had enough innovation to keep me playing it, and had good music, so there you go. A few bits of info I picked up here and there indicated that it was a very, very different Megaman game - gone was Wily, gone was Rush, and so forth. I had heard of Megaman X (called "Megaman Ten" by my idiot friends of mine) via my friends, though none of them had actually played it. I had long been a Megaman Fan (and in fact, had purchased Mega Man 6 via a friend who got it for me cheap). It was the glory days of the SNES, when one 16-Bit console was king, and everyone knew it - and only said system's ludicrous censorship policies so much as chipped away at the advantages of the Super Nintendo (and allowed the technologically inferior but software-wise innovative Genesis to carve its own deep niche). My own personal history with the Megaman X series began years ago, back when I was still but a lad in middle school, and back before my father vanished. It's a series I've long cherished and even longer played. It's also one I've analyzed deeply, and one that has had a rather tumultuous history in and of itself.
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