From the Memory Bank: My History with Video Games

Mega Man X - Evolved to Perfection
After spending years pumping out one pedestrian sequel after another, an inspired Capcom turned up the volume and rocked my world once more.

As it was, I'd played through cherished favorites like Mega Man 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past so many times that I'd essentially become one with each of them. I'd passionately explored and re-explored every inch of their wondrous worlds. I'd obsessively dissected their every perceivable theme and subtext. And I'd spent countless hours examining them and eagerly seeking to unravel their every mystery.

I knew each one of them as well as I knew myself.

Yet even then, there was something about them that I was never able to fully understand. It was a certain quality that they shared. I couldn't find the words to describe it. I couldn't explain what its distinguishing characteristics were. All I knew was that it was a quality that made these games stand out from the rest in a powerfully transcendent way.

I considered these games to be "perfect," but I struggled to explain how they achieved that status. I couldn't fathom the type of creative realities that would need to exist in order for games of their caliber to be developed.

I often ruminated over the same questions: "Where, exactly, does a 'perfect game' come from? Does it result from careful planning, or does it achieve excellence simply by chance? And at what point do its developers become aware that they're creating something truly special?"

In the case of Mega Man X, more pertinently, I wondered how it was possible that a game that was this amazingly ambitious came to us from the same people who had spent the previous half-decade robotically pumping out nothing but safe, formulaic 8-bit Mega Man games.

"How could those same people have created the series' most amazingly evolutionary entry?" I wondered. "And what helped them to develop their new determination?"

Before then, I wasn't expecting much from them. I no longer believed that they were capable of exhibiting the type of ambition that was necessary to create a truly special Mega Man sequel.

That's why I wasn't particularly excited about Mega Man X at the time of its unveiling.

The first news of Mega Man X's development appeared unexpectedly in Nintendo Power Volume 50's Pak Watch section, and it do so, I felt, with a curiously minimal amount of fanfare. It amounted to nothing more than a short, generically written preview, and it was relegated to one of those late-page tripartite-style segments that were usually reserved for second-tier projects like the Adventure Islands, the Pac-Mans and the ClayFighters.

I didn't find it odd that landscape-changing games like Street Fighter II: Turbo and the first home-console port of Mortal Kombat were given precedence over a new entry in the Mega Man series, no. It made perfect sense: They were exciting and new and currently transforming the entire industry. The Mega Man series, on the other hand, had become safe and predictable, and its formula had grown stale.

But even then, Mega Man was still highly relevant. It was still one of gaming's most beloved franchises. And the announcement of its first 16-bit entry certainly deserved better than last-page treatment.

And what was worse was that the preview was completely devoid of meaningful content. It was so pedestrian in its language and so underwhelmingly mundane in its descriptions, in fact, that it wound up giving me the wrong impression of the game. It made me think that Mega Man X was just another standard entry in the original Mega Man series. I simply assumed that the "X" was a Roman numeral and that I was reading about the series' tenth entry.

Also, I was pretty sure that its title was, at last, confirmation that the NES and Game Boy entries did indeed share the same canon! And it was a sign that they were now being officially being grouped together in preparation for the arrival of an all-encompassing next-generation Mega Man game!

What bothered me, though, was that the math wasn't working out. At the time, there were five NES games and four Game Boy games (the last of which was an upcoming release), and that meant that we were one short. So I figured that it was the case that either (a) Capcom was planning to rush an 8-bit Mega Man 6 or Mega Man V to market in advance of Mega Man X's release or (b) the series contained a Japan-exclusive game that I'd never heard about.

"A ninth entry has to exist out there somewhere!" I believed.

So yes--the only thing that Nintendo Power's Mega Man X preview was able to inspire was some slightly enthusiastic mathematical computation. It was that uneventful.

I mean, the screenshots looked great and all (though, I can see in retrospect that their imagery depicts an early build of the game), but a few intriguing images, alone, weren't enough to convince me that I should be excited for yet another Mega Man game. At that point, honestly, I was burned out on the series, and Capcom's recent efforts did nothing to make me think that it was ever going to change or evolve. The company's track record suggested, rather, that Mega Man X was probably going to be nothing more than a prettier, more colorful iteration of the same game I'd been playing since the summer of 1989. And thus it didn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.

I didn't lie to myself, though. I knew that I wasn't to skip Mega Man X. I knew that I was going to run out and buy it almost as soon as it became available. Because I couldn't help myself. I was a hopeless sequel hound, and there was no way that I was going to miss out on a game that belonged to a series that I'd been closely following for four years.

But my position was that I could be a complete sap and still remain principled if I behaved a certain way. "If I make it known that I have zero expectations for Mega Man X and commit to being really mad at the game as I play it, then I can easily justify the purchase!" I thought. "That'll teach Capcom a lesson and simultaneously let me off the hook for being gullible!"

That's seriously how my brain worked.

Though, my opinion of Mega Man X began to shift dramatically when Nintendo Power Volume 56 arrived with a full-sized illustration of the game's hero on its cover (on both the normal color and the subscriber-only engraved-chrome cover). That was a pretty big deal to me. Any game that could nab feature coverage in a holiday-focused issue of the magazine had to be be something special, I felt.

And as I flipped through the 10-page Mega Man X review, I was very pleased with what I was seeing, but at the same time, I was a little bit nervous. You see: It was easy for me to express outwardly that I wanted the series to evolve--to insist that it break free from the bondage of formula and try new things--but that fact was that I harbored a conflicting feeling of apprehension when it came to the idea of abandoning the old ways. I wasn't sure that I was actually ready to let go of the old Mega Man.

That's why I was kinda scared by the changes that were being displayed and talked about. I feared that they had the equal potential to rob Mega Man of some of the qualities that made it what it was and thus take the series in a direction that was a little too different.

I liked, for instance, how the stages spread out in all directions and how X could upgrade his suit by obtaining special enhancement parts (including leg armor that would, according to the review, allow him to execute a cool-looking dash maneuver), but I wasn't fully comfortable with the game's tonal shift (it was, I suspected, veering toward overly "gritty," and I didn't want that to happen because I preferred for my Mega Man games to be lighthearted in tone) and the switch to animal-themed bosses, who seemed to lack the personality of the "Man"-themed Robot Masters.

Most of all, I was worried that the original series was going to be abruptly abandoned and replaced permanently by this "Mega Man X" reboot and its sequels before it could get what it deserved: an epic final entry that brought satisfying closure to its years-long story.

"The original series should go out in a bang," I thought, "rather than end flatly, with Wily escaping again and the war going completely unresolved."

My fears subsided a bit when I started focusing more on the review's text and reading about the game's story, which, I was excited to learn, was actually connected to the original series'. It was a respectful continuation of it! Its events were going to be set many years in the future, and it was going to show us what Mega Man's world was like at that point! (I took this news to be Capcom's assurance that the original series was going to continue and eventually get the closure that it deserved.)

What intrigued me most was the inclusion of Dr. Light's ghost. His presence was the clearest evidence that there was an important link between the two series. I spent the month in following wondering about the nature of that link and about how and if other established characters like Proto Man and Roll would be returning. I spent many school hours drawing up dozens of possible storyline scenarios and connections in my notebooks' back pages (my recurring theory was that X was a secretly a refurbished old-school Mega Man and that his memory had been wiped). I was completely obsessed with the subject of the two series and all of their potential links.

And as Mega Man X's release drew nearer and nearer, my anticipatory activities only grew more spirited and enthusiastic. I couldn't wait to get a hold of the game and find out what it truly was and how, exactly, it was related to the original series!

And as soon as it arrived in stores, I ran right out and bought myself a copy of it!

For certain, this was the first time in a long time that I spent my own money on a Mega Man game without feeling like a complete sap in the process. After living through a years-long period in which I would always resign myself to disappointment before buying a Mega Man game, I'd finally arrived at a moment in which I was once again able to feel great about purchasing a new Mega Man game. I was once again in a situation in which I was excited to rush home, tear open a Mega Man game's packaging, pore over the manual and absorb all of its information, and fully immerse myself in the story.

And my excitement was rewarded: I greatly enjoyed reading and re-reading the manual's contents and especially Dr. Cain's fascinating "journal entries," which detailed his excavation of X's capsule, his initial interactions with X, his ongoing progress in the creation of Reploids, and how he was coping with the emergence of the Maverick forces. I felt that using an event-chronicle-style of storytelling was a unique and brilliant way to introduce the game's narrative and establish the character motivations, all of which, appropriately, were explained from the perspective of Dr. Cain, who was responsible for setting the story in motion.

This approach really grabbed me. It inspired me to create incredibly compelling mental renderings of characters like Sigma and Zero. I couldn't wait to meet them!

And let me tell you: Mega Man X started speaking to me in the loudest, most captivating fashion the moment I flicked the SNES' console's purple power switch into the "On" position. I was instantly engaged by what I was seeing.

Honestly, I barely understood what was going on in the game's intro, in which incomprehensible tech specifications were being thrown all over the screen and a loud siren was repeatedly blaring, but still, somehow, this bewildering combination of chaotic visual and aural elements managed to send me a very coherent message: Capcom, it told me, was finally ready to free itself from the shackles of convention and clear the way for an unrestrained journey into the unknown.

That was what I sensed as I watched the intro. "This game," I thought, "is going to take me on a wild ride!"

Then I arrived at the gateway to this new adventure: the proceeding title screen, which blew me away with its intense visual energy and a musical theme that I could only describe as one of the most rockin', powerfully invigorating title-screen themes that I'd ever heard! I couldn't help but stop and let the tune play a few times and draw empowerment from its every rousing, spirited drum beat and guitar strum.

That, I felt, was what I needed to do before taking the next step on this new journey.

As X confirmed my choice of "Game Start" with his charged buster shot, I prepared to be tossed directly onto the typical Robot Master-style selection screen, as I had been in every Mega Man game that I'd ever played, but that didn't happen this time. Rather, I arrived on what looked to be a standalone intro stage, which was already a startlingly huge departure from the norm.

I was abruptly dropped into a highway scene and right into the thick of the action, and I was immediately informed of the world's impending state of instability via displays of denizens speedily fleeing westward, away from danger, in their robotic vehicles. In that moment, I was eager to find out what was waiting for me a few screens over, though I thought that it made sense to first familiarize myself with the game before moving forward. So I decided to hang around the opening area for a bit and intently gauge the striking visuals and X's cool movement animations and take in the stage's alluring atmosphere. (I loved, in particular, the stage's background visual, which contrasted a vast, sprawling cityscape against an overcast, foreboding skyline. It told me so much about where the adventure was headed.)

Basically I wanted to get a sense of this new version of Mega Man and the world that he was born into. And as I surveyed the opening scene, it was clear to me that both of them had the potential to be truly special.

So yeah--I was impressed with everything that I was seeing and hearing. The graphics, the music, the sound effects--all of them were amazing. "This is what I wanted to see," I thought to myself as I played through the highway stage. "This is the kind of ambitious spirit that I was looking for."

Every aspect of the game was explosive and brimming with intensity, and it was almost as if Capcom was loudly advertising to me, right up front, that this Mega Man wasn't like those I'd been playing in the past few years, no. This was a grown-up, matured Mega Man game that was going to boldly and grandly spread its wings and try new things and take me to new places.

My first run through the highway stage was all about learning the timing for dodging enemy attacks. One enemy in particular gave me a lot of trouble: the big blue robot, whose ground-trekking spark attack moved way faster than any attack I'd ever seen in an action game. I struggled to read it and react to it. All I could do was spam buster shots and hope to kill the robot before it severely damaged me.

Including an enemy like this one, I thought, was the game's way of making it clear to me that I was going to have to step up my game and seriously improve my reflexes if I hoped to stand a chance. "This is the next level of challenge, son," it said to me. "What you learned in the old Mega Man games won't help you here!"

In my earliest experiences, the blue-robot encounters overwhelmed me, but eventually I reached a point in which I was able to easily deal with them. And it was these encounters that trained me to do so. They helped me to greatly improve my reaction time and my button-mashing skills.

Those were just two of the many things that Mega Man X did for me as a video-game enthusiast.

Mega Man X, as I witnessed in the following minutes, was filled with exciting spectacle and exhilarating action. As I traversed my way across the stage, helicopter robots violently thrust their spiky protrusions down into the highway's surface and destroyed it layer by layer. The streetlights' comforting luminance faded to signal the emergence of large flying robotic insects (sub-bosses), which proceeded to aggressively bombard me with bullets and missiles. The robotic insects' destroyed carcasses crashed and slammed into the ground and epically collapsed entire sections of highway--in slow-motion style, for great dramatic effect (or, rather, for cleverly disguising slowdown)--and the resulting mass destruction sent all parties plummeting down to the ruins below.

It was captivating to witness!

Sections of highway crumbled away. Wall-jumps, which were extremely easy to execute, made the action feel dazzling and breathtaking, and they added a whole new dimension to the gameplay. And at the end, an enormous aircraft, which menacingly hovered overhead, opened its hatches and created a drop-off point for vehicle-riding baddies and a fearsome Boba Fett lookalike (whose name was "Vile," I learned later one) who piloted a nimble mech suit.

And I was in awe of all of it.

I hadn't even completed the first stage, and I was already confident in thinking that this was the Mega Man game I'd long been asking for. That's how strong a first impression the highway stage made.

Then came the next spectacular event: Zero's debut! His rushing in from offscreen to save X from certain death at the large crushing hands of Vile's mech was an electrifying scene and one of the most awesome moments in video-game history! His amazingly heroic theme music, his staring down and repelling a super-tough enemy, his calm and collected aura--everything about him screamed "super-cool warrior."

Zero was instantly appealing to me because his was the type of heroic entrance that I'd always daydreamed about making. I, like every other kid, was always imaging scenes in which I swooped in at the last minute and proceeded to take out the villain and save my imperiled friends. And Zero not only carried out that type of rescue; he did it in the coolest, most-awesome way possible!

"He's exactly the type of hero I want to be," I thought to myself as I reflected upon the rescue scene.

I especially loved his rousing, adrenaline-raising theme music. Just listening to it made me wish that I could be a hero in a world like Mega Man X's.

So yeah--Zero's was quite the memorable entrance.

I'm sad to say, though, that I don't have many other vivid memories of my first Mega Man X play-through. That's continuing with the trend. For whatever reason, I've never been able to retain memories of my first experiences with Mega Man games. Something about their choose-your-own-path and bounce-between-stages style of progression prevents me from being able to clearly recall play-throughs' chronologies and form solid memories of events that occurred during my adventures. So usually I'm only able to speak of my experiences in general terms.

But still, I do have a few other clear memories of my first Mega Man X play-through. I remember, for instance, that my adventure began in Chill Penguin's stage (and thereafter, his stage, much like Guts Mans and Air Man's, became my customary initial choice for the rest of time). My first-ever run through his stage sticks in my memory because it entailed my first meeting with the holographic remnant of Dr. Light, whose somber appraisal of the situation and hauntingly plaintive capsule theme combined to create a powerfully emotional scene that pulled at my heartstrings and caused me to enter into a deeply reflective state.

"What happened to this world?" I wondered as I listened to the agonizingly melancholic tune. "Why caused it to fall into such a sorrowful state?"

I'd never felt that way when I was playing any of the previous Mega Man games, all of which remained unrelentingly upbeat no matter how dire the situation was. They always had a positive, optimistic energy to them. That's why I was completely caught off guard by this scene and its sad, pensive music. A Mega Man game never challenged me to think about my adventure in these terms.

And, like I said, the capsule theme inspired me to think about how all of this came to be. I listened to it for a couple of minutes, and in that time, I wondered about all of the potential ills that could've befallen Dr. Light and friends and turned the previously-sanguine Mega Man universe into a colder and darker place.

I had so many questions.

I was, of course, going to continue playing Mega Man X mostly because its action and gameplay were topnotch, but thanks to that scene, which amounted to one of the most memorably thought-provoking moments of the 16-bit era, I now had a second, equally important motivation to play through the game: my strong desire to advance the story and find out (a) how and why the world changed and (b) what role, if any, the original series' other characters played in prompting the change.

I was eager to find out the answers to my questions!

So when I stepped out of the capsule, I had myself a new dash move, and I was instantly a fan of it (I was quick to think of it as a superior version of the original Mega Man's slide maneuver). Its inclusion, much like the wall-jump's, added a whole new dimension to the action. It allowed me to tackle the game's wide variety of platforming challenges with exhilarating long-jumps and acrobatic grace, and it provided me the means to keep the action moving at an ideally blistering pace.

It was the best new addition to the series. And it played a prominent role in helping Mega Man X to separate itself from the original series and establish a distinct style of gameplay.

And there were many others ways in which Mega Man X was able to distinguish itself. It did so, mostly, by making a number of tweaks to existing mechanics--by making modifications that were seemingly slight but ultimately critically important. The more I experimented with these enhancements--like the ability to quickly and conveniently cycle through weapons with the shoulder buttons and exit stages that I'd already cleared--the more I appreciated them and the way in which they helped the action to maintain its blistering pace and proceed without interruption.

That quality was what made Mega Man X what it was. It was what made it different from any of the original series' games. Mega Man X was a game about unrestrained movement. Its action, in comparison the previous games', moved speedily and fluidly, and it almost never wasted my time.

That was one of the things that I loved about it.

Mega Man X was proving to be transcendent in every way. It was raising the bar so high and impressing me so much that I couldn't help but occasionally park the controller by my side and marvel at it and take some time to soak in all of the spectacular things that it was doing.

I spent most of my first session, in fact, making mental notes about its remarkable graphical achievements. It was, I continued to entrancedly observe, a gorgeous-looking game! Its every texture was amazingly vibrant, highly detailed, beautifully shaded, and rife with cool visual touches; and its background environments--its shadowy forests, glorious mountain ranges, and mysterious caverns--were so wondrously rendered that they frequently inspired me to intently examine them and wonder about what was occurring within and beyond them.

Graphically and technically, Mega Man X was next-level. Its environments were awe-inspiring, its characters were superbly drawn and wonderfully animated, its action consistently moved at a brisk pace (except in two or three segments in which there was, noticeably, some heavy slowdown, which I was willing to overlook; I was happy to play along with the idea that the slowdown was actually a "cinematic technique" that was designed to make certain events, like the rail ride in Armored Armadillo's stage, seem more dramatic), and its wild boss fights terminated with some of the most impressive (if not excessive) explosions in gaming history!

Mega Man X refused to skimp on even the tiniest detail. It never ceased in its eagerness to exhibit its ambition and set new standards for the Mega Man series.

That was true, also, when it came to music. It was on a whole other level. It was amazing from the start, and it just kept getting better!

What the soundtrack was doing was truly incredible. It kept endeavoring to top itself. It continued to ceaselessly and determinedly escalate its energy and dynamism, and as a result, each successive stage theme was more vigorous and more rockin' than the previous one.

Mega Man X's was one of those musical efforts that made me stop and wonder if its composers were possessed at the time. "From what divine, otherworldly source were these people obtaining their power as they were pounding away at those keyboards?" I kept wondering.

Every Mega Man game did well musically. Each one had three or four standout tunes and a few very-good ones. But that wasn't how it was with Mega Man X, no. None of its tunes were merely "very good." Rather, each one was a masterwork and a top contender for the game's best tune. Each one was brilliantly composed and as aurally pleasing as video-game music could be. And each one was incredibly rousing and powerfully invigorating.

My favorite was Storm Eagle's stage theme. It was much shorter than any of the other stage themes, but it used every second of its time to tell one of the most compelling stories I'd ever heard. As I listened to it, I was deeply invested in its rousing tale of a helmeted hero who took the skies and jumped from one perilous platform to the next and bravely soared through the air as he relentlessly chased down a rogue aircraft.

Storm Eagle's stage theme encapsulated all of the elements that made Mega Man X's music such a triumph. It, like every other music track in the game, was the epitome of enrapturing accompaniment and augmentation. It made me feel as though I truly was a superhero.

That's what Mega Man X's music did: It made it feel as though the game was an action movie come to life and that I was the star whose bravery was on display.

I don't remember how, exactly, my first session ended or how long it took me to beat the game, but there were two events that I would never forget. The first was the Sigma battle. It was an amazingly epic encounter, and when it was over, I truly felt as though I'd won a monumental war. As it was with the Wily fights, no Sigma battle would ever be as epic as the original. (Admittedly, the suit upgrades and the four rechargeable sub tanks worked to compromise the battle's difficulty, but still, I did have some real trouble with Sigma's final form. It certainly took me to the limit. And it continued to do so in the future.)

The other event that I could never forget is my first time watching the final scene, in which X stood at on a mountain cliff and watched from a distance as Sigma's castle exploded and sank into the sea. I remember how I was caught completely off guard by how emotional the scene was. Its sobering text scroll and highly disconsolate musical accompaniment filled me with sadness and almost broke me. It induced me to think about X's unenviable plight and empathize and feel bad for him.

"What a tragic character," I thought. "He's got it way worse than the original Mega Man."

It was a poignant finale to my first Mega Man X experience but at the same time a very encouraging start to a series that was bound to become something truly special. (Well, about that...)

As I handed myself over to the game's contrastingly optimistic credits sequence, whose accompanying tune was wonderfully inspiriting, I knew that I had fallen in love with Mega Man X and that I couldn't wait to start playing through it again!

Mega Man X absolutely blew me away. It was one of the best action games I'd ever played. It stood among giants like Contra, Mega Man 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Castlevania IV, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and even managed to surpass most of them. And most importantly, it gave me everything I ever wanted in a new Mega Man game and much more on top of that.

I was honestly in awe of what it was able to accomplish.

Going in, I had zero expectations for the game, and what it did, in protest, was use every available moment to exhibit great ambition and continuously raise the bar and consequently show me what an ignoramus I was. In doing so, it succeeded in elevating the series to new heights and convincing me that Mega Man was back in a big way.

Mega Man X was a masterpiece. It performed amazingly in every area: Its controls were excellent, and they allowed for X to smoothly and speedily traverse stages and soar through the air with great precision and pinpoint directional movement (I was annoyed, though, that there was no option to disable the double-tap input, which occasionally caused me to accidentally dash into a death pit). Its weapons were interesting and fun to use; some of them were a bit plain and derivative in their default forms but otherwise wonderfully creative and destructive when charged up. Its visuals were gorgeous. Its music was stunningly great. And its level design was outstanding.

It earned perfect scores in just about every conceivable category.

I was especially fond of the way in which Capcom evolved the level design. I loved how open and expansive the stages were. I loved that you were able to freely explore every inch of them and find secret passages and seek out special items like sub tanks, heart tanks, and armor upgrades. And I loved how stage environments told their own stories while simultaneously contributing to the developing narrative with their circumstantial variations.

These were the types of evolutionary ideas I'd long been begging the company to implement.

The stage variations, in particular, were the best example of the kinds of great things that could result from creative risk-taking. They were born from a brilliant (and sadly abandoned) mechanic that allowed for the environmental changes in one stage to impact the structure and function of another (usually in a way that helped you to more easily traverse the affected stage). Spark Mandrill's electrical power station, for instance, would be torn to shreds after you completed Storm Eagle's stage, the fallout from which was Eagle's aircraft violently crashing down into the station and resultantly destroying parts of its infrastructure and causing it to lose the ability to generate electricity (and thus damaging electrical currents). Defeating Chill Penguin in his snowy mountain habitat would cause an avalanche to spill onto the reactor in Flame Mammoth's stage, whose expansive fire pits would consequently freeze over and become harmless. And after you defeated Launch Octopus, water from his ocean base would spill over to Sting Chameleon's stage and flood its underlying caverns.

You could also cause changes within the stage that you were currently traversing. In Sting Chameleon's forest stage, for instance, you could halt a cavern's violent tremors and deadly rock showers by defeating the massive service bot that was stomping about in the hidden area directly above the cavern! Then you could more easily traverse your way through it.

There were those and many other cool ways in which you could affect the stages' environments and cause them to undergo changes and thus open up new ways to explore them.

And some stages even told little stories. My favorite was the one told in Armored Armadillo's stage, whose opening area was home to a lone, misfit bubble bat whose very appearance conveyed a really sad tale. The spherical-shaped fellow was obviously a leftover, obsolete remnant from the old Mega Man world and out of place among the sleeker, more-advanced batton bones. In attacking me, I recognized, it was only trying to remain useful and find purpose in a world that was radically different from the one that it was born into 100 years earlier. Because it was able to hang around for so long, I felt bad about killing it and ending its hopes to endure (though, I didn't mind collecting all of the 1ups that it seemed to drop exclusively).

"Poor guy," I thought whenever I saw him.

That was one of the things that was so great about Mega Man X: It worked diligently to create a world that was wholly its own, yet at the same time, it always made sure to take opportunities to respectfully acknowledge the world that existed previously.

The best example of the latter was the way in which it emulated the original Mega Man's approach to re-fights: Rather than placing the Mavericks within 8 separate capsules, it interspersed them into the Sigma-castle stages, and it made the tribute more meaningful by placing the scissor-armed Maverick first in line, which was where Cut Man was positioned when he reappeared in Mega Man's Wily stages. I strongly appreciated the game's efforts to make these types of spiritual connections.

I appreciated, also, that it kept the old Robot Master-select music. At a time when I feared that the series was going to change too radically and forget where it came from, that familiar little jingle went a long way toward assuring me that Mega Man X had no intention of straying too far from the path and abandoning all of the things that made the original Mega Man games so great.

"The spirit of those games won't be lost," it told me in a comforting manner.

At the time, I wasn't yet prepared to say that Mega Man X was my favorite game in the entire series. It was too early to grant it that distinction. Though, like I said earlier, I absolutely felt comfortable in determining that it was one of the best games on the SNES and also one of the best games in video-game history.

That's how deeply it impressed me.

I loved Mega Man X so much that I couldn't stop playing or thinking about it. It was ubiquitous in my life. It was with me wherever I was. When I was home, I'd be playing through it and joyously exploring its stages and raptly examining its vivid environments. When I was at school, I'd spend the hours exploring the game's themes, writing up my own interpretations of its story, and coming up with theories as to how the original and X series were connected. And when I was on the road, I'd be reading about it in magazines or thinking about new and creative ways to play through it.

I'd use my tape recorder to record all of the game's tunes and then listen to them when I was at my aunt's house. All the while, I'd rock out to them and invite them to shape and augment my daydreams. I'd listen, for instance, to the Sigma Stage 1 theme and let its mysterious tones inspire an imagined scene in which I stealthily infiltrated a tightly guarded mountain fortress under the cover of night; or I'd continuously play the game's credits theme and imagine that I was running home after successfully completing a mission and being met with great fanfare.

I was completely obsessed with the game.

I spent hours enjoying Mega Man X for its amazing action, gorgeous visuals, and outstanding music, but I also found the time to marvel at all of its cool little touches, like the stage-select screen's mode-switching corner squares, interacting with which gave you the option to get additional information about the Mavericks (their technical specifications and their stages' map positions); the introductory highway stage's special lighting effect, which would make environments darken when no streetlights were onscreen; and how it was designed to where an armor robot would be standing beside its Ride Armor, rather than occupying it, if you came across it at a time when you weren't piloting your own Ride Armor, which gave you a fair chance to eliminate the robot before it could hop into its ride and gain a considerable advantage.

Another great touch, I thought, was Sigma's startling post-credits appearance, which succeeded where all of the series' other cliffhanger moments failed. His words, contrastingly, were chilling and serious-sounding, and thus they provided an intriguing lead-in to the sequel, which I was now anticipating even more!

And I loved discovering the game's hidden depth. That's why I considered it to be the biggest deal in the world when Nintendo Power Volume 60 arrived with news of an impossibly-well-hidden Dr. Light capsule that allowed for X to obtain a special move: the Hadouken fireball from Street Fighter II (which happened to be one of Capcom's contemporary masterpieces)!

The Hadouken was game-breaking because it was powerful enough to one-shot all of the game's bosses, including both of Sigma's forms, so I mostly refrained from acquiring it. I enjoyed the experience more when I was actually challenged by the game's bosses. But still, I felt that the Hadouken was a super-cool Easter Egg and another great example of how deep and content-rich the game was.

Though, I wasn't particularly keen on the process that you had to go through to acquire it--on having to throw myself into a death pit four times in succession and continuously re-traverse the lengthiest segment of Armored Armadillo's stage. It was too tedious and time-consuming. And it was another reason why I largely refrained from acquiring the Hadouken in my subsequent play-throughs.

A lot of my discoveries were made years later. It wasn't until, say, 2005 that I learned that you could cut off Flame Mammoth's arms and Launch Octopus' tentacles with the Boomerang Cutter. And around then, also, I made the most shocking discovery: You could obtain the buster upgrade in an earlier portion of the game! It was available via a hidden capsule in Flame Mammoth's stage! Up until that point, I was pretty sure that the upgrade was given to you exclusively by Zero, as he was dying. So consequently, possessing it at a much earlier point felt almost taboo to me; it was like I was mischievously breaking a longstanding rule and wielding a power that I wasn't yet meant to have.

And I'm still discovering interesting and cool things about the game now, in 2015! That's how much depth it has. And, also, it's a powerful indication of how much love and affection was put into its creation.

In time, Mega Man X became one of my most-played games ever. I continued to return to it on a constant basis and derive enjoyment from it in multiple ways. I simply loved it. It was my favorite Mega Man game and one of my top-three-favorite action games (the other two of which were Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse and Super Metroid).

My level of adoration for it was so great, in fact, that I felt confident in proclaiming it to be "the perfect Mega Man game." No other could compare.

It was formulaic and derivative in many ways, yes, but it pumped up the volume to such an extreme degree that it effectively transcended its formula and made itself feel amazingly fresh and new. That was a credit to its rejuvenated creators, who were obviously eager to exhibit their newfound ambition and finally evolve the series in a meaningful way.

It's just sad that Inafune and his team used up pretty much all of their inspiration and ambition while creating Mega Man X and quickly fell back into old habits. Once again, they began to pump out safe, iterative sequels and try to create the illusion of innovation by filling the games with unnecessarily complicated systems. I was rooting for them to take the series to an even-higher level and blow me away with a follow-up that was even more ambitious and evolutionary than Mega Man X, but unfortunately, they didn't care to do so; they were content to instead deliver more of the same.

The fact was that none of the Mega Man X sequels were able to capture my imagination in the same way or hold my attention for more than a few weeks. They just weren't as good as the original. So in the years that followed, I continued to turn to Mega Man X whenever I had a craving for some X-series action. It was always the superior option.

Mega Man X was simply the best. It was, as I came to term it, the "perfect" Mega Man game.

Twenty years later, I'm still not able to articulate why, exactly, games like Mega Man X are perfect or satisfactorily explain how perfect games come about. The proper words and descriptors simply escape me.

Though, I do very much understand the message that perfect games convey: It's not about what you create as much as it's about how much heart and passion you put into it. Technological power and know-how aren't enough on their own. You need, also, copious amounts of inspiration and desire. They're what help you to outdo yourself and produce an amazing work.

Mega Man X proves that to be the case. It shows us that you can create something truly transcendent if you dare to dream big. And more pertinently, it shows us how to take a classic video-game formula and evolve it to perfection.