Trivia / Mega Man X

• Christmas Rushed: The most likely reason that X6 failed to reach its potential. Not only did it come out just a few months after X5, but the North American version hit the stores mere days after the Japanese version! (December 4, 2001 and November 29, 2001; respectively. We all know how that turned out...)
• Creator Backlash: Keiji Inafune became apathetic to the franchise post X5, due to Capcom deciding to milk the series for all it was worth. He may have gotten over this when he tried to remake the series starting with Maverick Hunter X.
  • While he had no involvement with Mega Man X6, Keiji Inafune was obviously not happy with how rushed and sloppy the game turned out. In "Mega Man X: Official Complete Works", he outright apologized for the game ever happening.
• Creator's Favorite: Zero, being Inafune's original idea for the protagonist that he has to alter slightly. He even says that Zero will "steal all the good scenes".

  Advertisement:
  • Zero was supposed to be the Mega Man X, but was instead turned into the secondary character. According to the Official Complete Works, Inafune himself made the decision after he finished the design for the main character, deciding people would not relate him to Mega Man because he looked too different. So he had someone else design the main character, and instead presented his design as the "side character".
• Fan Nickname:
  • X: Referred to often as "The Blue Bomber of the 22nd Century" or the far pithier "The Azure Hunter". Other times, especially by fangirls, "Ekkusu" is also used.
  • Zero: "The Red Ripper" or "The Crimson Hunter." An odd inversion is that his popular fan "full name," Zero Omega, turned out to have a significant connection (which you should already know) to the Sequel Series.
  • Gate's battle armor is sometimes referred to as the "Zero Armor" because of the source of his research. Not to be confused with Zero's own ultimate upgrades.

Advertisement:
• Fan Translation: Mega Man X through X3 received a fan-made relocalizations of their respective Japanese script through ROM hacks. Mega Man X6 received a similar treatment through the Mega Man X6 Tweaks project while fixing many of the game's issues.
• Newbie Boom: For more than a year after the X Legacy Collections came out, the Mega Man subreddit was filled with threads from newcomers asking for advice about the games and sharing their first-time experiences.
• Relationship Voice Actor: An interesting case: Both Takahiro Sakurai (X's actual voice) and Peter Von Gomm (X's voice actor in Megaman X7) voiced, at some point, Bit Cloud. Not only that, but both characters ends up being friends with a robotic creature named Zero.
  • For a more straight example, Both X's and Zero's japanese voice actors eventually gain a role in Bleach. X's four voice actors voiced different characters in the anime (Harribel, Reiji, Tensa Zangetsu and Kira respectively) while Zero voiced Byakuya. Also, in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Zero is voiced by Ichigo's English Voice Actor.
  • Most characters from the series also shared roles with some characters from Castlevania: X's actual voice actor is Jonathan Morris, Zero is Alucard as well as the 2017 version of Trevor, Mega Man X6 villains Gate and High Max voiced different interpretations of Dracula (With one of them being also Gabriel Belmont) and Mavericks Rainy Turtloid/Blizzard Wolfang and Blaze Heatnix are, respectively, Simon and Alucard (the latter from the 2017 version). It's worth mentioning that both Zero's japanese voice actor and Signas' X7 dub voice actor voiced Alucard in Symphony of the Night.
• Screwed by the Network: Keiji Inafune apparently wanted to make more Maverick Hunter X remakes of X2 through X6 for the PSP. Unfortunately, due to apparently low sales, Capcom's executives vetoed it. What makes this worse is this is tied in with the Mega Man X Collection. The makers of the XC had developed a large series of improvements for each game (such as re-dubbing X4, giving X6 a new translation, re-mapping one of Zero's moves in X6 so that fighting on ropes was no longer extremely dangerous, and throwing in other various extras). However, someone at Capcom Japan didn't like this, thinking the extras would make the XC overshadow the upcoming Maverick Hunter X series, and so forced the XC's developers to remove all extras and improvements (which were IN the game at some point, as evidenced by a line change in X1, and the re-mapped Zero move from X6 having a different command listing, but the actual way to perform it remaining the same) so that the MHX series could lay sole claim to them. Naturally, the series died after the first game, and so the extras ended up never being used at all.

  Advertisement:
  • They were still in late enough that they were still referenced by info on the box and manual. The removal of the new and updated content was pretty much almost literally a last minute thing.
• What Could Have Been: Maverick Hunter X is said to be Inafune's reimagined storyline for the series, with better graphics (as it's on the PSP) and focus on plot and characterization. Unfortunately, it didn't sell well.
  • The design for X was actually not the Mega Man-esque one we know, but instead a red robot with boob-lights and long hair we know nowadays as Zero. Because he thinks that the design doesn't look like the original Mega Man, Inafune discarded the design and then created a new character for that design. And then Inafune says that Zero will steal all the good scenes.
  • According to Yoshihisa Tsuda, the X-Hunters were originally a quartet instead of a trio, with a fourth female hunter, altogether titled "The Four Guardians". Unfortunately, the limited memory size of the SNES mandated her removal, as well as the removal of Violin's second form, though it's possible that the fourth member was where Leviathan was originally conceived from.
  • According to this article the person who designed X's Ultimate Armor for X4 also made an armor for Zero, that would've been related to Dr. Wily. It sadly didn't make it into the game. Though this does explain why the Black Zero code in X4 didn't do anything: like the purple recolor of X, the new color just meant that the code worked and that the secret armor was unlocked.
  • Maverick Hunter: The Mega Man X FPS that almost was the attempt was headed by a few breakaways from Retro Studios aka the people behind Metroid Prime
  • Another, smaller one was the fact that X, Zero, and Axl would have taken up the roles as the Navigators while playing Alia, Layer, and Palette respectively. Just imagine the protagonists switching jobs with the side characters. They even recorded voice clips for this, but they were never applied. Here's some fan-made art of what they would've looked like as Navigators too.