Mega Man Xtreme
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Xtreme action on the colorful handheld.
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Mega Man Xtreme (or Rockman X: Cyber Mission; ロックマンX サイバーミッション in Japan) is a video game developed by Capcom, and the first handheld Mega Man game to be developed in-house at Capcom instead of being developed by a third-party developer like Minakuchi Engineering. It is the first handheld entry in the Mega Man X series, and the first X game developed for the Game Boy Color. It borrows elements and bosses from the original Mega Man X as well as Mega Man X2. The game chronologically takes place between Mega Man X2 and Mega Man X3.
Plot
The Mother Computer of "Hunter Base" has been hacked by an unknown source. All of its data was overwritten in an instant, and the resulting fake data has sent the whole world spiraling into chaos. The command center sends X out to face the as-yet unidentified enemy, who has resurrected Maverick data from the past.
Why It Rocks
- Good graphics for a Game Boy Color game. It looks like as if a Mega Man X game was made on the NES.
- Great and faithful chiptune renditions of songs from Mega Man X and X2.
- Unlike the classic Mega Man games and the SNES Mega Man X games, which had passwords for saving progress, this game has a proper save feature.
- Most of the weapons and half of the Mavericks from both games are here and accounted for, behaving exactly like the SNES counterparts.
- The two new bosses, Zain (found in Flame Stag's stage) and Geemel (found in Wheel Gator's stage), are challenging, but fair.
- Both the Hadouken and Shoryuken moves from Street Fighter are unlockable in a secret Dr. Light capsule, and both moves are much easier to perform, requiring the player to either press up or down on the D-Pad while charging up the X-Buster instead of putting in a button combination like in the SNES games, although they don't kill enemies and bosses in one hit.
- Zero can be summoned to do a powerful attack after finding the Dr. Light capsules in Hard Mode (only after clearing Normal Mode and continuing from there on the same file) and Extreme Mode.
- Some bosses have more than one weakness. For example, Morph Moth is weak to Flame Stag's Speed Burner like in X2, but he's also vulnerable to Armored Armadillo's Rolling Shield.
Bad Qualities
- Unlike the Game Boy Mega Man games, instead of having unique levels, most of the stages are exactly the same as the original SNES levels, including Sigma Stage 2, which is based on X-Hunter Stage 3 from X2, one of the hardest levels in the game.
- The leg parts do absolutely nothing to improve X's mobility, as he already has the dash move unlocked from the start.
- The game is really short, and both Normal and Hard modes (or Extreme Mode that combines both modes without story elements) can be cleared in under an hour.
- The pause/weapon menu button is mapped to Select instead of Start, which may confuse some players.
Trivia
- Mega Man Xtreme can be played on the original Game Boy models with a few differences, like the colors becoming monochrome and the game running slightly slower.
- For some reason, Vile is referred to as VAVA (Vile's Japanese name) in all the releases of the game, even the non-Japanese versions.