Video Game / Mega Man X6

All spoilers for previous Mega Man X entries preceding this one, particularly Mega Man X5 may be unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

"Thanks to the Space Colony incident, a lot of Reploids were lost. Now I can easily control the Reploids remaining...It's the ideal time to build my world! I won't let anybody interfere. Finally I can realize my "dream"! I will build the strongest nation!"

— Gate, Mega Man X6.

Mega Man X6 is the sixth entry in the Mega Man X series, released for the PlayStation in November 29, 2001 in Japan. This was released soon after in North America in December 4, 2001. Europe received it on February 8th, 2002.

In the year 21XX, three weeks have passed since the fall of the space colony Eurasia. The Earth was saved, but is severely damaged. Zero is missing, presumed dead. Humans hide underground while Reploids work to make the land inhabitable again. X remains the Maverick Hunters' ace on the front lines.

During a mission at the Eurasia crash site, X encounters a powerful investigator Reploid named High Max and some sort of illusion of Zero. He learns from a scientist named Isoc that a phenomenon called "Nightmare" has appeared all over the world, causing Reploids to experience dangerous, reality-altering hallucinations. Isoc blames this Nightmare on the "ghost of Zero", enraging X.

With the Nightmare being studied by Isoc and High Max's "Nightmare Investigators", along with legions of volunteer Reploids unprepared for the Nightmares ahead, X decides to intervene to discover how the situation is connected to Zero. He soon discovers that a mad scientist named Gate is behind the Nightmare, and that Zero has somehow survived and is still out there.

The core gimmick of the game is the "Nightmare Phenomenon", which changes certain stages for better or worse. Defeating a boss causes additional phenomenon to appear in other levels. Alongside them are the "Nightmare Virus", DNA-shaped enemies that can be destroyed for their floating Nightmare Souls. Collecting Souls increases your Hunter rank, determining the enhancement parts you can equip. Parts are found by saving injured Reploids, many of which you have to search for in every nook and cranny... and quickly, because Nightmare Viruses may attempt to corrupt the Reploids, turning them into a "zombie" beyond saving.

This game's eight Mavericks are High Max's eight Nightmare Investigators, each resurrected by Gate:

• Commander Yammark, from an ecological observation team. X and Zero both earn Yammar Option from him.
• Ground Scaravich, an illegal treasure hunter. X earns Ground Dash from him, and Zero earns Sentsuizan.
• Blaze Heatnix, from a disaster relief team. X earns Magma Blade from him, and Zero earns Shoenzan.
• Blizzard Wolfang, from an arctic development team. X earns Ice Burst from him, and Zero earns Hyoroga.
• Rainy Turtloid, from a water purification team. X earns Meteor Rain from him, and Zero earns Ensuizan.
• Metal Shark Player, from a recycling research team. X earns Metal Anchor from him, and Zero earns Rakukojin.
• Shield Sheldon, a disgraced bodyguard. X and Zero both earn Guard Shell from him.
• Infinity Mijinion, from a weapons testing team. X earns Ray Arrow from him, and Zero earns Rekkoha.

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Mega Man X6 features examples of:

• After the End: X6 canonically takes place after the Eurasia incident from X5 after Zero piloted a space shuttle in a head-on collision against the colony but its debris hit Earth, and made the planet harmful to humans due to the rampant pollution.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: Gate's Lab stages feature many hazards found in the Nightmare Investigators' levels.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The developers at least anticipated just how hard the game was, even by the standards of the series.
  • If you get a Game Over, you can start off right at the last checkpoint in a stage you're in. Unfortunately, this won't do you any favors if you are not prepared to face the situation the checkpoint puts you in.
  • The game doesn't rate your level according to your performance but to your number of Nightmare Souls.
  • If you chose to quit a level after getting a Game Over, the game will track the Reploids you rescued so you don't have to get them again.
  • If you go against High Max (who normally needs special weapons to damage/open up to damage) wearing the Shadow Armor (which can't use special weapons), the charged saber strike of the Shadow Armor will stun and deal damage instead. Even better, the attack's range is just large enough to bypass High Max's energy shielding during the fight in Gate's Laboratory if X is right next to the shielding, allowing him to cheese High Max surprisingly easily.
• Attack Its Weakpoint: The Mini Bosses in Blaze Heatnix and Metal Shark Player's stages, as well as Gate's lab #1's boss (Nightmare Mother), can only be attacked at their weak points. Rainy Turtloid also can only be attacked by destroying the 2 crystals on his back. Sigma's second form can only be attacked when he opens his mouth for his stronger attacks.
• Attack Reflector: Guard Shell, which can reflect some energy-based projectiles at enemies.
• Awesome, but Impractical: X's Shadow Armor. Turns X into a Ninja, makes it so you cannot be killed by spikes, makes him swing his saber faster, and replaces your X Buster shots with shurikens. The catch is, you cannot use ANY of your special weapons and the shurikens are shot in an erratic pattern, making it somewhat difficult to shoot accurately. Combining this with the Ultra Buster, which makes it so that you always fire charged shots, is especially this trope, as you lose all ranged capabilities (due to the Shadow Armor's charged shot being a powerful but short ranged sword attack). Ironically, this combination can actually cheese through the majority of the second stage of Gate's laboratory, as the armor provides protection from the spikes and the charged saber can destroy the majority of the enemies in the stage with a successful connection, is just large enough to bypass High Max's energy shielding and massively lower the difficulty, and it can easily and quickly destroy Gate's projectiles, barring the infamous gap that requires the Hyper Dash and the Speedster/Jumper parts being equipped to manage.
• Ax-Crazy: As an incomplete clone of Zero, the Zero Nightmare is severely mentally unstable. One moment it's acting like it genuinely thinks it's the real Zero, the next it's screaming incoherently about how it must destroy X.
• Back from the Dead: The Nightmare Investigators used to be dead long before the events of the game, and Gate revived them.
• Badass Back: When he isn't rolling around, Rainy Turtloid stands with his back turned toward you.
• Bag of Spilling: The Gaea Armor was lost, but like in X5, one armor set from the previous game (the Falcon Armor) was salvaged and is usable in a weaker form from the start of the game.
• Behind the Black: Many of the stages' collectibles and secrets can only be found after you try to walk through those seemingly open pathways that lead to nowhere; the screen will only scroll once you do so. One of them, in particular, is a seemingly bottomless pit that's actually not.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Infinity Mijinion, Ground Scaravich and Commander Yammark are human-sized creepy crawly Reploids. Also the robot mantises in Yammark's stage.
• Blown Across the Room: Shield Sheldon and Infinity Mijinion will get flung towards the wall if they're hit by their weakness weapon, and the latter will do this if it hit by a particularly powerful attack as well. The latter will also use this opportunity to make a clone of himself.
• Boss Bonanza: Blaze Heatnix's level is little more than separate fights against 5 of the same Mini-Boss, each played out differently from the last.
• Breath Weapon: In his second form, Sigma's stronger attacks come from his mouth. He's also most vulnerable during said attacks.
• Brutal Bonus Level: The Nightmare Areas; completely optional, and some have hair-pulling obstacles (Mijinion and Turtloid are probably the worst offenders). They end in an Optional Boss.
• Call-Back:
  • Isoc is eventually found as a lifeless shell, similar to the Erasure incident of Mega Man Xtreme 2.
  • The Nightmare Mother is based on CWU-01P from Mega Man.
• Came Back Wrong: Sigma is also Back from the Dead, but his mental capacity has been degraded to the point where all he can do is give death threats to X and Zero while screaming their names. He also looks and moves like a zombie.
• The Cameo: Metal Shark Player uses junk to summon Mavericks from previous Mega Man X games: Sting Chameleon, Magna Centipede, and Blast Hornet show up during the boss fight. X's charged Metal Anchor unleashes a fleet of Storm Eagles across the screen.
• Ceiling Cling: Blizzard Wolfang can cling to the ceiling. Zero can do this as well with Hyoroga, and X with the Shadow Armor.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Zero has an entirely new design for his saber, with its swinging animations making it look a lot more like it is a solid blade than before. X's saber sprites still animate like they did in previous games, as it is literally the same saber from those games.
  • When Isoc's body is found at the end of the game, Aila notes that while it is still activated there is nothing inside and notes that it is just like the "Erasure Incident" from Mega Man Xtreme 2 which released around the same year as this game.
• Conveyor Belt o' Doom: Metal Shark Player's stage has this once you get to its second area (or its Nightmare area). It's also an Auto-Scrolling Level.
• Corridor Cubbyhole Run: The first part of Blizzard Wolfang's stage has periodic avalanches that you have to go through; whenever an avalanche is about to appear (indicated by the roaring sound), you have to find some hiding place before it rolls over.
• Damage Over Time: Rainy Turtloid's stage gimmick is the acid rain that appears at certain points of the stage that drains the player character's health slowly. Fortunately, there are healing pods you can use to restore health, and the rains can be stopped if you find the rain generator and destroy it (but not before you destroy the control orbs scattered around the stage that shielded the generator).
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: The game just takes you back to the last checkpoint you reached in the level if you die or even use a continue. This is beneficial to pass sections without having to repeat the hard parts from the beginning, but in some occasions can be a nuisance. If the player does not have the proper equipment for the next area, they will be stuck having to intentionally kill themselves over and over again to get a Game Over. Made worse if the player has many lives, whether they were obtained from 1-Up or from lost Reploids.
• Descending Ceiling: Metal Shark Player's stage has this spanning almost the entire stage; the stage is a recycling lab and the ceiling acts as press disposer. Gate's second stage also has this at the later part if you take Zero into the stage.
• Distant Finale: Zero's ending, via Retcon. Realizing he is a Typhoid Mary, he enters a capsule and goes to sleep for about a hundred years while scientists purge him of the Sigma Virus and develop a true antidote by studying his systems. Capcom eventually stated this does not happen immediately after defeating Gate, but instead happens after X and Zero have many more unspecified adventures saving the world (such as the immediate sequels and Command Mission, as well as X Dive).
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The opening songs of the initial releases, "Moon Light" and "The Answer", are performed by Showtaro Morikubo, the voice actor for X in this game.
• Double Jump: This time Zero has it from the start, unlike in X4 and X5 where he needs to beat a boss to get it. He also can do a rolling slash after double jumping (which, again, is a feature he has to acquire in previous games). X's Blade Armor has an non traditional double jump in the form of a multidirectional dash, which can be aimed upwards.
• Dual Boss: The Nightmare Mother basically consists of two cubes made of Nightmares, each with an eyeball for weakspots.
• False Flag Operation: Gate and Isoc enact a plan to use Zero as a scapegoat for creating a new society of selected, powerful Reploids; independent from humanity, in an ideal state, led by Gate. To do this, he created a discolored, apparently insane copy of Zero, called the Zero Nightmare, which was then publicly blamed for the recent Maverick attacks by Isoc. Isoc encouraged Reploids all over the planet to join the Nightmare Investigators to hunt down and destroy the Zero Nightmare to bring back peace.
• Fake Difficulty: Hooooo boy! Considering this game's rushed production, there is a lot of it. Where do we begin?
  • For starters, some levels have spikes in places that you can't see them, like in Commander Yammark's stage.
  • The Nightmare Virus enemies. They can move and shoot through walls (that the player can't shoot through), when they're not doing this they're moving in to abuse Collision Damage by forcing themselves into the player's hitbox (which doesn't help because of the game's knockback), can fly (ignoring any and all traps that the player normally has to deal with like spikes or pits), and have a weak spot on their body that can't be hit with any of the default weapons if the Nightmare Virus gets completely inside the player's hitbox, forcing the player to either shift to the left or right or abandon their platform if on a small perch. While they're innocent enough mooks in small numbers, the game loves to flood the player with them in narrow platforming segments, in multi-layer passages, and in sections with unstable camera levels (such as ascension rooms).
  • Letting a Nightmare Virus possess a civilian Reploid can potentially mean losing useful parts and power-ups forever. It's generally best to just reset if any Reploid gets infected, really.
  • As HideofBeast can tell you in his "minimalist" speed-run of the game, X6 flat-out hates unarmored X, to the point that one wonders why he was made playable at all. Not only does the game make things absolutely, unreasonably difficult with him, but Gate's first stage is impossible to beat without either one of the armors, and/or the Jumper part (which also requires the Hyper Dash part to get). He makes a big point of the fact that unlike all of the other Mega Man X games, X6 goes out of its way to punish you if you don't take advantage of every single benefit given to you.
  • As the author of the fan-site The MegaMan Homepage puts it, it's as if the play-testers used only the Ultimate Armor.
• Flying Seafood Special: Shield Sheldon is a clam that can float around freely.
• Flunky Boss: Sigma's second form summons green goo flunkies to fill the space and distract you. They can be destroyed and can drop health and weapon energy pickups like any normal enemy.
• Freudian Excuse: Gate laments the fact that his genius work is looked down upon (referring to his complex reploids) because they're too good. He also says that Zero should be destroyed too (because he's even more complex that any of his creations) and yet people are fine with him.
• Game Mod: Mega Man X6 Tweaks (forum thread) is an extensive ROM hacking project that aims to rebalance, modify, and tweak various aspects of the game's heavily-criticized elements, as well as featuring newer redrawn character portrait art (even giving portraits to characters who didn't have them), restore some of the unused features of the game, and a complete re-translation of the game's infamous English script. Users can also tweak these changes however they like with a separate patcher utility to modify a wealth of features, from starting number of lives, removing nightmare effects altogether, allowing Life and Weapon Energy upgrades shared between both characters, changing the title and loading screen graphics, tweaking the mechanics of X and Zero, Nightmare Souls requirements for Hunter Ranks and events that can be triggered, customizing X's Ultimate Armor appearance^* (between the Prototype/X4 version, the original black and silver version, the corrected black and gold version, and the Legacy Collection's X Challenge version, along with matching portraits) among many other features.
• Geo Effects: The Nightmare system. Enter a stage, and regardless of whether you complete that stage or not you'll affect several other stages with a generated effect based on the boss of that played stage. It's kind of like how the original Mega Man X bosses would affect others. While several stages can have multiple potential Phenomenon effects, each stage can only have one active Phenomenon at a time and if the second Phenomenon is triggered it will replace the previous one.
  • Nightmare Bugs: Commander Yammark's Phenomenon, generated in Blaze Heatnix's and Shield Sheldon's stages. It's an Invincible Minor Minion that takes the form of a small flying insect that flies around X/Zero, hindering their attacks and capable of dealing Collision Damage, and multiple insects can group together with enough time. Invulnerable to everything save the Yammar Option, attacking it enough with anything else will cause it to fly away.
  • Nightmare Cube: Ground Scaravich's Phenomenon, generated in Metal Shark Player and Shield Sheldon's stages. They're an assortment of brown, red, purple, and black cubes that act as obstacles and can only be affected by the Ground Dash or Sentsuzian. Brown and red cubes will be destroyed (though red ones explode), while black and purple ones will move (purple ones will slide while black ones will only budge a bit).
  • Nightmare Dark: Infinity Mijinion, generated in Commander Yammark's and Rainy Turtloid's stages. A portion of the screen will become pitch-black, and visible/semi-visible portions will be moving in a diamond-like pattern that greatly reduces visibility.
  • Nightmare Fire: Blaze Heatnix, generated in Blizzard Wolfang's and Infinity Mijinion's stages. A rain of fireballs fall from the sky that can be destroyed by Magma Blade or Shoenzan. Activating this Phenomenon is required to reach the Nightmare Area in Blizzard Wolfang's level since it melts the ice covering the passage leading to it.
  • Nightmare Ice: Blizzard Wolfang, generated only in Metal Shark Player's stage. Some floors/surfaces become coated in ice that cause Frictionless Ice and can only be destroyed by Ice Burst or Hyourouga.
  • Nightmare Iron: Metal Shark Player, generated in Blaze Heatnix's, Ground Scaravich's, and Infinity Mijinion's stages. Massive iron blocks that move up or down in the air to try and crush X/Zero underneath them to the floor or smash them up against a ceiling. However, they can also be used as improvised moving platforms with one of these in Blaze Heatnix's stage being a necessary component to reaching the Nightmare Area and the stage's Dr. Light Capsule without a specific combination of parts and/or a specific Armor and are destroyable with Metal Anchor or Rakukojin.
  • Nightmare Mirror: Shield Sheldon, generated in Rainy Turtloid's and Blizzard Wolfang's stages. Spectral copies of a purple Zero (X) or turquoise X (Zero) highly reminiscent of the Soul Body will appear in the air and after a second will try to rush and collide with the player. They are dispersed if they touch the Guard Shell.
  • Nightmare Rain: Rainy Turtloid, generated in Commander Yammark's and Ground Scaravich's stages. Rain and strong wind will buffet X/Zero and hinder movement. The acid rain variant only appears in Rainy Turtloid's own stage and Gate's Laboratory 2 if playing as X.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Sigma only appears in the end where Gate reveals he has resurrected Sigma as his final weapon if all else failed. Unfortunately for him, Sigma clearly wasn't finished and proceeds to fatally injure Gate himself.
• Glass Cannon:
  • Zero can dish out a ton of damage with his Z-Saber, Z-Buster, and special skills, but since he lacks armor sets like X outside of Black Zero (which requires a code input before even starting the game), he takes a lot more damage and dies easier. Unless he equips the Shock Buffer part from a Reploid in the Recycle Lab, which cuts received damage in half and eliminates knockback. X can technically equip this part too, but he can only receive its benefits when he's completely unarmored (and unarmored X is all but unplayable due to how the game is structured).
  • Sigma in his two forms. His attacks can be tricky to dodge and inflict a lot of damage, but he is very fragile. Justified given he wasn't even fully revived right, much less with a completed body.
• Golden Super Mode: With a quick flip of his cape, Gate swaps his standard purple armor for a Golden Suit. No transformation sequence required. Truly super in the fact that only thing that can hurt him is his own attacks.
• Gotta Rescue Them All: The stages will contain Reploids that you need to rescue; they're the volunteers that Isoc asked for help in investigating the Nightmare. When you touch them, they'll then teleport to safety, presumably by virtue of your character issuing the base to teleport them. Various rewards you can receive include health pickups, extra lives, increases to maximum health (effectively acting like extra heart tanks) and weapon energy, and enhancement parts. This may get rather cumbersome because the Nightmare Virus mooks may appear nearby and try to possess the Reploids; if they do, they'll become "zombified" and you have to destroy them, denying you some valuable upgrade parts.
• Guide Dang It!: Good luck figuring out which Reploid is carrying a valuable body part even with a guide. General rule of thumb is that the more hidden, out-of-reach, and/or close to a Nightmare Virus they are the more likely they have something good, but even that isn't a guarantee.
• Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: True to the series, the levels are mostly hard as nails and the bosses are mostly a cakewalk, at least with their weaknesses. Infinity Mijinion, Nightmare Mother, High Max and Gate are exceptions, since their levels and their difficulty as bosses are equally hard.
• Hailfire Peaks: Because of the Nightmare Phenomenon, stages will be littered with some elements of previously completed stages in them.
  • Defeat Blizzard Wolfang first, and some levels will have icy floors.
  • Blaze Heatnix invokes a rain of fireballs.
  • Infinity Mijinion causes a Blackout Basement.
  • Rainy Turtloid would cause acid rain in other stages.
  • Gate's first stage has the player climbing a room filling with lava, while eventually throwing in slippery ice floors at the same time.
• The Heartless: The Nightmares, mutating Reploid civilians and quickly coming back from defeat if their Nightmare Soul is not collected. Kill them a second time, however, they will stay dead (though they won't drop a Soul in that case).
• Hijacked by Ganon: Subverted; Gate was working of his own volition. However, Gate decided to half-revive Sigma for the heck of it. See below.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Zero Nightmare's weakness is, ironically, X's saber attack. Also happens when Gate revived Sigma for his own ends, only for Sigma to turn on and attack him.
• Humongous Mecha: Infinity Mijinion's stage has one in the background named Illumina which attacks you as you move around the stage. Your mission is to destroy it by attacking the power cords you find around the stage. Mijinion later reveals that he built it himself (he refers to the mech as "her") and that he's angry at the heroes for destroying it.
• Improvised Platform: Ice Burst creates a chunk of ice on the ground that X can stand on to reach higher places.
• Increasingly Lethal Enemy:
  • Infinity Mijinion will periodically duplicate himself during battle (or when he's struck by a powerful attack). He can potentially fill an entire screen with his copies and bubbles if you take too much time, making him harder to kill.
  • Ground Scaravich will always fight with a boulder of rock to use as a weapon and a impromptu shield. At the beginning of the fight the boulder is only slightly bigger than he is and easy to jump over, but if you destroy it, when he heads off-screen and comes back it will be a bit bigger. Repeat this enough, and eventually you'll get a giant boulder you can't avoid without using the hanging ledges of his boss room.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • If you look at the save screen, you'll see an empty space reserved for someone...
  • There's also a red section of the Parts screen reserved for exclusive parts for said mystery character.
• Jungle Japes: Commander Yammark's stage, for the most part.
• Kaizo Trap: Averted with Gate. You fight him over a pit with only a series of small platforms, which he'll occasionally start destroying once his health gets low enough (but to be fair, Gate isn't INTENTIONALLY targeting the platforms; he is actually going after the player with that specific attack, and the platforms more often than not will just be in the way). When you land the final hit, however, X/Zero freezes in mid-air as he explodes, so you don't have to worry about having solid ground under your feet at that moment.
• King Mook: D-1000, the first boss of the game, is an enlarged version of the Junkroid enemies found in the same level.
• Kryptonite-Proof Suit: The Shadow Armor allows X to pass across spikes without getting hurt.
• Lethal Lava Land: Blaze Heatnix's stage. Downplayed that it's set in a facility near a volcano, with only a few fire-spewing holes and 2 lava sections.
• Light and Mirrors Puzzle: Shield Sheldon's level has lasers that must be redirected using a shield-bearing Invincible Minor Minion so it opens the doors blocking the way forward.
• Live Item: The rescuable Reploids; they give you HP, extra life, and sometimes enhancement parts when they're rescued. A few of them are also found in hard-to-reach places, and they give particularly valuable parts - as if they're rare items.
• Logical Weakness: Metal Shark Player, as his name implies, uses metal scraps to attack, so he's vulnerable to water. Ice Burst freezes Rainy Turtloid easily, who's a water-type Reploid. Ice-type Blizzard Wolfang is weak to Blaze Heatnix's flame-based weapons. Blaze Heatnix's weakness is the earth-type Ground Dash, although there are both ice and water-based weapons.
• Lone Wolf Boss:
  • Gate is not affiliated with Sigma at all—he's a disgraced scientist who is acting of his own accord, albeit under the influence of the Zero Virus. He does revive Sigma at the end just for the heck of it though, and it immediately comes to bite him in the ass.
  • Dynamo returns as a mini-boss, and he's not affiliated with Gate—he's only interested in fighting X and Zero because he's interested in harvesting the power of the Nightmare Souls.
• Mad Scientist: Gate was only a prick at worst in the past, but he's then driven mad with Zero's DNA data he found; he's aware of it, declaring that it feels "liberating". Isoc, his assistant, is also one to an extent.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: In the past, many Maverick Bosses were eliminated under sabotaged accidents, or labelled Mavericks and destroyed outright.
• Marathon Boss:
  • High Max. Unlike many other bosses, once he gets damaged he'll be invulnerable for a time and flee; he also takes little damage from any kind of attack in the rare moments he does get damaged. During his Desperation Attack, however, he's fully vulnerable.
  • Gate, due to his Puzzle Boss and Tennis Boss status.
  • If you try fighting Infinity Mijinion with his weakness, you'll get this instead. He's savvy enough that he rarely actually attacks with something that can be reflected with Guard Shell. And even if you use Guard Shell's charged shot (which can attack directly), they do little damage to him AND always makes him make a clone. Same with trying to fight Sigma's second form with his weakness; if you do, his inner mouth cannon will disappear early, while attacking with, say, just a normal buster/saber lets you do more damage quickly. That is on top of his massive amount of health.
• Meaningless Lives: You can earn lives, but they are rendered pointless because checkpoints count even after a Game Over.
• Multiple Endings: Well, two for X, depending on if he finds Zero or not.
• Mythology Gag: One of the rescuable Reploids is immediately recognizable as the Green Biker Dude, and another is a yellow version of Middy.
• Necromancer: Gate specializes in Reploid resurrection, and manipulates Reploid DNA to revive the Mavericks. He plans to use Zero's remains to build an indestructible army, and he's busy reviving Sigma, too! Metal Shark Player is also skilled at using junk to form bodies resembling Mavericks from earlier Mega Man X games.
• Ninja: X's Shadow Armor, the X6 equivalent to the X5 Gaea Armor only minus the dashing speed lost. It changes X's normal shots to throwing stars and charged attacks become a powerful saber attack (equipping the Ultimate Buster part allows for instant charged saber attacks, if you managed to save the Reploid carrying it). It also gives him faster Z-Saber swings, a high jump ability to perform said ceiling-clinging (and ceiling-dashing), and immunity to spikes. The cons? You can't perform air-dashes and you can't use special weapons outside of your Giga Attack.
• Nintendo Hard: X6 is easily one of the hardest games in the entire franchise.
• Noble Wolf: Blizzard Wolfang being a loyal, honorable minion of Gate.
• No Endor Holocaust: Following off of X5's good ending, which downplayed just how much damage occurred after the Eurasia was successfully broken apart, here we see the full fallout of the damage has society on the brink of collapse.
  Gate: ...What happened? I heard they avoided the collision, but they might as well have failed... And for this, we should be thankful?
• No OSHA Compliance: Gate's laboratory is filled with instant death spikes, rising lava, acid rain, and crushing ceilings. Never mind the bottomless pits you need to air dash over.
• Nonstandard Character Design: Commander Yammark, who instead of being a beastman Reploid like other Mavericks, appears to be a humanoid Reploid wearing dragonfly-themed armor. Notice the human eyes under his visor, and how the dragonfly eyes are just part of his helmet.
• Optional Boss: The 8 stages have optional exits guarded by optional bosses. First up is Zero Nightmare (which unlocks Zero for play). High Max replaces him if you go through the optional exits again, and defeating him will unlock Gate's Fortress prematurely. After defeating him comes Dynamo, back from X5 and can be farmed for Nightmare Souls with Rainy Turtloid's weapon. Ironically, he's probably the easiest part of the game.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: Dynamo, an optional encounter, can be fought several times to farm Nightmare Souls, which increase the Hunters' rank (influencing the number of parts they can equip). Also Infinity Mijinion's stage, for accessing its Nightmare area (and thus Dynamo) quicker.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • Unlike X5, the Reploid civilians can be possessed by the Nightmare Viruses. If one of those viruses possesses them, the Reploid (and thus the useful enhancement parts they may carry) is gone for good. Left in their place is some kind of Empty Shell that you should probably Mercy Kill. As you can guess, sometimes a Nightmare Virus is placed right next to a Reploid, giving you three seconds of reaction before that Reploid is possessed. The worst offender of this is located in Weapons Center, where a Nightmare Virus is placed exactly on top of a Reploid, so you have less than a second!
  • If you collect enough Nightmare Souls or defeat the eight investigators before defeating Nightmare Zero, unlocking Zero will become impossible.
• The Phoenix: Blaze Heatnix.
• Platform Battle: Gate's boss fight is placed on unevenly placed platforms above a bottomless pit, making it harder to move around and attack the orbs he sends out. If his health goes low, he can sometimes attack and destroy the platforms too, though they'll regenerate.
• Power-Up Letdown: The Ultra Buster is mostly useful, but may be problematic with the Shadow Armor, since it will make X purely melee, and the Ice Burst will not have the Improvised Platform.
• Proactive Boss: Illumina.
• Puzzle Boss: A rarity in a Mega Man X game (outside of the usual Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors), this one has a couple.
  • High Max must be stunned with a charge shot, then damaged with a special weapon as he recovers (inverted with Zero, who must stun him with a special attack before using a basic combo). He is a Hopeless Boss Fight at the end of the introductory stage, and he is Unintentionally Unwinnable if you face him as a Optional Boss before you get a Maverick weapon.
  • Gate is immune to your attacks, but you can destroy the energy balls he throws. The balls break apart and can damage Gate if they hit.
• Randomly Generated Levels: Ground Scaravich's Mini Dungeons are put semi-randomly; there are 8 of those mini-dungeons and you'll only encounter 4 of them at a time. Getting the stage's Dr. Light capsule, the Heart Tank and the Nightmare portal is thus a Luck-Based Mission.
• Rank Inflation: Maverick Hunter ranks in this game goes by D (at the start), C, B, A, SA, GA, PA and UH. The ranks are determined by the Nightmare Souls you collect, and higher rank means more power-up parts you can equip.
• Recycled Soundtrack: The 'X vs Zero' Theme and 'Dynamo' Theme from X5 are reused in this game.
  • The Gate Lab theme is a remix of the 3rd X-Hunter stage of X2.
  • The Final Boss theme is a remix of the final boss themes of X1 and X2.
• Rise to the Challenge: One part of Blaze Heatnix's stage will have you race against the rising lava...while one of the Nightmare Snakes (the red donut thingy) is harassing you. Eventually it stops just short of the exit door; if you're still fighting it by that point, tough luck especially if you failed to destroy the two lower weakpoints. Gate's second stage also has a rising lava section (with slippery ice slopes!) just before the fight with High Max.
• Rouge Angles of Satin: Prior to his second phase, Sigma does this during his death threats to X. Examples include replacing the T's in "battle" and "just" with D's (resulting in "baddle" and "jusd", respectively), spelling "begun" with two N's (resulting in "begunn"), and merging "just" and "die" together into "jusdie". X gets the impression that his foe is suffering from And I Must Scream as a result, so our hero decides to put Sigma out of his misery. The result is below:
  Sigma: (laughs evilly) "Not yet! The baddle has jusd begunn! Die!! X!! Jusdie, X!!!"^note Proper version: "Not yet! The battle has just begun! Die! X! Just die, X!"
• Scarab Power: Ground Scaravich.
• Scoring Points: Defeating Nightmare Viruses will drop Nightmare Souls, which can be collected to increase your Maverick Hunter ranking. However, if one takes too long to collect the Soul, the Nightmare Virus will respawn and if killed again will yield no Soul. The game also keeps track of which specific Viruses you killed, so if you do a run through a level killing every Nightmare Virus you see and collecting their Soul, you can't kill that virus again for another one when you go back, which can be irritating considering X and Zero have separate rankings they need to collect Nightmare Souls for. At the same time, should you take an alternate path (say through the Nightmare Stage of the level) and encounter and kill Viruses you didn't on your first run, they will drop Souls to collect. Also, though the game never tells you this directly, triggering a new Nightmare Phenomenon in a stage will reset the souls as well. The Nightmare Investigators drop 200 each, and Dynamo will drop plenty more.
• Self-Duplication: Infinity Mijinion can create seemingly limitless copies of himself. Things can get ugly when you have several onscreen at once. Shield Sheldon can also create a single holographic copy.
• Sequence Breaking: Defeating High Max in one of the Nightmare Stages will make Gate's lab stages be accessible earlier than usual.
• Shout-Out Theme Naming: The hostage Reploids from Wolfang's level are named after other Capcom characters.
• Shout-Out: The X Legacy Collection rerelease includes achievements for destroying a enemy for the first time with the unlockable armors, the one for the Blade Armor is called "Ice-Skating Uphill" and the one for the Shadow Armor is called "Theatricality and Deception".
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Blizzard Wolfang's stage.
• Smart Bomb: Falcon Armor's Giga Attack reappears. Zero also gains one in form of Rekkoha. And a good number of X's charged special weapons affect almost all over the screen.
• Something Only They Would Say: Isoc for some reason refers to Zero as "the strongest robot". This, among other things^* claiming that he knows Zero from inside out, his hatred for X, and that he shares Wily's voice, fed to the Epileptic Trees that Isoc is Wily.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Gameplay example. Blaze Heatnix's stage theme is very fast paced and hard rocking. The actual stage itself is very slow paced, featuring 5 fights against the same mini-boss, one of which is a slow autoscroller. The only parts of the stage where the music fits are the shafts with the flamethrowers (or you can make it fit by outfitting yourself to be able to one shot the red donut mini-bosses with X's charged Metal Anchor or Zero's Rekkoha).
• Studded Shell: One of Rainy Turtloid's main attacks is to retract into his shell and deploy spikes out of the sides before rolling across the screen.
• Sturdy and Steady Turtles: Rainy Turtloid is a tortoise-based robot who is built with high defenses to withstand high levels of pollution and made to work for a pollution survey team. As a boss, his shell makes him nigh invincible, except for attacks at his weak points.
• Sword and Gun: This game marks the second time X wields a saber alongside his Arm Cannon, but this time he has it from the start (and is less proficient at it than Zero, although his armors at least give it some extra power). Zero also does the same here, with his Z-Buster being more effective than in X5.
• Sword Beam: Both the Blade Armor and Shadow Armor's Giga Attacks are variants of this; the former is shot forward while the latter spins around him. Zero Nightmare also can shoot 2 kinds of this: a smaller one that is shot at X and a bigger one reminiscent to Awakening Zero's Desperation Attack.
• Tactical Suicide Boss: If Gate didn't shoot his little energy spheres, he would be completely invincible.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome: Present in all of the eight Maverick Bosses, but Blizzard Wolfang, Commander Yammarck and Rainy Turtloid especially. The other five died or were killed for other reasons, Shield Sheldon killed his ward and was so ashamed of his failure and the surrounding scandal that he committed suicide, Ground Scaravich was poking around in heavily restricted areas, Metal Shark Player was engaging in illegal reploid DNA resurrection research, and Infinity Mijinion and Blaze Heatnix were reckless assholes that nearly or actually got their teammates killed respectively.
• Teleport Spam: Zero Nightmare teleports a lot in his boss battle. So does Shield Sheldon.
• Eternal Engine: Metal Shark Player's stage, complete with the Inconveniently-Placed Conveyor Belt underneath the trash compactor of doom.
• Temple of Doom: Rainy Turtloid's stage, which is also riddled with acid rain.
• Tennis Boss: Gate can only be damaged by shooting the orbs he fires and sending pieces of them back at him.
• The Song Remains the Same: As a side effect of the original American release being rushed to the point there was no time to make an Alternative Foreign Theme Song, the original Japanese vocal songs have been retained. Averted in the English version of the Legacy Collection 2 release, though.
• This Cannot Be!: High Max laments that these old relics (one of which he is an "improvement of") was able to defeat him.
  High Max: Wh-what’s the meaning of this!? Speed, power, body...I’m not inferior in any way! I can’t possibly lose to an old robot like you!
• Threatening Shark: Metal Shark Player.
• Triumphant Reprise: One of "Variable X", Zero's death theme from the first game, plays when he is found.
• Took a Level in Badass: X is distinctly more confident in this game than the last. He's still reluctant to fight the more reasonable Investigators, but stands firm when met with threats. Most cathartic of all is seeing him mock Sigma, the monster that made his life hell, now that he’s been reduced to a walking corpse. Naturally, he had to toughen up after losing Zero and is very unhappy to see his friend’s legacy desecrated.
  X: I've found you at last!
  Zero Nightmare: Let's fight together to retire the Mavericks, just like we used to...
  X: Fine. The first subject to be retired is YOU!
• Undying Loyalty: Rainy Turtloid, Shield Sheldon and Blizzard Wolfang are all very loyal towards Gate, and feel indebted because he resurrected them.
• Unexplained Recovery: So, Zero is alive and well, somehow. He glosses over how he recovered, but an Easter Egg gives an answer.
  Zero: Sorry to cause you worry. I lay low until I was fully recovered from the damage. Meanwhile it looks like this “toy” was stirring up a fuss.
  • When Zero approaches one of Dr. Light's capsules, Zero asked him if he knows how he came back alive. Light outright says that his recovery was a miracle. Seeing as he's Zero with his fancy Zero Virus, maybe he's still like Sigma and is simply very hard to kill.
    Zero: "I won’t die" is what I’d like to say. But my memory is vague...I don’t know if my recovery function revived me, or somebody picked me up...The next thing I knew, I was able to move...
• The Unfought: Isoc is the only villain that the heroes never get to fight. Zero does try, but Isoc easily paralyzes him. After Gate is defeated, he suddenly becomes lifeless, with Alia referencing the the Erasure incident and noting he didn't actually "die" so much as his consciousness seems to have left his body entirely.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: Several softlocks abound, and none are that difficult to run into.
  • High Max is a boss that requires either a particular special weapon or the the Ultimate Armor to defeat. Since there's nothing stopping you from going straight to the Another Routes, you can reach him without either one, but you won't be able to damage him.
  • Amazon Area's Another Route cannot be traversed without the Blade Armor or Hyper Dash part as Falcon Armor X and Zero.
  • Metal Shark Player's armor capsule and Another Route portal are hidden in a secret area from which the only exit is to take the portal, but they can't be reached without parts, the Blade or Ultimate Armors.
  • A possible room in Central Museum requires the air dash, making it a dead end for unarmored or Shadow Armor X, but if luck is on your side it won't appear.
  • A wall of spikes exist at the start of Gate Stage 1 that's no problem for Shadow Armor X, but impossible to pass as normal or Falcon Armor X without parts. Zero, Blade and Ultimate Armour X can just barely scrape by.
  • Unarmored or Shadow Armor X cannot traverse Gate Stage 2 for lack of an air dash.
• Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: In addition to the usual involving X the Super Prototype fighting his various successor Reploids, Zero gets in on the fun for once should he fight High Max, who is a Reploid made by Gate using his scavenged DNA and proudly boasts his specs are all higher than Zero's (and X's).
• Utility Weapon: Some boss weapons are useful against some Nightmare phenomenons found in stages; both the weapon and the phenomenon weak to it usually come from the same boss, i.e the Ground Dash and the colored blocks (from Ground Scaravich) and Guard Shell and the X/Zero silhouettes (from Shield Sheldon).
• Vigilante Execution: In the backstory, Shield Sheldon killed his ward, Dr. Jim after the latter went Maverick but before he became dangerous. To the Maverick Hunters, this looked like he just committed murder and between the scandal and the shame of his failure, Shield Sheldon committed suicide before he could clarify things.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Gate, Isoc, and the Nightmare Investigators are easily trusted by the populace due to offering to help the current crisis (which they're behind), while the Maverick Hunters are looked down upon as a combination of their actions during X5 not being enough to save the planet from devastation and the currently-missing Hunter Zero apparently being behind the new crisis (which he's not, but Gate made an Ax-Crazy clone of him to help sell it).
• Warm-Up Boss: Most of the main bosses aren't particularly challenging to begin with, but even on Xtreme mode, Commander Yammark is a complete joke of a boss and can be downed in just a few charge shots, and the best one to start off on. You can even just use a charge shot to destroy all of his attacks before they even get a chance to hit you!
• Well-Intentioned Replacement: The Falcon Armor from X5 was hastily salvaged and is available from the start of the game, but it lacks the flight capabilities of the authentic model. However, it has gained the ability to charge special weapons, still has its Giga Attack, and now provides a 33% reduction to weapon energy consumption.
• Your Head Asplode: The fate of Sigma's One-Winged Angel after being defeated, presumably because it was the location of his energy cannon that kept firing the screen-filling Wave Motion Guns and was also its only vulnerability.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: The Nightmare phenomenon is apparently illusions; this is shown in X/Zero and Alia's conversations in the stages, where X/Zero see things that Alia couldn't detect. Despite so, some of the phenomenon are tangible and can hurt the player character. This is also part of the game mechanic; see Geo Effects above.

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