Back to 16-bit, no less!
Mega Man X: Corrupted is an upcoming Mega Man X fan-game being developed by John K. Bacchus (a.k.a. JKB Games). It was formerly being made in Flash Develop, but later moved to HTML5. The project has been in development since the late 2000s, and production is still going strong. The game uses the retro 16-bit graphics and SNES-like music of the Mega Man X series. However, the game also differs from the original series by being a Metroidvania-styled game (similar to Mega Man ZX) where X and Zero can level up and earn skill points to power up their attacks and weapons.
The game's story takes place in an Alternative Continuity after Mega Man X5, where X and Zero are forced to fight a dangerous new Maverick called Strike who hijacks X's Ultimate Armor and threatens to bring the world into ruin again. Along the way they must fight the usual eight Maverick bosses, and they also gain new Maverick Hunter allies such as Synthia.
The game currently has no set release date. Official progress updates, answers to questions, and the like are posted by JKB Games on their Facebook page
. Most updates can be found on their YouTube channel as well. Although the game itself is still unreleased, it has a fansite here.
Tropes used for this (upcoming) game:
- Acid Pool: Loads of them abound in Vulpex's laboratory.
- Advancing Boss of Doom: Giga Wheel, which chases you down an Auto-Scrolling Level obstacle course before you fight it for real at the end.
- Alternative Continuity: Takes place after X5 in place of X6.
- Animal Species Accent: Neurohack Mosquito has a tendency to replace the "s" in his words with "zzz", similar to the buzzing sound of a mosquito.
- Armor-Piercing Attack: The Force Breaker weapon, obtained from Force Starfish.
- Art Evolution: Over its years of development, the game has gone from reusing sprites ripped and edited from the first three Super Nintendo Mega Man X titles to using more and more original custom sprites. This includes the sprites for X and Zero, which were originally straight rips and edits but are now scaled-down versions of their sprites from the Playstation games (from X4 to X6). Just look at this video from 2008 compared to this video from 2020.
- Anti-Air: Cyclone Razor, which attacks upwards.
- A Taste of Power: The Intro Stage has you start in the Ultimate Armor.
- Attack Drone: The first Charged Attack of the Neuro Spike creates these.
- Attack Reflector: Crystal Rafflar's crystals will make X's attack bounce back to him. The weapons copied from him also do this with certain enemy attacks.
- Backpack Cannon: Warfare Milodon has a HUGE one that shoots out napalm bombs and incendiary missiles.
- Bag of Spilling: As expected for a Mega Man game, but with a twist and justification. X begins with the Ultimate armor, making him far more powerful at the start compared to previous games where he either starts in his normal form or in a downgraded armor from a previous game. At the end, he performs a Heroic Sacrifice by stabilizing the core of the Maverick Hunters' ship, taking a lot of damage and knocking him out for a while. This seriously damages the Ultimate Armor and ends up disabling a lot of his systems, forcing him to repair them as he goes while waiting for the Ultimate Armor to regenerate.
- Bait-and-Switch: It's possible to find a robot dog hanging out near the Maverick Hunter base. A lot of the crew are ecstatic about the possibility of being able to adopt the dog and ask Signas if they can, only for him to flatly state no. Then after everyone is visibly disappointed, he then adds that they can offer it shelter until they can find its owner, which restores morale.
- Be the Ball: Plasma Puffer, as expected of a puffer fish. One of his attacks involves inflating and bouncing about the area while firing Reflecting Lasers.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: Sparking Scorpio naturally has one, being a scorpion Maverick and all. He can use it to grab X or Zero before throwing them into the wall. Interestingly, like Magna Centipede, his tail can be destroyed — although his Desperation Attack will reconstruct it back as new.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Plasma Puffer. He has a rather goofy design, his pre-battle animation has him hiding in a pipe, jump out, then almost trip and fall over backwards, and his reason for turning Maverick and flooding the sewers is because he wants to make the place more comfortable for himself (and because he gets bullied for his odd stature). Despite all this, he's still a boss battle and a particularly tricky one that spams projectiles at that, harasses the Maverick Hunters throughout the level, while also causing a rather inconvenient effect should he manage to carry out his plans.
- Blackout Basement: Sparking Scorpio's stage. If not beaten after four bosses, this extends the blackout to other levels too!
- Blood Knight: As a reploid made specifically for war and weapons manufacturing, Warfare Milodon has violence in his programming. He states that he has no purpose in a peaceful world.
- Blow You Away: Hurricane Hoatzin specializes in wind-based attacks and his Desperation Attack consists of him creating a huge tornado to toss the player's character around.
- Boss Arena Urgency:
- Crystal Rafflar's fight. When taking enough damage, Rafflar will access the flower in the center to create a layer of crystal walls at each end, shrinking the playing field.
- Warfare Milodon's fight. The floor under you is breakable, which will take damage from Milodon's explosives or his own weight. Once a section of the floor takes enough damage, the floor breaks and player and boss drop down to a room with molten metal/lava on both ends of the arena, leaving a small "island" in the middle.
- Bouncing Battler: Plasma Puffer often inflates himself and bounces around the boss room. His Desperation Attack has him inflate to a huge size before bouncing all over.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: X can do this to his enemies via the Neuro Spike weapon, which then turns an enemy to his side.
- Bring It: Warfare Milodon does this before the fight with him begins.
- Combos: Present in this game. And yes, you get to see Zero doing his combos in 16-bit!
- Closed Circle: At the start of the game, the Maverick Hunters are forced to crash-land on a remote island (where Strike's Mavericks are executing their activities), so they set up a temporary base there for the game's duration.
- Continuity Nod:
- The Junk Armour that you can summon is made up of the parts from five different Mavericks from previous titles, not unlike Metal Shark Player's DNA Resurrection ability in X6. note
- The giant eagle craft in the Skyway areas have an attack where they spit out an egg that hatches into three small eagle drones, in a manner very similar to Storm Eagle's attack.
- One Maverick in prison says he wishes the place would burn to the ground.
- Contractual Boss Immunity: Downplayed with the Neuro Spike. While bosses won't turn to your side like mooks will, the Neuro Spike can still disable Collision Damage temporarily, and some bosses become vulnerable to their own attacks, as well.
- Counter-Attack: Jikūgeki (Time-Space Strike), which allows Zero to do a Flash Step behind the enemy and slash them. It only works as a counter to attacks and projectiles, though.
- Cranium Ride: In Force Starfish's stage, you can do it on squid robots so you can avoid electrified kelp.
- Desperation Attack: Every boss has one, and the player will know when they use it as the screen darkens a bit when doing so:
- Warfare Milodon becomes invulnerable and fires rockets into the air, which rain down and explode into flames. They also cause the floor underneath to break away rapidly.
- Crystal Rafflar begins using two crystal waves in a row, and will cover the walls in gemstone, shrinking the playing field. And in S difficulty it also reflects the attack, making it way more dangerous.
- Hurricane Hoatzin summons a huge tornado that causes X or Zero to move in a spiral motion up and down, while firing Razor Cyclone projectiles downwards in a similar spiral manner.
- Neurohack Mosquito dives into the wreckage below, before a scrap Humongous Mecha rises up of the ground and begins to fire lasers that must be avoided by hiding behind its moving arms, while summoning more flunky mosquitoes. Once that takes enough damage, Neurohack will exit it and resume his attack pattern, but become far more aggressive.
- Sparking Scorpio charges his tail (and reconstructs it if it was destroyed) with electricity and lifts it vertically. Horizontal bolts then travel out of his tail segments as he sends EMP Spark balls that travel the ground, up the wall and on the ceiling akin to Plug Ball before unleashing electricity downwards.
- Force Starfish will detach the starfish limbs on his back, which will home in on X/Zero as an enemy until it is destroyed. If it touches X or Zero, it grabs them and slams them into the wall for incredible damage.
- Plasma Puffer inflates to a massive size, then bounces all over the room while firing out bouncy bubble mines as he bounces.
- Detachment Combat: Force Starfish can remove the starfish arms on his back, which will then follow X or Zero around. If it touches them, it grabs them, smashes them into the wall and self destructs, doing huge damage. Like a starfish, Force Starfish will regenerate a new set of them.
- Doppelgänger Attack: Zero gets one from Neurohack Mosquito.
- Downer Beginning: In X's intro stage, the carrier airship that X and the Maverick Hunters are on (as well as an imprisoned Warfare Milodon and Hurricane Hoatzin) is attacked by Mavericks, and despite X's best efforts, Strike manages to destroy it. X is also forced to sacrifice the Ultimate Armor to stabilize the ship's core and prevent everyone from dying, causing him to be temporarily disabled and the Ultimate Armor to be set aside for repairs.
- Dual-World Gameplay: Warp Vulpex's Cyber Lab's main gimmick has the player switch between two different planes by touching laser gates, with enemies on the other plane becoming intangible but unable to damage the player.
- EMP: The weapon obtained from Sparking Scorpio, the EMP Spark.
- Experience Meter: There's a little green meter for that purpose below the life bar. It makes a jingle once you've filled it up and reset it.
- Expy: The bonus character Synthia is one for Axl, being a Reploid with dark armor, a ponytail, and a multi-directional rapid-fire handgun. This is due to the fact that the story is set in an Alternative Continuity post-X5, and thus Axl isn't around (or just hasn't met the Maverick Hunters yet).
- Fantastic Foxes: Warp Vulpex.
- Flunky Boss: Neurohack Mosquito primarily attacks with shooting out small mosquitoes which then dive into the junk around the battlefield to form destructible minions.
- Foul Flower: Crystal Rafflar is a manipulative maverick based on a Rafflesia. The miniboss of his stage could also count, being a giant version of those crystal flower plants fought in the level.
- Gemstone Assault: Crystal Rafflar's powers are crystal-based.
- Gratuitous Japanese: As usual, Zero's skillset.
- Hair-Trigger Explosive: Warfare Milodon's weapons factory stage has quite a number of them. The bombs go off if anything touches or goes near them, and the missiles launch if anything hits them (which is used as platforming in certain segments).
- Homing Projectile: The Missile Barrage obtained from Warfare Milodon allows X to fire homing missiles into the air that then target and rain down on enemies nearby, homing in on them.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Named for classes of Maverick hunters, with descriptions.
- C Class: Easy difficulty - for enjoying the story and action sequences in a more relaxed setting.
- B Class: Normal difficulty - for a fast-paced action platforming experience.
- A Class: Hard difficulty - for platforming veterans looking for an adrenaline rush.
- S Class: Very hard difficulty - for experts ready to take on Mavericks with a few more tricks.
- Σ Class: Extreme difficulty - for those who stood in the face of annihilation, and said, "more".
- Indy Escape: Present in one area with Giga Wheel chasing the player. There's also the cave area where giant boulder enemies will chase X or Zero.
- Insect Gender-Bender: Neurohack Mosquito is male, but sports a Life Drain attack that's reminiscent of a female mosquito siphoning blood.
- Invulnerable Attack: Bosses are invulnerable to damage when they're using their Desperation Attack.
- Just Toying with Them: Strike's dialogue in X's first encounter with him states that he's simply playing around with X. After he loses half his health (or if he damages X enough), he simply quits the fight and performs a new attack that he didn't use in the battle in order to destroy the airship's last engine, implying that he was holding back.Strike: What matters is you're here, and I can finally play with you.
X: Is this a game to you?
Strike: What's the matter? Afraid you'll lose? - Lag Cancel: One key feature of Zero's moveset. According to
Word of God, this was a bug that became a feature because it made a lot of sense. - Last Chance Hit Point: Viral Zero can only die if he's damaged at 1 hit point. Any attack that would kill him (except instant-death) will bring him to a single HP.
- Legacy Boss Battle: One Maverick from each game up to X6 are featured as bonus bosses with updated movesets and animations. They are Storm Eagle, Morph Moth, Blizzard Buffalo, Magma Dragoon, Spike Rosered, and Rainy Turtloid.
- Lethal Lava Land: Warfare Milodon's stage, the weapon factory, is filled with molten metal on the floor. Unlike most other Mega Man X examples, touching it isn't lethal, but it does cause you to burn for Damage Over Time.
- Life Drain: Just like bloodsuckers Shade Man and Dark Dizzy before him, Neurohack Mosquito has a grab move that drains X or Zero's HP to refill his own.
- Logical Weakness: Crystal Rafflar is weak to Force Starfish's weapons, as crystals are easily shattered by Armor Piercing Attacks.
- Loose Canon: By fan game standards, at least. On one hand, the game is said to replace the events of X6 (which would logically place every event afterwards into Alternate Continuity), but on the other, it's likely that Axl and Red Alert still exist in the setting, they're just not the focus of this game's incident.
- Macross Missile Massacre: Warfare Milodon has two forms; one of them is a slew of homing missiles, the other is a rain of incendiary missiles. X can do the same thing with the weapon he gets from Milodon, Missile Barrage, which fires three missiles into the air before they come back down and home in on enemies.
- Megaton Punch: Ryokuhaken (Power Breaking Fist), which lets Zero do a very powerful, armor-piercing ground smash.
- Metroidvania: Similar to Mega Man ZX.
- Mind-Control Device: The Neuro Spike is a heroic version. X can turn a mook over to his side as long as he has weapon energy.
- Mini-Mecha: The Ride Armors. New types in this game include the Tank Armor and Manticore Armor.
- The fully charged version of the Neuro Spike allows you to summon a Junk Ride. Made up of previous Mega Man X bosses, no less!
- Mook–Face Turn: Temporarily done via Neuro Spike.
- Mosquito Miscreants: Neurohack Mosquito is a mosquito Maverick who is plotting on forming a scrap army from the junkyard.
- Multiple Endings: The creator has said that there will be 12 different endings. Some of them involve the order in which the bosses are fought in.
- Non-Lethal Bottomless Pits: For Hurricane Hoatzin, not you. If he lands off the platform and falls down, he just flies back in from below in upward dash attack.
- No-Nonsense Nemesis: Plasma Puffer, in spite of appearances, is a rare case of a Maverick boss (and, by proxy, Mega Man boss in general) having the foresight to proactively harass the Maverick Hunters throughout his level, before they reach his boss fight.
- Non-Standard Character Design: Like Commander Yammark, Force Starfish looks more like a humanoid reploid in starfish-themed armor rather than a starfish-themed animal reploid.
- Only in It for the Money: Force Starfish explains that he's working with the bad guys because they've paid a huge reward for his services.Force Starfish: That's the whole point, kid. I sell my services to the highest bidder. And this client, he's promised me a pretty sweet reward.
- Orcus on His Throne: Averted for the eight initial bosses. They're out actively pursuing their goals (though still back in their boss rooms when it's time to fight) and will have an effect on the world depending on which four you initially take down. These Final Four effects are:
- Warfare Milodon - Upgrades all military robots, giving them new weapons. This is signified by a red paint job on these enemies.
- Sparking Scorpio - All indoor areas have reduced or flickering lighting. The player will have to utilize light from their weapons or other creative methods.
- Crystal Rafflar - Red crystal vines appear throughout the world, restricting the player's movement, blocking some paths, and reflecting X's buster shots.
- Plasma Puffer - Corrupts some of the enemies, making them drop poisonous health, weapon, or 1-UP items after they explode. If the player picks up one of the poisonous capsules, their health/weapon energy/lives will be reduced. The poisonous capsules can also be destroyed by attacking them. These enemies flash green when they are damaged.
- Force Starfish - Upgrades all mini-bosses (and the Sentinel enemy), making them stronger, upgrading their attacks or even giving them new ones. This is signified by a yellow/golden color.
- Warp Vulpex - Creates vortices (wormholes) throughout the world that will spawn random corrupted enemies. These vortices cannot be destroyed, and will continually summon enemies as long as the player is near them.
- Hurricane Hoatzin - Causes a storm in all outdoor areas with wind, rain, and reduced lighting. A new enemy, the Storm Balloon, also appears to slow your progress.
- Neurohack Mosquito - Spreads infectious mosquitoes everywhere on the map that will infect a random enemy on sight, increasing their reaction time, health, and damage. They are immune to status effects while infected.
- Original Flavor: The Maverick bosses are original and based off animals not used in the games.
- Painfully Slow Projectile: Strike fires very slow-moving but somewhat large projectiles. This is actually a bad thing, as it does reduce the space for the player to avoid his Weaponized Teleportation attack.
- Playing with Fire: Warfare Milodon's specialty is incendiary weaponry, and the ability that Zero copies from him is fire-based.
- Point Build System: The weapons system is like this.
- Poison Mushroom: Plasma Puffer's Final Four effect turns some of the health/weapon pickups into green versions that harm X/Zero if they pick them up.
- Posthumous Character: Dr. Cain died at some point, but he follows in Dr. Light's footsteps by being the one who gives X his upgrades via capsule.
- Power Copying: Naturally.
- Power Floats: Force Starfish is constantly floating.
- Psycho Electro: Sparkling Scorpio didn't use to be one, but becomes one although not by choice thanks to a hardware malfunction common in models from his production year.
- Prehistoric Monster: Warfare Milodon, based off the Mylodon.
- Proactive Boss: Plasma Puffer harasses the Maverick Hunters in several parts of the Sewer Level, popping out of pipes to fire bouncy plasma bubbles at them.
- Ramming Always Works: Most of Force Starfish's attacks consist of ramming into X or Zero, causing an explosion and debris to fall from above should he hit the wall.
- Razor Wind: Hurricane Hoatzin's main method of attack is firing these out. When beaten, he gives X Cyclone Razor, and Zero's counterpart weapon is Shippūzan, which acts somewhat like Storm Tornado from X.
- Reflecting Laser: The Plasma Bubble fires out shots that reflect off walls.
- Rise to the Challenge: The weapons factory has a big cube-shaped thing racing you to the end of the room while filling it up with lava.
- Rocket Ride: The missiles in Warfare Milodon's stage can be stood on and if shot, will launch in the direction they're facing. Naturally, you need to perform this to get past a few segments.
- Rolling Attack: Crystal Rafflar has a move where he bounces around the room in a crystal ball, not unlike Armored Armadillo's rolling attack. Unlike Armadillo, Rafflar's bouncing also creates waves of crystal to erupt from the point of impact!
- Scary Scorpions: Sparking Scorpio. His tail looks like you really do not want to mess with it, and indeed he can grab X/Zero and throw them with it.
- Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: The Neuro Spike allows you to do this by making the affected Mook your temporary ally.
- Set Bonus: Equipping X with all of the armor parts from a given armor will unlock an armor-specific Limit Break attack. The Light Armor, Giga Armor, and Max Armor bonuses unlock the ultimate techniques from their respective games.
- Sewer Gator: Crocodile-themed versions of the Classic series' Wanaan traps can be found in the latter half of the Sewer Level. They pop out to crush any Maverick Hunter or Mechaniloid that steps over the trap.
- Shock and Awe: Sparking Scorpio uses several electricity based attacks that hug the walls or paralyze the player.
- Short Range Guy, Long Range Guy: The miniboss of the junkyard are two bug things that pop out of three background holes on top and three holes on the bottom. The one that appears on the top attacks with a Spread Shot of bullets while the one that appears on the bottom three holes attacks with its claws. All this while, there's junk blocks dropping onto conveyor belts and getting grinded up in the middle of the room.
- One could also say this about the playstyles of X and Zero themselves, as is standard in Mega Man X titles.
- Shout-Out:
- If X defeats Strike in his first encounter, Strike will reply with a similar quote to Bass in his first encounter should Mega Man win: "You are as strong as they say, X".
- One of Zero's Skills is Genei Jin (Illusion Shadow Army). It functions similar to Yun's Super Art of the same name.
- At the beginning, the two Hunters that are watching the imprisoned Mavericks (Milodon and Hoatzin) have an uncanny resemblance to a certain music duo that has retired recently.
-
Spiritual Successor: To the ZX series, despite the X series' events occurring well before the former's. - Spread Shot: Homing Missiles can be charged up and shot out in a spread of seven. The Plasma Bubble's regular shot is a dual diagonal shot, while the charged version shoots a spray burst in many directions. The Hydra Armor's buster piece affects the spread and amount of bullets with its charge level rather than the power and size of the bullets.
- Stock Animal Behavior:
- Neurohack Mosquito can grab onto X/Zero and drain their life, like a bloodsucking mosquito.
- Sparking Scorpio attacks X/Zero with his scorpion stinger.
- Force Starfish's Desperation Attack sends out his starfish arms backpack as a separate enemy, which he then regenerates as an exaggeration of how starfish regenerate their arms.
- Plasma Puffer's bouncing attack and especially his Desperation Attack has him inflate like a puffer fish, before bouncing all over the room.
- Token Good Teammate: Out of all the eight maverick bosses, Sparkling Scorpio seems to be the only decent person who just has a hardware malfunction that makes him go insane. Most of the other seven are much less decent, with Milodon and Mosquito wanting to build a hostile army, Puffer being extremely petty over his current position, Starfish being a mercenary who's Only in It for the Money, and Rafflar being a Manipulative Bastard who wants the others to achieve their goals.
- Tragic Monster: Sparkling Scorpio appears to be a decent guy until the power surge in the power plant fries his AI, causing him to go insane and attack you.
- Turbine Blender: The Skyway area contains giant fan blades that will damage X or Zero on contact if they're moving. Fortunately, there's a switch in the area that turns them off temporarily.
- Unexpected Shmup Level: Part of the Skyway has the player character ride an air ride chaser and shoot down enemies in Shmup fashion.
- The Unintelligible: Force Starfish speaks as if his speech device is broken, but X/Zero is capable of understanding him either way (his words are helpfully translated).
- Unrealistic Black Hole: Warp Vortex, although it's not a black hole but a suction vortex.
- Wall Crawl: The Crystal Bomb creates crystals that scale walls, while the Tank Ride Armor's grenades can do the same, too. The EMP Spark also runs across walls and ceilings similar to the Plug Ball, except that it can be detonated to send out lightning bolts to the opposite side. Zero's counterpart skill does a similar thing, by shooting a lightning bolt upwards that splits when it hits a ceiling.
- Weaponized Teleportation: Strike has an ability to warp and appear right above X/Zero to do an attack.
- You Can't Thwart Stage One: The last four bosses that you defeat will be able to carry out their mission and alter the world somehow.
