Features
- Includes choice stages of Mega Man X and Mega Man X2
- Eight ferocious bosses to fight and win weapons from
- Auto-Save feature and Battery Back-Up
- For Game Boy and Game Boy Color
Don't be misled when the game ends on you're your first play through with only a handful of levels and four bosses -- Capcom has drastically restructured the design for Xtreme to include the best stages of Mega Man X and Mega Man X2 as well as a few original final boss stage... all wrapped around a completely new storyline that doesn't completely explain itself until you play through the game in Normal, Hard, and finally Xtreme modes. It's kind of a surreal experience, since you're battling through stages nearly identical to the SNES games, except for a few startling differences -- in the opening expository scene, for instance, X can actually destroy the foe who challenges him at the end of the stage, and this time it's not Zero. The storyline now is that this is a virtual Mega Man adventure (thus the Xtreme title) being rendered in the real world from Mega Man's memory banks by a mysterious new foe.
This is a nice turn of events, and a good way to write off the repeated stages. Mega Man X's darker, cataclysmic storyline wasn't a favorite compared to the simple cartoon mano-a-mano spirit of Mega Man and Dr. Wily, but the game holds together better now with this new tale. Unfortunately, the key sequences are rendered simply with text behind a few simple high-color stills -- without animation or more excited dialog and drawings, it's tough to care about what's going on.
Of course, as soon as you fire up the Mega Buster, nothing matters except the baddies in your path and the platform challenges standing between you and them. Mega Man Xtreme does an outstanding job of keeping the intensity and gameplay of the original. All of Mega Man X's moves are in, from the charging buster to the wall jump, and even the secret Street Fighter attacks are hidden somewhere in there. Mega Man X can do everything but duck [incidentally, he never could duck until X5 ], and the depth of gameplay benefits greatly from all of the options. This is pure Mega Man
Compared to the previous Mega Man Game Boy games, Xtreme is eons better with Game Boy Color support. Capcom shipped this one still to be compatible with the Game Boy Pocket, but that's clearly just a side thought -- on the old Game Boy, the game strobes like crazy, flickers wildly, and slows down with enemies on screen. It's playable, but because Capcom kept the stages almost identical to the SNES version, there's often cases where the GB Pocket can't handle the enemies. But not so at all with the Game Boy Color -- it's perfectly smooth always with flickers only in the effects, and features beautifully rendered recreations of the SNES game. There are some shortcuts made -- the janky way the game pauses for the Auto-Save is weak, and there are some effects (the explosion of the ground in the exposition scene, the raging lava in Flame Stag's stage) are done with pretty cheesy substitute effects [likely to keep the game GB Pocket compatible], but it still works.
What doesn't work is what made Mega Man X a less likable substitute for the original Mega Man in the first place. The stages in Xtreme are quite short (in keeping with the SNES game, although a few are abridged some at the end) and rarely challenging. Instead, the boss rounds are the core of the gameplay -- and with Xtreme's unbalanced design that makes the game pretty rough, this wasn't a good thing for the average player. Part of the game's difficulty is just because the screen is smaller, making battles against large bosses (not as big as the SNES game, but well-rendered all the same) much tougher in a confined space.
That's natural, but adding on to that the required hidden objects makes the game a pain for those who just want to run in and gun on a Mega Man game. It used to be that the strategy of the game was deciding which weapon to use and when, but with Mega Man X, Capcom introduced the need to find Sub-Tanks to extend your life bar. Instead of being bonuses for hardcore players, it's the beginning players (who don't know that they must explore for these power-ups) that suffer, as they try to battle fierce bosses on slivers of health. These Sub-Tanks (and Mega Man X body enhancement pods) are often buried in obscure corners of the game world -- take a leap of faith off a cliff or scale six screens of a sheer wall, and there's the Body Armor you've needed for hours now. Since there's no indicator to let players know when they've finished a stage 100%, most won't know that these bonuses are even there, and there's so few of them hidden that some gamers may never even guess that hidden stuff is even part of the gameplay. Without those obscure items, even the best gamers would find the further battles of this game a nightmare.
Verdict
I wouldn't gripe about the hidden Sub-Tanks so much, but it makes the game incredible unbalanced for most players -- you'll likely need a guide to play it your first time through. A bonus is one thing, but when a new player picks up a Mega Man for their first time after everybody's told them so much about it, or when a old-school gamer is returning to Mega Man after loving the first three or four, these people expect to get their money's worth, and not run up against a brick wall just because Capcom decided to get clever with the power-ups.
The whole game's structure has some serious balance issues -- that damned impossible Spider Boss is stuck halfway in the very first run through, still with too much health and too lethal attacks (and now with a smaller screen, so there's no room to jump out of its way when it drops mini-spiders). That's stopping gamers from enjoying 3/4 of the game for a while, since only four stages are offered up to that point. Mega Man games were great for their variety -- if you don't like a stage or find a boss too hard, trip through another one and pick up a new weapon. Xtreme hides too much of its joy from beginning and regular players.
Too bad for them, I guess, because otherwise Mega Man Xtreme is a great recreation of the SNES X series. The platform gameplay is perfectly honed, taking it all down to just two buttons, simple colors, and quick reflexes. The weapon selection, with crawling guns, circling shields, and other unique tricks, are the most balanced compilation yet -- no one gun works for the same purpose as another. Graphically, it does plenty well on the Game Boy Color -- even the ability to leap into a gigantic robot suit is in. If anything, the graphics here do more to prove that the SNES X wasn't enough of a step up, because aside from the fact that Mega Man is a lot more blue and the bosses are smaller, all of the visuals are shrunk down here, with incredible animation in X himself (looking at the old GB Pocket Mega Man titles shows off the work here... Just watch how effortlessly but expressively he climbs ladders, and look carefully when the screen stops and scrolls at a gate to see the detail work).
Mega Man Xtreme is a great package, with four great bosses out of Mega Man X and another four from X2. Die-hards will be perfectly set with this game. However, if you recommend this to a friend, make sure to be there for them when they get stuck, because Xtreme is sometimes as extreme as its name.
