Insane Difficulty: Mega Man X Easy/Modern Type? - Insane Difficulty

First I'd want to thank Hart-Hunt or this AWESOME mod. Been playing it on an SD2SNES and it has been a blast. Love the level design, love the new features. Hard Type is a must-play for any fan of the series.

Now, onto the real subject. As you might have noticed, I'm a big fan of the MMX series. My girlfriend also plays videogames, but when it comes to retrogames, she usually prefers JRPGs. I enjoy introducing her to some of my favorite oldies. She absolutely loved Castlevania SOTN, for example. But when it comes to Mega Man... I've tried many games, but she just can't seem to dig it.

By observing her play, I started seeing the game from another perspective. I always held MMX1 as the holy grail of 2D action game design, and being so used to the game, it was hard for me to have an "impartial" take on its qualities and flaws. But when she harshly dropped game after game of the series without looking back, I started to realize what her problem (and that of many other players) was with these games.

IMO, what makes MMX a great game is not just the challenge. TBH, after getting used to these games, they aren't even that hard. What I like about them the most is the sense of discovery and mastery they provide. That and the upbeat atmosphere, great soundtrack and nice looking aesthetics. However, for many players, some frustrating design decisions hinder any possibility of engaging more deeply in the experience.

For my girlfriend, it was mostly the lives system. Modern games have abandoned "Lives systems" for a long time now (I'm not counting the mobile "pay or share to continue playing" kind of lives system), and that's because they add very little to the experience. After stressfully conquering checkpoints throughout the level, she would get to the boss, only to get beaten while still learning its patterns and having to redo do whole thing. That's usually where she quit the game.

I couldn't blame her. Yes, MMX is cool. There are many other cool games out there. There's little time to play all of them. Why should she bother playing through the entire stage she just beat all over again, just because an arbitrary lives system was in place? Ain't nobody got time for that.

That made me realize that having infinite lives actually makes the game a much better first time experience for many players. Ok, trying to beat it while dying just three times is a good challenge. While you're at it, you can try a one life challenge. Or maybe a no-damage run. These are all challenging and enjoyable scenarios to try for extra challenge. But for the default game, limited lives actually don't contribute to the experience in any meaningful way. Especially when you can farm life drops from enemies and have 10 lifes after some tedious grind.

I found out about Mega Man X Hard Type while looking around for a romhack that changes "outdated" design decisions such as the limited lives system. Much to my delight, that's not the only thing it fixes. Many other inconvenient design decisions are changed, such as:

> Being able to exit the stage before you beat it. That goes hand in hand with the lives system. If a player wants to exit a stage, he has to suicide multiple times. That's very inconvenient. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to just quickly exit the stage through the menu instead of suiciding multiple times.

> Autocharge without holding Y. This one is controversial... IMO, there's no good reason not to charge your weapon most of the time. New players have a hard time with the game's controls, having to charge, dash and jump at the same time. Other games of the series introduced "Autocharge" as either an option (MMX6 comes to mind) or an equippable upgrade. Having the option to not have to hold Y to charge would make the game much more comfortable to control for many players. Hard Type unfortunately doesn't implement this, and I doubt it would be easy to do.

> Special weapon ammo refill on death. Wanna know who likes to replay an entire stage just because they had one bad boss attempt and wasted all their ammo? Nobody. This inconvenience is fixed on Hard Type as well.

All of that lead me to wish there was an even "Softer" mod than "Soft Type". One that implemented the convenience features without upping the difficulty. Call it "Easy Type", "Modern Type", "Mega Man X 2016" or whatever you like.

If "Soft Type" is intended as an intermediary between Vanilla and Hard Type, a way to convince Vanilla players to eventually try out Hard Type, then this new mod could be a way to introduce completely new audiences to MMX. By eliminating key points of "friction" from the games' design, you'd make it far less likely for a new player to drop it before they actually get addicted to the game.

Does this resonate with anyone? I know it's probably a bad idea to suggest such a thing in a site called "Insane Difficulty", but I guess it doesn't hurt to try.

Great review. While I can't speak to Hart's desire to work on the items you specify ID does have a number of non-hardtype mods. And generally we're reasonable people who like well thought-out suggestions like yours. Thanks for sharing, and welcome!

PS If your girlfriend likes JRPGs you should definitely check out the relevant mods hosted here.

Hey there, nice post.

From what I can tell, Soft Type is like... 90% of what you suggest. original's level designs, exiting levels, infinite lives, ammo refill after death, all of it except for autocharge. There's also a few changes added on top of it so it's actually not easier than vanilla, but the core gameplay changes you suggest are there.

Auto-Charge could be implemented somehow in the newer projects I intend on doing. With a tweak for both worlds to co-exist: Auto-Charge would activate after not pressing shoot for X amount of frames. That wait, players can use the buster normally, and if they don't use it for a while, it charges automatically. Also, auto-charge would only work for the buster.

Hell, it'd make a great addition for one of the less worth upgrades. I like it.

Bishop, on 17 July 2016 - 09:47 AM, said:

Thanks! I'll definitely show her. She probably wouldn't really care for the increased difficulty ones, but the ones with story and mechanic changes might interest her

Hart-Hunt, on 19 July 2016 - 06:13 AM, said:

I actually didn't expect you to reply to this random wall of text, so thank you!

Yeah, Soft Type does make the game much more convenient. It does make it harder, though, so in presenting the game to a newcomer you kinda have to choose between an easier, but inconvenient game that might make one quit because of its inconvenience, or a harder game that might make one quit just because of the difficulty. For my gf's case (and that of other possible complete newcomers), I guess the ideal would be vanilla stats/AI with just the convenience changes from Hard/Soft type. If I knew anything about assembly at all I'd do it myself. How much time do you think it'd take a complete beginner to learn and make such a mod? Could be a fun challenge.

About auto-charge, I'm glad you liked the suggestion. It's actually not my idea. As I've said, other games in the series do have it. Mega Man X6 has it as an option in the options menu, Megaman and Bass has it as an equippable part. Mega Man Xtreme has both AutoCharge and Rapid Fire as menu options. Enabling both makes it so that holding the fire button shoots continuously (while respect on-screen bullet limitations), and not holding anything starts charging automatically, so the first shot of your next button press/hold comes out charged if you stop rapid firing for a while.

Adding it as a feature from a body part upgrade could be fun. Wouldn't some players be annoyed by the constant charge, though? I wonder...

Violet Lee, on 19 July 2016 - 12:50 PM, said:

Welcome to the forums! Hart's not the type to ignore somebody posting a long comment about his mod (few of us are).

Violet Lee, on 19 July 2016 - 12:50 PM, said:

Personally, I think I'd be in that camp. I tend to hold down the button almost always without thinking about it anyways, probably because I use the same button as the run button in Mario games and I'm always holding that down as well. I feel like it would just weird me out if the blaster started charging on the odd occasion when I'm concentrating on something else. Also, it could be a hindrance when fighting Armored Armadillo, since he counters the charged shots.

Agreed. However, I'm still intrigued about how it'd work. What I can do is try to implement it as a switch function, but that'd be a huge longshot. I don't promise anything on this one. And it will be something I'll do in the future, once my annouced projects have taken a long step forward.

Yeah, the infinite lives goes a long way. Also MegaMan HardType was what exposed that my controller just sucks ass so I bought a new one. I'll probably start playing it again after I finish some of the other games I'm playing right now.

Off topic here, but it sounds like you should introduce her to FFVI: Brave New World. It IS harder than vanilla due to balance changes, but not a difficulty hack per se and if she enjoys improved game mechanic changes, then that is where she'll find one of the most polished mods out there. It's basically vanilla FFVI with the story intact, with minor dialogue changes and a massive over-haul of the game mechanics to make the game more balanced. True story.