Waiting for Mega Man X5

One type of article I’ve wanted to write since getting The Mega Man Network going again has been a type to sort of help preserve moments in the franchise and fandom’s history. Not just the release of new games, but things about moods and attitudes during various periods in the franchise’s history.

For instance, one previous article along these lines I’ve written is growing up when Mega Man merchandise was practically nonexistent, at least compared to how things are today.

Recently, @girlbossuran on Twitter initiated a prompt that caught my eye:

Hey! That’s me! I qualify!

*sobs*

Ah, but seriously, this ties in pretty well with a topic I was going to write anyway, so why not strike while the iron is… *looks again* …two weeks old?

Eh, that week and the next’s posts were already set, what can you do? (Don’t answer that.)

Anyway, to the subject at hand: “What was it like waiting for Mega Man X5?”

Well, these days, I’m finding myself a lot more patient. The last major new release (read: excluding collections and mobile) in the franchise, Mega Man 11, will have been five years ago this September. It still feels pretty fresh to me, though, as though it was only a year ago, maybe two at most.

But back then? Boy, that was a different story.

When I first got online, Mega Man X3 and Mega Man 7 were the most recent releases in the series, and the subject of a number of fan fics and art as a result. Mega Man X4 was just beginning to appear on the horizon, with sites such as PSX Power and Saturn World (early sites that were a part of what would come to be known as IGN) providing grainy, low-resolution videos of the opening that took forever to download and watch.

The wait for Mega Man X4 had been longer than we’d been used to, at least for Mega Man X games. Mega Man X, Mega Man X2, and Mega Man X3 came out at the start of 1994, 1995, and 1996, respectively. Mega Man X4 took over a year and a half to reach us.

So, why am I talking about these, when the question was about Mega Man X5? Simply put: the longest we’d had to wait, a whole 20 months, was nothing compared to the nearly four year wait we had for Mega Man X5.

At this point, there was a bit of panic going on. Mega Man 8 had released at the start of the year that Mega Man X4 came out, and there had been no follow-up to that, either, save for a Super Famicom title Capcom would show no interest in bringing over (save for several years later on the Game Boy Advance). People were worried that Capcom was calling it quits on these series.

Not on Mega Man entirely, though. You see, between Mega Man X4‘s 1997 release and Mega Man X5‘s 2001 release, we did still get new Mega Man games. Three of them, in fact: Mega Man Legends in 1998, The Misadventures of Tron Bonne in early 2000, and Mega Man Legends 2 in late 2000. As difficult as it is to believe now, there was a genuine fear in the community that Capcom was shelving their 2D Mega Man franchises to placate the gods of 3D, and would only release Mega Man Legends games from then on. Oh, to get a glimpse into that reality.

It wasn’t an unrealistic fear; the industry at large seemed to have it in for 2D games at the time. Developers didn’t seem to want to make them as everyone raced to 3D, while publishers acted like people didn’t want 2D any more. And from a select point of view, they were right. Some video game magazines and the earliest websites would react with scorn and derision if a game that wasn’t packed with polygons crossed their desk, savaging even classic titles such as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island in their coverage and reviews of the time. Portions of the buying public weren’t much better, as they were more than willing to turn their attention to the new, sometimes janky hotness of the time, leaving the more refined fare like so much dust in the wind.

But then came a surprise: Not one, but two new Mega Man X games were coming in 2001. One, of course, was Mega Man X5, but Capcom also made a surprise play for the handheld audience with Mega Man Xtreme for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color. Why had they waited so long, since Mega Man V had appeared on the Game Boy and Super Game Boy in 1994, to release a new handheld Mega Man game? I’m not sure an answer has ever been given, but one has to imagine a reinvigorated Game Boy scene thanks to the popularity of Nintendo’s Pocket Monsters had to have something to do with it.

Here’s how Mega Man X Online (The Mega Man Network’s direct ancestor) reported the news at the time:

Naturally, there was plenty of speculation. Would this be the last Mega Man X game? There wasn’t enough story information at the time for that to lead us to such a conclusion; as we would come to learn later, it was at one time intended to be the end of the series and pave the way for Mega Man Zero, but no one even knew about the latter at the time, or for a while yet. And with Capcom announcing Mega Man X6 less than four months after its release, it was barely even a thought until speculation arose from that game’s release. However, with the PlayStation 2 releasing the previous year, it was believed until Mega Man X6‘s announcement that it would at least be the series’ swan song for the original PlayStation.

But ever since Mega Man X3 had alluded to it in its ending (with Mega Man X4 reinforcing the notion in its own), people were expecting a cataclysmic showdown between X and Zero. And as we all know, it did indeed deliver on that. Eh, more or less.

Another fun bit of speculation was the involvement of Dr. Wily. While I forget what exactly led to people (correctly) guessing that Dr. Light’s old rival would play a part in this chapter, at least beyond the “final showdown” conjecture, one thing that fuelled the fires was the reveal of someone that would not be expected in hindsight today: Dynamo.

You see, back in the day, fans often looked for any ties to the original series they could find. Mega Man X was the original Mega Man, Zero was Proto Man (or Rush, or Roll, or any combination of the three), Serges was Wily… well, okay, that one kinda was true, in a way. And if you really squinted and thought up some things, then of course, Dynamo was clearly Bass. He was a dark color and had fins (sort of) on his helmet, after all. (There was more to the theory, but maybe that can be for another time.)

As I write this, it’s been nearly 20 years since the last new Mega Man X game (no, not counting Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X, and as it’s by its own conceit not canon to the series, not Mega Man X DiVE, either), and it’s interesting to compare things now to how they were then. Mega Man X4 didn’t leave much in the way of a cliffhanger, beyond “will X and Zero have to fight?”, while Mega Man X8 has left us wondering what happens with Axl, and if we’ve seen the last of Sigma. Mega Man 8 before it would have to wait over 11 years to receive a sequel, and would go on to receive one of the best-selling games in the entire franchise ten years later (with a nod to Mega Man 10 in between), leaving us to wonder if the team behind that can do it again with Mega Man X.

They say that “waiting is the hardest part,” but if you wait long enough, sometimes your patience will be rewarded. And while I’m eager to check out Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection, I have to admit… I’m a little more curious about what comes next.

Do you remember the wait for Mega Man X5? Share your memories and nostalgia in the comments below, or on Twitter @themmnetwork!

Thanks for reading!