bite sized: mega man lore (ft. wesley rea)

Well, hello there everybody and welcome to another bite sized episode with yours truly, Wesley the henchin dad himself, who doesn't really do henchin dad anymore. But I digress. I am going to come at you today with a bite size that you might find interesting, you might not, but I think it's interesting. And I spent the, the better part of my younger years speculating on such a concept, honestly. And, and this is really like near and dear to my heart. It's very, very true to myself, you might say. Recently the backlog breakdown boys, yes, the triple B themselves, have had an episode talking about Mega Man X. Well, Mega Man X is one of my favorite games like ever made period. And it really started me down this very, very odd like rabbit hole of playing Mega man. And that was really the genesis for my fandom. Like I had played classic Mega Man a lot growing up, but Mega Man X is the first game that really grabbed me. And just the way that it starts out where you have all of these, like the BIOS is loading and you have this command line interface with Dr. Light or whatever, like writing a message based on like what happened in the previous like classic series and how this bridges the gap between classic and X. It's really interesting. But one of the things that came up actually was that particular topic itself and what exactly happens between the original Mega man series and Mega Man X. And I am here to tell you about all of the speculation that I can give on this particular subject because I remember writing fan fiction about this very thing. I remember scouring the Internet as a young lady trying to figure out what happened to like regular Mega Man. And I think I actually have a pretty decent grasp on the general idea of what happened between the two series. But unfortunately there is a lot of speculation involved in this particular topic. So I'm going to be your resident historian for the Mega man to Mega Man X historical pipeline. So let's go ahead and start out with the classic series Mega Man 1 through X. Pretty bog standard games and you can probably guess that 7 is as well. But there is something interesting that happens at the end of Mega Man 7. And just so you know, in case nobody's like aware of like what the Mega man franchise is, I'm going to go ahead and tell you. Mega man is about this like blue robot and he fights other like different robots and he takes their powers. He's like Kirby, but not exactly like Kirby, but he does turn pink sometimes so that you know, he's basically robot Kirby. That's what Mega man is About Robot Kirby, you might even say he's a metal Kirby. But I digress. Mega man, he's a really cool robot. There have been many, many games based on the Mega man franchise, but within the classic series himself. He is a robot that is created by Dr. Light in order to fight against Dr. Wily and the different robot masters that Dr. Wily either still steals or repurposes or makes himself. You know, he. He kind of does a whole lot, that Dr. Wily. He's a bit of a. He's a bit of a wily chap, that one. So one through six, pretty bog standard Mega man games. You fight the robot masters, you get their powers, and you continue. All six of those games were NES games, so not. Not much room for story, you might say, because it really, like, focus on the, you know, intense platforming. And it definitely is intense. Like, it's a really hard game, like a really hard series at times. Mega Man 7 does definitely follow in that same, you know, flow. Basically, it is a, you know, regular platforming game. And it was the first classic Mega man game that was released for the Super Nintendo. Now, I can't remember if Mega Man X or Mega Man 7 came out first. I'm pretty sure they were right around the same time because, you know, they were experimenting with Super Nintendo stuff, so probably around the same time. So they were probably thinking to themselves how they could start bridging this gap. And there's a particular scene that happens at the end of Mega Man 7 when you finally beat Dr. Wily and all of his robots. And he's there and he's begging for mercy, as usual. But then Mega man kind of. Kind of snaps a little bit, and he gets ready to, like, get his blaster and just go. He just get about ready to just kill Dr. Wily right then and there. And within the actual, like, game lore, it's not really addressed, like, in any way, shape or form. He's just ready to just be like, I've had enough of this Dr. Wily. I'm not just a regular robot. And Wiley's like, oh, shoot, this guy's actually gonna, like, take care of me. Like, he's actually gonna kill me. And he doesn't, you know, Dr. Wily is able to, you know, not die, which is, you know, good because Mega Man 8 came out after that. Mega Man 8 is a great game. But, yeah, this was such a weird moment growing up. Like, I didn't play Mega Man 7 as much as I played Mega Man. I was very, very aware of what happened at the end of this game. And my thoughts are, is that as you know, within like the canon storyline of the universe at this point, you know, seven games in and, you know, countless, however many years. Megan man has pretty much just like gotten to the point where he's become more self. Self aware and he's starting to show some emotional depth, a little bit of moral complexity, kind of like the, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Maybe you could even go along those lines. But. But the basic implication is that Mega man is evolving in some way, shape or form. And you have to be thinking like Dr. Light. He finds this interesting. He is a roboticist and he, you know, has been making robots, like he made the original robot masters and everything. And he probably is finding this a little bit concerning. And I have to imagine he sees this and he's like, oh, shoot, what's going on? There are some limits to what I'm able to do. And there seems to be some kind of emotional instability that's happening, which, hey, if you know anything about the Mega Man X series and the idea of what is the Maverick virus, it almost seems like they're setting something up now. Really? Were the creator setting something up. I don't know. I don't know how much they had planned of this to begin with, but when you take that into account, the beginning of Mega Man X makes sense because you see that intro screen, you see the little journal that Dr. Light is writing, and he's talking about how like, you know, X is like the first robot in the new series that is capable of basically being human in a sense, like basically emulating human traits, growing, evolving, gaining emotions that would actually make sense. You know, he's not limited by his initial programming, and that's why Dr. Light has to like actually put him away in a capsule for like, what, 100 years? I think it is for about 100 years, so. Or maybe it was 30 years, I can't remember, because I'm also thinking about like Mega Man Zero and everything in the background. So ignore that. He puts him away for decades, let's just say that, so that he could go through a whole bunch of diagnostics to prove that X is not going to go crazy like some other robots. So I think that's kind of that bridging area that they were talking about. But then Mega Man 8 comes out, and it's for the PlayStation, so, you know, considerably after the first three Mega Man X games, I think, because Mega Man X1X2 and X3 kind of follow the same general storyline. You follow x and 0, and there's the Maverick Virus and Sigma and everything. And then Mega Man 8 comes out on the PlayStation. I think that came out even before Mega Man X4, but don't quote me on that. And the story of Mega Man 8 is that there's this evil energy coming from these outer space robots, these alien robots, and this mysterious foe. There's this evil energy that corrupts and enhances the different robots it comes in Contact with. And Dr. Light and Mega man, they are obviously, you know, the heroes of justice, and they fight against it. And then Proto man shows up and Proto Man's really cool, basically the Proto Zero, which makes sense because he's Proto Man. And some of the speculation that people have on this is that the amount that Dr. Light studied the evil energy and what it actually did to the different robots and how it actually enhances them, similarly to how he was exploring with Mega Man X probably later on in his career. This is probably what led to X being designed. And the sealing him away in a capsule are some kind of like, protective protocols that are in place as he's actually trying to infuse this new energy source idea into X. And that would explain how he's so adaptable and how Dr. Light can like put away all these different armor enhancements and everything for X in the future, and his body will just immediately adapt to it. And he's able to have all these different charging blasts and weapons and the ability to dash. And you know, obviously the, the loop of each game having to have their own enhancements and whatnot kind of destroys the illusion there because, like, Dr. Light's appearing him and appearing to him with different capsules, and there's different capsules just where they need to be. But, you know, that's just game stuff. That's the kind of stuff that you have to, you know, let go of because there's, there's no, like, way of explaining that away. But anyway, so X, my theory is that after Mega Man 8, and this is before we had Mega Man 9 and 10, and I don't really know the stories of Mega Man 9 and 10 very much so, you know, whether they contribute or not, I don't know. But after Mega Man 8, my theory is that this is what propels Dr. Light to start working on Mega Man X. He's trying to create a reploid, you know, a replicative Android type thing that has a sense of free will, autonomy, moral reasoning. He is an advanced robot, basically Basically his own species in and of itself, and he seals him away for decades for all of those diagnostic tests. But then Dr. Light dies before X is even able to be released. And eventually, about 100 years later, I think is when Dr. Kane, who is an archaeologist, he discovers X's capsule. He lets him loose, he does all these tests on him, and he uses X's design to create what the reploids are. So Mega Man X is the proto Reploid, and then from there, his schematics and all that create the replays of the future in the Mega Man X timeline or not. Timeline I should. But the Mega Man X games and series, however, because of the way that Dr. Kane went about it, and there are some speculation as to whether or not Dr. Wily stole the designs of X and was using those designs to create Zero. I think it's pretty clear, based on, like, the fighting games and whatnot, that Dr. Wily is the creator of Zero. I think there's even flashbacks in Mega Man X4 and Mega Man X5 that actually confirm this. And so you have these two different, like, proto reploids, and all of the reploid designs are based on X. So that's where Sigma comes from, who was originally like a hero. And he would take out the different reploids that were going maverick or basically infested with this, you know, digital virus and whatnot. And that's what leads to the proliferation of the Maverick virus, because clearly Dr. Kane did not do his due diligence to make sure that whatever diagnostics were done to X to make sure he wouldn't go nuts is what eventually happened to all the Reploids that he based off of. So there's an interesting, interesting way of looking at this, honestly, because, you know, Zero is Wiley's final creation and X is Light's final creation, and they both basically meet up. X is seen as kind of, kind of a weakling in many ways, even though he is like the prototype. So you can see why he'd be considered such a weakling. And then Zero seems like this big giant hero, almost like this big classical mythological figure that X looks up to, but it's like it's the creations of a scientist and his rival who had spent many, many years fighting each other. It's an interesting idea of, like, Zero is redeemed over time based on his associations with X. But, you know, 10 dies in the first game. Spoilers if you haven't played the first game, but I assume you have, X is in charge of getting his body parts back in x2 in order to create, recreate 0 for x3. And it's, it's just really interesting. Like there's a lot of unintended consequences from that. The problem is that we don't really see what the interim period is because, like, There is the PlayStation Portable game Maverick Hunter X had a little, I think it's like a 20 minute anime short which talks a little bit about like, who x is, who 0 is, and who Sigma is, and how Sigma finally went to the dark side. Okay, that, that's cool, but there's never really been a clear cut, like here is exactly what happened. And unfortunately there probably won't be because there was a plan at one point. I believe it started about 2010, where there was this one game that was coming out. I think it was in China, but I can't remember. But it was an MMO called Rockman Online. And I very specifically remember seeing this trailer as a kid and I. I should have pulled it up and looked at it before I started recording the episode, but that's okay. I specifically remember seeing this like, anime trailer where you have X fighting all these like, you know, different robots and whatnot. But then the classic Mega man shows up. And the idea all those different teasers were showing were basically suggesting that classic Mega man would actually meet Mega Man X and that this would really bridge the two series together properly. Now, of course, it being an online, you know, MMO and all that, and I think it was even like marketed in Chinese, maybe Korean, but I'm pretty sure it was Chinese. This never came to fruition. And that's a real big bummer because it was canceled officially in 2013. And that's really too bad because this was like the only glimpse that we had into like, what if classic Mega man met X? But they never really did that, so it's a bummer. The idea was in many ways that there was this kind of cataclysmic moment that happened at the end of whatever classic series or a few like decades afterwards that caused Light and Wily and everything. Zero, like turns on Wiley and then eventually kills Light and all that. It's not really speculated. It's speculated on, but it's not really clearly cut out. I do remember that it's kind of funny. There was this Mega man sprite comic back in the early 2000s called Bob and George. And it was all humorous and it was just, you know, the prototypical sprite comic where, you know, the Mega man characters are just doing things like going through the games, but it's all comedic and everything. It was a fun little comic, you know, it had some pretty decent humor. But then the creator of Bob and George created these Flash movies that were called like the Cataclysm. And it was supposed to be a series of episodes showing you exactly what happened between the classic series and the X series. And he got people voice acting for it. It was all really nicely animated with sprites. And then it never got finished. But I do remember those being pretty interesting and like, sparking my imagination as to like, what that would have actually looked like between the classic and the X series. And I thought it was really interesting. So while there is no clear cut, like, this is exactly what happened between the two series, a lot of people have like taken the general idea of like, well, something clearly had to happen, some big giant disaster so that, you know, classic Mega man is no longer around and X, you know, he's kind of found in rubble. What happened there exactly? Some kind of disaster. And I think that's really cool. I think that really helps to again, spark my imagination. But again, no explicit, like showing as of now. I really hope that someday they'll take the ideas that they had for Rockman Online because they were developing them for years, even to the point where they had an animated trailer out. Like, what happened to those, like design documents? What happened to like whatever the story bible is and the lore that would be involved in that? I wish I had those documents in front of me, but in all my searching, I still haven't been able to find a lot on this other than just like, well, this is what they had planned. And unfortunately nothing. Nothing really happened. So there you go. To summarize, Mega man shows a lot of emotional growth in Mega Man 7. These alien threats with this new source of energy are introduced in Mega Man 8. Dr. Light creates X in response to these ideas of the regular Mega man gaining this emotions and the idea of robot evolution. He creates X to be autonomous, moral, and adaptable. X sleeps for a while getting diagnostics while humanity, you could say, advances, but maybe they kind of fall, who knows? And that the Reploids are eventually going to take over the planet in so many different ways. And then Zero somehow gets released at some point and they two become friends. So it's interesting. These two guys, their creations both probably meant them for like combating the other, but then they end up being friends. And that carries all the way up into the Zero games. And I would say even to an extent, the Mega Man Legends games kind of continue those threads, because if you try to figure out the timeline of Mega man, it's a bit wonky, but the idea is that the Legends games kind of take place, like, at the end of whatever canonical timeline there is. So it's. It's interesting. I find it interesting. I love Mega Man. While it may never be, like, fully spelled out by Capcom because they just don't like the Mega man series anymore, I think it's really interesting and it really represents this big philosophical shift, I think, between the classic series and the X series. Whereas the classic series seems to be more like, happy, go, lucky kind of asteroid Astro Boy. Like, a little dark at times, but ultimately optimistic. The. The way the world is depicted in Mega Man X is pretty dark. Like, it's pretty dreary. And there's not a lot of hope or optimism. So I don't know if they ever do bridge that gap. I'd look forward to seeing, like, what they actually do. But thank you for listening. If you like this little historical deep dive, or, you know, I guess it's more of a shallow dive, but this historical dive into the bridging between the classic series and the X series for Mega man, let me know what you thought. That's pretty much all I gotta say. Keep listening to the Backlog Breakdown. I don't remember their sign off exactly. It's. It's a little bit convoluted for me to remember. But, yeah, if you enjoy what I do, I sometimes do a podcast called Retronim. Right now, I don't really do the henchin dad stuff anymore, but Retronim, you can find that. R E T R O N I M. I think I got about 50 episodes out there. I'd like to do a few more if I can, but I had to do this for the boys at the Backlog Breakdown, the Triple B themselves, because they covered a great game. I wish I had been invited onto this because I think I could have added a lot to the conversation. Hint, hint. But you know, that's okay. That's okay. All right. Keep breaking down your beating down your. Okay. Keep beating down your backlogs. They'll keep breaking down the benefits. Yeah, yeah, got it.