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The Nintendo GameBoy is everybody’s favorite, light, portable, gray brick from the late 80’s and early 90’s. The GameBoy is notable for many things: bringing handheld gaming to the masses, making Tetris a video game staple and, perhaps most importantly, beating back what seemed like superior competition. However, the GameBoy had lots of help against its competitors and that help often came from those competitors’s shortsightedness.
Over the years and in the late 90’s/early 2000’s the GameBoy would see a few tweaks and revisions. The first major overhaul I remember was the GameBoy Pocket which was a lot more sleek, compact and economical than the original. Add in a much better screen – gone was the green on green hues the system was known for – and you had an obvious winner. Then there was the GameBoy Color which added a dash of color to the games which was previously only available through the Super Game Boy but in a much more limited way. Still, the advent and rise of the original PlayStation pretty much saw to the unintentional end of my interest in handheld gaming. There was no clear cut decree that I was uninterested, it’s just the kind of thing that happens when a console packing an awesome assortment of titles comes around.
History aside, where does Mega Man Xtreme come into play? Well, Xtreme was more or less born on the edge of the GameBoy/GameBoy Color handoff. The game is fully playable on the original GameBoy (in back in white or green on green) but was designed to take advantage of the advancements of the GameBoy Color. As a Mega Man X fan, a copy of Xtreme (and by extension Xtreme 2) are items I’ve always wanted to add to my collection despite the fact neither game really adds much to the series (now extremely fudged-up) story line. But in reality, while Mega Man Xtreme’s story isn’t one for the ages (despite it being specific to this entry) the story is one of the more notable aspects of the game since the parts you get to play are generally recycled from Mega Man X and X2.
So if Mega Man Xtreme is mostly retread why play it? Well, good point, but the fact is while Xtreme is retread it’s extremely well done retread. The game is obviously limited being a GameBoy game (the way the road falls down in the intro level “Awakening Road” is pretty pathetic) but beyond such trivial matters the game brings the goods. The revived mavericks from the first two games retain an impressive amount of animation and have all the attacks you know, love and possibly despise. The music is a faithful 8-bit take on the iconic 16-bit tunes that powered the SNES games and even the level designs are pretty close to the originals.
Still, out of all areas concerned it’s rather surprising how the animation of the characters and enemies stands out. There are even small touches that aren’t present in the originals like how X’s leg bobs when sliding down a wall or how X exposes the palms of his hands when decelerating at the end of a dash. My favorite touch has to be how X beams into a stage as it’s a step-by-step recreation of how this occurs in Mega Man X4, X5 and X6 but with Mega Man X1, X2 and X3’s sprites. Clever as the little moments are however the real surprise is how well the game manages its on-screen real estate. If you’ve played any of the previous Mega Man games on the GameBoy you know that the environments are little more compact because Mega Man’s sprite takes up more space on the screen than it does on the NES. Xtreme forgoes this convention because it has to; boss characters are generally larger than X in most cases. You might worry about controlling a smaller character but you shouldn’t since Xtreme handles this very well. Along with this attention to detail are the controls. Once you get the dash upgrade all your forward jumps off walls are automatically super-charged to make up for the fact it would be impossible to hit dash and jump simultaneously due to the control setup. There’s also an auto charge and auto fire option that helps your thumb from becoming sore.
Unfortunately, while the above is more than adequate for 99% of the game, there are times where things fall apart. The big offender is the game’s final battle - which is a reprise of the last fight in Mega Man X – that is simply a nightmare on a small screen. There simply isn’t enough room for this fight to play out as intended and if it wasn’t for the fact there is an easy way to cheese your way through it would hamper what is an otherwise fine game. Why? If you run out of lives fighting this monstrosity you’ll have to fight the previous five bosses just to get another crack at it. The auto save feature helps a little but you obviously can’t rely on it every time since it’s deleted when it’s loaded. The truth is the end of the game needs to be broken up into more levels.
Story wise, Xtreme contains many parallels to Mega Man X4. There’s a large amount of pathos near the end of the story that’s once again tied to the fates of characters specific to this title. That’s okay in and of itself but unlike the tragic characters in X4 you won’t remember those from Xtreme nearly as long. Additionally, the events that play out in this game are never referenced in any other game unlike Xtreme 2 which gets a quick nod in Mega Man X6. The narrative runs into a few other issues that are exacerbated by necessary evils. There are a few times where the writing feels stilted, but considering it was probably difficult to squeeze the English translation in place of the original Japanese it’s forgivable – it’s not like the lack of English voice acting or proof reading in Mega Man X6 or the lack of emotion in X7’s voice actors – things that really were insults and should have received more attention. The other problem is when the game fails to amend important plot points graphically. This being the GameBoy color I’m not expecting much as far as fireworks go, but there are a few times where even a slight change would make certain moments clearer.
Bad points aside however, Mega Man Xtreme is a solid cart to add to any expanding GameBoy collection. Again, there is a great amount of retread here, but when isn’t there retread in a Mega Man game? It’s true that it’s one of the less important pieces of the Mega Man X saga but is an interesting side note to the more prominent console releases. If you’re into Mega Man you’re probably already sold on the game despite what I’ve said but if I can give you any advice it would be not to fork over too much for it if you find it. It’s a curious item and it’s more than playable but it will be far from being the centerpiece of anybody’s collection.
7/10
