From the Archives: If You Want to See What it was Like When I was ACTUALLY Good at This (Birthday Post with Mega Man X Memories)

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The X4 video I uploaded yesterday was a little lackluster due to the stage being so short and easy. It was my birthday yesterday, so I went down memory lane, which in this case was my old external hard drive.

I found some older Mega Man X videos I've recorded way back in the day.

So, to make up for the X4 video, I decided to bundle the three Dr. Doppler stages of X3 into one video for your enjoyment.

I'm quite proud of the first two stages here in particular, especially the second one. The second Doppler stage in X3 is easily one of the most difficult stages in the X series. X6, of course, craps all over that, but we'll get there when we get there.

It may not look like much, but dancing with those red laser-shooting enemies in the second stage is a damn bitch. They shoot the lasers so fast, nothing but perfect timing is good enough to clear them. Like I said, this was recorded when I was a lot younger, and my joints were in better shape, hah.

There are some tricks here that I'm not sure I could even pull off today. It's fun to look back.

Of course, most of them are such obscure things that require you to be an absolute Mega Man X nerd to appreciate, or even understand why they're done. Such as the precise, damn near erotic 7-pixel wall jumps during the Tunnel Rhino boss fight. And Jesus Christ on a camping trip, the jump I do to clear Volt Catfish at the beginning of his boss battle, dodging his Triad Thunder attack. Volt Catfish has an enormous hitbox that extends well beyond his sprite, that's not a jump that's even humanly feasible, so I don't even know what I did there.

And that wall kick at 03:07, which is actually necessary to do in order to move without stopping since jumping over the second red enemy off the top of the platform gives it enough time to turn around and blast X in the back of the head. So much cool stuff here that I probably couldn't do nowadays, like I said. But oh, well.

This whole theme is fitting for a birthday post. I have devoted such an amount of time for these games. I know them inside and out, I understand them more intimately than I understand myself. I've completed them front to back, back to front, upside down, you name it, I've done. Most ways you can't even name.

This all begs the question.

Why in the hell have I devoted such an insane amount of time and energy into the Mega Man X series?

The X games were quite popular among the kids at my school. We all had the Super Nintendo, and Mega Man X was the poster child of a series pulling off the transition from 8-bit to 16-bit in style.

And Mega Man X was about speed. X1 set the formula, X2 perfected it, and X3 was the one that added a truly realized difficulty level into the mix. So, of course, a friendly rivalry was formed amongst a group of friends for the mastery of Mega Man X - we often raced the games, compared our times, added in a no damage challenge, etc.

Guess who came out on top.

It was the guy who obsessed over it the much.

I guess, for me, being a somewhat insecure kid growing up and all that, trying to be as awe-strickingly fast and good at the X games became a way for me to make a mark. Or something dramatic like that. Even some of the cool kids were impressed.

The X series was more mature than the classic series on the NES. That most likely played a part in it being a cool thing to do to master it. It was grittier, more dark, and had an apocalyptic, foreboding atmosphere to it. It wasn't cartoony like the classic Mega Man games were.

Also unlike the classic series, the X games made you feel like an absolutely unstoppable force of nature once you learned to blast your way through the stages without looking back.

To this day, these are the games the offer me the best escapism from whatever real life drama I'm going through. I NEVER get bored of these, ever. That's their most amazing feat, in my eyes. There's never been a moment in my life when I've felt bored by the Mega Man X games. I can't tell you why because I'm not quite sure.

But there's something about always improving yourself in this set of games that keeps drawing me back, time after time. The controls are so smooth and fluid, X becomes an extension of yourself. That's why it's so damn rewarding to do the insane stuff I do with these games because you're in control of everything. X jumps exactly when you tell him to. He shoots exactly when you tell him to. Moreso than in any other games I've playd, in the X games, if you pay attention to the levels and enemies, you can practically do anything and be invincible.

The first one will always remain my favorite, but I chose these stages from X3 because I feel X3 is one of the more underrated X games.

Yes, it has its flaws. It's a bit overdesigned with not enough time put into some of the individual ideas it has going for it, and the level design often suffers from long stretches of emptiness, but it also offers something that the first two X games don't quite do: an actual difficulty level even for an experienced player.

I think that may be a big reason why X3 is so overlooked. People got frustrated because it's so decidedly more difficult than its two predecessors.

Personally, I love the fact that X3 demands the player to keep his eyes open. Though, at the same time, I can appreciate the fact that X2 is easy, which makes it possible for even less experienced players to play them like the old Sonic games, and just speed their way through, feeling and looking cool.

You can do it in X3, as well, but it does take a lot more effort.

Don't get me wrong: I love Super Mario as much as the next guy, but Mega Man X. That was my game.

I'll never forget the first time I inserted the Mega Man X cartridge into my Super Nintendo, heard that awesome, classic midi guitar kick in, and saw the cool massive "X" after Mega Man's name in the logo. It was the early 90s, what was cooler back then than adding an "X" after something? Nothing. I just knew that shit was on and I was in for something special, and completely different than what had been used to in the classic Mega Man series.

After the opening stage, all of us got our ass kicked by Vile, only to be saved by Zero who gave his speech about reaching one's potential. That speech set a mood and a tone I had not seen in a videogame before that point. It was about growing with this new character, this new Mega Man, X. We entered a random stage without knowing what the hell was going on, got our ass kicked again, until we stumbled upon the dash upgrade in Chill Penguin's stage.

Now it started to make sense. All of a sudden, we got better and started kicking ass, rather than getting our ass kicked.

Then all the way until Zero's sacrifice, we grow and get better and stronger. Before Zero dies, he gifts us with his Buster Upgrade, and tells us we're now strong enough to defeat Sigma.

As a kid, it was so cool.

I hope the love and the time I've spent with this series shows in the videos.

Enjoy.

All music by Pretty Lights. Support them here: www.prettylightsmusic.com. You can download everything for free, or be cool like me and support content creators voluntarily. :)

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