The Mega Man X series holds a special place in the hearts of many, with fans from all over the world hoping it will one day return. While Capcom themselves have remained silent on the matter, one group of fans is now making their dreams a reality with Mega Man X: Reminiscence—an ambitious fan-game players will not want to overlook.
But what is Mega Man X: Reminiscence exactly, and what makes the Mega Man X series so special? Well, we here at Netto's Game Room spoke with the developers of Reminiscence to get a bit more of an inside look at the title, but for those not familiar with the series, here's a quick run-down of its history.
A Quick History of Mega Man X:
Building upon the gameplay established by the classic series on NES, Mega Man X took advantage of the new SNES hardware by not only featuring a major graphical overhaul but also by including new mechanics and a wider range of movement options. Dashing and wall jumping became key to survival, and over the years the series continued to evolve in new ways.
New armor sets for X granted him different powers and abilities, new playable characters such as the melee-focused Zero and the transforming Axl, and of course, eight unique special weapons from the bosses featured in each game. Of course, not every entry in the series is beloved by all, but its popularity is what eventually led to the Mega Man Zero series, its follow-up Mega Man ZX, and even the spiritual successor Azure Striker Gunvolt.
That being said, it has been a long time since Capcom has released a new title. Mega Man X8 launched in December of 2004 in the US, and the RPG side game Mega Man X: Command Mission hit store shelves earlier the same year. A remake of Mega Man X titled Maverick Hunter X came out exclusively on the PSP in 2006, with the Mega Man X Collection appearing on GameCube and PlayStation 2. The X Legacy Collections (1 & 2) would come to modern hardware in 2018, with the series also releasing games individually across Nintendo's Virtual Console and PlayStation's PSOne Classics on PSP and PlayStation 3.
Thanks to all of these releases, the series is easily accessible; however, fans still want something new. Although Mega Man X Dive released on mobile and PC, with an offline version later arriving in 2023, it was a unique case. Taking place within a virtual world created using the data of the Mega Man video games themselves, it was a crossover title that featured popular characters throughout the entire series. While it retained much of the Mega Man X playstyle, it utilized the auto-lock-on shooting seen in Mega Man X7 and made other adjustments to account for being a mobile title. Although the game has been well-received and has an active fan modding community on PC, it still isn't quite the same core experience fans have come to expect.
With Capcom continuing to be silent on the series' future, one group of fans has now taken it upon themselves to follow in their footsteps and release a Mega Man X title of their own.
This is Mega Man X: Reminiscence
Mega Man X: Reminiscence is an upcoming fan game by developer Layson and his team of passionate fans. The title sets out to capture the classic 2D gameplay style of the official titles, while also modernizing it for today's audience. It borrows influences from throughout the entire X series, and from other popular 2D action games— creating a fresh and unique take, that still feels at home within the series. Featuring smooth animations, and a great attention to detail, it is a passion project that has gone far and beyond that of being a "simple fan game," and that is precisely why we here at Netto's Game Room wanted to reach out to learn more.
Hello, and thank you for taking the time to speak with me! My name is Ben, and I'm one of the co-founders of our gaming site Netto's Game Room. To start things off, could you tell us a little about yourself?
First of all, I'd like to thank you very much for the invitation. It's rewarding to know that our project has caught your attention. So, thank you very much for the invitation.
My name is Layson, and I'm the creator and developer of MMX Reminiscence. I've been a huge Mega Man fan my entire life; I've had many moments where those games were present, and they ended up meaning a great deal to me.
So this is honestly something very different for us. We typically avoid talking about fan games, but I've personally followed your title for a little over a year. Maybe closer to two? How long has it been in development?
MMXR is been in development for 3 years now (it completed 3 years in October).
Now I want to stress this for the readers, but this is in fact a fan game, and not an official title by Capcom. That being said, its quality is outstanding, and it is clear how much love you have poured into this project! In fact, the animations alone go far and beyond what we've seen in official 2D Mega Man titles to date. Could you tell us a little more about them? What inspired you to get this detailed?
To be totally honest, this level of quality is somewhat recent and was only possible thanks to the artists who collaborated on the project (Artur, Sooj, Dink, Midas, Hi-Go!, AlyssonDaPaz, etc). Initially, our plan was to make something strongly inspired by the SNES. Over time, incredible artists began to collaborate on the project, and the possibility arose to migrate to this new style. It wasn't something that happened overnight; we had around 4 major changes, and numerous small ones, to reach the current state.
The spritework for the title is also unique, and seems to call back to not just the classic 2D days, but also to the 3D entries such as Mega Man X8. Was it a challenge to balance the iconic X designs, while also creating your own style?
Our style was an attempt to adapt what we saw in X8 with Tatsuya Yoshikawa. He designed everything knowing it would be used in a 3D game, so adapting it to Pixel Art was quite laborious. It was difficult to translate the details without making the pixel art messy, so in the end we tried to balance, removing some details (like body lines), but we emphasized others, such as X's helmet gem. Unfortunately, we even had to scrap some armor concepts due to the amount of detail, which became almost impossible to translate into pixel art without losing their entire identity (I still get sad when I remember they were scrapped; this is the first time we are showing these concepts publicly).
These concepts were made by Hi-Go!
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When it comes to the general gameplay, Reminiscence does mirror the official X titles. It is a 2D action platformer, X uses ranged attacks, Zero is your up close and personal fighter, and the classic abilities such as dashing, wall jumping, etc are all here. However, you've further expanded upon this gameplay by not only refining it, but by also bringing in your own set of moves, abilities, and mechanics. Could you tell us a little more these additions?
Of course. Besides our project being strongly inspired by Mega Man 8, Mega Man X, Zero, and ZX, we brought in new elements to refine the gameplay, which is essentially a 'Skill System.' It's the same kind present in Action RPG games.
The inspiration came from games like Elsword, Grand Chase, and the canceled Rockman Online.
In short, we just call it the Skill System. The best way to describe it is that it replaces what other games call the 'Giga Attack.' So now, each character will have up to 18 different Skills at their disposal, which will be available through a Skill Tree, and they can equip a maximum of 4 Skills at a time.
These Skills are unlocked progressively—by defeating bosses, unlocking armors, and so on. However, all characters start with 2 initial skills.
I also think it's worth mentioning that we will have 3 different types of skills:
- Active Skills: These will be skills with a low energy cost and a short cooldown. They might cause low damage to enemies or be related to movement (like X's slide skill, which is now a skill that can cause knockback on enemies, keeping them at a safe distance for X to shoot).
- Special Active Skills: These are skills with a high energy cost and a long cooldown. They will be stronger skills, typically used to clear many enemies in an area or to cause high damage to a single target.
- Hyper Active Skills: These skills will be the pinnacle for each character and are only unlocked under specific conditions, like equipping all parts of a single armor set. However, they can only be used once per stage, so the player will have to plan carefully before using it.
I personally love the character swapping first introduced in Mega Man X3, but eventually integrated into the games as a core feature in Mega Man X7. While it allowed you to generally play stages from start to finish with your favorite characters, sometimes swapping made your life easier simply because another character was more fit to handle the current situation. Is this something we can expect from Reminiscence as well?
Definitely. We are working on the level design keeping in mind that the player will always have two characters (they can be a bit of a masochist and play with just one, but that becomes their choice). We even implemented a way for the player to recover a character if they die during the stage.
So, we will have sections in the stage that are planned precisely for you to play around with this swapping, whether it's for the better mobility of Zero or Bass, or for X's brute force. We will encourage the player to use both equipped characters.
The only thing we made a point to implement is a cooldown system between character swaps, so the player has to wait 5 seconds between each swap; This is a way to make the swap a truly important decision. (this time can be reduced with some chip upgrades)
Speaking of the characters—Both X and Zero are playable here, but you've also teased other characters such as Layer. Will they be playable too? And if so, will they be unique, or sprite swaps for the main leads? (Which is something we saw in Mega Man X8.)
The Layer screenshot was just an inside joke; the navigators will not be playable.
The playable characters will be X, Zero, and Bass (the same Bass seen in the classic games but with a new gameplay).
Without spoiling too much, how many main stages are currently planned for the title? Will we be following the standard Intro Stage, Eight Mavericks, and multiple Final Boss Stage format? Possibly with interlude stages? Or will the game feature a different structure of its own? And if it follows a similar format, will "recommended boss order" still be a thing?
We will follow the standard format, as you mentioned. We will have some new features, like Intermissions similar to X8, but nothing beyond that. We will also follow what MMZ3 did, with a fully explorable command base and NPCs to interact with.
The next question is from my co-worker Jonsku: How hard is it to balance making something new for a beloved character while also balancing that you don’t lose what made that character and their game series special? I can imagine it could be a bit nerve wracking with a lot of expectations on both you as a creator from others, and as a fan yourself. How do you handle that?
It's very difficult. I'm always apprehensive when implementing any new type of ability because I worry that the character might lose their defining characteristics. Our current focus is to implement abilities and movements that we are already familiar with from somewhere, just with a slight adaptation (like Copy X's dash, which is reminiscent of classic Mega Man's slide). So, although it's new, the player will still have a feeling of déjà vu or something similar.
We are in a relatively early phase of development. We will almost certainly have many completely new things, but only after we are sure that it's something this character would actually do.
Developing a fan game is not an easy job in the slightest. While you have a concept in an established world to begin with, every aspect of the game still needs to be hand crafted and designed. What inspired you to create a fan game for Mega Man X, rather than developing your own original IP with similar gameplay?
The initial motivation was a matter of study. Although I currently work actively as a Mobile Developer, I had never had the experience of developing games before.
So, I came to the conclusion that starting with something where I already know the ecosystem very well would make this process easier. This is my first project related to gamedev.
Following the release of Reminiscence, would you like to create your own original title? Of course getting into the indie business is a challenge on its own (we receive hundreds of indie game press releases each week) but you've already gained quite the following within the Mega Man fan community. Not saying it would be any easier releasing your own IP, but just curious if it is something you've ever considered.
It has crossed my mind a few times; I can't say I haven't considered it at some point. But I feel I'm not ready for something like that yet. Reminiscence is only possible thanks to the team as a whole. Maybe I'll change my mind in the future, but for now, I prefer to keep this as a hobby.
And on the fan game front with Capcom. Have you thought about approaching them with your game once it is finished? Capcom's official policies state fans are free to create such content, but obviously you have to reference their original intellectual property, give credit to Capcom, and obviously you cannot sell or make a profit off of the game. However Capcom themselves have officially supported fan projects in the past, and released them as a free download. Our website Netto's Game Room was originally hosted on Capcom's Capcom-Unity (which gave users the ability to create their own blogs and communities), and I still remember when they released Street Fighter X Mega Man for the site's members to download. They stated it perfectly captured what made a Mega Man title a Mega Man title, and they wanted the world to play it. Do you think this could ever be a possibility with Reminiscence?
At first, I didn't plan to present it to them. It would be very gratifying if they recognized Mega Man X Reminiscence, but I have some fear about how much creative freedom would be affected. I mean, they would have the right to ask for any changes whatsoever, since we are doing work using their IP, even if it's non-profit.
So, the possibility of not being able to follow through with everything we have planned scares me a little. But if the adjustments didn't affect that, I would make a point of presenting it to them.
Is there any advice you would like to give others who wish to begin developing their own fan game, or game in general? Anything you wish you knew before you got started?
Define your scope well and really plan before you start. Unfortunately, the number of canceled Mega Man X fan games is countless, and I imagine this must also happen with some indie games.
Whenever we start something new, our motivation is at its peak; we try to implement everything and then some, wanting to make the biggest and best game in the world. But when we start to really understand the proportion of work required for something that big, it tends to frustrate us. And it's at that moment that projects get canceled.
So, start calmly, without rushing. Make the game work in a simple way initially. Then, start implementing the features you'd like, one at a time. The process becomes much less grueling and more rewarding.
For the final question, we typically like to ask something just for fun. So in this case... What is your favorite Mega Man X title? I personally grew up playing the original X almost daily, and it was the sole reason I wanted a PlayStation Portable for the remake. X5 also holds a special place in my heart—but what about you?
X8, obviously, haha. Only God knows how much I searched for that game daily on the internet when I was around 10 years old. Unfortunately, I couldn't afford a PS2, so my only alternative was to search for it relentlessly on the internet (please, don't do it). I literally had scheduled times during the day when I would search for it on Google, going page by page, to the point where I ran out of Google pages, haha.
It wasn't that easy to find something like that back then.
The day I finally found it was the happiest day of my life.
For more on Mega Man X: Reminiscence, you can head on over to the official website to keep up with the latest news updates.
You can also check out the Original Soundtrack playlist on YouTube—featuring songs composed for Reminiscence.
And finally, feel free to follow the project via its socials, and show your support:
Discord: https://discord.gg/
X: https://x.com/remini_team
Youtube: https://www.youtube.
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