Mega Man X: Grand Finale!

So here we are team. Last boss. Sigma. He's a big ol' jerk. And he has 3 different stages for the fight. I am thankful that the whole stage itself was essentially just the boss battle; because I did NOT want to have to deal with any mini-punks.

I beamed into this... Pit? A rather thin pipe that I had to wall jump up. There were these two holes that little robo-worms popped out of. Every one of them would either drop health, ammo for powers or an extra life. So I spam killed them until I was satisfactorilly stocked up.

Eventually I popped up into the room where Sigma appeared with his little robo-dog. He talked a little bit in regular bad guy fashion, then he call me a traitor!

What the hell!? Who did I betray? And when!?

Gawd, what I bastard. So he vanished and left his dog to do his dirty work. Well; this dog is annoying, I'll tell ya. He had a fair amount of moves at his disposal. He could leap at me, run at me, shoot glowing blues balls up and over at me, launch a large flame curve downwards and upwards at me. I could avoid his attacks easily enough, but his leaping was hard to gauge sometimes; and if I crept up the wall, he would jump up towards the wall, back and forth before dropping down.

Hitting him with a charged shot would knock him back a bit, but hitting him with an ice shot did a helluvalot of damage. So I switched between the two and took him down. Sigma re-appeared and threw off his cape and pulled out a ligthtsaber. And then we started the fight.

He began by lounging forward at me, and so I jumped up the wall. Then he jumped up the wall, back and forth. He hit me and knocked me down. I shot at him and (because he has a lightsaber) he deflected my shots. I started a charge shot and jumped on the wall again. He leapt up at my and I shot him. It hurt him, but but he kept coming and he killed me. So this began a series of unfortunate events... Or, I suppose of series of X dying. His leaping back and forth just seemed so erratic, it was so hard to predict where he would go and he kept hitting me, and dealing a top of damage! Gah.

Eventually I took a break and took a step away from the game.

I came back and thought of how I could hit him when he was in the air. The Ice-shot, the Boomerang all had means of striking out in angles I couldn't normally hit. Since I used much of the Ice-shot against his pup, I knew that power ran out pretty quick, so I didn't use it right away. I did find the Boomerang very useful though, because it would swing around up and hit him.

The boomerang was not strong enough, and I couldn't quite finish him off by the end of the power. So I switched to the Ice-Shot and shot him a few times. I really found the rhythm of his leaping, and could avoid him fairly easily now. And so I finished him off with a good amount of health left.

He exploded and I was very happy. But, of course, that was not the end. After the explosion cleared his head was floating in the center of the room with a stupid grin on his face. He floated up and the back of the screen lit up revealing a large... Robot-Dog-Headed-Floaty-SpikeHandy-Thing. His head joined with the canine head and the battle began.

He had two floating platform (hands) which opened up and shot lightning up and down, or flew down at me. I could jump on these in order to rise up on level with the head and shoot it (with a fully charged buster shot.) The platform would open and lightning blast me off often though, so I had to get used to leaping off of them. The head could also breathe fire down at me in a slow arc, or shoot large electric orbs which had a rather slim margin of error in dashing between. Through these combinations of attacks I found myself defeated a number of times.

Luckily I had those robo-worms to farm at the start of the level each time I died, so I stocked up on health, power and lives.

Eventually I found that I could wall jump up to the platforms (instead of waiting for them to float down) and I could continuously damage him with the Rolling Shield. As long as the platform wasn't directly touching the wall I could leap off of it when it shot lightning and back onto it to continue my onslaught. This strategy worked wonderfully, and I brought Sigma to another explosion. Again, in solid bad guy fashion he had a little bit to say before he died; but he did ask some very provocative questions.

I don't know! Haven't you been reading my progress!? No one tells me anything!

So I let the baddie explode, and I teleported away, conveniently on a cliff-face many miles away. From there I saw Sigma's fortress crumble into the ocean and then explode in brilliant light.

Now... If I can teleport so far away, so easily, why do I have to go through levels at all? Can't I just teleport into the bosses rooms?

Then some nice Bit music started to play, and some epilogue details started to crawl up the screen, again, questioning why we did this whole thing.

"Those who sacrificed themselves will never return." ... Doesn't Zero have his own series now? Also, you should say "never be forgotten" it puts more of a positive swing while keeping the weight of the words... But that might just be me.

The epilogue ends saying that the X-buster on his arm knows the answer. The GUN on his arm knows the answer to whether he will have to keep fighting... I wonder what the gun will say? NO, DON'T USE ME, I WANT TO BECOME POINTLESS. But, then again, ya never know.

So the credits rolled, and there were some names and stuff, and then they ended and I was greeted with this smiling face! (Accompanied by some rather creepy music.)

!!! A sequel!? No way!

And that concludes my trip through Mega Man X. I hope you all enjoyed the adventure as much as I did! I had a lot of fun with the game, I can see why it is held in high regard among those lists of "Best SNES games." The action is alot of fun, and the 16-Bit graphic style is quite lovely. My only gripe is story... But, I suppose that's what RPGs are for!... I don't think I'll do an RPG next though, judging by the amount of time I've been able to settle down and play last month, it'll be best to get a less time consuming game out of the way... But which one? If anyone has any ideas, throw them out in the comment section below, I'd be happy to see what you're all thinking.

Catch ya later gamers!

Mega Man X: Holy Boss-Battles Batman!

So I demolished the rest of the old bosses in this one level, and fought a new robo-beast; which ended up having me face 6 boss fights in one level! SIX. I was running low on all counts of powers and energy tanks as the level progressed. It also felt like the bosses were a little more difficult than the first time I fought them... not that I DIED a whole lot. The fights just felt harder.

The first boss door (which again was pretty much as the start of the level) was the Armored Armadillo. I knew I had to electrocute him with my lightning shot to get rid of his armor, and then continuously do so until he died.

Don't worry, I'm not invisible, I just got hit by his forehead shot.

After defeating Armadillo, I made my way through some baddies and got myself to full health; just in time for the next boss door (which was pretty much a single hallway away.)

And within this doorway was that bastard who can actually turn invisible: Sting Chameleon. He was just as annoying as I recall, the first time we fought. Only THIS time, I found his weakness!

THE BOOM!... erang.

So I made my way out of his chamber, down a little drop where there was some health behind some pipes. I used the boomerang to snag them up (that thing is all kinds of handy, ain't it?)

Onto the next boss! Here I had to face off with Spark Mandrill! I already knew his weakness, so I could use my wonderful Ice Shot to freeze him whenever he was getting to close for comfort. I did not leave the battle unscathed however, as each one of his flying punches would knock me off the wall if I tried to avoid them that way.

You know what killed the dinosaurs? The ICE AGE!

So that was 3 bosses down, so I was imagining I would be facing a new boss right away, but I was wrong! I dove down into some water and instantly knew what was coming.

Hmm... I wonder who I'm fighting next?

Oooo... Surprise, surprise.

Octo-whatever his face is was a bastard. I very much did not enjoy fighting him. Mainly because I couldn't figure out his weakness, and also I couldn't remember how I beat him last time. So I switched rapidly through my powers and buster shots, trying to avoid his missiles and keep away from his whirlpool thang.

Then I killed him with his own powers; just for the hell of it.

Then I leapt out of the water and found another boss door. When I entered I saw the conveyor belt and knew right away I was to be facing Flame Mammoth. Last time I didn't have his weakness, and I knew I did this time. As far as I could tell, it seemed the tornado power did more damage to him. I jumped away from his fireballs, and soot shot, and blasted him down as much as I could.

I finished him off at the same time as getting knocked into the air by his fat-ass weight coming down.

So I had finished them all off. All them old guys. And the level wasn't over? Who was I supposed to fight next?... Some rather large robot, T-Rex head thing? This guy was annoying as hell. He killed me a fair amount of times, to be honest. He only had two attacks really. His upper half and lower half would split and move seperately attempting to hit me. The other is if both halves come together and shoot a large electric orb out at you. I had to dash under that one. You can't hang up on the wall to avoid it... It will launch at you.

Also, in trying to jump through the gap of top and bottom, the top would often be too fast and crush down on me, causing a fair amount of pain. How I ended up winning was getting into a rhythm of his movements and blasts; I scrolled through my powers, charging fully as well as I could to do the most damage possible. And in the end, it was still a damn close call.

HUZZAH! I won! Whew... That was DAMN stressful.

But I finished him off, that I did. And was then sent to the boss screen again. This HAS to be the final boss now; Sigma. I'm also curious as to whether I'll get some answers of some plot? Maybe?... Maybe I'm hoping too much. I guess we'll see.

Catch ya later gamers.

Mega Man X: First of the Last

So, it was silly of me to think that it was just going to be the last boss right away, I OBVIOUSLY was going to have to go through his mystery hideout and fight legions of baddies, and then take on old bosses again. Why didn't I think of that? Tsk, tsk.

Anywho, it started with meeting up with big ol' Zero. I don't wanna say he's a cocky bugger. But. He's a cocky bugger. "Don't worry X, I'll handle the big guys." "Don't worry X, I'll go first so I can destroy all the big guys who might give you trouble." "Don't worry "X, I'm just viscerally better than you in every way, no big." I'm not bitter.

Ya, that's always a good idea.

So, I make my way, tearing through some robo-turtles. Leap on some floating platforms and make my way up along this floating path, careful not to fall to my doom. I enter Sigma's fortress and begin blowing apart some baddies. Nothing too out of the ordinary here, just had to blast away. I started to realize that I had so many different powers that I could totally start using them to ease my way through the levels. The cyclone power is SO FREAKING SWEET. It protects me from things coming at me, and rips apart any bad guy infront of me, cuz it hits them so many times.

I made my way up to this ladder area and had to deal with some rather annoying moving turrets. I popped up through the ladder though, and Purple-Jackass popped down and was ready to get an ass-whooping when Big Red shows up being a 'hero' (even though I'M the hero of this story... Right?)

You jackass, let me do my own dirty work!

So I follow after them and hear the sound of some charge shotting, and a >thunk<, and I'm thinking "Oh shit, Zero got pwned!" And I hurried forward, and I was mostly right.

Oh, so I guess you aren't so ALL POWERFUL are you, Zero!? Hah!... And I resent your words, Purple-face.

So, Purple-Face managed to get IN his mech and trap Zero in a very short amount of time. After some banter about how I can defeat him, and how I know I can't defeat him, the battle began. However, there was no health bar for Big-Purple-Mech so I didn't get the feeling I was supposed to win again. I was right. When I got me down to near dead he paralyzed me AGAIN, and then picked me up to bring me over to the other side of the screen for... Some reason.

He laughed, and said I was helpless. Then Zero did a big ol' "BUT I'M NOT!!!" And broke free of the prison and exploded them both.

... Well shit, he saved me.

However, Zero only destroyed the mech, leaving Purple-Man for me to deal with. Out of nowhere, I broke out of the paralization and was restored to full health. Baddie says "Where did that energy come from!?" I dunno. Still don't. Plot hole anyone?

Anywho, without his mech, I could easily jump over Purple when he charged, and I could damaged him with all my attacks. I didn't really pick a defined strategy, I just charged up my buster, or switched between powers, and just shot the hell outta him. And thus he died.

Not so tough without your big mech, eh? I tore through you, boi.

So, I washed my hands of Big-Purple and continued on my way, only to find Zero's body... And from the looks of it, his legs were gone. He told me I was stronger than he ever imagined, and then said that "Maybe you can defeat Sigma..." And, I still have NO IDEA who that is! So he faded away and died.

Now I feel bad for those bad things I said. Why'd you have to go and die?

And that WASN'T the ended of the level. I still had to fight some regular bad-guys and leap over some other guys. Again, same old same old. No new faces here. And then I came to a boss room, with an especially familiar face. KUWANGER!

When I entered the room and he started in with his phasing-in-out-dance thing, I was like: "Oh, I know how to deal with you." And he was exactly the same as I could tell. I switched to his weakness (missles) and blasted him away with them. Just for the hell of it, I waited when he was at low health to charge up my missle shot and...

I beat you already, bitch. Eat homing pirahnas!

And that wasn't the end of the level! I still had to continue on and fight more baddies, and lump up some walls, and get annoyed with some turrets and whatnot, but I made it to the NEXT boss in a short amount of time. And boy, was he annoying.

Enter Big-Spider-Robot. He has these four long poles in the room which he manuvers on, and when he exits the screen these little horizontal green bars appear in random patterns between them, somewhat hinted out how he'll approach next. That is sometimes difficult to judge. You think he's going to follow the descending path of bars, but sometimes he'll wipe around and come at you from the top. Other than simple charging down the poles at you, Spider only has one other attack. Which is to throw down four mini-spiders which run at you and are an inconvenience.

The only way I seems to be able to get him was to shoot the moment BEFORE he came to the bottom of his trip downwards, because he scurried up the pole very quickly upon reaching hitting you or not. And forget about hitting him if he hits you. Ain't gonna happen. I'm so glad I got the armor upgrade, because he was still hurting me quite a bit with his obviously excessive body weight.

Ouch. Scary robo-spider moves fast.

Also, he speeds up the more you damage him. Just thought you should know.

But he still dies like everybody else!

So I finally beat him by constantly doing a super-charge of my regular ol' Buster shot, as you can see here.

That was the end of the level. The game returned me to the boss screen again, with the same picture of that Sigma guy... So I'm guessing I'll have a few more levels, maybe 3 bosses per level from now on? I guess we'll see.

Catch ya later gamers!

Mega Man X: Underwater Battle!

Alright. So, underwater levels never really were 'my thing' in most games. They make your character sluggish, unresponsive, and in general more difficult to avoid attacks. Happily it appears that SNES games (or just Mega Man X here) that they don't change all that much, except that cause your jumping to be slightly slower, but it actually enhancing my ability to choose where I fall when I leap. This level ended up being fairly lengthy, though might've just felt that way.

It started with shallow water which had robot water-bugs. They died with some buster shots. It got deeper fairly quickly and the first deep dive ran me face-to-face with some robot sea-horses who popped out of the ground and hurled themselves at me. They were rather annoying to be honest. I killed a bunch, and tried to keep moving, but they kept launching up from the ground! couldn't escape them. I kept blowing them up again and again, until I finally got out of their 'territory' and ran into these robot piranha things.

If you're wondering where I am in this picture; I'm inside the fish. It ATE me. It sucks in water and pulls you into it's belly. Luckily this doesn't do any damage and I can just shoot my way out, it's just an inconvenience. Next big thing was this guy:

There seems to be a trend of forced movement in this level, which I suppose makes sense, considering that it's underwater. Anyway, this guy didn't really have anything too special, he just sucked and blew, attempting to get me to fall into the pit of spikes. He also launched out these... robot snake-things which homed at me. I was hit by them a few times, but after continuously blasting him with my buster, and a couple other powers, he ended up dying. So I continued on my way, and these bombs started raining down from the surface. They weren't homing, but they were annoying. I moved as fast as I could through that area, and avoided the spikes... Then I heard some rumbling;

And thus, giant-snake-mini-boss thing popped up. It moved slow enough, and didn't shoot anything, so as long as I just kept myself away from where it's head was, I was alright. The only parts of the body I could hit were the head and the end of the tail. The body bounced my shots away. It took a bit to kill, because it would sometimes go back into the dirt, but it was just delaying the inevitable. It died, and dropped me some health and some energy for my ammo for my super powers, and the boss door was there shortly after. However, I didn't find a single power-up in the level so I did some back-tracking and found a rather large gap. I jumped over it before cuz I thought I'd die; but the camera moved down with me, so I decided to see how far down it would go.

I entered a cavern of some sort, and there was another giant-sea-snake-mini-boss thing. So I killed him, and then there was a health increase! I was so happy, and then promptly fell into a spike pit. so I fought my way back through the giant-sea-snake-mini-boss thing and went to slay the boss.

So this punk pointed and me, and said I was going down. So I was like 'Oh, you are SO going down.' This Octo-punk shot missiles. MISSILES! Luckily a charged shot usually destroyed the ones that would hit me, and then hit him, so I could plug away at his health that way. Again, I didn't have the power which was his weakness though, so I had to plug away his health normally. The regular buster/charge-shot combo seemed to be the most effective. So I killed him good.

So there are 3 bosses left, and the last 2 bosses I fought I didn't have their weaknesses... So, I hope I have the chameleon's weakness, because I think I'm gonna take him on next. Catch ya late gamers.

Mega Man X: Armor Time

Alright, so it was a busy-as-hell day today, but I managed to squeeze in about 30 minutes of Mega Man time, which I used to beat the Armored Armadillo. Now, that may have sounded like it was an easy task, but it wasn't. That bastard bounces all the hell around like a mother-... Anyway. I ought to talk about my trip to said Armadillo before I go harping on him, now shouldn't I?

Well, to start, this appeared to be a cavern of some fashion. I imagined the insides of a mine. Probably due to the cart that I jumped upon at the beginning. The spikes on the front and back of the cart protected me from enemies on the rails themselves, while I occupied myself with shooting at the many, many robot bats who flew at me as I careened along. I thought it was to be

an on-the-rails level, but that was silly of me. The cart dipped into a gap and then bounced back and forth between the wall towards doom. So I leapt off and went flying with the momentum into a robot heron. That hurt, so I killed it with a few buster shots.

I ran for a bit, shot some things and then dropped down a hole to find this guy break through the wall after me.

So I ran away, with my dash boots I was able to get away from him rather easily. He chased me all the way along until I leapt over a pit of spikes which he promptly fell into and died. I chuckled and then retraced my steps back to where he came from and found an Energy Tank thing! It appears to store health I pick up when I'm at full so I can use it to heal myself. Nifty. I fought my way back through all that lovely jazz and jumped over more rocks and rode another cart, which killed more guys for me and then bounced down into another gap.

I was hurled through the air again and ended up dropping down another long fall where another smashy-smashy thing was waiting for me to tear apart some walls. I bolted along infront of it again and spotted a little glowing heart thing up above, so I did some wall jumping and grabbed it up. It game me more health! Awesome, right? Ya, pretty happy with that.

So, another cart, except this time, instead of flying down into a gap, it went hurling THROUGH THE AIR. I didn't know what was happening so I jumped right away, and flew onto the top of the cliff thing. There was a large thing of health sitting there but I couldn't go anywhere else. So I figured I'd slide down the wall, and then there was the boss door.

So. Armored Armadillo. Has armor. And can block by buster shots. That was annoying as hell. Also; he bounces around which is near impossible to continously avoid. He killed me so, so, SO many times. And everytime he killed me more than 3 times, I had to do the level over again. Yeesh. He has the bounce attack which can go on forever, he also has a little gun that pops out from his head and shoots a little dinky shot.

Anyhow, I remembered that the ice froze the one guy, and found it wasn't effective, HOWEVER, the lightning shot electrocuted him! And his armor fell off. Awesome, right? Now I could kept shooting him with the lightning shot. And he eventually died. I then unlocked the Rolling Shield, which is essentially a giant blue ball. I wonder which boss it'll pwn?... I also haven't decided which boss to strike next. So tired. Must sleep... Catch ya later gamers.

Mega Man X: Death by Lightning

So... I died this time around. Fairly often I might add. There was a lot to take in each level. I started with a fella called the "Spark Mandrill" which I thought sounded fairly ridiculous, and he did indeed LOOK fairly ridiculous, I might add, what with all his blinking lights and whatnot...

Anyway. This stupid level started on some stupid glass tubes, which had some stupid glowing electric sparks which shot along the path, damaging me if they hit me. This wouldn't have been so bad if there weren't MECHS shooting rockets at me. So I had to kill the mechs while jumping over the shock spheres, and trying not to get hit by rockets. I was nearly off'd in the first 15 seconds of that level. I luckily made it past them, only to find myself in a dark room where I ran into this crap.

So, these robot fireflys come blazing in from the other side of the screen and give you no time to react before they blast by; either hitting you or not. I died. So I had to go back, and then I died from the shock spheres/mech combo. And then I was hit by a firefly and dropped down a pit. And then again. I realized I had gotten cocky with my Mega Man skills from not dying before, but now... I was not happy. I then came to realize that the fireflys came in at the same spots every time, it was merely a matter of anticipating them and either shooting like a madman, or dodging. I managed to survive the first wave of this, and made my way along. More robots, more gaps.

I made my way through the level, blasting away, getting hit continuously by the constant array of villains. There were these giant turtles which launched parachute bombs down at me. I died

there too.

Then there was a creepy, messed up mini-boss;

He blasted me with lightning bolts, or bounced on me. Need I mention that he took out 1/3 of my health with each hit? I died there too. Just the once though, I managed to scathe my way through the second time, only getting hit twice. I died with the next wave of fireflies though.

Finally made it to the boss after fighting through more turrets, and turtles, and drill guys. He was a bulky beast, with glowing lights all over him. He didn't really have that many attack options, but he did a ridiculous amount of damage with each hit. He could send out two giant purple lightning orbs in opposite directions, which were easy enough to jump over; however, he had a flying punch that launched him straight across the floor. Now, I could jump onto the wall for this, but he would hit the wall and then knock me down... ONTO him. And so I died. Quite a few times. After getting a game over twice, and having to play through the entirety of the level a couple more times, I figured out that the Ice Power I acquired from the Penguin FREEZES big scary guy, and does an obscene amount of damage. And so I destroyed him thus.

... So I rambled again, and this post is already long enough, and I died a lot causing me to spend way more time playing today than I had initially intended... So I apologize, but it will just be the one boss for tonight. I'll go after the Armored Armadillo tomorrow. Catch ya later gamers.

Super Metroid: Die alien vermin and space golems!

So I logged about an hour and a half on Metroid today. Most of it was spent going from my save point to the golem that's guarding the morph-ball bombs, dying, then doing it again. Finally, after I decided to stop sucking at fighting this mini-boss and use some real strategy I beat him. Then I got killed by wall-crawlies only a few rooms away, having to start from the save point all over again.

Now, about save points. I have played many games with this feature and most of them strategically place them so when you finish something really hard, you save, and you never have to face that horror ever again. Unfortunately, in Metroid, this was not the idea. The save points are more like off-the-beaten-path rooms that you have to go well out of your way to get to, so obviously you're thinking to yourself...well I have two full energy tanks, why bother saving. Oh wait, the giant plant eyeball boss is in your way!

PS: Here's my WTF of the day.

I don't know what this is about yet, but I have a feeling I'll figure it out later. As of now, it seems a bit early in the game for such huge mysteries. I might just be dumb, but I personally was weirded out by this monstrosity's appearance. 

Moving along. I did defeat the giant plant eyeball thing and I felt pretty good about myself up until I discovered the super missile and promptly got killed by those little egg sacks that spit baby egg sacks. Sending back to the save point quite a ways before the eyeball thing, but (thankfully) after the killer golem. So I saved and shut the game off, and shaking off my rust before getting back into it.

Oh, and another thing. I've discovered (due to all my deaths) that Super Metroid has got to be the only game in history to have a slightly positive twist on player death...

Yes...Samus's armor explodes and you get a brief glimpse of her in her bit-sized skivvies. I personally found this weird. I pulled the image off of this guy's blog, btw. If you want more extensive information on Metroid and it's history I suggest checking it out:

http://metroidgameculture.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html

Anyways. Until next time, I'll be hoping for space pirates and killing stupid ceiling jumpers.

JO3: Mega-Gaming Begins

Well hello there. I'm JO3 and I'm the other co-author/founder guy of this here 16 Bit Warriors schtick. I'm looking forward to blasting through (attempting to at least) these 721 games. I love SNES, it holds some of the best memories of gaming from many years ago. TMNT IV anyone? Ya. Love it
.

As ME0 explained thoroughly, we're going to be playing one game at a time through our vast collection of SNES games, sharing tips we find for ourselves, general strategies, and of course, cursing the day we were born because everything is so gorram difficult in SNES. This is before the time of autosaves. Before the time of memory cards. Before the time of having infinite continues! When you die too many times, you start at the beginning of the game in many cases. These games will beat us down and leave us bear for the internet's reading pleasure; and I can't wait to get started.

So without further ado, game number 1!

I've decided to take on Mega Man X as my first challenge, even though ME0 is doing a side-scroller as well. I can guarantee our experiences and tales of woe will be vastly different, and I'm excited to experience some mega buster action. Time to hunt down some Mavericks.