This was one of the last things on my list of yet unplayed Mega Man games, and so I set about finally getting to it. Given what I’d heard about how it controls, I really didn’t particularly want to play it on real hardware, so I ended up emulating the English version and playing it with an Xbone gamepad instead of playing a Japanese copy on real hardware. It took me about 4 hours to get the real ending with fairly light save state use.
Xtreme is effectively the handheld version of the first couple Mega Man X games, but it has handheld versions of a jumble of stages, and to get around the fact that story-wise this makes no sense, they make a story here based around going into a computer database to set right all of the memory data of past battles that are being corrupted by the bad guys. The story is ultimately fine, but it’s really not why we’re here, as is usual for the older MMX games (though this was actually made close to the year 2000, so closer to when MMX7 was released than 1 and 2, but just ignore that bit :b).
The gameplay is pretty straightforwardly handheld ports of half of Mega Man X 1 and 2. Technically you have 3 difficulty modes of Normal, Hard, and XTREME (because of course you do), but all that really changes is how many of the game’s 8 stages you do as well for whether or not you fight the real final boss (Normal is first 4 stages, Hard is 2nd 4, and Xtreme is all 4 + the real final boss at the end). Now there aren’t much in the way of new stages, but what is here are pretty darn competent versions of levels from X 1 and 2 (as well as a Sigma stage from each game). Some of the more technically difficult parts of them have been cut out or shortened down, but it’s still a really impressive version of those stages. The boss fights have been changed a bit too to work better with a smaller screen, and there are even just about all the bonus X parts from both X1 and 2 to find hidden more or less where they always were. The only real design complaint I have is that with only two buttons and a D-pad, you’re forced to use double-tap to dash, which is less than ideal in the harder wall climbing sections.
Graphically, this is a REALLY impressive looking GBC game, and it’s even more wild that it’s also a black-cart game that’d also work on a normal GB. Granted I don’t have an original GB to test it with, games like this really show off the differences in power between the GBC and its older brother and just the kind of stuff the little colorful 8-bit machine was capable of. The music is basically all 8-bit versions of tracks from the represented games. That’s a pretty tall order for the GBC’s sound chip, and it does its best. It’s hardly a substitute for the real thing, but it’s ultimately fine.
Verdict: Recommended. I thought this game would end up being a lot rougher than it actually is. Now sure, part of how much I enjoyed it may be down to the hardware and controller I played it with, but even still, this is a remarkably well put together game considering how rough the 8-bit portable version of the early MMX games would be expected to be. Well worth playing if you’re a Mega Man fan and looking to change things up a bit~.
Xtreme is effectively the handheld version of the first couple Mega Man X games, but it has handheld versions of a jumble of stages, and to get around the fact that story-wise this makes no sense, they make a story here based around going into a computer database to set right all of the memory data of past battles that are being corrupted by the bad guys. The story is ultimately fine, but it’s really not why we’re here, as is usual for the older MMX games (though this was actually made close to the year 2000, so closer to when MMX7 was released than 1 and 2, but just ignore that bit :b).
The gameplay is pretty straightforwardly handheld ports of half of Mega Man X 1 and 2. Technically you have 3 difficulty modes of Normal, Hard, and XTREME (because of course you do), but all that really changes is how many of the game’s 8 stages you do as well for whether or not you fight the real final boss (Normal is first 4 stages, Hard is 2nd 4, and Xtreme is all 4 + the real final boss at the end). Now there aren’t much in the way of new stages, but what is here are pretty darn competent versions of levels from X 1 and 2 (as well as a Sigma stage from each game). Some of the more technically difficult parts of them have been cut out or shortened down, but it’s still a really impressive version of those stages. The boss fights have been changed a bit too to work better with a smaller screen, and there are even just about all the bonus X parts from both X1 and 2 to find hidden more or less where they always were. The only real design complaint I have is that with only two buttons and a D-pad, you’re forced to use double-tap to dash, which is less than ideal in the harder wall climbing sections.
Graphically, this is a REALLY impressive looking GBC game, and it’s even more wild that it’s also a black-cart game that’d also work on a normal GB. Granted I don’t have an original GB to test it with, games like this really show off the differences in power between the GBC and its older brother and just the kind of stuff the little colorful 8-bit machine was capable of. The music is basically all 8-bit versions of tracks from the represented games. That’s a pretty tall order for the GBC’s sound chip, and it does its best. It’s hardly a substitute for the real thing, but it’s ultimately fine.
Verdict: Recommended. I thought this game would end up being a lot rougher than it actually is. Now sure, part of how much I enjoyed it may be down to the hardware and controller I played it with, but even still, this is a remarkably well put together game considering how rough the 8-bit portable version of the early MMX games would be expected to be. Well worth playing if you’re a Mega Man fan and looking to change things up a bit~.