The Curious Case of X1’s X-Buster

Okay, so I had plans for other articles to write through January… and then COVID hit. For the moment, I’ve scrapped what I’m working on at the time, and decided to write out something that came to mind recently to get myself back into form. Hope you enjoy!

One of the strangest and most mysterious things across the entirety of Mega Man has got to be the original X-Buster upgrade from the very first Mega Man X. And probably not even by design!

Images via Mega Man Knowledge Base.

While the first glimpse of X seen by many a gamer in Japan was of his natural blue self, the leading images outside of Japan tended to feature his fully-upgraded persona, which is featured right there on the box art. Here, the Buster has a curious addition: a pointy protrusion of some sort. Is it meant to be a harpoon, since he’s underwater? Or maybe it was meant to be a missile, which would curiously precede X’s use of Micro Missiles seemingly fired from an unknown place on his X-Buster in Mega Man X Command Mission.

Ah, but I digress. Which is curiously easy to do, given the subject matter.

In Mega Man X (and the remake, Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X), the idea is that at his base level of power, he’s not strong enough to take on Sigma and his forces. As a result, part of his quest involves becoming a stronger and more formidable fighter. To this end, X discovers capsules that were seemingly hidden away by his creator, Dr. Light, long ago before passing away (these present their own curious cases, which we’ll leave alone for now). In one of them, his X-Buster is upgraded to the design we see in the iconic image presented here.

However, the upgrade from his creator is not the first we see of this X-Buster design. Earlier on at the start of the game, after a futile fight against the Maverick Vile’s Ride Armor, X is caught helpless until the arrival of his fellow Maverick Hunter Zero, who rescues his charge with a charge of his own. A charge shot, that is, which blows the arm clear off Vile’s compensatory contraption. We don’t get to see it on the first shot, but as the Hunter leader races onto the scene, we get to see what true power looks like as he readies another shot, only to just miss as the Death Rogumer comes in and Ubers the disarmed Maverick away to cause trouble somewhere else.

That raises the question: Why does Zero have this model of X-Buster on his hand? (Okay, fine, his arm; I’m trying to pay respect to the game’s ending here.) A possible answer to this may come from a rather unexpected — and very contemporary — source.

Image captured by/for The Mega Man Network.

In the 2020 mobile/Steam title Mega Man X DiVE (which is in itself non-canonical to the events of the series, but does use series canon for its own story), one of the many weapons you’re able to obtain — in fact, one of the first and most often recurring — is the X-Buster upgrade from Mega Man X. However, it is referred to here as a “Military Buster,” disassociating it from either X or Zero directly, and giving it a more distinct-yet-general use name. Presumably, the idea is that this model is widely available to Maverick Hunters who might wish to use it.

That makes sense, right? In Mega Man X4‘s flashback, after Zero gets his family jewel (the big Wily “W” one in his forehead, in case you thought I meant something else) busted by Sigma, they haul him back to Dr. Cain’s lab, where they presumably fixed him up, vacuumed all the broken glass out of his systems, reprogrammed him, and equipped him with a Military Buster for Maverick Hunting the professional way, right? So Dr. Light — who’s apparently sentient, or at the very least not pre-recorded — must have decided to make X’s new weapon match whatever was the style at the time. Open and shut case.

…or is it?

The Mega Man X games are no stranger to retcons, not even from game to game. Mega Man X6 turned three years into three weeks, Mega Man X7 turned Mega Man X6‘s perfectly promising subplot about Wily returning from beyond the grave into a paycheck for whoever collected the following week’s trash, and Mega Man X5 turned Mega Man X4‘s epic hand-to-hand edition of “Street Fighter 21XX” with Sigma and Zero into… something else.

Zero shows his inner-Indy by bringing a gun to a sword fight. Image captured by/for The Mega Man Network.

In this version of events, Zero doesn’t bludgeon his future boss with broken plumbing. If you take note of the arm Sigma has locked up — that’s right, he’s got his trusty Military/X-Buster, and he’s clearly not afraid to use it. Or if he isn’t using it, it’s because he wanted to beat Sigma with only one hand. Hey, we’ve all been there, but most controllers aren’t that accommodating.

So, did Dr. Light copy Wily’s design? Or did Wily copy from Light, even though X wasn’t even equipped with this model yet? Is there some piece of lore that’s still yet to be uncovered surrounding this one Buster design showing up in so many places (okay, so three times isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened thrice, right?), or is this just a bit of lazy continuity (or lack thereof) on the part of the developers?

It probably doesn’t matter, as it hasn’t really impacted the story in any way at all. If anything, it seems that the developers just wanted to make sure that players had the upgrade one way or another for the final stages, and the Dr. Light capsule is the trickiest of the bunch to reach, so they probably just decided on this as some sort of backup, plot be damned. And in that regard, mission accomplished!

It probably wouldn’t have come up at all, except that the First Armor is among the most revisited of all X’s armors, second only to the Ultimate Armor (PS1 version). It’s reappeared in Mega Man Xtreme, Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X (with a slight redesign), and most recently, in Mega Man X DiVE… plus the merchandise it’s gotten in recent years, such as the D-Arts figure from Bandai, and more recently, the just-released Kotobukiya model kit.

So its only natural that with all this spotlight being shone on this iconic armor, one would wonder about the true nature of this enduring enigma. The question then, is whether Capcom will ever address the matter in light of this added attention.

Thanks for reading!

LBD "Nytetrayn"

David Oxford, or “LBD ‘Nytetrayn’,” as he is sometimes also known, is a freelance writer of many varied interests who resides in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. If you’re interested in hiring him, please drop him a line at david.oxford (at) nyteworks.net.

For a full list of places to find him online, click here.