Games You Played Today: 13 Going On 30

[notbov]

can’t believe I got baited to phone game talk out of turn

the ZZZ team sort of finally figured out how the hell they want to balance the game and now kit design is Whoops All Quickswap

you also came back when they managed to squeeze down the menuing from “there’s still a few place you have to visit to do things” to “we shoved the important bit of character building (discs) into your quick menu”. as a pervert who likes grinding gear, I’m excited

Zhao has really good animations for a character you’re going to see for the few seconds you need to get her buffs up (Astra Yao is also like this)

[explosion]

ZZZ is a game I’d absolutely play if I didn’t have a personal policy to never play any live service games

[isfet]

been replaying the first 3 Mega Man X games on SNES for the first time in some years (not sure when I did it last - possibly over five years ago, but probably more). these games were super important to me as a kid and I was obsessed.

Mega Man X - more and more I hear people say stuff like “MMX1 is the best one” or “I don’t like Mega Man but I like MMX1” etc., and so I decided it was time for me to try to evaluate it as objectively as possible. however, there really are just some games I’ve played so many times, it doesn’t matter how long I stay away from playing them; the memory is solidified in my brain like iron.

I beat the game in about an hour and 20 minutes, which is not a record or anything, but I was happy that “I still got it”

definitely, for what the game is and for how it redefined Mega Man for the 16-bit era, MMX1 is “the best one.”

however, being the best one doesn’t necessarily mean it’s my favorite one!

that would be:

Mega Man X2 - I love this game so much. some (most?) people think it’s kind of weird, but I love the color palette, the neons and intense primary colors. MMX is relatively muted, comparatively, with its favoring of light colors and pastels. I love the weird music choices and sound fonts, and i like how it expands on X1 and just kind of does it “more.” though in some ways, as an adult I think resurrecting Zero is kind of a cop out, I remember how pumped I was as a kid, and how incentivized I was to get back his parts. the scene featuring his return felt so good, and I was convinced that the next game would make him playable due to how much detail they put into his attacks. I think the game still holds up and is worth playing

that said

Mega Man X3 - I didn’t complete this one yet, but I’m about 30-40% of the way through. the game is definitely very uneven, and it’s super obvious a new team was handling the game by this point. I liked it more as a kid, but I thought it was initially very hard. some of the music is quite good, and the game does look pretty visually striking at times, but the level design in general is not as good. the placement of armor items and heart and sub tanks are insane. when I originally played this game as a kid, I made it all the way to the final levels without any armor upgrades because I simply could not find any of them. I think in previous MMX games, there are some very-well-hidden items and parts, but they always give you a couple freebies to get those juices going and open up the game more. feels like they missed the mark with this one, and didn’t really understand the flow of the first two games. the introduction of Zero as a playable character was a super good and obvious choice, but they somehow even fucked that up completely. you can only play as Zero sometimes, you can’t use him on bosses, and if he dies on a stage, he’s out of commission for the rest of the game. just really bizarre choices, all around. I’m going to play the game to completion, but it’s not as joyful an experience as X1 or 2.

glad they brought Vile back, though

[Felix]

with late SNES games that kept getting sequels like that I think it’s interesting in hindsight to remember how much of the industry wanted to move on to doing 3D and how MMX itself came out relatively late in the SNES’ lifespan when no one thought it would do that well and it was relatively cheap to make — especially since I too loved and played a ton of it as a kid (I was the right age that a lot of those later SNES releases in particular I have totally committed to memory). I think MMX3 even had a red book PS1 release like Tactics Ogre

I agree X3 wasn’t great, nor was 7, but iirc 8, RM&F, and X4 was a nice little renaissance after that, like Capcom briefly realized again the games were good

[Felix]

isn’t there some kaizo secret passage you can do in one of the later Sigma stages in X3 to get Zero a god saber or something in lieu of a Shoryuken

Or ok I’m misremembering, the kaizo sequence is to get the Shoryuken in 2, in 3 you can actually give mega man the sword if you let Zero die at the canonical right time lol

[isfet]

@Felix

I agree X3 wasn’t great, nor was 7, but iirc 8, RM&F, and X4 was a nice little renaissance after that, like Capcom briefly realized again the games were good

all correct. I actually own the Saturn version of MMX3, which does have a redbook audio soundtrack and even adds opening, middle, and ending anime cutscenes, but the game is actually kind of worse. there is a slight lag to the game, the visuals are a little more gross and unrefined, and some of the OST sounds better with the SNES sound font. this is the version of the game in all the MMX collections released over the years, and it makes me sad because it’s kind of a worse game despite being “better”

@Felix

isn’t there some kaizo secret passage you can do in one of the later Sigma stages in X3 to get Zero a god saber or something in lieu of a Shoryuken

oh yeah so I completely forgot to write about the Hadouken and Shoryuken in X1 and 2, but those are such lovely little easter eggs. I think getting the Hadouken in X1 is totally one of those “who would ever have found this” things, and I assume the dev team leaked it to Famitsu or whatever, back in the day.

by X2, you come to expect something and so you are looking for it, and they don’t make you do anything crazy like die 5 times in the same stage after walking over some specific pixels.

but yes, that section of the game made me into the MMX player I am today lol.

in X3 you get the saber through letting Zero lose a fight to a bug helicopter or whatever in the Doppler stages, but only if you do some very specific stuff and play it in a very specific way. it’s very unintuitive. there’s also the Gold Armor you receive if you didn’t pick up any of the special Boost Chips.

re: MM7, I actually have reversed my opinion on it after replaying it a few years ago. I think it’s actually really good! wish I’d gotten a copy back then. it’s not as good as 8, but it’s fun and looks very nice

edit: forgive any weird typos. I need to turn off autocorrect on this work Mac

[Felix]

that’s right, the end of X2 is really funny if you actually found all the secrets, because Sigma has to make a shitty version of Zero with bootleg parts that dies in one hit and then you dragon punch him to death also in one hit

[meauxdal]

@isfet

Saturn version of MMX3

MMX3 is such a cursed game. even ignoring the gameplay, what a massive, massive letdown in the soundtrack from 1 and 2. Saturn also has that deranged pillar-boxing due to the hardware not supporting a 256-pixel-wide resolution (320 minimum) (the curse of 320 minimum… btw this is also why the saturn SOTN is fucked lol)

[Felix]

ooooh can I bring up my favorite 90s Sega fantasy history rant again, that the Sega CD should’ve had an 020 in it so that it could’ve accommodated more super scalar ports (as well as the stuff the 3DO got like Doom/Myst/Star Control 2/Super Turbo), that they should’ve ported VF2 to CD packed in with the VDP1 as a cartridge slot expansion chip (similar to virtua racing, instead of the 32X), so that what was released as the Sega CDX would basically have been the Saturn (could they have gotten it running with one 020 instead of 2 SH2s, and used the Sega CD’s scalar hardware as the VDP2? maybe), and they should have invested in more advanced cartridge rom bank switching (like Super SF2 and Pier Solar) with decompression chips (like Mario RPG) so that they could’ve continued to support Megadrive ports of eg Neo Geo games to give the Nomad a longer lifespan in the meantime, so that they were basically able to use the Megadrive platform as a basis all the way up until the Dreamcast in 98. it would’ve produced a way better “primarily 2D hardware that also does 3D but weird” result than the Saturn as it was.

[isfet]

@isfet

by X2, you come to expect something and so you are looking for it, and they don’t make you do anything crazy like die 5 times in the same stage after walking over some specific pixels.

oh wait, something I wanted to mention, but forgot to talk about, is how Capcom themselves sent me a MMX2 postcard in the mail that told me about how to get the Shoryuken.

to this day, I have no idea how they did that. did they track my mom’s CC info and mail it to our address?

@meauxdal

MMX3 is such a cursed game

this is something I should have suspected back in the day, because another memory I have of it is that it got delayed for months and months. memories of calling up the Electronics Boutique in the Roosevelt Field Mall on Long Island every time it was supposedly getting released, and being told the date had been pushed back.

[Mikey]

If I had to pick a top 10 moments from single player games that have left an indelible mark on my psyche, the prologue/opening level in Mega Man X is one of them.

[Felix]

the problems with this as I can see it:

• the platform would’ve been kind of bus-starved with the 68k still handling a lot of data passing between much newer and faster chips. however, the 68k had the distinction of having a very fast bus for a 16-bit chip in the first place so I think this would’ve been tolerable.
• Sega of Japan didn’t trust Sega of America at all and kept making insane partnerships like with Hitachi for the SH2s; granted this is also why Nvidia exists today so it’s technically possible this could’ve worked out.
• (the biggest issue) this would’ve required a willingness to make the Sega CD really expensive at launch at a time when the Megadrive was not that old outside of the Japanese market, when it being able to play a few huge DOS or Mac ports like Doom or Myst didn’t yet register as a factor, and they basically wouldn’t have known how to support it in the market until it got cheaper (right around when they could release VF2 or something for $100 with the VDP1 as a pack-in at the end of 95), and only a few years before FF7 and Gran Turismo made clear they needed a new console. so it’s understandable that it never happened because while the technology and the market could have supported such a platform from 93-98 or so, it would’ve required a lot more foresight.
• it’s fun to imagine the Panzer Dragoon Saga programmers trying to find subroutines to run on the Z80 that would still be in there.

[Felix]

@Felix

super scalar

also this was actually the wrong usage of “super scalar” lol, that didn’t happen until the P5 from a hardware POV, should’ve been “super scaler”

[isfet]

oh, one more annoying thing about MMX3:

they took away the ability to go “back” when entering numbers on the password screen, so you have to sequentially go from 1 to 8 and can’t go backwards, which makes entering passwords slightly more annoying and tedious

just all these little things make the game feel a little icky at times

[isfet]

@Felix

Capcom briefly realized again the games were good

thinking about this, and yeah, it’s really interesting how they just kept screwing the pooch with this series. like MMX1 and 2 are respectively very good videogames and then they decide “let’s have the B team work on it, instead.”

and then you get MMX4, which is arguably one of the best action games ever made, and once again, they’re like “ok, well now that we hooked folks again, let’s have these other folks work on the sequels.” X5 is to X4 as X3 is to X1, I guess. and then it just totally goes off the rails. it’s hard for me to believe how bad X6 and 7 are, sometimes. they’re the only games in the series I never bothered to finish because they’re…they’re not even bad, they’re just fucking stupid, awful games from hell.

I’m sorry to the folks who worked on them because I’m sure at least a few of them must have been like “Wow I get to work on Mega Man!” and then you just end up making Mega Man X6 or 7. like your director walks in one day and says:

“hey what if we made Mega Man X about rescuing reploids on stages like trinkets instead of an immaculate action game?”

“what if we had randomly-generated stages that were literally impossible to clear?”

“what if we took Mega Man out of the game and tried to replace him with an idiot?”

[Felix]

I honestly think most of the problem is that they were too cheap to make. like part of the reason that X4 and the games around X4 were good is that they invested in a bunch of new and fancy spritework for the PS1 and they rode that energy for a little while longer. but then there was nothing to allocate real budget on so they turned into crap

I also think there is too much PS2 nostalgia in general and that a lot of PS1 franchises stopped trying or at least stopped trying along intelligible axes with that transition but that people don’t remember it that way enough of the time so the assumption is these can’t have been that bad

[Mikey]

@isfet

hey what if we made Mega Man X about rescuing reploids on stages like trinkets instead of an immaculate action game?”

Wait I’m lost, is this Megaman X7 you’re talking about or MegaMan 7 because I don’t think I remember that from the latter

[isfet]

MMX6 and MMX7

[ArOne]

On paper I don’t hate the “Save the robots” wrinkle in stages as it adds to the Heroic Image of X and Zero but it gets tacky when you start seeing them floating in the middle of stages with no context or set dressing to their locations. Megaman/X was one of my fixations growing up and maybe cared about it’s fiction a little to much so I always dreamed a little bit of it growing into what MegaMan Zero did with have 1 whole interconnected world and having to navigate to the missions instead of a boss select screen. That would’ve been a cool way to spread out the rescues and even have them show up in safe zones for more set dressing.

I want to sit down and play X8 hearing it was kind of ok after X7 and I played a demo of X8 in a store right as that was dying out and felt good enough for me to be curious. Also X’s design being slimmed down was novel even if I prefer the orb bot design. Part of me also wishes for X games to push the action and tap into some of that Treasure juice reserve should they get any sort of revival if new Classic proves fruitful.

[Felix]

btw in this scenario I imagine there would have been relatively less software support for the “Saturn” or whatever you’d call the Sega CD + VDP1 combination — say, as much as the N64 got in 96-98, ie not a lot but certainly enough considering that it was an optional expansion to hardware that would have been on the market for a long time by then, was economical, and was about to be replaced — but quite a bit more for the Sega CD baseline hardware (eg it could’ve run SotN and any sprite stuff that was too complex for the SNES from 1993 onward, which is why the mention of SotN made me bring this up).