All things Mega Man

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Mr Ixolite
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Re: All things Mega Man

Post by Mr Ixolite »

I know the part you're referring to, and I spammed a good deal of Homing Torpedos there. The good thing about them is you can launch them before the enemy is onscreen, and then as you scale the wall they will proceed to target enemies as they appear. That and the Storm Eagle weapon worked best for crowd control, for me.

Have you found any of the armor parts (besides the legs)? The Sigma stages can be a real pain, but two of those upgrades help a great deal
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Alex79
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Re: All things Mega Man

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Yeah I've found all heart tanks, all sub tanks and all body parts. The only thing I've not got is the hakoken, but having watched a video that looks a bit like cheating.

I've just discovered two things though which have helped a huge amount with that section. Firstly, two of the special weapons when fully charged will actually give you invulnerability for a short time, and secondly, I realised you can dash jump off the wall by double pressing IN TO the wall. I'd been double pressing away from it...
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Mr Ixolite
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Re: All things Mega Man

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Yeah I was thinking of the chargeable special weapons, but didn't want to spoil it in case you hadn't gotten the part.

But oh man, I cannot even imagine playing through an X game without Dash-Walljumping. My default boss strategy is mostly clinging to the walls like a coward, and vaulting over the boss with dash-walljumps. For the same reason I found the Megaman Xtreme games near unplayable, as their Gameboy origins mean that "start" was the only option for a dedicated dash button.
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Re: All things Mega Man

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Dash jump into the top left corner is a good place to start with most of those bosses!
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Alex79
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Re: All things Mega Man

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Mega Man X... This game...

Every time I'm about to throw my Switch out the window I have a breakthough. Just beat the first Sigma stage. That spider boss is a bitch.

Now back to Armoured Armadillo to farm energy tanks and lives for the next stage!

EDIT: YEAH! Just beat Sigma stage 2 without even losing a life! Go on!
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Mr Ixolite
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Re: All things Mega Man

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You're in the home stretch now! Hope you can show Sigma what for, that boss is a paaaaain

Speaking of pain, I decided to give MMX7 a whirl, in order to get it out of the way.

Wow.
This is bad. Really bad.
I was expecting some clumsy 3D design, but damn, why did they have to make the unskippable cutscenes so bad, and so sloooooooow. Why is zero so useless. Why is it so cumbersome to activate Axls hover mechanic. Just a terrible first impression.
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Alex79
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Re: All things Mega Man

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I'm so close to finishing....

I can beat Sigma Cat almost without getting hit, I can best Sigma form 1 without getting hit (but not in the video below!) but I must have had 20 attempts on the final stage Sigma when he turns in to a robot with the floating platforms and got him down to last bit of health but not managed to kill him yet...

https://twitter.com/Alex79uk/status/123 ... 94816?s=19

Aaaargh! Harder. Than. Any. Souls. Game.

It's just lucky you can farm the caterpillars before the boss arena to fill your sub tanks back up, otherwise there would be no chance of me doing it!
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Mr Ixolite
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Re: All things Mega Man

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Dude, I spent soooooooo long farming those caterpillars. Eventually my hands were sore, and my eyes glazed over. I "only" had the armor and three subtanks, but I eventually just threw up my hands and switched on rookie hunter mode for the final boss...I just didn't find it fun at all, and needed to get it done. Those damn lightning bolts ARRRGH
For whatever its worth I can't remember any Mega Man final boss being harder, except maybe in Mega Man 7.

After the extremely poor first impression of X7, I went all the way back to X2. You can tell that they were quick to capitalize on the groundwork from the first game, some of the spritework, especially on the bosses is seriously impressive, and they flex a lot of graphical trickery for the SNES. My main complaint is that a lot of the bosses seem to love wasting your time, with long phases of intangibility/invulnerability - I'm looking at you, Crystal Snail! That guy is most likely going to be my "Armored Armadillo" boss of this game where I resort to exploiting his weakness, if only because he's so annoyingly tedious otherwise.
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Alex79
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Re: All things Mega Man

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Yeeees! I did it! Fifth or sixth time this evening, and with two full tanks left! Finally worked out a good strategy for him and took him down. Phew.
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stvnorman
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Re: All things Mega Man

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Alex79uk wrote: March 5th, 2020, 12:14 am Yeeees! I did it! Fifth or sixth time this evening, and with two full tanks left! Finally worked out a good strategy for him and took him down. Phew.
Congratulations! Be sure to go back and do it again in a year or so. You’ll get a real kick out of returning to this one especially. I’ve started playing Mega Man Powered Up, which is the PSP graphical spruce up of Mega Man X. Was planning to buy it but the UMD goes for crazy money so am playing on hacked PS Classic and an old, small TV so it looks at its best. Only a couple of levels in but it’s a really fun variation. I’d still take the original X over this though.
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Mr Ixolite
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Re: All things Mega Man

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I've always dismissed the PSP remake due to its 3D-graphics, but ever since learning that the bosses have new behaviors, my Megaman-completeionism has drawn me to it. Is playing as Vile any fun?
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stvnorman
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Re: All things Mega Man

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Just realised I meant Maverick Hunter X and not Powered Up, which is the remake of the original Mega Man. And highlights how little value emulating something can place on it!
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DeadpoolNegative
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Re: All things Mega Man

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Switching gears for a bit, has anyone read the Archie Mega Man comic book series from Sonic the Hedgehog mastermind Ian Flynn and drawn by various artists? (Does anyone remember the short lived 2003 series from the equally short lived Dreamwave productions?) It's actually really quite good.

To be up front, however, the series IS a kids' book, even more so than the Sonic the Hedgehog series. But Flynn does some surprisingly deep stuff with the characters. One of the early arcs is Mega Man having a crisis because all he's doing is destroying rogue robots, and wondering if that's all he was made for. It ran for 55 issues and there was even a few Sonic crossovers.
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Alex79
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Re: All things Mega Man

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I've never heard of it before but it sounds interesting, may have a look.

A new collection came out a couple of weeks ago, the GBA and DS games:

https://uk.ign.com/articles/mega-man-ze ... ion-review

Anyone played the Zero and/or ZX games? Seems to be reviewing fairly well.
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Mr Ixolite
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Re: All things Mega Man

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I've played all of them. They're pretty good, though they play a fair bit differently than the classic and X games. Zero 2-4 stick pretty close to the standard "8 bosses + intro, interlude and final stages" formula f the older games, but the first Zero and the ZX series have a more open strucutre. All games feature loads of sidequests, though I mostly found them rather boring. Theres a huge departure in how they handle weapons; the Zero series relies on managing 4 or so weapons/subweapons, with special skills eventually being unlockable from the bosses...if you get a high enough Rank. If you get a "B" or less then too bad, reload the save and try again if you want that skill. In the ZX series you transform into different forms with different movesets, which is pretty fun, but it kinda goes overboard in the ZX advent where you transform into bosses as well, and they're just not that fun to control.
Theres a bigger focus on story, which is pretty blah in the ZX games, but actually OK in the Zero series, going for a "dystopian resistance fighter" vibe. And theres a new artstyle, which is probably my biggest gripe with both series. In contrast to the simple cartoonish style of the classic and X series, everyone looks weridly plastic-y to me, more like Bionicle toy-figures than characters. Thats purely subjective though, but it is a pretty stark difference.
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Mr Ixolite
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Re: All things Mega Man

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DeadpoolNegative wrote: March 8th, 2020, 6:04 am Switching gears for a bit, has anyone read the Archie Mega Man comic book series from Sonic the Hedgehog mastermind Ian Flynn and drawn by various artists? (Does anyone remember the short lived 2003 series from the equally short lived Dreamwave productions?) It's actually really quite good.

To be up front, however, the series IS a kids' book, even more so than the Sonic the Hedgehog series. But Flynn does some surprisingly deep stuff with the characters. One of the early arcs is Mega Man having a crisis because all he's doing is destroying rogue robots, and wondering if that's all he was made for. It ran for 55 issues and there was even a few Sonic crossovers.
I read a fair bit of the archie comics; It was fun seeing them wring out actually compelling drama from the games' bare bones storylines, but as someone who's used to reading Manga I often found the action beats a bit too brief in their execution. I lost interest during the Sonic crossover as it was clear that I was missing a ton of context, but I might return to it someday. A real bummer they didn't get to the Stardroids.
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Alex79
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Re: All things Mega Man

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Mr Ixolite wrote: March 8th, 2020, 9:24 am And theres a new artstyle, which is probably my biggest gripe with both series. In contrast to the simple cartoonish style of the classic and X series, everyone looks weridly plastic-y to me, more like Bionicle toy-figures than characters. Thats purely subjective though, but it is a pretty stark difference.
Ah I know exactly what you mean without even seeing it, I remember a lot of GBA games going for that art style.

I think Clayfighter on the SNES was the first time I really noticed that sort of graphical style. I'm not sure what the correct term for it is.
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Mr Ixolite
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Re: All things Mega Man

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Thats Mega Man X2 down as well. A fun time, you can tell they really upped their game with the spritework for the bosses, and it was fun to discover how much music from this game gets re-used later. Some of the bosses are a bit of a chore to fight (Crystal Snail and Wheel Gator, ugh), and the final boss is super annoying, even if he's way easier than in X1. The special weapons feel like a bit of a step down. Still, a nice half-step forward for the series.

So I immediately jumped into Mega Man X3, only to discover that the Legacy collection offers no option to choose the music arrangement! Outrageous! Which meant that I've dusted off my old PSX copy of the game and fired up the PS3, because I don't wanna listen to this...




When I can listen to this!

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Mr Ixolite
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Re: All things Mega Man

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After blasting through X3 in a couple of sittings on my playstation, getting almost everything, I can concede that its reputation as "lesser" compared to its predecessors is not completely unwarranted; a few of the stages feel really undercooked, a lot of the new additions are rather underexplored, and enemy variety is surprisingly low. Like, a few of the stages are completely devoid of unique enemies. But I still love it because of how dense with secrets this game is, because of how many ways you can approach it (Alex79uk, if you ever make it to this one I'd be wary of using a guide as the game has a fair amount of surprises, secrets and swerves that gives it more replayability than prior games)

On that note 'm nearing the end of an "alternate" run on the Legacy collection, my first experience with the SNES version. Now despite being biased towards the PS1 version, I concede that the impact of the different music and lack of cheesy animated videos are subject to personal taste. But apart from that the PS1 version still seems clearly superior, since the SNES version occasionally suffers from a weird lack of sound effects, and extreme slowdown. Plus, one version lets you play with a playstation controller.

The Doppler stage 1 music for the SNES is a banger though, the one track I feel got downgraded for the PS1. That boss though...GAH. I was doing so well with my no-pickups no-subtank run, but that bastard made me capitulate. Lets see if I can at least make it without the armor upgrade or subtanks...
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Michiel K
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Re: All things Mega Man

Post by Michiel K »

Haven't played anything Mega Man recently, but my boy's been loving Mega Man 11 on the Switch and has been telling me all about it and his strats to get through the game. <3
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