Video Game / Mega Man X2

All spoilers for Mega Man X may be unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

"X and the rest of the Hunters have tracked the last of the Mavericks to an abandoned Reploid factory. There they hope to wipe out the last of the resistance. Little do they suspect that real war is about to begin..."

— Mega Man X2 opening narration.

Mega Man X2 is the second entry in the Mega Man X series, released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System on December 16, 1994 in Japan, January 1995 in North America, and October 1995 in Europe.

In the year 21XX, six months after the events of the first game, X has taken over as the leader of Maverick Hunters following Zero's death. Zero's body is missing, and all they have left is his control chip. Sigma is destroyed, but the remnants of his rebellion are slowly rebuilding their forces.

X spearheads a crusade to root them out, discovering a large group of Mavericks in an abandoned factory. Under X's command, the Maverick Hunters besiege the hideout. Shortly afterward, however, the X-Hunters - a trio of Mavericks named Serges, Violen, and Agile - unleash a brand new group of SA-Class Mavericks to wage war again. They also hold the three reconstructed pieces of Zero's body, and challenge X to duels over his control chip; thus begins the war to resurrect Zero. However, X will also discover a dark secret about the nature of Sigma, and that his influence may be more difficult to neutralize than it seems.

Mega Man X2 is something of a Mission-Pack Sequel to its predecessor, playing mostly the same but with a new set of Maverick bosses, Special Weapons, and Armor Parts. The main difference is the duels against the X-Hunters, and the game also makes great use of its cartridge's Cx4 chip to draw wireframe objects and warp sprites in real-time, for some added visual spectacle.

This game's eight Mavericks range from complete newcomers to more former Maverick Hunters:

• Wheel Gator, of the 6th Naval Unit. X earns Spin Wheel from him.
• Bubble Crab, of the 6th Naval Unit. X earns Bubble Splash from him.
• Flame Stag, of the 17th Elite Unit. X earns Speed Burner from him.
• Morph Moth, a mysterious prototype Reploid. X earns Silk Shot from him.
• Magna Centipede, of the 0th Special Unit. X earns Magnet Mine from him.
• Crystal Snail, of unknown origin. X earns Crystal Hunter from him.
• Overdrive Ostrich, of the 7th Airborne Unit. X earns Sonic Slicer from him.
• Wire Sponge, a defective Maverick. X earns Strike Chain from him.

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Tropes:

• 11th-Hour Ranger: If X successfully retrieves Zero's parts, Zero will show up during X's final confrontation with Sigma to destroy his doppelganger.
• Anti-Frustration Features: If you're trying to get the Shoryuken in the third X-Hunter Stage, the path to it has an extra life, as well as a few health pellets. The thing is that they respawn after you die, so you can fail as much as you want without a Game Over, and even fill up your Sub-Tanks for good measure.
• Avenging the Villain: The X-Hunters want to hunt down X in order to get back at him for defeating Sigma.
• Back from the Dead:
  • The plot is to get back Zero's parts in order to revive him, and if you fail the X-Hunters revive him to serve as a boss. Sigma himself is revived by the X-Hunters, starting his Joker Immunity.
  • It's implied in the Japanese script and more so in the manga adaptation that Serges is Dr Wily revived in a Reploid body, though not outright confirmed.
• Background Boss: Gigantic Mechaniloid CF-0, the giant robot you fight in the intro stage, stands in the background, with only its head, hands and feet being capable of damaging X.
• Badass Biker: X gets a motorcycle, as showcased on the game cover. Unfortunately it only features in one stage, save the intro where you don't have control over it.
• Big Bad Triumvirate: Serges, Violen and Agile. Supposedly. Ironically, the Japanese version suggests Serges was a Greater-Scope Villain.
• Big Dumb Body: The Old Robots faced in Morph Moth's stage serve as a strong, durable body for the Pararoid that takes control of them.
• Big, Thin, Short Trio: The X-Hunters, with the Big being Violen, the Thin being Agile, and the Short being Serges.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation:
  • "Sagesse" (wisdom) has been mistranslated to "Serges." Violen may have been this in the original Japanese; the X-Hunters are named after French words, and while the French word for violent is "violent", in Japanese it would be pronounced without the "t".
  • Here is a comparison of the English and Japanese script. Pretty much the whole thing was changed. This normally wouldn't be a problem, since X2 has a fairly bare-bones plot, but the dialogue changes cut out a big implication.
• Book Ends: The intro stage and Magna Centipede's revisited stage both use the same exact music.
• Boss Rush: The Mavericks are refought in the traditional teleporter layout.
• Bubble Gun: Bubble Crab's Weapon, the Bubble Splash, fires explosive bubble upwards.
• Bubble Shield: Charging up the Bubble Splash turns the rapid fire Bubble Gun into an orbital shield that also allows X to jump extremely high underwater.
• Collapsing Lair: On the stage select screen, a section of the X-Hunters base is destroyed after a stage is completed. By the time X proceeds to confront Sigma, it's fallen down completely.
• Creepy Centipedes: Magna Centipede is a ninja hacker centipede robot.
• Cheat Code: Enter "8377-8113-6822-7652" as the password, and you'll skip Violen's stage towards the end of the game with all the standard collectibles. Holding Down, Left, B, and R after setting up the same password and pressing the Y button to confirm it will start you off with the Shoryuken as well.
• Crosshair Aware: Present in the area before Raider Killer in Magna Centipede's stage. While X is avoiding the falling blocks, he'll need to avoid a crosshair homing in on him. Getting hit by it won't hurt him, but it'll cause Raider Killer to upgrade himself for each crosshair that got him.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: If you kill Wire Sponge using his primary weakness, the poor dude gets sliced in half.
• Dash Attack: X can kill enemies trapped in the Crystal Hunter by dashing into them.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • It's difficult but possible to drive the Ride Chaser right up to Overdrive Ostrich's door — of course, on hitting it, the same thing happens as every time the Ride Chaser drives into a wall.
  • In Crystal Snail's stage, with some careful jumping you can take the Ride Armor into the miniboss room. The boss is the right height to hit with the armor's Charged Attack and will die in seconds to it, but don't be too happy, the exit out of the room is too small by a tile for the Ride Armor to go any further.
  • Since the final stage takes place in Magna Centipede's stage, selecting it on the map instead of the final stage will take the player to the final stage anyway. In addition, both the Sub-Tank and Heart Tank are located before the point where you meet Sigma, if you missed them previously.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The Strike Chain is a weapon that's normally rather clunky to use and has limited range at that compared to other weapons that can get the job done faster, and from a longer distance. However, a player who knows how to use it well can quickly skip past sections of the game by using it as a Grappling-Hook Pistol on the right surfaces.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole: In the Japanese version, Sigma will tell X to meet him in the Central Computer for their confrontation. The English version removes this line, thus making many English-speaking players confused over why X is suddenly back in Magna Centipede's stage.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The Final Boss is some kind of computer virus shaped like Sigma's head. It seems like it's the central computer's self-defense system, but Mega Man X3 shows this is Sigma's true form as the Sigma Virus.
• Final Dungeon Preview: Magna Centipede's stage is initially like every other Maverick stage in the game. However, this level later turns out to be the final one, except that there's a new detour which leads to the Final Boss.
• Flying Flightless Bird: Implied to have been the case for Overdrive Ostrich, but an accident took his ability to fly away from him.
• Foreshadowing: The Final Boss laments that Zero was the last of "The Doctor's" creations before exploding. Said doctor makes a cameo in Mega Man X4.
• Frozen Foe Platform: Crystal Snail's weapon, Crystal Hunter, allows X to freeze enemies in crystal blocks and use them as platforms.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Reaching the Life Up in Energen Crystal Stage can be rough. It's not too hard to locate, but the gap you need to cross with the Ride Armor is too long for the dash-jump-hover that you'd expect. Many players have found ways around it by grabbing the ledge with Strike Chain or extending airtime with Giga Crash, but the real solution is to gradually tap the hover button rather than holding it down - something that does not come naturally and is never hinted anywhere.
  • Finding the Sub Tank in Deep-Sea Base Stage. The game never hints that charged Bubble Splash allows you to jump higher than normal when fully charged in water, and even if you accidentally find out, how would you ever possibly guess that X now has the ability to jump on top of water?
  • Good luck finding the Armor Parts in Robot Junkyard Stage. You need to use the Spin Wheel on a certain spot on the floor that is marked by lacking cracks in its tiles, just a plain color. And when you find it, the tiles don't crumble in a way that's graphically consistent with the series; the tileset literally falls off like someone was messing with it in a level editor.
  • The Life Up in Weather Control Stage. It's right at the start of the level, in a hidden alcove in the wall on the left. As with the Armor upgrade, about the only way to find it is to dedicate yourself to crawling over each level firing the Helmet Radar off every screen until it finds the passage. Which is the entire point of using the Helmet Radar, but still.
• Guns Akimbo: The buster upgrade allows X to fire two charge shots in quick succession by charging both busters in each hand.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Wire Sponge is split in half if you deal the final blow with the Sonic Slicer, the weapon he's weak to. Note that this applies to the normal version of the slicer (which flies horizontally), the super-changed version (which flies vertically) does not do this.
• Handicapped Badass: Overdrive Ostrich actually had flight capability before getting into an accident prior to the game.
• Hijacked by Ganon: Sigma turns out to have come Back from the Dead and is The Man Behind the Man for the X-Hunters. Much like Dr Wily, he's set up a theme of always being behind the plot.
• Improvised Platform: Enemies trapped with the Crystal Hunter can be used as platforms.
• Infinity -1 Sword: The Double Charged Shot upgrade is up for grabs in Wheel Gator's stage and can be obtained as early as your first stage, albeit with great difficulty due to the need to perform a precision wall jump. Failing that, you use multiple methods to lower the difficulty such as Wire Sponges Strike Chain or the Dash Boots upgrade. The Double Charge Shot isn't nearly as powerful as the Shoryuken but both shots do more damage to bosses than their actual weaknesses with the main limit being the charge time.
• Infinity +1 Sword: X can learn the Shoryuken attack from a secret capsule. It is a highly damaging rising uppercut, but can only be used at full health.
• Joke Weapon: If the Silk Shot is used in Wire Sponge's stage, X fires out... a ball of leaves that floats upwards before disappearing without exploding, and deals pathetic damage. Despite this, this is actually very effective against Violen should he appear there.
• Lethal Joke Weapon: The Bubble Splash gives the impression of being useless, being difficult to aim, having an odd firing rate, and overall looking just plain silly, but when used properly, it can decimate minibosses, mow down legions of enemies, and its charged version lets you move faster and jump higher underwater.
• Lighter and Softer: X2 is comparatively more upbeat than the rest of the series besides the original. The music is more energetic, the mavericks and stages are more vibrantly colored, and the plot is less dramatic (sans the fight with Zero if you don't collect all of his parts), with the antagonists acknowledging that it's only a matter of time before X defeats them.
• Lost in Translation:
  • In the Japanese version, Agile explicitly names his master before dying. However, that's only a minor error compared to the dialogue changes for Serges/Sagesse. In the American version, when the X-Hunters issue their challenge to X, Serges begins the message with "Greetings." In the Japanese version he begins the message with "Rock...ehh...X". There's another big change when Serges is defeated in his X-Hunter stage.
  Serges (American): This is impossible! The prophecy must be fulfilled!
  Sagesse (Japanese): Defeated again by the robotic memento of Light? Regretful.
  • Finally, in the American version, the Final Boss says that Zero was the last of "The Doctor's" creations before dying. In the Japanese version, he instead says that Zero is a Wi(ly) Number.
• Mini-Boss: Several of the stages have them; Magna Centipede's and Morph Moth's stages are notable for having two.
  • Pararoid S-38, pink parasitic bugs from Morph Moth's stage that takes control of the body of an Old Robot which has to be destroyed in order to reveal the vulnerable parasite. Two of them need to be fought.
  • Chop Register, a holographic wireframe sword from Magna Centipede's stage with a weak point in the hilt.
  • Raider Killer, a killer robot from Magna Centipede's stage who upgrades himself if his crosshairs manage to target X in the section before the fight.
  • Sea Canthller, a Coelacanth submarine with multiple destructible parts fought in Bubble Crab's stage.
  • Magna Quartz, a large crystal from Crystal Snail's stage who spawns drones that fire Reflecting Laser attacks at X.
• Missing Secret: Prior to the Boss Rush, there's a broken teleporter next to the one X uses. There's no given explanation as why it's there or has a hidden significance.
• Mission-Pack Sequel: The core gameplay is virtually unchanged from the first game aside from the new armor upgrades and the sidequest to reclaim Zero's parts.
• Moth Menace: Morph Moth is a humanoid robot moth who occupies a robot scrapyard and uses broken machine parts to turn himself from a larva form into his full moth form. He can also manipulate those machine junks to attack.
• Multiple Endings: Subverted. Gathering all of Zero's parts definitely changes things in the final battle, but they only slightly affect the ending.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: Wheel Gator joined Sigma's army and got a massive dinosaur-modeled tank to use to raze an entire city.
• One-Winged Angel:
  • Morph Moth reveals his true form halfway through the fight against him, although this isn't surprising since you see it during the cutscene after you select his level.
  • Sigma becomes a wireframe head for the final battle.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: There are secret areas that, when a charged Silk Shot is fired, releases large amounts of energy and weapon refills. A nice trick for filling up sub-tanks.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • There are several ways to make it impossible to collect all of Zero's components, thereby forcing you to fight him near the end of the game:
    • If an X-Hunter is hiding in a Maverick's stage, and you beat that stage without dealing with the X-Hunter, they'll teleport off the map and never re-appear.
    • Once the X-Hunters first appear, for every two Mavericks you destroy without dealing with at least one X-Hunter, you'll also cause one of the Hunters to teleport away and never come back (which order they disappear in is chosen at random; not that it makes any difference, seeing how you're screwed if even one of them does so).
    • If you've gotten two of the Zero parts, but choose not to deal with the X-Hunter before you destroy the last Maverick (say, if that Maverick has the weapon the X-Hunter is weak to), the Hunters break into Dr. Cain's lab and steal back the two parts that you did reclaim.
  • If you don't find the Shoryuken capsule in X-Hunter Stage 3, you won't be able to go back for it after clearing the stage.
• Personal Space Invader: The wingless Pararoids from Morph Moth's stage will try to jump and latch onto X, should they manage to they will either force him to repeatedly fire his buster, jump, or dash until he gets them off.
• Plant Person: Wire Sponge is based off a loofah sponge, not a sea sponge.
• Platform Battle: The rematch against Serges, set on floating platforms above a bed of lethal spikes.
• Player-Guided Missile: The Magnet Mine can be steered vertically while it's in flight, both in normal and charged forms.
• Power-Up Letdown: The Radar Helmet sounds awesome, a way to detect secret passages in a franchise that uses them, but in practice it's not that helpful. It has to be manually activated and doesn't let X fire any weapons, and it will only detect secret passages in the sense of paths that are out of view or hidden; for power-ups that are in plain view but in out-of-the-way areas the player is unlikely to go to, the Radar probably won't point out to you. Further, there's only a few hidden passages in this game that aren't immediately obvious without the Radar to draw attention to them, and in the internet age any player can just look up the locations of power-ups, rendering the Radar pointless.
• Punched Across the Room: Overdrive Ostrich can jump-kick X across the arena. Sigma can also do something like this.
• Real Men Wear Pink: When X uses the Bubble Splash weapon, he dons a bright yellow and pink color scheme.
• The Remnant: A number of the Maverick bosses are Reploids who defected in Sigma's initial rebellion but weren't finished off in the last game.
• Removable Shell: Crystal Snail. If you hit him with the Magnet Mine, his shell flies off, causing him to lose his only method of defense and causing him to focus on trying to reclaim it over attacking you... Which you can prolong indefinitely by knocking the shell around.
• Rock Beats Laser: Magna Centipede, the advanced ninja robot that dwells in a computer complex full of complex security systems, is defeated by shooting scrap metal at it with Silk Shot.
• Screen Shake: The screen constantly shakes in Wheel Gator's stage. Justified because you're in an immense dinosaur-themed tank that's on the move.
• Sequence Breaking: With good timing and use of Strike Chain, it's possible to get the buster upgrade without needing the Air Dash.
• Sequential Boss:
  • Morph Moth starts the battle in a larval stage and doesn't reveal his true form until low on HP. Conversely, you can just avoid attacking his first form and his cocoon will eventually gather enough junk and grow large enough (via the magic of Mode 7 scaling) that he will transform on his own.
  • The rematch against Serges has him move into a new phase when the four initial cannons on his machine are destroyed.
• Situational Damage Attack: Silk Shot's attack and subsequently damage changes depending on where X is. In most stages, it's scrap metal. In Bubble Crab's and Flame Stag's stages, it's a bouncy rock projectile. In Crystal Snail's stage, it's a bouncy crystal projectile that explodes into shards on contact with an enemy. And in Wire Sponge's stage, it's a weak leaf ball that floats upwards and doesn't even explode.
• Shout-Out: In the X Legacy Collection rerelease, the achievement for grabbing an item by using the Silk Shot is called "Friendly Neighborhood Mega Man".
• Skippable Boss:
  • Agile, Serges, and Violen become available to fight after a second Maverick is down. They need somewhat more strategy to defeat than the usual Mavericks, but defeat all three and you skip a boss fight preceding Sigma. Zero's black copy can also be fought in the japanese mobile port in Magna Centipede's stage after the game's been completed once.
  • If you defeat the three X-Hunters in the Maverick stages and obtain all of Zero's pieces, you won't have to fight Zero in the final stage. Inversely, if you choose not to fight one or more of the X-Hunters, and don't get all the Zero parts, the fight is mandatory.
• Smashing Survival: Used to escape Crystal Snail's Crystal Hunter.
• Sorry I'm Late: If Zero's parts have been obtained prior to defeating all the Mavericks, he'll reactivate in time to take down his fake copy before it could fight X.
• Speed, Smarts and Strength: The X-Hunters are a Terrible Trio consisting of Serges, the smart professor-like robot, Agile the lean speedy robot, and Violen, the huge, strong robot.
• Stealth Pun: Magna Centipede's stage takes place in a secure data storage facility. Magna's weakness, Silk Shot, comes from Morph Moth, whose own stage is a scrapyard. You're defeating Magna Centipede by feeding him junk data.
• Tank Goodness: Wheel Gator commands the giant dinosaur-shaped tank.
• Turns Red: Starting with this game, the Mavericks began unleashing new, more powerful attacks after their HP hits 50%. Flame Stag doesn't reveal much in the way of new attacks, but the color of his fire upgrades from red to blue and he does act faster (in the rematch against him, he already starts out blue).
• Warm-Up Boss: The Gigantic Mechaniloid CF-0 from the intro stage. It's a huge robot, but it has a weak, simplistic attack pattern, and it can literally be mowed down in seconds due to its large hitbox and very low durability.
• Where It All Began: A subversion: Sigma is fought in an earlier Maverick stage (specifically Magna Centipede's), but not necessarily the first stage. In fact, trying to revisit this stage at this point (instead of trying to choose the wrecked X-Hunter base) will just take the player to the final stage as normal.
• Wolverine Claws: Sigma's weapons are retractable claws that emerge from his knuckles.

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