This is a double review for Xtreme 1 and 2. Main reason, Xt1 isn’t much of anything, it’s basically an 8bit mix of Megaman X1 and 2, and as the gameplay is the same across both of these, it’s easier to just merge them.

Both games involve travelling through stages from the console games, but in 2 There is a fair bit of originality. X controls okay but he’s pretty floaty, making it easy to lose control during tight platforming sections. In 2 you can play as Zero, who sucks compared to his PS1 outings, no range and lacking attacks. However X Can become ridiculously powerful using just his base weapon, it quickly became the best way to kill everything in seconds, and it was fun no doubt, but pretty limiting.

Extra weapons are borrowed from other games, and 1 has the better selection no doubt, as pulling from X1 and X2 is bound to have strong results. Xtreme 2 really doesn’t have much utility in the weapon department at all, it’s better to just stick to your base weapon as previously mentioned.

In both games you essentially have to play the game 3 times to see everything, as the second run brings new stages and bosses, and the 3rd combines everything in one “big” adventure. A cool thing is that in 2, you can switch characters on the fly, marking the first time this was possible in the series. It’s great for having that extra support in bosses.

These games really struggle to stand up to the console X games, but I did have fun with 2. They are little rough around the edges, But did their job at the time. So for Xtreme 1 it gets a 5/10, and 2 gets a 6/10

Gostei mais que o primeiro, mas não tá muito alto não. É basicamente o 1 só que mais interessante, mas ainda tem alguns bosses insuportaveis, e esse tem um level design muito quebrado e frustrante as vezes.

O mais legal é poder jogar com o Zero, apesar da gameplay dele ser MUITO chata nesse jogo, mas ainda é daora jogar com ele, e a parte gráfica sempre impressiona, porque os Xtreme são bem bonitos mesmo, uma bela adaptação dos de SNES.

Dito isso, esse jogo não tem muita coisa que me faça querer voltar pra ele sinceramente. No máximo jogar e fazer o 100% pra fazer um vídeo, porque de resto, acho que nunca mais encosto nos Xtremes.

Mais interessante do que eu presumi que seria. Assim como a maioria dos Mega Man portáteis, ele reutiliza conteúdo dos jogos de console. Mas, felizmente, ele pega um pouco do exemplo dos melhores games do robô azul nas telinhas e adiciona seu próprio conteúdo original por cima, manifestado em sua maior parte nos níveis. Alguns estágios são apenas versões remixadas de jogos anteriores, mas outros são bem originais. Blast Hornet, em especial, me parece ser um estágio completamente novo e é bem bom.

Mesmo nos níveis mais idênticos ao visto originalmente nos consoles há ainda uma novidade notável: você pode completá-los com o Zero! Refazer estágios de MMX2 e 3 com ele é um sonho que meu Eu Criança certamente tinha e vê-lo realizado, mesmo que numa versão portátil meio capada, é bem legal.

Infelizmente, fora os níveis, o resto é tudo reaproveitado de jogos anteriores... E nem sempre de maneira otimizada para a tela pequena do GBC. E, pior, ele repete a encheção de linguiça do primeiro Xtreme de te obrigar a zerar o jogo no mínimo três vezes para ver tudo o que ele tem a oferecer. Não obstante, é melhor que o primeiro Xtreme, e uma bom platformer portátil para se jogar em sessões curtas.

Recently replayed this and it's a big upgrade from Xtreme.
A handful of new bosses and stages.
There is one down side to this. One of the new bosses (Isaz/Spinx Tank) is the worst boss in any Megaman game it is just frustrating to deal with.

The 8 boss stages are remixes of the originals instead of just ripping a small section from the SNES stages like Xtreme did.
You can now play as Zero and even have his abilities similar to X4. You also get a armor set for Zero (just upgrades ATK/DEF).
There is a somewhat interesting story this time.
There's also a boss rush mode that lets you choose between the bosses from the first xtreme or this one.
Plays pretty well overall considering the hardware it was on.
Would have loved to see these Xtreme games continued on better hardware.

After completing Xtreme 1, I of course immediately fired up its sequel, as it was basically the last traditional-style Mega Man game I hadn’t yet beaten that I had any interest in playing. Now, this being a proper GBC-exclusive game, not a black cart game like its predecessor, I expected something at the very least a bit flashier, if not ultimately more of the same. While perhaps not quite what I expected, I certainly got something ambitious, that’s for sure ^^;. It took me about 6 hours to get the best ending with pretty gratuitous save state use, playing the English version on an emulator with an Xbone pad.

The story is once again more or less an excuse to remake a bunch of levels from X 1, 2, and 3, but with a bit more effort put into it this time. X, Zero, and confusingly enough, some crew from the later X games as well go to a mysterious island to learn who has been stealing reploids souls, and they end up having to do battle against the island’s strange inhabitants. It does its job just fine to set up the story as well as give the game excuses to have a lot more original levels and bosses that aren’t from any of the adapted games.

For anyone who played the first Xtreme, the setup of this game will likely be very familiar. You once again have 3 routes, with the first two each having half of the bosses, and the 3rd one (unlocked after beating the first two) has all 8 of them as well as the real final boss to fight. However, instead of just differently named difficulties like the last game, now it’s X mode and Zero mode, and then Xtreme mode where you can swap between them whenever a lot like Mega Man X3 does. However, this game is just as much a victim of its own ambition as it is just poorly designed.

The adapted levels are ones left over and not yet adapted in Xtreme 1, and its pretty clear that all the best ones had already been taken. As far as both the bosses and the stages go, they feel far more poorly adapted than the previous game’s (including one of the worst bike stages in the franchise), especially ones Zero has to fight who were never intended to be fought with him. What takes the cake though are the original levels and bosses. This is up there with the other worst MM games in just thinking “good Mega Man levels are hard” and running from there. They are unfair, difficult, and grueling trials of memory and attrition, and the true final boss is easily one of the worst bosses in the whole franchise.

As far as the presentation goes, this is once again really flexing just what the GBC was capable of. The animations especially look really impressive in just how many frames they get for the player characters. The music is also once again not really anything to write home about, as while its doing its best to adapt the tracks from the games its adapting, the GBC sound chip can only do so much. They’re noble attempts, but I’d stick with the original versions myself.

Verdict: Not Recommended. This is easily one of the worst traditional Mega Man games ever made. While it isn’t the absolute bottom of the pile of the ones I’ve played, it’s very very close at either #2 or #3. Even if you’re a big Mega Man fan, this is a game where it’s pretty darn hard to get much fun out of it, and you’re likely better off avoiding it entirely.

The sequel to Xtreme, now with fully playable Zero! Unfortunately, I don't think this one is the greatest Mega Man ever made either as it feels like it doesn't learn any lessons from the previous, as all the flaws there are here too: Unskippable text cutscenes, needing to beat the game multiple times, each playthrough only having 4 of the 8 available Mavericks, double tap to dash, unfair descents where you can't see what's below until it's too late...only here some of the bosses are worse like the tanks in the second Fortress stage which may be one of the worst bosses I've ever fought. You have no screen space as they hog all of it and fire massive homing projectiles, have fun with that. Zero isn't all that great either, dude's got no range and his abilities aren't all that incredible either outside weakness.

The only reason this game ranks the same as the previous is because they put Iris in this game and she survives the whole thing and is cute.

I played this pretty much exclusively to understand what the "Erasure" reference in X6 meant, and I wish I just read the wiki like a normal person instead.

X and Zero feel pathetic to control in this game. Immediately, I was bothered that they changed the way the dash works in this game. In Xtreme 1/Cyber Mission, you could set the Dash to the Start button. The GBC doesn't have enough buttons for the same depth of control as the console games, but they figured they'd use the only other available button for SOMETHING. On emulator, I had the benefit of mapping it to the R shoulder like I usually use for dashing in the other X games, but on a real GBC, I guess it didn't feel very good to use because of how mushy the button was?

For this game, Start pauses, and Select can EITHER swap your weapons (which you can do by pausing the game anyway) or tag your character out (a feature you only unlock when you reach Berkana and Gareth's Lab, and something you can ALSO do by pausing), depending on your config settings. I'm basically forced to either use Classic Rockman slide inputs for dashing (which doesn't let you dash jump) or double-tapping forward, which feels REALLY bad and imprecise. Same goes for airdashing, you airdash with a double-jump input instead of just using the dash button in mid-air.

Zero is infinitely worse, though, because ALL of his techniques share the same ammo for some reason, which gives you almost no reason to experiment trying to find out boss weaknesses because there's no Weapon Tanks and you don't regenerate ammo after a death like the PS1 games.

You also only get ONE Subtank per character for some reason?? I Googled a locations guide to make sure I wasn't missing anything, and sure enough, I found every armor piece and collectible on my own. There's only one Subtank for X and one for Zero.

I've said before that Quickman and Metal Shark Player are the two worst stages in any Rockman game, but I think Gareth and Isaz & Sowilo are two of the worst bosses in Rockman PERIOD. Worse than Kaiser Sigma, worse than Hell Sigma. Two bosses from the same game almost made me quit playing entirely.

The shop feature with Iris was a neat idea, but DNA Souls have basically outright replaced all real Health and Weapon ammo pickups. You pick up yellow souls for Health and blue for Weapon Energy. But as far as I could tell, yellow souls do not refill your Subtank. I could be wrong about this, but I checked my Subtank after collecting a soul, and often it would not be going up when I'm at full HP. I think that's really dumb. It makes grinding for souls less annoying, but I had more than enough to buy what I needed for one character by the end of the second stage.

I'll end by saying at least one nice thing, I think it's neat that this game was the origin of the tag mechanic in X7 and X8 at least. From my time playing X8 (I only know X7 has a tag feature because I saw it in the button config menu), the tag feature is SUPER fun in that game. This game doesn't really make a lot of use of it because progression is locked to one character, even if you bring stuff over from an existing save file. X will have less health and less combat options than Zero, which makes daring to use him in the Berkana Lab stages a dumb choice. X is only useful for his vertical dash if you play as Zero first.

Whereas I felt that the reused stuff in Xtreme 1/Cyber Mission was charming and really impressive, this game just annoyed me the whole time I was playing. I'd rather be playing X2 and X3 than play a version that controls worse.

(Like with Xtreme 1, I emulated this because fuck using a tiny ass Game Boy to play this game)

X1
X2
X3
X4
X5
X6
X7
X8
Xtreme

Mega Man Xtreme 2 is overall a pretty significant step up from Xtreme 1 in all aspects, but it still kinda falls flat in some others. This game is pretty much solely remembered in general for its continuity elements (i.e. that this is the first canonical appearance of Zeros love interest Iris prior to the plot of X4 or that the main event in this game, the Erasure Incident gets referenced in a line of dialogue from X6), but I'll touch into the plot in a later paragraph because for a portable game there's some hint of ambition here.

First notable point aside from the continuity is the fact that Zero is a fully playable character in this game while in Xtreme 1 he was kinda just a support character that X could summon to do a screen nuke or something. Fortunately his moveset pretty much stems from his playable appearances in X4 & X5 rather than in X3, so you can expect blisteringly fast and precise gameplay with his Z-Saber. He also still gets new techniques from bosses which are occasionally needed to grab collectibles. However his Z-Saber has the range of a fucking toothpick (compared to the PS1 games it feels WAY shorter) so you really have to get up close moreso than those games, and unlike X5 he doesn't even have his Buster, although you can attribute this to the limited amount of buttons on the Game Boy, so it is understandable. Not much else to say about playable Zero here as the rest of what I have to say ties into the next paragraph.

Next point of discussion is the progression. It's handled in the same manner as Xtreme 1 (fight 4 mavericks, beat the fortress stages, fight another 4 mavericks, fortress again then do Extreme Mode which has you do all 8 mavericks before doing the fortress), but this time they do something unique with it. At the main menu you can pick to play as either X or Zero which puts you into a new save file. Once you go through the fortress for the first time, you start the second half of mavericks as either Zero or X depending on who you picked on the main menu. This helps to freshen the experience, as you go from one distinct style of gameplay to a whole other style of gameplay, so you have to adapt again once you get to that second half. Furthermore, you have more incentive to go through Extreme Mode this time around, as not only does this allow you to tackle any stage as either X or Zero, but the true final boss (spoiler alert: it's Sigma) is locked behind it. However, in some godforsaken decision, only the hunter who lands the finishing blow on a maverick in Extreme Mode gets the special ability (say you beat Wire Sponge as Zero in Extreme Mode. He gets the Lightning technique while X gets jack shit). Fortunately if you still want all the collectibles then you can negate this by... fighting each maverick with whoever fought them previously (so have X fight Neon Tiger, Launch Octopus, Volt Catfish and Flame Mammoth while using Zero for Wire Sponge, Blast Hornet, Overdrive Ostrich and Tunnel Rhino). And because you have to decide who gets the Life Ups like in X5 it comes off as being a punch in the face to players who wanted to try doing a stage with a different character, especially once you factor in that some collectibles become impossible to get if you do a stage as the wrong character.

This then brings me onto my next point; the level design. Like with Xtreme 1, all the stage bosses in Xtreme 2 come from the SNES X games. I spoiled this in my last paragraph, but this time there's a few bosses from Mega Man X3 in the mix, including Neon Tiger, Volt Catfish, Blast Hornet and Tunnel Rhino. However, not all of the stages are ripped straight from their original games as they do a few things different, in some cases even going for an entirely new gimmick such as Neon Tigers stage having you go through a dense woodland akin to Sting Chameleons stage from X1, or Blast Hornets stage having you scale a fleet of aircraft akin to Storm Owls stage from X4, or Volt Catfishs stage being moreso based on Toxic Seahorses stage from X3, and they play with this pretty significantly, as in a few sections you have to avoid large waves of water which eventually become charged with electricity, making them go from simply pushing you back to being a straight-up OHKO upon contact. These are the kind of fun twists on the level design that Xtreme 1 was sorely missing (also Blast Hornets theme in this game is based on the PS1 version of it as opposed to the SNES version, thought I'd add that on).

Something else Xtreme 2 does well is the items. The usual 8 Life Ups are here alongside only 2 Sub-Tanks, and X & Zero both get their own separate sets of armor capsules to improve their abilities. X gets his Second Armor back from X2, complete with the vertical air dash from X3, and let me tell you, having an air dash makes getting Flame Mammoths armor capsule a total joke. Zeros armor isn't anything major to write home about, but the extra defense is nice to have. Again just beware that in Xtreme mode if you do Wire Sponge or Tunnel Rhino as X then some of Zeros armor capsules become impossible to obtain, and doing Flame Mammoth as Zero makes one of Xs armor capsules impossible to get, and because of a point I'll bring up later, it's important to balance out the heart tanks among both of them.

Next up I wanna talk about the plot, because as I mentioned in the intro, despite being a Game Boy title (and a Mega Man X game where the plots are generally hit or miss), there's an actual effort to be found here. If you care about spoilers for a 22 year old game for some reason, skip past this paragraph. Anyway a new phenomena known as the Erasure Incident has been occurring in Xs world, where innocent Reploids have been losing their spirits, essentially being left as empty husks.. X and Zero travel to the Laguz Island where this event originated from, and supporting them in this mission is none other than IRIS from X4, allowing us to see what the Maverick Hunters relationship with her was like prior to the Repliforce conflict from that game. It's then revealed that the ringleaders of the Erasure Incident are Berkana, a reploid designed to resemble and fight like a witch (also the only other female antagonist in the mainline X series aside from Iris), and Gareth, who resembles and fights like a knight. For most of the game they seem to be doing it on their own accord until you get to Extreme Mode where it's revealed that they were just doing Sigmas bidding. Predictable, but the new duo of antagonists are pretty cool and unique. A pretty solid plot overall, not unlike X4s dumb plot, but that's for a review at another stage. Also as I mentioned in the intro, this games plot gets referenced in X6, albeit only on a single line of dialogue.

Going on from that is the bosses, most of which which have received a few changes such as Neon Tiger losing the ultimate i-frame attack he loved to spam in X3 when he was at low health so you could barely damage him, or Launch Octopus overall feeling slower than he was in X1 alongside him no longer recovering HP if he caught you with his tornado. Those are the only real major ones with all the other ones not really changing the fight that much. The new bosses are all pretty neat as well, Berkana in particular stood out to me as she takes away some of your controls in a few specific attacks while still letting you use tools to survive her onslaught. The Sigma battle is pretty unique as well as not only is it an entirely original body, but it forces you to use both X and Zero to defeat him, something I'm surprised is only done for this single fight, and it's not even something that gets done in Mega Man X7 and X8 which brings back the switching mechanic (post review note: I forgot that X8s Sigma battle forces you to do a teammate switch to get out of a hard knockdown, but that's only a single instance of it). But then on the other hand you have the fucking tank boss in the second fortress stage, which makes Gate and Nightmare Mother look like nothing when it comes to discussing the worst Mega Man X boss IMO. At the start you have enough space to dodge exactly (1) attack before it closes in on you and strips away that breathing room while onslaughting you with projectiles. And because its attacks hit like a freight train, you have no other choice but to tank its hits and hope its health bar goes down before yours does. You can knock it back as Zero, but it only works for so long as it continues to pelt you with projectiles. And you have to beat this fucker THREE TIMES to get the true ending. For me its the worst Mega Man X boss by a landslide and it isn't even close, so it sticks out like a sore thumb when bringing up Xtreme 2s bosses.

Another gripe I have is that the wall jumping controls still feel pretty clunky. Sometimes X or Zero won't even move while I'm holding down the D-Pad and I have no idea why. That's the only real gripe I have with the core-gameplay, and it didn't really become a serious problem that much throughout the playthrough.

In the end, a pretty good step up from Xtreme 1 with having quite a few original ideas and an ambitious plot, as well as a (flawed) implementation of playable Zero. However fuck having to do the worst boss in the series 3 times to get the true ending, as well as having some pretty fucking janky wall jump controls (although this was present in Xtreme 1 too). It's serviceable enough as an actual Mega Man X game let alone a portable experience, so I can recommend this more than Xtreme 1 as it isn't a COMPLETE rehash of existing content.

I wish X4 was more like this game.
Controls are rock solid like the SNES mmx games.
The 8-bit remixes of all the SNES stage themes go away harder than the original songs.

Can't wait for Gravity Circuit.