Video Game / Rockman CX

Rockman CX is a ROM hack of Rockman 2 by Zenkaku Himajin, completed on August 23rd, 2016. Compared to other Rockman 2 hacks such as Rockman No Constancy, CX is a much larger project, reskinning the entire game into something that closely resembles the Mega Man X series, complete with an intro stage, a MMX-styled dash ability, and an entirely different plot, starring Evil Counterpart Rockman CX as the game's Villain Protagonist battling Dr. Light's army of robots. Like many of the ROM hacks that preceded it, it's not without it's share of Nintendo Hard Platform Hell moments.

An English translation by Himajin was released in March 2017.

Robot Masters:

• Whispy Woods, gives Ringo Shield
• Fire Mario, gives Fire Ball
• Bomber Man, gives Power Bomb
• Kamen Rider, gives Rider Kick
• Cheat Man, gives Cheat Saber
• Yoshino Man, gives Print Cutter
• Rock Man, gives Rock Buster
• Air Man^note A literal Air Man, not the one from Mega Man 2, gives Dead Ringer

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Tropes:

• All the Worlds Are a Stage: The game reuses parts of all previous levels for the second half of Dr. Light's Lab 5, after defeating Dr. Light the first time.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Collecting Weapon Energy when the current weapon you have equipped has maximum energy (or have no weapons selected at all) will instead use the energy to replenish health instead (but a weapon energy pickup, when used for HP, gives 50% the amount that it gives weapon energy.
  • During the Final Boss, if you die, you will respawn right where you left off instead of starting over (unless you Game Over); and you also regain some Weapon Energy.
• Background Boss: The final boss.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: Kamen Rider is the only boss in the hack not to use projectiles of any sorts.
• Big Damn Heroes: In the intro stage, right when Quick Man is about to finish off Guts Man, the real Mega Man appears, shooting away Quick Man and holding him at gun point, allowing Guts Man to escape.
• Boss Bonanza: Dr. Right 5, with the eight Robot Master rematches, then Rush, then two different forms of Dr. Light.
• Boss Rush: It wouldn't be a Mega Man hack without one. Dr. Right 5 has your typical rematches with the eight masters, though some of their arenas are different:
  • The Angry Sun from Super Mario Bros. 3 joins Fire Mario.
  • Air Man's room has no platforms or spikes.
  • Whispy Woods is replaced by Whispy's Revenge from Kirby Super Star Ultra's Revenge of the King sub-game.
  • Cheat Man is assisted by a Gently Weeping Guitar, a Jealous Bass, and a Beaten Drum from Mother 3. Cheat Man himself also gets several more additions to his arsenal.
  • Bomber Man is aided by Black Bomber, who drives a Bad Bomber and drops additional bombs into the arena.
• Character Portrait: These show up once the player reaches the Fortress stages.
• Chest Monster: Two of the E-Tanks right before the Guts Dozer in Dr. Right 3 contain enemies inside that stun you and breathe poison gas, dropping your HP to One. It is possible to kill the enemies while they're still inside the tanks before they have a chance to stun you, becoming regular E-Tanks.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Played with thanks to Cheat Man, who generally likes to glitch Rockman CX around and kill him in several odd ways (including causing one half of the arena to spontaneously disappear, transporting him outside the arena, using rapid-fire and rebounding bullets on him, or literally swapping their life bars).
• Crossover: The bosses include Fire Mario, Kamen Rider, Whispy Woods, and Bomber Man. Not only that, but the first Light stage boss is a giant Ultraman.
• Cycle of Hurting:
  • Kamen Rider's combo attack if it happens when you have low HP- stunning you with a sequence of punches on the ground and finishing you off with a kick.
  • Cheat Man's rematch during the Boss Rush has an attack where you're entrapped by the Mother 3 instruments, allowing Cheat Man to air-punch you repeatedly and lower your HP gradually, guaranteeing death if he traps you when you only have a very small amount of HP.
• Demoted to Extra: Dr. Wily's only role is escorting Rockman CX to the grounds of Light Labs.
• Didn't Need Those Anyway!: In both Kamen Rider and Yoshino Man's stages, there are red Frienders/Hot Dogs present. If you destroy the head, the tail begins to rapid-fire bullets at you until you destroy that too (which kills the Hot Dong entirely) or the head regenerates.
• Downer Ending: The ending is left almost completely unchanged from the source game, and since you defeated Mega Man and destroyed Dr. Light's lab, Dr. Wily wins.
• Dual Boss: In Dr. Right 4, you fight Ice and Fire Man simultaneously.
• Energy Weapon: The Force Beams from Quick Man's stage appear in Kamen Rider and Yoshino Man's stages with a new trick up their sleeves: they can now change direction in mid-air. They get worse once you reach Dr. Right 3.
• Exact Words: Air Man.
• Expy: In the hack, Quick Man plays a role similar to Zero from the X series, namely as he is depicted in X3.
• Escape Sequence: After Quick Man is defeated without the use of Cheat Saber, Rockman CX tells him to get back to the lab for repairs, but his teleporter malfunctions due to the damage he's taken, forcing him to escape the stage the good old fashioned way... Except his health bar is completely empty from the earlier fight. Fortunately, you can quickly pick up some health items.
• Fighting Your Friend: In the optional Dr. Right Stage 2, you fight Quick Man as a boss. Defeat him without using the Cheat Saber (which would cause a Killed Off for Real) and he will turn back to normal.
• Goomba Stomp: Fire Mario naturally has this, with one of his attack being to jump on Rockman CX multiple times in a row.
• Heal Thyself: Cheat Man, Rock Man and Elec Man can recover life in some way; the first has gradual healing, the second can regain all his health by chugging down an E-Tank, and the latter regains a chunk of health by absorbing thunder from the sky.
• Heart Container: Half of the main stages contain several severed bars that add 4 additional points to your HP bar. Only one of them (the one in Bomber Man's Stage) requires using a specific weapon to reach it.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Bomber Man is not immune to his own bombs, as per his originating franchise. Naturally, it's possible to win the fight in this fashion.
• I Surrender, Suckers: After the first fight with Dr. Light, he seemingly bows down...only for a capsule to trap Rockman CX (which he easily breaks out of), allowing the doctor to escape.
• Infinity -1 Sword:
  • Cheat Saber. See One-Hit Kill below.
  • For a shield weapon, Ringo Shield is considerably powerful. Once deployed, it will instantly destroy most enemies (ones that aren't destroyed simply absorb it but still take damage) and the shield itself can destroy projectiles, said projectiles occasionally spewing out items when destroyed.
• Invisible Block: Several are placed in parts of Air and Cheat Man's stages. Strangely, they're still solid even before they're revealed.
• Invisibility Cloak: The Dead Ringer doubles as this; Enemies that normally aim and/or move towards your location won't target you.
• Jump Scare: Ultraman's entrance is this, due to the loud sound it makes.
• Kaizo Trap: The ending credits has you navigating a simple stage as Quick Man. While there are no enemies to fight, there is one section where you have to make a few difficult wall jumps across a chasm, which can lead to this.
• Kamehame Hadoken: Dr. Light throws Hadoukens as one of his attacks, both in his standard battle and the One-Winged Angel final boss.
• Luck-Based Mission: All of Cheat Man's attacks are drawn through a Random Number God, thus the odds are more in your favor if he doesn't do his strongest attacks all in one blow, especially the HP bar-swap technique. Save-states and rewinding in emulators can easily abuse this.
• The Maze:
  • Fire Mario's stage, in true Super Mario Bros. fashion, has a maze in the second half of the stage. you have to take the lowest path in the first segment, followed by the highest path in the next two.
  • Rock Man's stage, with a few repeating rooms if you take the wrong path and some traps that will kill you if you don't traverse the stage correctly (such as when making a jump close to the top of the screen, you scroll the screen up, and instead of scrolling back down, you find yourself in a pit that kills you).
• Nigh-Invulnerability: You can obtain the Übercharge as a weapon.
• No Ending: In Beta 5, after the Boss Rush, Right appears and congratulates Rockman CX for trashing his lab so quickly... before telling him that he has outpaced the developer's progress, then the victory theme plays and the game reboots to the title.
• No Endor Holocaust: Dr. Light's Lab gets massively destroyed before the fight with Giant Dr. Light.
• Not His Sled: Fire Mario's boss room looks exactly like Bowser's room from Super Mario Bros, including the familiar axe. Touching it causes a One-Hit Kill... to you.
• One-Hit Kill: The Cheat Saber allows you to down any enemy or boss (there are exceptions) that makes direct contact with it, except Cheat Man, who will intentionally glitch the game to have it backfire on you.
• One-Winged Angel: In a clear homage to Yoshi's Island, Dr. Light grows to incredible size via his flying capsule to engage you on the rooftops of Light Labs. Defeating it reveals it's holographic like the Alien.
• Original Character: Cheat Man, Yoshino Man, and this game's incarnation of Air Man.
• Perspective Flip: The entire premise of this game. Rock Man's boss fight exemplifies this. When the fight starts, Rock Man enters the boss room through the door on the left, just like a regular Mega Man boss battle, while Rockman CX enters the boss room by dropping in from above like a Robot Master. Heck, CX even strikes a pose before the fighting starts!
• Platform Hell: Many stages (most notably Air Man's and Rock Man's) have misleading paths that cause you to fall into spikes or a pit immediately after entering a new screen. Likewise, a number of stages in the game have Mario invisible blocks and there's even a few Force Beam obstacle courses which are leagues ahead of Mega Man 2 in terms of difficulty, especially Dr. Right 3.
• Power-Up Letdown: The upgrade you receive for 2.Subtank. Instead of pressing B once to restore one unit of health or Weapon Energy at a time (allowing you to fill up more than just your health or one weapon), pressing B now uses all of it's energy on only what you pick to restore; continuing to empty off the Subtank even when you're fully healed or the selected weapon has max energy.
• Rare Random Drop: E-Tanks take the place of extra lives as the game's rare defeated enemy drop.
• Shout-Out:
  • The intro stage works about the same as Mega Man X3 - the main hero encounters an enemy who apprehends them, and a stronger ally busts through the ceiling and goes through the rest of the level to rescue him.
  • Cheat Man has an intro like Spark Mandrill's.
  • The Dead Ringer is a Mega Man-themed copy of one of the Spy's weapons, the Dead Ringer (with it's Weapon Get screen showing the original spywatch associated with the technique). In addition, the Team Fortress 2 victory theme is used when a stage is completed, and the Medic's Übercharge is one of the game's three items.
  • The animations used when using Rider Kick are similar to the ones seen in Battletoads. It also makes a similar sound when kicking.
  • Mario invisible blocks pop up in both Air and Cheat Man's stages.
  • After the first fortress stage, the player picks from one of two paths Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse style, the upper path being an optional stage which uses music and a similar atmosphere to the corresponding Dracula's Curse stage, along with a chance of recruiting an ally (Quick Man in this case) and having to re-traverse the stage backwards with the new character.
  • The raid against Dr. Light's laboratory takes a number of elements from Revenge of Meta Knight, with Light playing an archetype similar to Meta Knight and his robots mimicking Meta Knight's underlings.
  • Dr. Light 5's spike maze and All the Worlds Are a Stage segments use Megalovania as their theme, with Dr. Light himself mimicking Sans throughout via dialogue. He even falls in one hit.
  • Dr. Light using Street Fighter-inspired attacks may be a reference to Mega Man X and X2, where he was able to teach X the Hadouken and Shoryuken..
  • The final boss is Dr. Light as a giant Background Boss, based directly on the final boss of Yoshi's Island.
  • The Dr. Right 1 boss is Ultraman, a reference to Omoide Wa Okkusenman.
• Sound Test: You can enter it by pressing Select on the title screen. Earlier versions (beta 3 and lower) named each track along with their sources.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: After fighting Rush and Dr. Light in Right 5, you get to stock up with four Weapon Energy capsules and four extra lives. What follows afterwards is a maze of spikes with flying Armor Joes and a lengthy All the Worlds Are a Stage segment.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Pretty much the point of this game.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: After spending most of the game as an arguably sub-par weapon compared to the likes of Ringo Shield, Rider Kick, and Print Cutter, Bomber Man's Power Bomb weapon becomes the only weapon (aside form the Print Cutter) able to damage Giant Dr. Light in the final showdown.
• Timed Mission:
  • The battle against the giant Ultraman in Dr. Right 1. Take too long to kill him and he'll fire a giant laser beam that will One-Hit Kill you. If you dodge it with 1.Floor, he'll pull a Villain: Exit, Stage Left, forcing you to commit suicide via the Bottomless Pit.
  • Thankfully averted with Giant Dr. Light. Unlike the battle he's based on, Dr. Light can never destroy the whole ledge you're on to end the battle instantly.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • The Guts Tank at the end of Dr. Right 3, now operated by Gutsman himself. Not only is it now much more mobile compared to it's appearance in Mega Man 2, but it's attacks are much more fierce, and it gets a second phase ala a Wily Machine.
  • Rush of all characters is the first boss of Light 5 following the Boss Rush, and he's a surprisingly capable fighter even equipped with a dive-bomb attack that can one-shot you.
• Villain Protagonist: Rockman CX, an Evil Knockoff of the blue bomber who takes down all of Dr. Light's robots. That said, the Perspective Flip makes Light much more threatening and unsympathetic, and Wily doesn't seem to be engaging in any villainous acts or intentions on his own. Unless you count one of his castles suddenly appearing during the ending.
• Warm-Up Boss: The first and easiest boss fought is Guts Man.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Roll has no further appearances after the dialogue sequence in Dr. Right 1, although players can presume that she evacuated.