Why three Mega Man games at one time? Because after Mega Man 5 Capcom made a Game Boy sub-series and ultimately different sagas that took place in a time after the classic Mega Man universe.
After the events of 20XX, Dr. Light made one more robot before he passed away. This was a robot warrior that had the ability to think for himself and have the same high-level thought processes, emotions and feelings as human. Since this technology had not been done before and had yet to be proven, he stored this robot, Mega Man X (who we'll simply call X at this point), in a diagnostic capusle somewhere. The opening shows Dr. Cain in 21XX, who has managed to unearth Dr. Light's cache of hidden secrets, on his computer. This basically shows the specs of Mega Man X as well as a huge warning file involving the new technology involved in creating him, as he is afraid that X will turn on mankind.
Now, let's take a look at this intro screen. You're telling me that in the years 2105, 2109 and 2114, we'll be computing with hard drives that have several terabytes worth of information? Well, I got news for you, 1992's version of the future. This is 2013, and we've been using 1 and 2 TB hard drives (external, no less!) for the past few years now. Also, data caches that only consist of mere kilobytes?
Really? REALLY? Really?!?
I'm pretty sure I'll be dead by that time, but in and after 2100, I'm pretty sure that we'll have so many exabytes (one exabyte is 1024 terabytes, or 1048576 gigabytes) that we can...oh, I don't know...create our own private miniature Internets?!?
Also, for something that's supposed to take place about 100 years after the time I've written this guide, these are really, really conservative estimates. Web browsers in 2013 use several megabytes worth of data for their data caches, so how could you save everything in mere kilobytes? Now, granted, this game was made shortly before the Internet was unleashed upon the masses...but seriously...kilobytes?
Anyway, you'll see the warning screen which says that X is in a capsule that continuously runs diagnostic tests on him. Long story short, Dr. Cain frees X, and the technology used to make him is recreated with help from X to create replicate androids, or "Reploids," which have the same freedom of thought X has, and the world flourishes. Then, the Reploids go rogue and go on a terror spree to the point that Sigma, one of Dr. Cain's greatest creations under the Reploid technology, does the same. At this point, Sigma becomes the leader of these rogues, which go by the name of "the Mavericks." (In Japan, they're known as the "Irregulars.") He feels that humans have inhibited the growth of Reploids, and has now declared all-out war on humanity to drive them into extinction.
The Maverick Hunters were created to capture and disable "Mavericks," rogue Reploids who go haywire and partake in any sort of criminal activity. They also have a role in damage control in any incidents involving Mavericks. However, the Hunters' numbers have been decimated somehow. X, feeling guilt in helping create such a dangerous type of robots, goes out on his own to take the Reploids on himself.
Highway
Unlike past Mega Man games, the first game in the X had a few things that hadn't been shown in the series before. Besides a mature storyline that would blossom in future entries, it also introduced the intro stage, which you had to go through before you could tackle the meat of the story.
The spiked wheels fall after a few shots, but can be completely destroyed with a charged shot. In this game, instead of a Mega Buster, you have the X-Buster, which is basically the same weapon except much more advanced and able to charge up other weapons, as you'll see later in the game.
The blue robots that stand there and shake have two attacks: missiles that can't be repelled by any weapons as well as electric shocks that travel across the ground. Both attacks can be jumped over.
The purple flying enemies will crush the highway with their spiked bottoms. If you destroy the extendable spiked bottoms, the explosion will travel up to the robots themselves and get rid of them, which is pretty advanced for something we've seen this far in the history of the entire series.
The pick-ups are back, as always. The white and gold ones are health, while the blue and gold ones are weapons energy.
You'll soon take on a giant mechanical hornet which has a machine gun in front of it. Hit it with a combination of normal and charged shots. It also sends out white spherical robots with legs that can only be hit in the face. When you destroy the hornet, it falls and sends the bridge careening down with it. To get back up and continue, jump towards the wall and keep holding forward on the Control Pad. As you do, keep holding forwards and jump repeatedly. This is Mega Man's wall jump, and you'll be using it not only throughout this game, but throughout the entire X series as well.
You can also keep holding forwards on the wall without jumping to gently slide down the wall.
It should be noted that as you go through the highway, the ground gets light, then dark, then light again as you go forward.
The gold hornet-like robots shoot bombs onto the ground. They're easy to destroy for the most part, but around the time that you start seeing them, you'll also see parts of the ground that will crumble and fall when you stand on them.
The pink and purple robots with the helicopter blades on their head will follow you around and dog you unless you get rid of them immediately. Charged shots work best on them.
The robots in the cars will fire lasers at you. When you do enough damage to the cars, they'll be damaged and the driver will be destroyed, but the cars will keep going. You can actually take a ride on these cars at this point, believe it or not. You can also keep destroying the cars to the point that they no longer move around at all. You can let them sit there and explode or you can just hasten the inevitable and get rid of them immediately.
When you reach the end, a giant jet plane will be on the top of the screen and send a bunch of car-driving robots at you. You've already tackled them before the end of the stage, so they're nothing you can't handle at this point.
After you take out four of these cars, you'll see some guy dressed up very much like a purple Boba Fett in a giant, armored robot body with two hands and two legs. This guy is Vile. Not surprisingly, he's known as Vava (spelled VAVA) in Japan due to the fact that he looks very similar to Boba Fett. There's nothing you can do against this guy; he will pound you into scrap metal and your X-Buster will have no effect on him. When you're low on health (which also puts X in an animation where he breathes heavily and the red crystal on his helmet flashes if he's standing still), he starts shooting out yellow energy projectiles that gently fall towards both you and the ground. Have one of them hit you. You're not supposed to win this battle, but you're not supposed to die, either. Instead of dying here, you'll be caught in a energy field that leaves you immobile. Vile grabs you, and before he can destroy you, a giant arm cannon blast knocks the arm off of Vile's robot. The blast comes from a red robot with what seems like long, blonde hair and even more outlandish-looking armor. Vile flees on the returning jet, which takes off before this guy can do some real damage to him.
Apparently, he already knows who X is. (This is also the only time in the game where X has a speaking part.) He tells you to become more powerful if you have any chance of being able to turn the tide in the war against the Mavericks. He plans to scout ahead for more information on Sigma's fortress, and will meet X there when he makes it. Zero then leaves, and X leaves the area as well.
After beating an area, you'll get a 12-digit password, with all the digits being anywhere from one to nine. For the first time, the passwords got more complex, as the X games had more secrets than the classic saga did on the NES.
The stage select screen is more complex-looking as well. You'll be able to tell where in the city you'll fight a Maverick (which are basically the Robot Masters of this saga) with a map. Apparently, you're going throughout a city as opposed to the entire world.
Chill Penguin
Instead of "insert-item-here Man" for boss names, you have "adjective noun." Usually the name involves an ability name as well as an animal name coming after it.
The flying gold robots are back, but you also have snow rabbits with laser-shooting ears, woodcutter robots that send parts of a metal tree stump at you with their axes and bats that hang on the ceiling and fly at you. The woodcutters can be taken out with a fully charged shot, as can the robo-rabbits. The tree stumps regenerate, but they can blasted endlessly if you're bored enough to do it.
You'll eventually go through a cave, taking on those bats as well as the rolling wheel robots, then you'll come across a capsule. When you approach it, you'll see a hologram of Dr. Light. I'm guessing he knew this time would come, and has placed capsules in certain areas for X to find to enhance his abilities. This one will give X the ability to dash, either by double-tapping Left or Right on the control pad or by pressing A.
The capsule abilities also change X's appearance. With the Dash ability, X will have white panels on his upper legs.
The ostrich robots have buzzsaws on their heads. They have some weird smile on their face before they rotate their upper body, flinging the buzzsaw forwards.
You'll soon come across a sea green robot, similar to what Vile was riding. Jump into it, and you'll be able to dash, jump and punch the crap out of anything until you either get off or the robot is destroyed. These robots will prove very useful against the guys in the Robot Suits, who take a lot of abuse unless you have a robot of your own. They also can destroy the silos that produces the flying dragonfly robots that try to drop small bombs on you.
At one point, you won't be able to go any further with the robot, so you'll have to continue on foot. After scaling a wall, you'll either have a choice of continuing to the right, or going up to the cave ceiling to the left and seeing what's up there. Go right. There is something to the left, but you won't be able
You'll be dealing with snowballs that get bigger as they roll down the hill as well as robots that throw snowballs at you.
The doors that lead to the boss are more advanced...and judging by the loud noise they make when they slam, a lot more menacing, too.
Chill Penguin has a freeze breath that creates two ice penguins that can be used as temporary shields, which break after a few hits from the X-Buster. He also spits balls of solid ice at you, too. He also has a slide attack that has him slide around the room for a few seconds, as well as a high-flying stomp attack that's easy to move under. His nastiest tactic, however, is a hook in the center of the ceiling that blows you to the left and leaves you unable to move. When that happens, charge up the X-Buster and hit him when he's at ground level.
If you have the Fire Wave from Flame Mammoth's stage, you can do some major damage from close range. The weapon also sets him on fire, which leads to another first in the Mega Man universe - bosses reacting to certain weapons. Unless he's about to do the slide attack (which makes him invulnerable), all the Fire Wave has to do is touch him to set him ablaze, allowing you to almost corner him.
Beating Chill Penguin rewards you with the Shotgun Ice.
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