Cole but Yeah.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, it takes a while to settle into stuff. I just hit go on the recording by the way, but um no, I'll trim off whatever.
Cole Yeah, I, I, I saw that. It was like, oh no. Oh no, I'm good.
Andrew Pinkston I will have to massage it either way.
Cole Okay, cool. Anyway, fuck this guy.
Andrew Pinkston so
Cole Am I right, Zach?
Andrew Pinkston i hate I hate this guy. Let's go home. zach Oh yeah, I'm in the room with him. I got to play cool. I feel like I should play the Beach Boys song right now. like God only knows what I'd be without you.
Andrew Pinkston All right, Cole, we're doing Mega Man again. At least you're gonna.
Cole We're doing, yeah, yeah.
Andrew Pinkston Are we out of Mega Man content?
Cole um
Andrew Pinkston No, we have more to tap into, apparently.
Cole Never. um Not factoring in the lack of Mega Man content for probably, oh god, the last game was Mega Man 11. I think that was 2018 or something, and that was Mega Man Classic.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, wow.
Cole um we we basically haven't had any main title Mega Man games for years. And everyone's like, hey, give me more Mega Man, but then all these people left the company and all this other stuff. So everyone has to basically ride that nostalgia train until infinity. um So we're going to go back to the Game Boy Advance era again.
Cole because ah they were like, Capcom's like, hey, you know what? Mega Man's so great. Let's do two Mega Man games on the Game Boy Advance at the same time.
Andrew Pinkston Cheese.
Cole So we got Mega Man Battle Network, which, hey, you know, if you haven't listened to that one, go listen to that episode.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole um Because that was the that was the series where that was the ah Thomas Light ah has sex ah timeline, and this is the ah
Andrew Pinkston Virgin.
Cole This is the Virgin Thomas Lite timeline, which has, but it turns out, much more disastrous consequences than ever thought.
Andrew Pinkston Okay, ah can we orient ourselves around the different compartments or silos of Mega Man franchise? So let me let me check my my knowledge with you really quick, cool.
Andrew Pinkston So we've got Mega Man Classic that came out for the Nintendo, original Nintendo.
Cole Yeah, the original NES, yeah.
Andrew Pinkston Zurko way back, I don't know when specifically. ah It got up to Mega Man, what, how many came out?
Cole So not count not factoring in spin-offs, remakes, or anything like that, there is Mega Man 1 through 11.
Andrew Pinkston jeez on the n nes yeah i feel like that's i think i think you're right i think it's like
Cole Oh, sorry, wait, NES. Um, that, I think it got to, what was it, like seven?
Cole One through six. It was one through six because when Mega Man 7 came out, it had a graphical overhaul to be on the Super Nintendo or like whatever other system it came out on.
Cole So it couldn't operate on the n NES.
Andrew Pinkston Okay, then there's Mega Man X.
Cole Yes.
Andrew Pinkston not Not saying X as in Roman numeral 10, but actual X, different character, different Mega Man that I think takes place ah significantly forward in the time of things from the story.
Cole Yes.
Cole Right, ill I'll go over some of the details of the chronological stuff of this because it does pertain to it, but yeah, yeah.
Andrew Pinkston Okay, okay. slow down we're just check We're just checking my understanding, that's all, okay? Then there's Mega Man Zero that I think happens in the same timeline, and that's even further forward than X.
Cole Like a couple hundred years.
Andrew Pinkston Okay, just a couple hundred years, whatever. like You know, but difference of a bronze age and industrial evolution, but whatever. So you got Mega Man Zero. And then you've got a completely different timeline that we've already discussed, which is the Mega Man Battle Network timeline in which I guess Baro never, or does get laid.
Andrew Pinkston And that's a whole other timeline, like kind of like, kind of like, uh,
Cole Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Pinkston Is there anything like that? Is there anything that hinges on somebody you have back to the future?
Cole Like a pivotal, a pivotal moment.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole ah Who knew that the coin flip was literally determined by if a man was able to get laid or not.
Andrew Pinkston Adam and Eve.
Cole Did he have enough Riz? You know?
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole My god.
Andrew Pinkston Is that all of it, Cole? Those three?
Cole Um, so, um, there are, there are a few sort of Mega Man spinoff games.
Andrew Pinkston Or four?
Cole Um, yeah, like as it turns out, Mega Man Battle Network has its own timeline because it had its own sequel, which factored in space.
Andrew Pinkston Oh no, there's more of them.
Cole Um, and as in like outer space with like aliens and shit.
Andrew Pinkston This is in, like, outer space?
Andrew Pinkston Okay. Wow. I didn't know that.
Cole Yeah, ah that those ones came out on the on the on the DS there. I'm trying to think. And then um I remember mentioned I mentioned it last time because there was um there' that Mega Man that was released on the PS1, which as it turns out is also a distant future of the classic series as it turns out.
Andrew Pinkston What Mega Man's at? Because the one I'm thinking of is Mega Man X4 on PS1.
Cole Well, Mega Man Legends is actually the distant future.
Andrew Pinkston a Okay.
Cole So, yeah, we are...
Andrew Pinkston All right. i thought it was I thought it was simple, but it's not. I thought it was...
Cole No, there as it turns out, there are many Mega Man and there are many continuities, but but let's let's not get super nitty gritty about it, because we're we're talking about Mega Man Zero today, and that's at least pretty straightforward.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Andrew Pinkston All right. Okay. Kick it off, dude. Take us in.
Cole ah So anyway, so Dr. Thomas Light and Dr. Albert Wiley were two robotic scientists ah in the years of 20XX because they kind of just don't really give you a determinate date.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole um So these two guys are the the foremost leading experts of robotics.
Andrew Pinkston Sure.
Andrew Pinkston We'll see 2007.
Cole Sure, you know, it's ah it's a retro futuristic version, like we wish we had robots in 2007. The goals of these two men, of course, were to create robots that could integrate in society and complete jobs that the average person wouldn't be able to do.
Cole So, you know, despite.
Andrew Pinkston all of who the
Cole Yeah. you know, Elon Musk wishes, you know. um but so so But the two of them, of course, despite how brilliant they are, it clearly shows that Thomas Light is a much more superior and successful roboticist. So um Albert Wiley gets a little... ah an inferiority complex and decides to just go fucking crazy um and attempts to take over the world to prove his genius by taking robots Light already made or in some cases making his own and then causing Chex Notes 11 games worth of problems.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole um
Andrew Pinkston yeah Were they friends at some point or just?
Cole the It seems like they were friends and colleagues in their early years and one of the things that happened was that when they both proposed different technologies that would help bring robots
Andrew Pinkston Got it. Okay.
Cole further in development, Wiley was going the route of empowering them to grant them increased speed and strength, which could in theory be weaponized and was rejected.
Andrew Pinkston Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Cole While Thomas Light said, how about rather than just having robots be three laws compliant like Asimov's three laws of robotics, how about we give them free will and intelligence and the ability to make their own decisions?
Cole And that was the next step in robotics. So
Andrew Pinkston and Everyone accepted that? That sounds far more dangerous.
Cole Yes, as it turns out, after we by the time we hit Mega Man Zero era, it turns out to be a wild mistake.
Andrew Pinkston Okay, all right.
Cole Now, regardless of who did what and how long it went and how many games there were, the end result was was that these two guys were getting older. um By the time we get to see the two of them in action in Mega Man 1, they're about in their mid-50s at this point.
Andrew Pinkston Am I right?
Cole um And so while Dr. Light feels like he has reached the limits of what he's capable of doing in his current era and with Mega Man, he decides to start developing a next generation robot called X.
Cole um At this time, he realizes that if he wants to make the next best thing in terms of robotics, he needs to make sure that he stress tests the shit out of this thing before he even lets it out of the can.
Cole so
Andrew Pinkston All right.
Cole This is advanced hardware and software and AI development that will, as we will learn, goes on for over 200 years of operation. But he needs to put him in an augmented simulated reality for morality testing for the next 30 years.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole Now, he realizes, of course, he can't do it, so he also develops an AI system of himself that he'll be able to kind of put out into the world. That way, when X finds him in the future, he'll be able to give him upgrades and advice and so on, as if he was still alive.
Andrew Pinkston Because he's just gonna outlive his is going to outlive him at this stage.
Cole Oh, by multitudes of decades. Like, a couple centuries? No big deal. I'll see you there in spirit. So... Wily ah puts him in the fridge and says, all right, cool, see a sun and then dies.
Andrew Pinkston okay so Is all this going on during the Mega Man classic?
Cole This is going this is set effectively after the things that we see go on between Wily and Mega Man.
Andrew Pinkston Okay, okay.
Cole This is sort of the end of that.
Andrew Pinkston So, Wylie and Light's rivalry is the Mega Man classic saga, and Mega Man's just kind of what, like Light's instrument, Dr.
Cole Mm hmm.
Cole Yeah, and and every, ah you know, ah Thomas Light ends up making a bunch of the robots that are in society that we fight against, and then Wiley takes control of them because the only thing he's mostly good at doing is hijacking other people's stuff and improving on it.
Andrew Pinkston Light's instrument.
Andrew Pinkston Okay, okay.
Cole um Now, at the same time as as Light is making X, Wiley is also making his own machine, and he calls it zero.
Cole um
Andrew Pinkston Oh, shit.
Cole So, so when you're playing Mega Man X1 and you're in the intro level when X is running down the highway, going up against Vile and getting his fucking ass whipped and then Zero shows up?
Andrew Pinkston I didn't know that.
Andrew Pinkston Yes, dude.
Andrew Pinkston Is that the dude who looks like Boba Fett, but he's in like a Gundam?
Cole He's in a giant mech, yeah.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, the coolest character in that game.
Cole Yeah, um, Vi- uh, he- yeah.
Andrew Pinkston Is Vile, not Zero.
Cole So, Vile is the purple guy, Zero is the long-haired red guy.
Andrew Pinkston No, no, no, Vile. Yes. who fucking decks him. He shows up and like ripped his arm off.
Cole Yeah, he just shows up and one shots him.
Andrew Pinkston I'm not saying he's the most powerful. I'm just saying he's the coolest. All right, Zach. All right. You're right. You're right. You were recognized as the one who was right.
Cole So, but it establishes here that although Wiley wanted to make a robot that would compete against Light's creation, by the time we see them in X1 and as it goes through X1 through X6, they actually turn out to be incredibly good friends and allies, despite what they were originally created as.
Cole Now, obviously, something's going on with Zero by the time Wylie tries to let him out into the world. He is erratic, unstable, uncontrollable, and attacks anyone or anything.
Cole So Wylie has to shut his ass down and throw him in a pod and seal him away. And then Wylie dies, and then we fast forward about 100 years.
Andrew Pinkston This is zero, he goes like berserk or something.
Cole He goes berserk. From the get-go, something Wylie did or didn't do made Zero go batshit insane.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, interesting.
Cole um And so we Right so we so they see on the way we will now fast forward ah to the ah Very quickly and rapidly studied history of Mega Man X as done by me someone who has never played the X games so we will now go to the next part where Someone finds X sealed away in a rundown laboratory about a hundred years later
Andrew Pinkston When? Because he doesn't attack X in the game, does he? Okay.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole Dr. Kane takes the blueprints or copies or attempts to replicate X's robotic body, and he uses it as a template to create the next step of robotics, and these beings are called Reploids.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole They have advanced AI, they are free thinking, they have free will, um and they are more powerful than their older robotic counterparts from 100 years ago. It's also around this time that Zero also gets found by reploids who have begun to make their way throughout the world. They're obviously, you know, it's like they're the engineers, they're the workers and everything. This one guy, Sigma, finds Zero, sealed away and wakes him up, but Zero obviously goes on a berserker rampage and attacks everyone.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole Sigma takes Zero out by breaking a crystal that he has on his forehead, the giant triangular crystal on his forehead.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole But something happens in this encounter.
Andrew Pinkston Hmm.
Cole ah Zero functionally gets a reset from his berserk personality to the one that we get to see in the games, as someone who's a very controlled warrior, someone who's very powerful.
Cole Sigma gets a virus inside of him from this exchange.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, shit. Was it the virus that was making him crazy?
Cole and it was the virus that was making him crazy so
Andrew Pinkston Wow. whoa It's like 28 days later, but robot edition.
Cole So, so, Wiley may or may not have developed a virus or program inside Zero, but something about it was incompatible with his circuitry, and therefore, Wiley couldn't figure out the issue. But we fast forward, Sigma gets this virus, and then he not only goes crazy, he also starts spreading this virus around in the 21... 28 or whatever, you know, like in the future.
Cole And then it's at this point that any reploid that is being infected this with this virus that originated from zero, is are become becomes ah they're called mafrics because they are defying their programming and fighting against humanity and laying waste, everything.
Andrew Pinkston right They're going rogue, going maverick.
Cole Now, they're the enemies, yeah.
Andrew Pinkston yeah they're They're the enemies in the game. They're bosses. yeah They're like the bosses.
Cole So ah X, of course, once he finally awakens in this modern day era, ah joins what becomes like this organization that's called the Maverick Hunters.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole And Zero becomes a part of the organization because he's got his cool buster. And he's like, well, he doesn't know he's the start of it. No one figured out anything until like years later. But they're like, we're going to be part of the Maverick Hunters so we can fight against Mavericks and protect humanity.
Cole um But what ends up happening over the course of the X-Series is that not only do Zero's origins come to light about who and what he is, Sigma also just fucks up so much shit and he just doesn't fucking die.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole He... you fight him at the end of X1, and he c- Yeah,
Andrew Pinkston He's kind of an intimidating villain, dude. He's like Ganondorf. He's like a robotic Ganondorf. He's like a huge chin and shit. like he He's pretty intimidating.
Cole he's got the Giga Chad chin and...
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, I remember that. I was gonna say.
Cole So not not going into the nuances of, like, who are these characters in relation to each other and, like, what ends up happening, but the core of it, of course, is X and Zero having this initially friendly rivalry that eventually picks up into a necessary intervention of X having to put Zero down because the virus comes back to him um and all this other stuff.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, shit. whoa
Cole um But one key thing, of course, is despite everything that happens and everything to including like a charge counter attack level asteroid drop.
Andrew Pinkston Whoa. Hmm.
Cole Like, which actually, sorry, let me take that back.
Andrew Pinkston These.
Cole It's the equivalent of the the start of the year one war in Gundam by actually having something drop under Earth.
Andrew Pinkston Hmm.
Cole um And. ah Numerous things, of course, like this is literally
Andrew Pinkston You can't just say Gundam Wing, can you? You can't even do it.
Cole Yeah, I don't want to say it, but you know.
Andrew Pinkston That's how Gundam Wing starts. They drop a colony.
Cole Yeah, that's true. Just true. Fair enough. Fair enough. um
Andrew Pinkston After colony.
Cole so um Zero it during all this time despite the fact that he's being affected by this virus is still like a noble warrior and is clearly not what Wylie intended for him to be. And X continues to be the sort of paragon of virtue who wants to fight for the continued peace within the world just like Thomas Light trained him effectively to be within this 30-year ah morality testing.
Cole Um, we then, you know, they have their rivalry, they have their fight. Sigma finally gets properly defeated. And, um, eventually what ends up happening is studies are done on Zero's body and the virus that he created.
Cole And eventually they did find a cure for it.
Andrew Pinkston Mm hmm.
Cole Um, but as a trade-off, Zero said, I'm going to put myself away and seal myself to prevent any risk or chance of this virus coming back out. um So he puts himself to basically cryogenic sleep for an undisclosed amount of time. And X says, I will continue the fight and lead humanity on into the future, both humankind and reploid kind. As part of this, he creates this kind of like big huge cityscape utopia called Neo Arcadia that becomes like the main hub city, country of humanity and reploids.
Cole Also around this time, a big cataclysmic-like event, like apocalyptic level event, occurs. And we then fast forward to Mega Man Zero.
Cole um So this is where stuff's gonna get super freaking funky.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole Um, so that is the setup to this whole thing. Now let's go take a look at it from the game development side really quick. So Game Boy Advance games, you know, it's kind of crazy to have two, two, a company make two concurrent series around the same time.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole These four games came out around between 2002 and 2005. And the battle network was like, what was it? I said 2001 to 2006 or something.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole So.
Andrew Pinkston Well, we're talking about zero now, right?
Cole Yeah, we're talking about Mainmen Zero.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole So.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah. Cause X covers like super Nintendo PS one.
Cole um
Andrew Pinkston p s one and They had like anime and in it.
Cole One.
Andrew Pinkston I remember that like was the first time I had seen something like that.
Cole Yeah, they cut scenes and everything, yeah.
Andrew Pinkston Oh yeah. On a game. Right. It was like, this is a full fucking blown anime. Uh, zero like had a squeaky foot kind of like sell from dragon ball Z. Like when he would walk, he would make like a,
Cole Yeah, when he would move, yeah.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah yeah like I was dude it was sitting this is this was x4 so I beat x which was difficult I beat x4 and I beat x5 those are like the the three that I beat x5 being the hardest and playing is 0 and x4 and x5 was a tougher route like it's way easier to play as x than it is 0 Oh interesting
Cole Mm-hmm.
Cole Well, because you you get to play keep away with Exus Buster compared to getting in everyone's faces with Zero Z Saber.
Andrew Pinkston Exactly. Yeah. You have to get in melee, melee with everybody. Like he does a lot of damage, but the other thing is, is that he, it could be X five. He, he can't move and swipe at the same time.
Andrew Pinkston Like he has to like do a combo. Cole Mm-hmm.
Andrew Pinkston I think you can jump swipe, but like, if you're standing on the ground, he just felt way rigid, you know, like,
Cole Yeah, one of the one of the things that was obviously different was that we're a light-designed X to still have like the adaptability of Mega Man. So you beat all these bosses, you get their powers and everything.
Andrew Pinkston you pick up their gear yeah you get some kind of suit ye right Yeah, he's definitely, he's definitely the advanced player.
Cole Zero was just simply made of sterner stuff, stronger material, but the only thing he could do was learn techniques. So like you said, there was the combo system where you could sometimes do certain button inputs to do like an uppercut swing or a stabbing dive or stuff like that. So it was a little bit played quite a bit different.
Andrew Pinkston Because like me and Brad, my my brother would play it and he he loved zero, so he would like pick zero before I could get to it.
Cole Mm hmm.
Andrew Pinkston And I'd just be like cruising through levels, you know. I remember there was like this, there was an X5, I think, there was this boss that's like this ball of black goo that he's really tough like for the zero player because there's these cubes that fly from left to right in the boss room and you have to be like on point jumping between them, but it's all about boss order when you're talking X because he'll give you
Cole hu
Andrew Pinkston Like if you kill boss A, it'll give you the thing that that boss B is weak to. right because you Yeah, because you start out with this tile and you don't really know the right order of who you should be going after first.
Cole Yeah, and so on, yeah.
Andrew Pinkston Like you could just attack it randomly, but there's I think a right sequence of boss order that makes the game easier. But by the time you get to that black goo guy, it's kind of near the wind down of the game, right?
Andrew Pinkston Like the game's kind of winding down. It's not like one of the Mavericks on the tile but that intro screen.
Cole Yeah. Probably something in between the missions or something.
Andrew Pinkston i I don't remember what it was, but it was a suit that basically like made X look just like straight up like a ninja, like black and had like a mask and everything.
Cole yeah because because Yeah, because he also had all those adaptable armors and stuff.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, that's cool.
Cole Like he had the hyper armor and
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, and um looking he would shoot like shurukens or something and they would just shred these blocks out of the way.
Cole yeah
Andrew Pinkston So it was like this laughably easy boss for X, but my brother spent like two weeks on this thing with Zero, dude. So like if you pick Zero, you're you're signing up for like the tough, tough route and and those games when they're together, when you can be either or.
Andrew Pinkston I think they made an X6 and that's when they brought that annoying dude around.
Cole They did. so well they yeah so So this is where sort of like the dev stuff comes into play, right? um So around the time that Mega Man 01 was being developed, X6 was probably getting wrapped up or about to get shipped or whatever, and the intent was that X5 would be like the transition point to go into continuing to the Zero series.
Andrew Pinkston okay
Cole Unfortunately, as usual, the upper suits of Capcom were like, but mean we need to milk this fucking cow dry, baby, let's fucking do it.
Andrew Pinkston Okay No, we need another one baby
Andrew Pinkston X5 was good. That was a good game. X4 and 5 were so good.
Cole So KG Dafune was still kicking around and he was one of the lead producers at the time. And he was also an artist. Zero was actually his creation compared to like Mega Man. So he was like, cool.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, that's cool. Nice.
Cole So we're going to do these zero games. And they were like, you got to make X6. He's like, fuck. ah Sure. All right, whatever. So but how do you like, I already said that like Capcom already has like the A team and the B team when it comes to like game dev and stuff.
Cole and They're already doing, like, there's a team doing the Battle Network series, and now there's he needs this other team to do X6, so he's like, huh, what do I do?
Cole So, he reaches out, or they reach out, like, Capcom reaches out to a company that's called Indie Creates.
Andrew Pinkston so cool.
Cole um This was a company that was made by ex-CapCom employees in 1996 and they they are probably hands down one of the best side scroller game creators there is because they still kind of like make them today.
Cole It is tight tight controls.
Andrew Pinkston in
Cole um It's your side scrolling hack and slash jump and shoot like dream of of like platforming and everything. Um, so they they get to work and the again proof of concept mega min zero one comes out in 2002 and um It is A bit a little bit different and a little bit samey.
Cole They had to simplify some things because we're still working with the gameboy advance um, so you're not going to have the same sort of graphical fidelity of what uh, super dented or ps1 or whatever can handle so
Andrew Pinkston Yes, we're at the PS, like it says on on top of the PS1 generation at this point.
Cole yeah So they had to kind of ah redesign everything from the ground up and sort of graphically reimagine what these characters in Zero would look like.
Andrew Pinkston Yes.
Andrew Pinkston Yes, dude, they look so different.
Cole Um, Toru Nakayama, I think is his name. I'll have to look it up again soon. But he just gets to work. And I really like this dude's artwork. Like, I think he makes Zero looks completely lean, like futuristic, sleek.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole Like, this is the future that you would expect, you know? But it also translates super well to the sprites in the game because you need that thing to fit in that tiny little screen. You don't have the same real estate.
Cole um And that's just visually at the same time, um despite the fact that, like I said, the controls are tighter. like You can dash jump and dash slash, and you can wall jump and do all this other crazy stuff with zero.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, it's a game made for zero. like He's not a side act like alternate character.
Cole Yeah.
Cole No, I mean, like come on, he is basically, if I mean, X is the poster boy, but zero is just one step right behind him, you know? um
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, it's definitely a difference. like they're definite like The zero from X is definitely different than the zero same the zero from zero.
Cole Yeah. um Now, on top of this, you actually have an interchangeable weapon system in the background of this.
Andrew Pinkston oh that's cool
Cole ah Zero doesn't just have a Z-Saber. He also has a gun. He doesn't have a Z-Buster. It wasn't part of his, quote unquote, upgrade. But he does have a Buster. So you're able to have your sword and your Buster at the same time charge one of them.
Cole You can still charge your weapons with the B button or whatever your button attack button is. And then you can use one of your trigger buttons to charge your step weapon. So you'll always have something on the charge in the background while you're hacking and slashing your way through a level.
Andrew Pinkston Oh that's cool. Hmm.
Cole Um, depending on which game between one through four, you do get additional sub weapons. There's oftentimes a bouncing shield that can reflect pellets. Like if someone shoots their buster, you can block it.
Cole Um, there are certain rods that are able to like pogo off of stuff or chain, like hook onto stuff.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, cool.
Cole Um, and.
Andrew Pinkston It's like Hollow Knight kind of took that note from there for sure. Oh, yeah.
Cole yeah And um instead of a complex ah weapon A beats we ah beats boss C, and etc., because we're not playing as X, um there's a simplified elemental system, very similar to like what Mega Man Battle Network was doing.
Cole except it's centered around electricity, fire, and ice. And don't ask me how those three can relate like a rock, paper, scissors, wheel. Fire beats ice, ice beats lightning, lightning beats fire because I don't know, shut the fuck up.
Cole Um, but these three elements become the centerpieces of like the boss designs and the characters that are made and some of the characters that will go over in a bit about like who they are, why are they the way they are and so on.
Andrew Pinkston no
Cole So. But game development wise, they got to do it pretty quick and it creates, we're able to bust out these games super quick with, and they creates possibly some of the best narrative of any Mega Man game yet.
Cole It is.
Andrew Pinkston Okay, that's what we're here for then.
Cole So. outside of what Zero Can It Can't do in battle and like, I don't know, it's a side-scrolling Mega Man game.
Andrew Pinkston Isn't zero fucking hard though too? Like it is not an easy game.
Cole Oh, and this? Yes, and this is the thing. So not only is it a Mega Man game, and not only is this game Nintendo hard as the trope is called because some of these games tend to be mercilessly brutal.
Andrew Pinkston Oh yeah.
Cole Spikes, open pits, if you get hit like stunned off the side of the edge, you will fall and you will die, you'll lose a life, you'll restart the level kind of thing.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole um You have a life bar that's tiny, tiny.
Andrew Pinkston I remember being tough. I played zero and it was tough.
Cole And they also have a, they kind of effectively have a point system that ranks you whenever you complete a mission. um You get ranked S through F, if depending on how fast or ineffective and effective and how you are like, get through the level in a minute. Okay, cool. We'll rank you on that. How many enemies do you kill? How much damage do you take? g Did you find any collectibles? And then of course, do you use, um There's a system of things called cyber elves, which I'll go over in a bit later.
Cole But do you use these consumables in the mission, if you do, with dock points?
Andrew Pinkston Wow. Really?
Cole Yeah.
Andrew Pinkston Okay. I really don't want it to be easy.
Cole No, and... and and Well, um if if you...
Andrew Pinkston Do points do anything for you or is it just like a brag thing? Like can you cash in points for upgrades or?
Cole ah
Andrew Pinkston If you don't remember.
Cole depends and It depends on the game, but you do get to unlock ah certain techniques in later games. So a lot of Zero's moves that he had in X5 and everything, like the flaming uppercut, the blade wave or whatever, um that is affected by your score.
Andrew Pinkston Okay. Yeah.
Cole And if you do badly, you don't get the effect. And if you do super well, you do get the effect. It also unlocks like super moves from bosses, depending on the game.
Andrew Pinkston no
Cole so a sort of extra incentive to play super duper well. But if you're like an eight-year-old playing these games, you have no freaking idea what you're doing.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, yeah.
Cole You're flying around trying to survive. um So gameplay and all this other stuff aside, let's go right back into the setup, to the lore.
Andrew Pinkston All right.
Cole So as I had mentioned, X said he would become the leader of Neorakadia, the defender of humanity, and continue to fight because that's what he was programmed to do. And Zero's gone effectively at this point. We will go again forward another hundred years approximately. We're now in 22XX or whatever.
Cole Humans are continuously living in peace ah in Neo Arcadia, but Neo Arcadia is also the only place humans live. The rest of the planet at some point had effectively become inhospitable to them, like just isn't gonna work. And they're living the they're living in the lap of luxury. X is the best, coolest leader ever for humans, protecting them from everything, but there's a trade-off.
Cole Reploids are second-rate citizens, and they're being pushed to the brink ah because there's an energy crisis going on.
Andrew Pinkston No.
Andrew Pinkston Hmm.
Cole Whatever help fuels Reploids at this point in time, there isn't enough to go around.
Andrew Pinkston Gasoline.
Cole Gasol, yeah, we'll just yeah like make it steampunk or something. you know We'll figure it out. Problem solved. um So, X also, at the same time, is very quickly and casually calling any reploid a maverick and sentencing them to death.
Andrew Pinkston The hell's gone out? What the? Holy crap.
Cole so
Andrew Pinkston He's gone all like God Emperor of Dune on everybody.
Cole So... Yeah, dude, he just said, oh wait, you're eating too much of this of these E crystals that everyone needs?
Andrew Pinkston Straight to jail.
Cole Maverick. Can't kill him.
Andrew Pinkston and Whoa. Oh my gosh.
Cole So, what what are replays supposed to do?
Andrew Pinkston That's brutal.
Cole I mean, like, sure, you know, light said, let's give them free will and everything, but now X is going in full fascist mode, and replays are possibly at risk or on the brink, so what what are replays to do?
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole So, a certain subset of, quote unquote, Mavericks, who, you know, back then, were in during X times, like, there at least, but there was a virus or something.
Andrew Pinkston Right, there's a reason they're going berserk. like it's It's the zero berserk virus that's creeping through everybody back then.
Cole But,
Cole back then but they figured that out they figured that out about 100 years ago so like what the heck is going on so these basically more or less just robotic people are banging together kind of in ruins or behind the scenes that they're like well what are we going to be doing well Humanity still has some good people in it. And there's this 14-year-old girl called CL. She's a very accomplished and somewhat of a prodigy in terms of robotics and science. So she's like, let's go into hiding and get on out of here. And we're going to see what we can do to help save people and fight back against this fascist regime of whatever X is doing.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole But in order to do that, like these reploids, they're not like x or 0. They're not that strong. So we got to find 0.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole So this group called the Resistance goes out searching, trying to find records, anything that can lead them to to this supposed hero.
Andrew Pinkston ah
Andrew Pinkston like Somebody who can contest X.
Cole and
Andrew Pinkston like Okay.
Cole Yeah, and so eventually they find this sort of abandoned laboratory somewhere deep, sealed away, really out of the way, like it was borderline impossible for anyone to find it. And they trip an alarm and suddenly, well, they're being rushed by these things called mechanicaloids. They're basically just automatons. They're big, huge, blocky,
Cole And these guys just start shooting lasers, and all these Reploids who are trying to protect CL, they're just getting eviscerated. Like blowing up, slashing half, like nothing they could do.
Andrew Pinkston Things.
Cole They got guns of their own, does nothing against these things. They are iron fortresses, bullets are flying off of them, it's an absolute massacre.
Andrew Pinkston Crap.
Cole CL and one of this one of these other reploids and and this is where I kind of mentioned a subsystem of something called a cyber elf. There's these little electronic entities that you can find and exist in this world now at some point
Andrew Pinkston Sorry, I thought I thought I heard you say cyber elf. I must have.
Cole Nope, you did not mishear. They're these tiny little electronic sprites that exist that are basically sentient computer programs.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, okay.
Cole While replates are, in the physical reality, digital highways and stuff still exist. And as a part of this, cyber elves come into existence and they can influence computers, they can repair...
Andrew Pinkston Like a battle network.
Cole They can repair... Yeah, like, there's still some sort of cyberspace ghost in the cells.
Andrew Pinkston That's the pussy timeline, Zach. That's not this timeline. I'm getting the two confused.
Cole different time same thing different thing you know um so cl has one of these cyber elves with her and this thing this this little tiny sprite has a purpose as eventually cl this retboyed and the cyber elf break into uh the ah lab, and there is a red figure hanging from this derelict so set of like pipes and wiring.
Cole His arms are destroyed, his hair's fraying, his helmet's cracked, but for her, this's like well this obviously has to be zero.
Andrew Pinkston The heck?
Cole But
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole The machines, they're coming down the hallway, and it's not just these giant golem-looking things that are, like, eviscerating the stuff. They're these tiny foot soldiers, about human-sized, that are blue, that have an arm cannon, kind of vaguely look like X, but with a single mono-red eye.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah. Dang.
Cole And they are creeping through the darkness towards them, and they shoot the Reploid down, and then it's just CL and against an army.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole So there's this book.
Andrew Pinkston Of X dolls, like whatever they are.
Cole Yeah, they're they're called pantheons. They are the foot soldiers everywhere.
Andrew Pinkston Pantheons.
Cole And CL realizes like, well, what am I going to do in this case? Like this robot's destroyed. What can I do? And so the cyber elf, her little friend, it's called Passy, is like, all right, well, it's time for me to do the thing I was meant to do.
Cole And she sacrifices herself. Her energy is used to reanimate zero. And in a flash of light, his arms repair, his systems come back online.
Cole His theme from Mega Man X and the first one starts going full blast in Game Boy Advance audio.
Andrew Pinkston ah Sick, dude.
Cole And there's a brief little cutscene of him standing there in just a background of white, feet to top, like foot to head, just going like, all right, you know what time it is.
Andrew Pinkston Sick. ah that one
Cole You're fucking playing to zero.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole And so, Zero picks up the gun from the Reploid, his systems reconfigure it to use his own energy as as a bullet instead of whatever stuff exists in it. And CL's like, I need you to get me the fuck out of here. And Zero says nothing but you just start mowing down these guys as fast as you can pull the trigger.
Cole And you're running through this derelict, broken down lab, just shooting stuff, making stuff blow up, and CL's following you, it's an escort mission.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, yeah.
Cole um And which then, after he saves her, they they go to a dead end, and she's like, dang it, how do we get out of here? Well, the four of Blake's, and as they both fall, he immediately grabs her, and they fall like...
Cole five, six, seven stories deep into this hole and he just thankfully manages to save her. She's like, well, this kind of just proves the point that you're zero. He still hasn't said anything at this point.
Cole Now a single word is uttered by him.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, he said plenty.
Cole um And then just when they think they're safe and they're heading towards this teleporter that will take them back to their little hidden resistance space, a giant hand comes bursting out of a wall and grabs her.
Andrew Pinkston The fuck?
Cole and drags her into the darkness, Zero chases after her, and it's one of those big golem things.
Andrew Pinkston Whoa.
Cole So Zero just starts unloading this gun on this thing. You're you're in a tiny enclosed space, this thing hits you with its laser, you're basically dead in like maybe two or three hits if you're not careful, and it's dropping blocks from the ceiling onto you, and Zero's like, this gun is shit, I can't do anything.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole And all hope is lost until one of the screens in this lab that they're in flickers on. And in this little silhouette, there's this sort of ah blue halo illuminated figure. And it says here, take this. And out from this digitized space, a familiar saber gets thrown out. A green saber hits the floor.
Andrew Pinkston what we need baby huh
Cole And Zero picks up his Z-saber like the days of old and just one-shots this thing.
Cole um So now we're at this point where it's like, okay, so what the heck is going on? Who are you, little girl? Who am I? What's going on? Well, it turns out Zero doesn't remember anything. ah Guess it must be because of the poor condition of the lab, but he's got hibernation sickness, as they described it in the first game.
Andrew Pinkston Got it.
Cole ah So he has no idea who he is, and CL's like, well, look, we're looking for this red figure named Zero, and we think you're the real deal. And he's like, ah okay, how do you know that? She's like, ah well, you saved me, and that's pretty much as good as we're going to have to work with. And he's like... Cool. She's like, well, this is where we live in this piece of shit hole. ah We're all in trouble, and X is mowing us down. We need someone to stop him. And he says, all right, bet. So he, rather than ask questions or try to figure out what's going on, he says, all right, cool. You believe in me, I'll help you out, because that's just who he is fundamentally.
Andrew Pinkston So they don't know who, or zero doesn't know ah anything. Doesn't know who X is that they had a relationship before that they've fought in this war together.
Cole Nope. Nothing. Zero. Nada.
Andrew Pinkston None of that. Okay.
Cole So all he knows is he's got a sword and he's going to use it and go kick some ass for these people because they asked him politely.
Andrew Pinkston All right. yeah
Cole So it is now, ah Mega Man Zero One is a very strange ah version of like this what the Zero series becomes because it's not like Mission Select picked a boss, go off and do it.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole um Because it's it turns out the world that you're in in this game is actually kind of like a Metroidvania. all the levels interconnect into each other in some way.
Andrew Pinkston Oh.
Cole And you can go backtrack and all this other stuff.
Andrew Pinkston That's cool.
Cole There's also a terrible level ah web ah level up weapon system where the more you use a weapon, the more moves you can do. So you go from one slash to two slashes to three slashes to a charge attack to all this other stuff.
Cole And it's it's it's bad. It's terrible.
Andrew Pinkston So it's kind of like a Skyrim-esque type, look like you have to keep doing the thing.
Cole Yeah. you know he Yeah, except you don't level up your speech or your sneak by sneaking around. You have to, like, hit all these enemies and all this other stuff. And again, it's notoriously hard. Even doing a dash attack after, like, zooming towards something or doing a jump attack or anything, sure, it does more damage, but it still doesn't change the fact that you're still going to be dead in two or three hits if you're not careful and you still need to level up your weapon to have, like, these combo moves and, yeah, it's a whole thing.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, i I remember dabbling with it for a while and I was like, man, this game is fucking hard. Well, I'm just not a zero guy. I can't play a zero. And then I think Brad might've beat it.
Andrew Pinkston I'll have to ask him. Zero was like his guy.
Cole And I guess I didn't establish. There is a collection out on modern consoles and stuff and on PCs. So if you wanted to get it and replay it, it has ah they made a bunch of like quality of life features, including like saves, like these quick saves, depending if you go fight a boss.
Andrew Pinkston o Okay.
Andrew Pinkston okay
Cole So it doesn't penalize you. You can keep your lives. And you know you can retry as often as many times as you want.
Andrew Pinkston Hmm.
Cole um They clearly could have learned a lesson back like, you know, 20 years ago, but, ah you know, it is what it is. They made their games. They shipped it. It was hard as fuck. um So CL says, you know, ah go to these places because we're basically going to try to like sabotage Neo Arcadia and all these army forces or whatever. And it's like, OK, cool. You go hijack a train. ah You go to a hidden submarine place, you go to the desert to fight off an army.
Cole um And it's pretty standard stuff. The bosses are pretty cool There's these other reploids that are called Mutos reploids that are based off of animals. So there's like a Sung bu Kong monkey robot with a staff um There's I'm trying to think of another one off the top my head There's like an elemental gear thing that like shoots fire and ice and lightning at you and you have to try to like cut off its arms and kill it um and
Andrew Pinkston Hmm.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, that's cool.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, they're like usually like animal.
Cole and
Andrew Pinkston I mean, in the X games, they were like, there was a slash beast and a walrus and a, I think it was straight up like a whale at some point.
Cole Yeah, there's probably a whale or something.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole Yeah, like they always did that.
Andrew Pinkston yeah
Cole But these particular ones, like they're the most advanced versions of what those were back in X and more sleek, more animalistic, more than anything.
Cole There's like a giant ice bear, like a polar bear and all this other stuff. It's it's pretty if there's a giant um elephant that also turns into Sonic the Hedgehog.
Andrew Pinkston but straight up or
Cole go and spin dashing on you and bouncing off walls, and if you get hit, like it's ah it's a hole it's a whole thing. um so But Zero's causing ripples when he starts doing all these little projects here and there. ah Up until this point, no one's been able to contest Neo Arcadia in any significant way, so X sends out his four guardians.
Cole And these guys are serious business. Not only do they kind of have like the same sleek look that Zero does, but they also are the leaders of their respective armies. and They control the elements, so you get these four characters that start cracking back.
Cole You got um the ice ah controller of water, Fairy Leviathan. You have the ruler of skies and lightning, Sage Harpuya.
Andrew Pinkston okay
Cole The ah fighting Thefner, who's like a red-hot dude with like a gun and like grapple moves and all this other stuff. And then you have their intelligence guy, who's a non-elemental ninja called ah Fuck, what was his full name?
Cole Something phantom.
Andrew Pinkston Okay. Hmm.
Cole um But they're basically the forehands, like the limbs of X and his control over near Arcadia. And, but of course, when you start establishing these characters, they're like, all right, you're like a 200 year old robot.
Cole Like, we're just going to kick your ass and like go to bed afterward, you know? But then they get their asses beat by this guy and they're like, yo, that was sick. Let's do this again. And you're just like, OK, you guys are a bunch of freaks.
Cole Like, get over it. But um so yeah, so you fight all these bosses and they're like, dang, like you're pretty strong. ah Sure hope X knows what he's gonna do with you later, but you better watch out. you You better not keep this up. And Zero's like, whatever, I'm just gonna beat you and move on.
Cole It reaches a point where zeroes cause so much trouble that they're going to zero in on where the resistance base is full of all these like innocent robots. And they're going to just literally just zero all of them. like Just merc all of them, kill them all, get it over with. So you do you go through a base, save everyone, slash up all these ah robots. And then they're like, OK, we need to go on the offensive. We're going to go fight X like on his turf.
Cole um Fast forward a bit, and, um, CL, like, just before you hit New York area, and you're about to go through the typical Capcom bus boss rush, CL's like, alright, now you're probably wondering why a 14-year-old girl, human girl, is in the middle of all this story.
Cole Why am I bringing her up? What's her shtick? What's going on?
Andrew Pinkston Mm-hmm.
Cole Well, it turns out X isn't X.
Andrew Pinkston Huh? He's not the... the dude from...
Cole He's not, he's not the, he's no, no.
Andrew Pinkston It's Sigma.
Cole So CL says that X isn't the same X that everyone know.
Andrew Pinkston Oh.
Cole And as a matter of fact, anything that's been going on in the Arcadia is her fault. She has a direct rate responsibility for this.
Andrew Pinkston What?
Cole You're like, you're a 14 year old girl. What's going on? She's like, well,
Andrew Pinkston She's Sigma.
Cole Not actually.
Andrew Pinkston who Who are these people?
Cole see So as it turns out, X disappeared at some point within the last 20 years, maybe even a little bit more.
Cole And the scientists, the human scientists at near Acadia um were trying to like, how do we keep a populace of both humans and reploids from going crazy because of a benevolent leader and an icon disappearing from the public eye without so much upset.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole So they go into a bit of genetic engineering ah with humans and they're like, we need super smart people to be born ASAP for whatever reason, you know, I don't know.
Andrew Pinkston Oh.
Cole But one of these ah test tube babies was CL and CL at the age of nine was tasked with building a replica of X.
Cole So they give her his schematics and she gets to work and she creates physically a one-to-one replica of X from the ground up.
Andrew Pinkston Whoa.
Cole But what happens when you start an AI in a robot, a very powerful strong robot that does not have the 30 years of morality testing that X did?
Andrew Pinkston Right.
Cole So this dude thinks and is operating as if he's doing what he's meant to do, what he's built to do, but he's doing it at the detriment of reploids while keeping humans as safe as possible, but basically they're just cheap at this point, you know?
Cole So she's like, we need to kill him and you need to kill him for me because I made this and it's my mistake and it needs to be remedied.
Andrew Pinkston So is, is the real X out there or is that something for a later?
Cole That is something for later. We will we will get to that.
Andrew Pinkston Okay. Okay. Okay.
Cole ah so um Also, I forgot to mention this. During the entirety of this first adventure, this little cyber elf, this little spirit, shows up every once in a while and talks to Zero.
Andrew Pinkston Is that the one that like gave up its life for zero or.
Cole And he says, you ah no, this is the one that gave him the Z-saber at the very beginning.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, okay.
Cole um He's like, ah you know, keep it up, you'll find stuff out, we'll see you there, or blah blah blah, and Zara's like, okay cool, I don't know who the hell you are, but alright.
Cole So we get to Aeneur Arcadia after like a long grueling gauntlet of the Black Jelly Boss ah that comes up out of nowhere, and um all these crazy cool replays that they throw at you, and you get to fight against the Four Guardians again, you get to fight against the
Andrew Pinkston Classic Capcom.
Cole Class of Capcom, you can't not have a boss rush.
Andrew Pinkston Classic right there. You got have that fucking boss rush at the end.
Cole and
Andrew Pinkston God damn.
Cole But one of them, ah one of the Guardians, the ninja guy phantoms, like, you're not getting near X, you may have defeated me, but I'm gonna blow myself up. And you're like, wait, what?
Cole And then if you actually stop by him, you actually get damaged by the explosion, but it's not enough damage to kill you, so that he just kills himself for no reason. You're just like, Capcom, what was the plan here?
Andrew Pinkston how Yeah.
Cole It's game one, like what's happening? So anyway. So you go forward and you finally meet him. You finally meet him in his throne room. And there he is being like, hey, what's up, Zero? Long time no see. And the three guardians, the three remaining guardians show up and they're like, no, we got this. And he's like, get out of here. You've done your part. You failed. It's my turn. So.
Cole It's 1v1, you're in this big room, and X is like, ah you know, you're just another Maverick, you can't be Zero. I mean, look look at this place, it's a Utopia, humans are safe, and Zero's like, okay, I don't really remember much, but that sounds like a bunch of bullshit.
Cole and you're not you're not the real x anyway you're just a fake and he's like all right cool kendo fake do this and he turns on his own hyper armor like the one x used to have it's angelic he's got wings he's able to shift his elements and he's like
Andrew Pinkston Like, yeah, do all the X like, oh, okay.
Cole He's got, like, a dash move. He can shoot out different elemental shots. Like, he is effectively X. He's dashing around. he's He's kicking at you. He's shooting at you. But, you know, you're zero. You're playing the zero. You've kind of figured everything else out as you're playing through this game. And you beat him. And he's like...
Cole having a hissy fit because he's basically like five years old or whatever at this point and he's just like like screw you and Zero's like I might not remember but my body seems to remember and that you're a freaking fake and you're not as powerful as him you'll never be as powerful as him so
Andrew Pinkston What the hell?
Andrew Pinkston Yes. If you'd fucking rock my ass at this point, like there's no way.
Cole so x is like this copy x is like fine then so he overclocks and he transforms himself with this giant seraphic form he loses his legs he gets halo and he demolishes the floor so now you're on this tiny platform while he is shooting laser beams and all this other stuff at you and but then you know you're you're zero you're the badass you're the fucking guy you you clip his wings and
Andrew Pinkston Whoa.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, you are him
Cole in this very, oh god, the sprite worker in this game, like these games are so cool, like the bits and pieces of him fall off and he just crumbles to pieces, and all that's left of him is his torso, his face like blown out and cracked with like a fake eye, like a lens underneath it, and he's like, well, this is an unfortunate situation to be in.
Cole I'm gonna blow up this room! And Zero's like, oh shit.
Andrew Pinkston no
Andrew Pinkston Everybody's blowing themselves up.
Cole So, So he dashes out of the room as quickly as he can, the giant explosion engulfs this section of near Arcadia, and Zero is shown again, laying down the ground.
Cole White is just eclipsing him. We don't know where he is, what's going on, did he die, what happened? But this Cyber Elf pops down out of the sky again, this one that's been following him and gave him the Z-Saber.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, what happened? OK.
Cole This time, a silhouette ah comes out. You can't quite make it out, but you can see this kind of blue silhouette with a red crystal on his forehead.
Andrew Pinkston yes dude sorry bull
Cole And he says, thank you for taking out my copy. I ah trust the future of this fight to you, because the fight's not yet over. I just can't be here right now. And he fades away, and he disappears, and Zero's in the middle of the desert.
Cole ruins as far as the eye can see, and he picks himself up and he says, don't worry buddy, I got this.
Andrew Pinkston Yes, Straight up that call or something.
Cole and
Cole And... What?
Andrew Pinkston Did you call him buddy?
Cole No, he didn't call him buddy, but he's like, alright then, i'll I'll do it because you asked, and um he...
Andrew Pinkston Okay. um Okay.
Cole He turns in this scene that he's in, and all you see is this image, like it it pans back and forth, and there's this army of these those X knockoffs, those like mono red-eyed pantheons, and there are like hundreds around him.
Andrew Pinkston Hmm.
Cole And he's like, no problem, I got this, I'll keep fighting until, you know, I can't kip i can't pick myself up. and the last thing you see is I'm slashing through one of them and you hit the credits and you're like, okay, cool.
Cole So what's next?
Andrew Pinkston What's next? Yeah, like what's next?
Cole Well, this is where stuff really picks up. um And now we'll go into Mega Man Zero too. Everything's all brand new and shiny and you get more weapons and all this other stuff, but this is where the story beats really, really pick up.
Cole But let's start with, the very first thing that happens at the beginning of the first game. Zero had gone on a single one-man army fight against Neo Arcadia by himself for a year.
Andrew Pinkston Jeez.
Cole And when you see him at the beginning of the second game, there's an intense sandstorm blowing by. He's walking through the desert. He's got a cloak over him.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole He's got one of those like brown, tattered, but super cool cloak. And he's walking through. they're like So anyway, it's been a year. This stuff's been going on. He beat Copy X, blah, blah, blah.
Cole And then, of course, more of those pantheons show up because they can't get enough of the smoke. And he's like, cool. All right. His new theme in the second game starts picking up.
Cole He throws his cloak off of himself, and he's once again, if you're back in the back in the action.
Andrew Pinkston yeah
Cole um But it has been a year. So after Zero fights through this desert of like zombie robots and vulture robots and a giant like scorpion robot, he's reached his physical max, and he collapses in the desert.
Cole his like armor's all broken apart and, well, yeah.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah. We're getting your zeroed again. We're getting your zero zeroed again.
Cole But then ah someone shows up from the desert out of nowhere, and it's the the green master of lightning, Sage Harpuya, who shows up and is like, well, Zero, what are we going to do here? And then he picks him up and takes him back to the Resistance.
Andrew Pinkston okay
Cole Well, like, huh, this guy has a sense of honor. That's pretty funky. um So what's happened in the last year? What's going on? So while Zero's been going off fighting, CL and her portion of Resistance Robots have met up with another group of reploids, and they join forces together to create the quote-unquote new Resistance Movement.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole they're they're functionally more powerful. They have a large group of people who are trained to be, they basically dress up like they're in the army. And their leader is this guy who calls himself El Pizzo. And he's like, all right, we need to organize, we need to strike out and strike back against near Arcadia, and we're going to do it together. And CL's like,
Cole Okay, you can do that, but I need time to try to solve the energy crisis situation that's going on in the Arcadia. So that way we can save reploids and they don't need to act like this anymore and people can live normally.
Cole so
Andrew Pinkston Well, who's leading the neo Arcadia people at this point because X copy got dropped.
Cole but you know
Cole Well, as it turns out, the Guardians are basically playing this, like, political game where it's like, alright, propaganda time. Uh, X is on...sabbatical.
Cole He's...he's away for now, but don't worry about it.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole We got it covered. Why is there only three Guardians? Don't ask about that. He blew...he definitely totally didn't blow himself up for no reason. We don't ask questions you don't want the answers to.
Cole Stop talking. so Despite, you know, how do you keep that type of information to reps for like a year? It's ridiculous.
Andrew Pinkston hu
Cole But they're effectively the leaders at this point. So the resistance has been growing in strength and they found a new fancy base with like working machinery and stuff and they've quadrupled the amount of people that they have.
Cole in And so it's like, okay,
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, they're coming up.
Cole see yeah then Zero shows up. And well, well that starts to undermine El Pizzo, who's like, look, we were supposed to do this big operation. We called it Operation Righteous Strike.
Cole We're going to strike out against the New Arcadians and fight for our freedom. And then Zero shows up and he's like, OK, first of all, that's dumb. What do you think I've been doing for a year?
Andrew Pinkston yeah
Cole This shit doesn't work. So he's like, what we need to do is we need to do small scale attacks, you know attack their supply lines, like take out an energy plant or a manufacturing plant or two.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Andrew Pinkston Ball bearing plant.
Cole like, guerara tactics, you know? Like, that's how we're gonna be able to get through this. And LPs, I was like, okay, fine. I will defer to you for now, but the minute, the second I get the okay, we're blowing them the fuck up.
Cole We're getting we're doing this operation registry. And it's like, OK, sure. So this time, in Mega Man Zero 2, you have a more typical Mega Man X screen selection.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole ah You don't have a full eight bosses to go fight. This time, you only have ah four bosses to fight before the next sequence of events happens, and then the next four missions come up, and then you go through your regular boss rush.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole um But before you do that, CL's like, hey, so we found this thing called a baby elf. It's, it's, compared to the regular cybrels who at this point have, ah they're the consumables that you've been using. They can kill small enemies. They can help save you from falling in a pit as a one-time effect. Some of them can even increase your health bar at the cost of you getting a penalty on your final score when you complete a mission. So you can actually augment yourself to be pretty strong and have like quadruple amount of life that you would have had when you started.
Cole Um, but these cyber elves are kind of small, uh, like they're, they're, they're not as powerful as it turns out as what these baby elves are capable of.
Andrew Pinkston weird okay
Cole And all they know is, is that there's two of them and they found one of them circumstantially because El Pizzo brought it with him to the resistance and CL's using it to study how to create her sort of perpetual energy machine that she hasn't quite figured out yet.
Cole But this this will be ah this will be a plot that comes up later.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, let us know. Okay.
Cole So Zero begins all these ah small attacks here and there. And they're like, oh, hey, we found another baby elf. That's really cool. Let's bring it back to base. But then X shows up in a spectral form again.
Andrew Pinkston The real act.
Cole He's like, hey, Zero, hear me out. This thing's actually a lot more important than you think it is. and ah He's like, and I'm a cyber elf, so what am I talking about?
Cole He's like, things are in play right now that you don't understand, and these two baby elves are an indicator of something to come. You should keep an eye out for what comes next.
Cole And Zero's like, I mean,
Andrew Pinkston That's not very helpful, but all right.
Cole Yeah, you know everyone's this is the one thing the about the zero series that always kills me Is that up until like the end of zero three and four? It's cryptic bullshit. You're like x just fucking tell me what the fuck is going on He's like, no, no.
Andrew Pinkston yeah
Cole No, you have to play through the game and you're like, oh my god, man fine. All right, no problem um so then you do the first set of missions and you find this baby elf and you're like cool so now the two of them they seem to be resonating together they seem to recognize one another the energy is really unique but we don't really know much more else about them and suddenly LPs is like all right everyone it's time to march out and attack near Arcadia and they're like ah
Cole Okay, that seems like a really bad idea. You shouldn't do that, like, ceiling zero, like, nuh-uh, veto, nuh-uh. He's like, but I'm the boss now, yet they'd be the boss. This is what we're doing.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole Anyway, uh, it's a complete fucking disaster. Everyone gets eviscerated.
Andrew Pinkston Dang. Oh my gosh.
Cole They send, like,
Andrew Pinkston Who would have predicted such an outcome?
Cole Who could have seen this coming? like They sent, like I don't know how many, like it's Game Boy Advance limitations. There's probably only maybe 10 characters in a room at a time. But like let's just say a small army of 400 Reploids just get eviscerated.
Andrew Pinkston Yes.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole And the only one who survives is El Pizzo.
Andrew Pinkston Of course.
Cole And they're like, ah hey, can you go rescue these guys? And he shows up and he's like, well, hey, by the way, they're all dead, El Pizzo's ahead. fine I guess I'll go save him. So you find him and he's had his ass beat by the three remaining guardians and They're like, all right, you know what?
Cole We thought we learned our lesson last time, but this time, we're really we're just not even going to take our chances. We're going to send up a nuke. We're going to launch a missile at the base and just end this. You're like, oh, shit.
Cole So Zero has then launched off into into the air. And it's probably one of the coolest sequences in the game. You're literally jumping off. You know this um those kind of bug helicopters in X1 when you're on the highway?
Andrew Pinkston Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah.
Cole So you're riding basically on the back of those chasing a big ship to get inside of it to deactivate the bomb.
Andrew Pinkston wow That's cool.
Cole So it's this cool, like, like you're not timed, thankfully, as if that wasn't going to be difficult enough. But the platforming on this level at the intro is super duper hard, because if you miss your jump or get shot in the air, you just fall to your death.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole So they're like, all right, zero, we're flying overhead. You're going to drop down on them and going to go rate the thing. And you're like, OK, cool. The sickest music in the background is going on. You're like this awesome.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole So you jump on the ship and they're like, OK, it's just like, how am I going to take out the bomb? Like I could like I could just like slash it. They're like, can you do can you diffuse a bomb?
Cole He's like. so I can slash it, right? They're like, no. And CL's like, I'm going to go on the ship. You're going to teleport me on the ship with this like local short-range trans server thing, because they have teleportation in the future.
Cole And they're like, port me in. I'm going to deactivate it. Then you're gonna I'm going to port out. And then you're going to jump off the ship. And we'll get away with it. And we'll save everyone. So he's like, OK.
Andrew Pinkston seem Seems good, let's do it.
Cole So for a couple minutes, you do a timed escort mission where they send a bunch of enemies at you and they all try to shoot the little girl. Like, cool, I got a shield. You can't you can't get past me.
Cole And then just when you think you're safe, you jump off the ship and then, of course, a boss enemy attacks you.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole And this this bug enemy, because, of course, the je Japan has to do this. You know what they do? like um but like They do like bug fights, like they there's the bug with the single horn and the bug with the pincers.
Andrew Pinkston Mm-hmm.
Cole I can't remember. like Yeah, it's like a Hercules beetle and stuff.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, it's like a Hercules beetle or yeah I don't have time for this.
Cole Well, as it turns out, the brother of a random beetle boss that you beat in the first game is out for his revenge in the second game and you're like, huh, that's some continuity, cool, kill me.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole I don't have time for this. You equip the ice chip because he's electricity and you kill him.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah Okay
Cole You're like, cool, get the hell out. In the meantime, from the the bot like the the attack on the Arcadia and this bomb rush, well, the cyber elves disappeared. The two baby elves were taken away by El Pizzo, and he is off his fucking rocker. He is laughing insane. You know when you get like those like
Andrew Pinkston He's high on baby elf, is that what this is?
Cole um Well, you kind of know like when you get that little like dolly zoom on someone who's kind of going insane or when you see the thing in the anime where they zoom in their eyes and everything gets all like distorted like but Yeah, like you see him peeking into a camera and being like I'm gonna go find the the the strongest power there is in this world and I'm gonna go find the dark elf and you're like
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're cracked, yeah.
Andrew Pinkston What the fuck?
Cole What? What the fuck? Like, dude, what are you talking about? Like, we get it. You went through, like, the most traumatic thing you've ever gone through, but you're literally, like, you're you' tweaking out, bro.
Cole Like, calm down. He's like, oh, well, I'm going to do it. I'm going to go fight New Arcadia by myself once I find it. And there's nothing you can do. And they're like, zero. Can you bring this crazy boy back to us?
Cole and He's like, yeah, okay, cool.
Andrew Pinkston Is anyone able to do anything besides zero in this timeline?
Cole Well, and here's the thing, right? any Anyone who is capable of doing anything is currently in Neo Arcadia's side.
Andrew Pinkston Yes, okay.
Cole That's the problem. No one else is able to compete with Zero in a fight, but at the same time, anyone else who isn't like um a Mutos Reploid or the Guardians is competent in any way.
Cole So it's literally just, yeah, you are the main playable character, he's gonna be the one to do it.
Andrew Pinkston Yes.
Cole So you go through another section of boss fights, you go up against the three guardians again, and they're just like, what is this guy up to?
Andrew Pinkston Again, dude. God.
Cole He keeps s slipping away, like they can't seem to track him, they can't seem to find him, but then Zero shows up and they're like, well, all right, Zero, let's fight. He's like, didn't I beat you last game? And they're like, ah we got some new stuff.
Andrew Pinkston I bet.
Cole They're basically the same as the first game.
Andrew Pinkston Really?
Cole And they're like, ah, man, Zero, it's so cool when we fight. Don't die now. And you're like, Okay, you guys need to, like, quit getting this horny about this? Like, this is fucking weird, okay?
Andrew Pinkston Is it just an asset flip from the first game? Like the moves are the same. It's the same boss fight.
Cole Like, they do have some additions, like, there's something Zero can do that he couldn't do in the first game, but a lot of the things about the Zero series is, like, they do keep a lot of the assets, but they're able to, like, tighten things up and make things more efficient and clean everything up.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Andrew Pinkston Hmm. That's how they're able to do it year after year, I guess. Yeah, right.
Cole Yeah, because I did one in 2002, 2000, yeah, it's like 2002, three, four, and then five, and then that was it.
Andrew Pinkston When you love it, right? When you love it.
Cole So, then they're like, okay, we're narrowing down where he's going, but he's going to this, he's going to this hidden base in the Arcadia, and we don't know, but he' he says, he's trying to find this thing called a dark elf, and he finds the first half,
Cole and it's normally you get to see these like little balls of light that are maybe about the size of like if you fit a pokeball in your hand or like a but this thing's like huge it's like five or six times the size of any of these sprites and it seems to like be slightly translucent
Andrew Pinkston he
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole And at this point, X shows up again. He's like, okay, zero. I don't know what the fuck you've been doing up to this point, but you need to like pick up the pace here. Cause like, this is the most dangerous shit.
Cole And he's like, and if El Pizzo, this guy finds the seal of the other half. It's we're in word for in for a big world of hurt.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole So I was like, okay, fine. So it's not sigma.
Andrew Pinkston It's Sigma. The Dark Elf is Sigma. Oh, damn.
Cole My God. No. So.
Andrew Pinkston but How many times, dude?
Cole this as you're going through the next boss rush you are again going up against the guardians again and they're like that hey guess what but we we we uh we're holding back it's like what and so like x did like like copy x did in the first game as you beat him in the final boss they go through this transformation that they call an armed phenomenon and they
Andrew Pinkston Of course you were. All right, Piccolo, take it off and let's go. God.
Cole transform a leviathan who is kind of the sleek robot lady with a spear transforms into a giant mermaid with like any fighter underwater and uh feffnir who's only dude like a dude with two arm cannons transforms into a giant tank
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole And finally, you go up against Harpuya, who's kind of had like all these avian traits, but this time he's he's on his knees in front of Elpizo. Elpizo actually kicked his ass too, and he's like, alright, I need you to play interference for me while I go off to the final seal of the Dark Elf.
Andrew Pinkston Interesting.
Cole And so he uses the baby elves to super empower him, and compared to the other two who willingly fought Zero, Harpuya's like, you need to kill me right now when he overclocks and comes this like giant helicopter bird.
Andrew Pinkston Hmm.
Cole And so throughout all these fights, like despite the fact that the Guardians kind of aren't really characters, but they kind of are like, you're like, on the one hand, they are respectable, they are honorable, they want to fight because I guess, you know, that gives them meaning or purpose or they get off on it or whatever.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole But They also do the the thing is that they do fight for near Arcadia Under the pretense that they are fighting for humanity and that zero and these things are being maverick.
Cole So They are They're not going crazy.
Andrew Pinkston Right.
Andrew Pinkston They're misguided.
Cole They're not being influenced by anything but they're misguided because they don't know because like they they are
Andrew Pinkston misguided
Cole As it turns out, they're actually made from the quote-unquote DNA of the actual X, like the X that we know.
Andrew Pinkston They're misguided. Oh, that's cool. Okay.
Cole Robotics and reploids eventually evolve where, like, something about them began to have this sort of trace element that was the equivalent of, like, human DNA, and they use that to make the basis of the four guardians, and they all kind of take, like, aspects of them.
Andrew Pinkston Scene C.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole And they are still, of course, acting under the pretense and belief that the X that they were fighting for in the first game is actually X.
Andrew Pinkston Right.
Cole So again, misguided. They don't know any better. So, Zero beats Harpuya, and Harpuya is like, you should you should have finished the job. And Zero's like, look, like you're honorable, and you give me the credit due, and blah, blah, blah.
Cole But I'm going to go stop this El Pizzo guy, because he looks like he's going freaking nuts. Fast forward, boss rush time. We do the whole thing again. Hey, the beetle boss bros, this time they're back to fight you together? No, they're still dead. No big deal. But we're doing boss rushes and whatever. That is what you do. But the higher you climb this tower, like there's this energy that's flowing in the background that's flowing up towards the peak of the tower. And you're just like, this is like a really high tech like set up. Like what is this place?
Cole And when you go up to the top, and it's the final boss fight, and El Pizzo is standing in this room, he's standing in front of the body of X.
Andrew Pinkston Huh.
Cole And X is hooked up to this machine, it's this giant sphere with like a lot of like pipes and tech...
Andrew Pinkston Whoa.
Andrew Pinkston X is the dark elf.
Cole My brother in Christ, you could shut the fuck up for a second and let me get to it, we're so close!
Andrew Pinkston We found him.
Andrew Pinkston quite
Cole So El Pizzo's like, hold on a second there Zero, you're interrupting me and freezes him in place.
Andrew Pinkston okay
Cole because he's got all these powers from like the baby elf and half of the dark elf, which is their mother. And then he stabs the empty, non-responsive body of X, and it explodes in this huge, like it's it's the most horrific thing if you played as X, like X games as a kid.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole And Zero's like, oh fuck, there's nothing I can do, because this this pink floozy of a dude frozen me and in place,
Andrew Pinkston Does it look like the X from the original games or is his art treatment like...
Cole So his art tree, like he has the coloration of like a later X, but it has the same style as like these games have.
Andrew Pinkston Of these games? Ok, ok.
Cole But he has like the coloration of like, let's say like an X six or an X eight zero would have.
Andrew Pinkston Mmkay.
Cole So this body of X explodes and the other half of the dark elf comes out and the two halves merge together. And you do kind of have to remember like this is these things are like living electronic computer programs.
Andrew Pinkston Mm-hmm
Cole so whatever the heck this thing is like on top of being able to reformat something into different forms like it it's clearly powerful it gives this dude like this much power to stop people in place and influence people's minds so of course el pizzo all caught up on on this magic angel juice or elf juice or whatever the heck is going on here is like all right dark elf make me all powerful and it transforms his body and
Andrew Pinkston Yeah
Cole You think he was pretty a badass, but of course you're playing Zero, so you beat his ass, of course.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, yeah.
Cole And of course, he also throws a hissy fit, because who doesn't throw a hissy fit when they get beat in a Mega Man game at this point? He's like, cool, time to overclock. Well, compared to the armed phenomena phenomenon transformations that Leviathan and Fefnir and X had, this seemed more organic, weirdly enough.
Andrew Pinkston Oh,
Cole Things are being forcibly transformed, and
Andrew Pinkston God.
Cole He seems to just lose all sense of self as the the Dark Elf and the Baby Elves empower him to this freakish monstrosity. And, of course, you're zero, so you beat him. And as his body is there, re-transformed back to his form, the the the Dark Elf ah says zero.
Cole Like it's the first time we've heard it say anything. The baby elves have kind of like made noises or they're
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole As Elpiso's lying dead on the floor thinking that it's my time to move on and I've made mistakes and I recognize the error of my way, Zero, thank you, the elf, the elf, transformed at this point, makes him into a cyber elf.
Cole And then she transforms back into her dark self and flies away.
Andrew Pinkston okay
Cole And X shows up and says like, It's unfortunate that you couldn't save my body and now we have to go after it because this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole This is only the start of what comes next because if we don't control her or try to take like try to get the baby elves back, like it's it's good to be bad.
Andrew Pinkston You said that last time, bro.
Cole And that's the end.
Andrew Pinkston When does this end?
Cole All right, X3 time.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole Except not really. The end cutscene on Zero Two opens up on what could seems to be like a really cold room with like, you know when gas is hanging low in like those scenes where things are really cold?
Andrew Pinkston e Right.
Cole There's this big door, it's red and blinking and it's made of dark metal and you hear this low guttural groaning noise, like something beestle is behind it.
Cole And then a scientist, like an old guy, like scientist voice comes on says, all right, I guess it's time to for the plan to deploy.
Andrew Pinkston Oh shit.
Cole And now we go to X, ah we go to zero three a couple months later and ah zero and CL and some resistance soldiers are out on patrol because they're trying to find the dark elf.
Cole And sensors picked up a signature in this frozen hellish wasteland And as the snowstorm kind of dissipates, they see this giant sort-like structure in the distance.
Cole Something had fallen from space recently, and there's this strong signal coming there.
Andrew Pinkston well
Cole They're like, what the fuck is going on? So Harpuya shows up again.
Andrew Pinkston Whoa.
Cole It's been some time, but it's a couple of months later. And he shows up, and he's like, you need to leave this area right now. And they're like, are we not going to fight? and He's like, I don't have time for you. And he disappears.
Andrew Pinkston this was the This is the bird guardian guy.
Cole i mean here This is the Bird Guardian guy.
Andrew Pinkston the hell Okay, okay.
Cole And then you hear the groan again. You hear the same groan just in the distance, and they're like, what the fuck is going on? And Zero's like, okay, near KU forces are showing up.
Cole Everyone get back to base. I'm going to go check out what the heck this thing is.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole So he gets inside the sword-like structure, and it's huge. It's ginormous. It's basically like an entire building, like a skyscraper in size all by itself.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, whoa.
Cole And he goes up there, and the other two guardians, Fefnir and Leviathan, are just getting their asses beat. Whatever is off-screen, is throwing off these giant claw-like fists at them and throwing them around.
Andrew Pinkston Huh.
Cole And you're just like, what the fuck is going on here? And then you see it. It's this thing that's probably about like four or five times the size. It's this huge robot with like ah kind of like a knight motif, and it's got this giant cross-like sword on its back.
Andrew Pinkston That's pretty cool.
Cole And you're like, uh, what the hell is this? And the other two are like, uh, we don't know, but good luck. See you later. And they peace out. So it was like, fuck fine.
Andrew Pinkston but Thanks, so guardians.
Cole All right, let's get to it. And so you fight this thing and you fight it off. And you're like, what the heck is like, okay, we beat it. We can move on, right?
Cole And then it reactivates again and it picks itself up and it's like, Oh, I didn't do anything. What the heck is this thing?
Andrew Pinkston Hello.
Cole So Harpuya shows up and says, all right, enough of this. We're going to finish this thing now together. And Zero's like, oh, OK, cool. Yeah, let's do it. And then a voice says, stop.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole And copy X shows up again.
Andrew Pinkston Copy X, not real X.
Cole Not real X, because you've got to remember.
Andrew Pinkston What? Does anyone stay down?
Cole X, yeah well well, we'll see why in a second here. So as we've established at this point,
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole The real X existed in two forms. There was a cyber elf form that seems to be incredibly cryptic and disappearing in and out of the story. And then there was this physical body which was destroyed because it was being used to seal the half of the dark elf. So, Copy X shows up and he's got this weird speech impediment. He's like, Harpuya, like, you know, you you should stand down. You shouldn't need to do this with our honored get ah get get guest. And you're like, what?
Andrew Pinkston He's like glitching out.
Cole He's glitching out. Yeah. And then someone else shows up.
Andrew Pinkston Yes.
Cole This figure that's covered in like this black futuristic robe and his head is sealed in like this orange, like triangle.
Cole I don't know how to describe it. The guy's kind of shaped like a pyramid. It's kind of funny, but this guy shows up and he's like, my name is Dr.
Andrew Pinkston okay
Cole Weil. And, uh, B and Omega are now under the coverage like of protection from Near Arcadia, and X is like, yes.
Cole it can ah The reason I'm here is because of Dr. Wile, who repaired me. I would also like to point out before we continue, this guy is not Dr.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole Wile.
Andrew Pinkston Okay, that's what I was just saying.
Cole If you were thinking this, and there's some there's some hypothetical stuff where people may think he is, or like a distant relative, or somehow Dr. Wile got puss and it's his descendant.
Cole That's not not what's happening here.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah no.
Cole So, but this guy, whoever this guy is, this is the guy we heard in the background at the end of X2, and we're just, or sorry, X2, Zero Two, and we're like, okay, but who is this guy? He's obviously evil, what's his deal, right?
Cole And he looks really robotic, like he's floating around, he's covered up in this suit, we're like, what is he? We don't know who he is or what his deal is, but
Andrew Pinkston yeah
Cole All we know is is that they're establishing X and the Arcadia are saying, we are going to find the Dark Elf. And if you get in our way, we will stop you. And they're like, well, and so make a guy the big knight figure that they was just beating everyone down.
Cole It's clearly a serious business, but we still should be trying to find our way to getting of of getting this guy. So now it's a race against Neo-Ricadia trying to find the baby elves and the dark elf, because at this point we still don't know what they are exactly, what they're doing or where they're going or what their goal is.
Andrew Pinkston okay
Andrew Pinkston Okay. Hmm.
Cole And as it turns out, the baby elves were actually not together with her, they're trying to find her because she ran off by herself. Something about her interaction with Zero sparked something, like some familiarity, but he couldn't quite place it because he's still an amnesiac at this point.
Cole um So he the only thing we know at this point for Zero is that he's been pretty stoic, doesn't comment a whole lot, is very mission focused, and despite his kind of relationship with X, he still doesn't quite remember him to the same extent when they were maverick hunters back in X era.
Cole um But he still also doesn't know. And and and one of the things I just remembered, before all these guys, before X and Omega and Dr. Weil, peace out. Dr. Weil looks at Zero and says, you've gotten pretty far with that body. Let's see how far it'll take you. And then he peaces out.
Andrew Pinkston Interesting. So he makes a comment about like how he looks.
Cole like
Cole Yeah. So we then go through our ah the the do the for emission, select screen bits first, get the interlude part, then we do another for, and then we get to the end fight.
Andrew Pinkston who
Cole The first goal, the first few goals of the game are as such. The first goal is find the dark elf. Well, as you're going through all these levels, the dark elf and the baby elf are influencing things in a way where like other mechanoloids or all these machines are also getting transformations very much like how Opizo had.
Andrew Pinkston Right.
Cole So whatever is going on, like this thing can just be in proximity to stuff and make them transform forcibly and fight against Zero. Like, it's it has infection-like qualities just by proximity, so we don't know what's going on here or why it's happening.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, seems like extreme. Okay.
Cole So, Zero's first school, of course, is finding the baby elves, and he does find them. And they're at this point, they're starting to become a little more mouthy. They're like, pop a while, told us we need to beat you, and you're trying to hurt mama, and we're gonna and you're like, am I literally going to go fight two fucking children with a sword?
Cole Like, all right, ah these are little balls of light, but all right.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole bru so you So you do find the baby elves and But ah you you actually end up destroying them ah in one of your fights because at this point, regardless of what they are or what they're doing, it doesn't change the fact that they're actively attempting to be a threat.
Andrew Pinkston Oh.
Cole um The next part of course that's been going on in behind the scenes is that within the two months that CL was starting to develop her power ah energy system, like some perpetual, like it converted a black matter into like energy or something, but whatever it did, it was enough to theoretically solve the energy crisis issue.
Cole that replays we're having within near Akkadian they're like hey by the way um we know you got that if you don't give it to us we'll like consider you terrorists if you know since we already have been doing that and we'll take it by force and all this other stuff and see i was like okay i mean i thought we could negotiate at least but you know okay you can be crazy um and then we fast forward a bit where Uh, they're like, Oh, Hey, we found the dark elf.
Cole We're going to launch a nuke into the city to make sure that we have complete clear access to getting it another.
Andrew Pinkston And another nuke.
Cole Yes, of course. You know what? This is fallout now. Like, you know, we just got to be able to like, Hey, you know how you got to spend money to make money.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah. ah preers
Cole You got to use nukes, get more nukes.
Andrew Pinkston Got to have nukes to have nukes.
Cole That's how it works. And they're like, Oh, yeah. um And then also at the same time, while they're gonna be doing this thing, you're like, alright, Copy X, it's time for our fight. He's like, fine then. So you 1v1 this Copy X, and as usual, like, he's just not up to snuff. Even with all these repair jobs that Dr. Wilde did to him, it's still not quite enough for him to kick your ass.
Cole And then he's like, cool, it's time for me to go armed phenomenon again. I'll fight you at max power. I don't know why all these bosses think they come back like the second or third time and they can fight zero and it'll be different, but what anime protect like what anim anime boss like doesn't do this, you know?
Andrew Pinkston Right. Yeah.
Cole But as he tries to transform a bomb triggers inside of him and he explodes.
Andrew Pinkston Oh my gosh.
Cole And you're like, oh my God, like what the fuck did Wile do? So Wile then is like, cool, by the way, this was all according to plan. Everyone in Neo Arcadia, I am now your ruler. and So that includes like like ah control of the armies, control of manufacturing, like everything top to bottom. This guy, Dr. Wile, this random dude who showed up out of nowhere and is like causing so much trouble. He's like, I'm gonna be the boss now, you're gonna have to deal with it. ah And now I'm gonna like, we will, anytime you see zero, we're gonna make sure that we,
Cole make sure that we destroy this guy. So you're like, okay, but but who are these guys? Like, what is going on here? Why is this stuff happening? What is the dark elf? What are the baby elves? Who's Dr. Weil? What is Omega? In the background, one on one of the missions, you actually go to a sunken library, like something that keeps electronic records. And in the records, they're like, there was a war that occurred about 100 years ago.
Cole But the data's like destroyed or corrupted and it only says, reploids, deaths, humans, deaths, elf wars, dark elf, something, something.
Andrew Pinkston Hmm. Okay.
Cole And so they're like, okay, the pieces are being set. And X, of course, as usual is in the background being cryptic, like, all this stuff, it's it's happening. I hope you can remember more. And Zero's like, bro, like I haven't remembered shit.
Cole Like what are you talking about?
Andrew Pinkston yeah
Cole um and then again we go to the missile thing they're like all right it's time to get the dark elf and omega's on it and zero's like okay so hey remember the last bomb i don't have time i'm gonna jump on the rocket and ciel's like you do it's a it's a it's a what he's like we don't have time jumping on the rocket let's do it and you jump on the rocket and it takes off and of course you barely managed to survive as this missile crashes into human civilians this time.
Andrew Pinkston Damn.
Cole It just eviscerates this entire town and this time ah Omega is there to get the thing that Weil wants and it's the Dark Elf and they fuse together and his armor changes and they're like okay well
Andrew Pinkston whoa
Cole ah That's bad, and this time like Omega's been juiced up, like whatever influence that the Dark Elf has, it's not corrupting him the same way that everyone else was being affected.
Andrew Pinkston Mm.
Cole Like his form is still the same, he's just ah got a golden coat now kind of thing. um And so Harpuya was it also at ground zero thinking he could do something, but Zero just grabs him and is like, you're coming back to base with us, you dumb fuck, and they teleport back.
Cole But Wiles, like, all right, everyone, it's time to do the thing. And he snaps his fingers, and all reploids within the resistance base turn their guns on zero after he gets back to the base.
Andrew Pinkston Oh man. They've been hacked or something.
Cole they've been So whatever's been going on with Omega and Dr.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole Wile, well, the the combination of them allowed them to exert control over every reploid within, like, a thousand, ten thousand mile radius around them.
Cole And and that included all the Reploids in the Resistance base, except Zero, because he's not a Reploid, he's a robot.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole So ah everyone turns their guns, they start speaking as if they're speaking, ah they're being spoken to through Wile, like Wile is using them as his mouthpiece.
Andrew Pinkston I think he's just completely commandeered them.
Cole Yeah, and and so they're like, uh, okay. And then they also turn their guns towards CL because they're like, listen, you didn't, you didn't pony up with the energy thing. So we obviously not only got to take it, but we're taking over your base. This whole thing was foolish. We're going to kill you now. Then X shows up in his form and he's like, all right, enough of this. And turns the effect off.
Cole in the immediate area.
Andrew Pinkston This is the real X.
Cole Yeah, this is the real, yeah.
Andrew Pinkston Oh.
Cole Copy X finally bit the dust properly, and real X comes out in cyber-elf form, and in the immediate proximity of the ah ah resistance base, he exerts his power to save them from the effect.
Andrew Pinkston okay
Cole And so they're like, okay. ah we We need to talk. we need to We need to get this thing figured out because you need to know what you're fighting against exactly.
Cole And they're also like, oh hey, by the way, the corrupted file's been uncorrupted. Let's take a look at it. So, back during the era of X,
Andrew Pinkston Okay. Okay.
Cole um they realized that the maverick virus, whether it was the sigma virus, whether it was the zero virus or whatever that it was. Whatever originated from zero needed to be stopped in some way. So zero did two things within that time frame.
Cole He sealed his body away for research purposes to a bunch of human scientists to start doing research to see if they could basically make the the computer equivalent of a viral cure. And he had his control chip, his like processing unit, whatever made him, him, was taken out of his body in order to remove the secondary factor of his body going crazy.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole At this time, an unknown scientist managed to reverse engineer and create the first cyber elf known as the mother elf.
Cole This was basically the virus made into a computer sentient computer program.
Andrew Pinkston okay
Cole And with a wave of its non-existent hand or whatever, it cured every single trace of the sigma virus from every single reploid in existence.
Andrew Pinkston Whoa. All right.
Cole they managed to figure it out. So whatever Wiley did back in 2007 or whatever was zero managed managed to get figured out.
Andrew Pinkston Classic.
Cole But another scientist at the time thought that it was insane that people would have gone through such lengths to cure a virus when the real answer was that reploids needed to be brought down or destroyed.
Andrew Pinkston Hmm, huh.
Cole So the scientists around this time created a giant reploid of his own. Dr. Weil created Omega. and the intent was for him to use Omega, was he was a Reploid in function, but he was completely 100% subservient a while, to wild two forcibly take control of the Mother Elf and use its powers in conjunction with his body to exert control over all Reploids and take them all under his control.
Andrew Pinkston So there's like this back door through in all the reploids because of this mother elf hearing slash inoculating slash repurposing the the maverick virus, I guess.
Cole yeah like it was the yeah so at the time he also corrupts it making it the dark elf and the biggest war the world had ever seen like i remember the last time we're talking about mega man you were like oh so this is like the post-apocalyptic future this is the post-apocalyptic future the fight the the damage and fights and events that occurred
Andrew Pinkston So it's okay.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole From this elf the elf wars that x and and eventually zero was brought back to operation to fight against this thing it caused a 90 death rate of all red ploids in existence and Humanity was brought down by 60% So if we're talking what is the world population right now?
Andrew Pinkston Oh my gosh. Hmm.
Cole Have we finally had a billion like we should have sort like so
Andrew Pinkston Oh yeah, yeah, we're just over it.
Cole 60% of the current human population just gone.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, that's crazy.
Cole And it was like quick. This was like if we thought, I don't know, we're going back to Gundam for a bit, but like we thought the colony drop was insane. Like this was infinitely more devastating.
Cole The landscape was forever changed. Nature was nearly brought back to like non-existence, like absolute devastation.
Andrew Pinkston Jeez.
Cole So Two things had occurred at that point when they finally managed to stop Omega. They did several things. They sealed away the dark elf and split it into two halves. The baby elves, who were actually sub-control programs that were made in the image of the mother elf, like they were basically mini copies of her, while made them and they got sealed away and disappeared somewhere.
Cole Omega was then sealed away rather than destroyed because X said, we will not kill them. We will judge them accordingly. Shoots them off into space in a giant sword-like structure. And then Dr. Weil, for his penance, was sentenced to roam the world for eternity in an immortal life, and scientists mocked him up this like regenerative suit.
Andrew Pinkston Well, it's kind of biblical almost.
Cole and they stuck him in it.
Cole Oh, we're, working yeah.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, yeah.
Cole so we've So, but the one thing that was established is that Dr. Weil is actually a human and he's managed to survive possibly over like 100, 150, 200 years because of this regenerative suit.
Andrew Pinkston Huh.
Cole And so he was banished from near Arcadia.
Andrew Pinkston Right.
Cole I think, I believe he was sent up with Omega and cursed to roam the world forever.
Cole So then when you think about it, it's like, yeah, this dude went freaking crazy and he wanted to get his revenge against people, except he also caused the biggest genocidal apocalyptic event ever known to man, period.
Andrew Pinkston yeah yeah
Cole So he still comes back and he's like, it's time to fuck this up even more. So he comes back, he manages to take the Dark Elf over, and he makes himself the uncontested leader of Nier Arcadia, both humankind and Reploidkind.
Cole And you're like, OK, so how do we beat that? And X is like, well, we've got to go do the boss rush, and we've got to go fight Omega.
Andrew Pinkston yeah baby more boss rush we cap comment out
Cole One more. so So this time, you do not fight against the Guardians.
Andrew Pinkston and
Cole But the boss rush up to this point had been ah comprised of eight Reploids who also, they initially look human, but they transform into their animal robot forms.
Andrew Pinkston yeah
Cole And these eight robots, these eight replays were actually the ones that originally sentenced Wile to his exile and his unique condition.
Andrew Pinkston yeah baby more boss rush week cap comment out
Cole Then he came back, basically rewrote their code and sent them back out as his attack dogs. As sort of like a cruel form of punishment of like, all right, you did this to me, I'll do it back to you now.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah. yeah Yeah,
Cole ah And then this time you kill them and they sort of have this sort of like clarity of realizing that they were not only influenced by like the Dark Elf but while and they're like, oh We fucked up bad and they explode and you're like cool.
Andrew Pinkston wild.
Cole Well, huh? That's creepy and weird But there's still something that's been going on in the background the piece of of something that hasn't been quite figured out yet.
Andrew Pinkston yeah well
Cole And the thing was what Wiles said to Zero at the beginning of the game, you're getting pretty far on that body of yours. So you go up and you go up against Omega, and he's the most powerful he's ever been. He's got the Dark Elf boosting up his power. And Wiles like, okay, A, guess what? I'm a human being.
Cole He's like, oh, I thought you were a Reploid. He's like, no. And he's like, cool. I'm not three. I'm not three laws compliant, by the way. I don't give a shit what you are. I'll fucking kill you. um You're like, cool, zero. That's great.
Cole You got to fight Omega first. And then while says.
Andrew Pinkston Interesting that that like comes up.
Cole And then while says, um by the way, your body is a fake. It's a replica. everything Everything that you've been doing up to this point has been under the guise of you being Zero, but these foolish reploids and this foolish human truly believe that you are Zero. And Zero's like, anyway, I don't care about that. Let's fight. So this time compared to other boss fights, it's a three-boss sequence. You fight against Omega in his regular night form, and then he
Cole gets overclocked by the elf and he becomes this giant gargantuan boss that seems to be an amalgamation of zero X and his body and he's got like cannons the size of like skyscrapers scrapers and unfortunately we hit Game Boy Advance limitations and then you realize it's actually kind of a pushover because it's just the game cannot handle anything of that size like it's
Andrew Pinkston She is. Yeah. Yeah, you're right.
Cole multitudes big but of course You beat, you beat second phase Omega and Zero finds himself within the ruins where he was found in the first game.
Andrew Pinkston Whoa.
Cole And you're like, huh, so the ah the abandoned ah yeah place where he was being sealed was actually deep, deep, deep within near Acadia the whole time.
Andrew Pinkston Full circle.
Cole Like, whatever's been going on here in this place has been going on for centuries and this seems to be the centerpiece of it. It's like, okay, Well, turns out, Wile did do something that we didn't know about, and as it turns out, as a flash of light appears and the remainders of Omega's body breaks apart, ah so a horned silhouette stands in the darkness, and then you realize, wait a minute, that's zero standing right in front of me.
Andrew Pinkston Like the OG.
Cole Like, unfortunately not the OG, not the X-Design, but it is a darker palette version of the Zero that you've been playing for the last three games.
Andrew Pinkston Oh.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, man.
Cole So as it turns out, on top of While causing this huge heinous disaster, he knew that there was one single body that could act as a proper conduit for the Dark Elf, and that was Zero's original body that was sealed away.
Andrew Pinkston oh man
Cole So when the doctors were doing the reverse engineering of a replica body to ensure that there was no trace of the virus and they were doing the research and the control chip, like the the whatever memory chip that was zero was implanted into it, Dr. Wiles went out, took the body and put it inside Omega to act as like the firmware, the battery, the hardware to ah to be able to to handle it.
Cole So your final boss is you.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole Except this dude is throwing out full charge attacks from the get-go, launching out three full charge blasts out of his cannon, and you're just like, holy holy fuck.
Andrew Pinkston The end game sounds crazy in this this one.
Cole Whoa, jeez.
Cole And there's fire everywhere. Like, you were in the bowels of hell. You were fighting a mirror match of of of epic proportions. The hardest soundtrack you've ever heard, like an organ's going on in the background.
Andrew Pinkston Well, that's cool.
Cole Like, it is it's going. And, of course, you're not just fighting Zero. You're fighting an empowered Zero that is just the physical embodiment of everything Dr. Wily intended Zero to be initially.
Andrew Pinkston Hmm.
Cole But of course, at this point, you played these three games in a row. You're pretty good with the controls. You just counter everything he does.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole You hit him with charge attacks. You hit him with Buster shots. You've been getting all these really cool weapons in the background. You've got like, there's like these charged taunt fuzz that you have that can like, you can pogo stick off of them over enemies.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole And it's just, it's really cool. But finally, you land the final strike on Omega. And at this point he's called Omega Zero because, hey, mask is off, you know who you're up against.
Cole And Zero drops down to his knees right in front of the the Omega that's on his knees too, and Omega stands up and starts getting regenerated by the Mother Elf.
Andrew Pinkston God damn it dude.
Cole You're like, Dammit, we're this far, are you kidding me? But who's gonna save the day? The Three Guardians. They show up for one last rodeo.
Andrew Pinkston Oh my gosh.
Cole Fefnir's blasting this guy with his cannons, and Harpui and Leviathan are slashing him with their weapons, and... that now the mother l ah the the dark elf pops out and realizes and and starts transforming back to her mother elf form because whatever's been going on in the background, whether it's interactions with Zero or X influencing her or whatever, she's starting to return to herself and Wiles like, no, my plans, this can't happen. And they're like, finish them off. And of course, as usual, you just go up. It's a cutscene. Like you get full control and you just go charge attack on this guy and just one shot him at the end.
Cole And finally,
Andrew Pinkston d
Cole ah regardless of, you know, maybe it's hard to say what Zero's mentality is at this point, but the explosion goes off and Zero wakes up on the rooftop of the um ah resistance base.
Cole because X, with the last of his power, carried his body back and gave a message to him and said, unfortunately, the physical anchor that kept me here is no longer present, and I can't keep going. So...
Cole uh x fades away his powers are spent truly this time x has passed on but zero is still left remaining to fight and the mother elf has returned to the world and has moved on to somewhere else probably did hide away and zero realizes that not only was ciel ah she wasn't misguided putting her trust in him as being the original Zero regardless of his body or not like this is the guy that we played with back in like the X series and fought with like this is this is the guy but despite the fact that we're now going nearly two hours into this we're still not done because that motherfucker while is still not dead
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, interesting.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, he wasn't really in ah that kerfuffle, huh?
Cole No, and he's like, damn, all right. Well, it's a good thing I'm the leader of this giant place right now. What could I possibly do with it? So welcome to fascism part two, aka Mega Man 04.
Cole We need to wrap this shit up because X03, like how X5 was meant to be the ending, that was supposed to wrap it all up, but they just didn't quite have the room to do it.
Andrew Pinkston yeah Yes, okay.
Cole So they're like, all right. one more game and this will be the definitive end of this quad trilogy. But you're like, what else can we fucking do here?
Cole What is next?
Andrew Pinkston the Do tell us, Capcom, what can we do?
Cole walking
Cole So, zero is, of course, like, the last hope we got and while is off the fucking chain humans are running away from near Arcadia in droves like actual flesh and blood humans we begin the game with a convoy of trucks driving towards this place called area zero area zero over the last hundred years has become a paradise of nature back in
Cole Mega Man X5 during the Eurasia incident. This is what that thing is called. Reploids dropped a... um shoot. Your one Mega Man... not Mega Man. Gundam. Colony drop.
Cole The colony dropped on Australia, except they dropped it on the planet this time. And it has its own environmental control system. And it uses the environmental control system to spontaneously create a bunch of plant life. Life was effectively coming back to the planet's surface. So the humans like, well, if we can't hide in near Arcadia and human even humans are being now ah like arrested or killed or whatever by Dr. Weil, we need to get the fuck out of here.
Andrew Pinkston Crazy.
Cole And so they're heading towards this area Zero plays as sort of like the last bastion of humanity. And they're being attacked, of course. So Zero has to step in on his own convoy and jump on top of all these trucks that are going like full till 100 miles an hour down this dirt track. And he's just killing all the bosses and everything. And they're like, cool. Hey, by the way, we're also racist towards Reploids. Stay the hell away from us. And he's like, OK, you guys do realize, like,
Cole a bowl that hits you and you die, right? Like, what are you talking about? They're like, well, we can't trust you. We can't trust any Reploids because now, like, even Dr. Wiles going crazy and sicking them on all of us here. And so it's like, okay. This is kind of where the weird human element comes into play finally, despite the fact that we've had CL the whole time. So it's like,
Cole Humans have grown to be distrustful of Reploids because of the last few years in the game.
Andrew Pinkston Right.
Cole X wasn't reputable despite, like, X disappeared, the copy X information got out, and then they realized that they were being lied to possibly for decades or hundreds, like, a hundred years at this point.
Cole And then, when Dr. Weil started going all crazy and taking over and making their quality of life drop, they realized that they were basically sheep the whole time. And they're like, we don't know what's going on. We don't know the truth of anything.
Cole And we need to figure out what's going on. Why is this happening? And how can we have our agency back? So one of the characters of this human convoy, ah her name is Nej.
Cole She is a reporter. And sure her goal is to like go in all these places, these really highly dangerous places. She's kind of like your Louis Lane, basically.
Andrew Pinkston who Yeah.
Cole And she's like, well, Like, I'm gonna find out what's going on and I've already got a good start and all this other stuff and like, cool, okay. What is a camera to a gun? Are you insane right now? Like, get out of here. So Zero, it goes on these missions because Dr. Weil says, we're gonna go find these humans and we're gonna make them forced to come back to Neo Arcadia by destroying everything in Area Zero.
Cole So how does he do this? He sends out eight Reploids called the Ein... shoot. The Ein... what are the Norse names? Einherar or whatever?
Cole it's It's like full Norse mythology at this point.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, yes.
Cole yeah The warriors, they're like the Valkyries. they're called like they're So they all go to all these places controlling like the the environmental control systems to like freeze things over, set things on fire, have perpetual lightning storms, anything that would destroy this paradise and send these humans back under the regime and everything.
Cole And so Zero goes out to fight them. um Then Zero meets this guy called Kraft. He's a battle military reploid who has like a gun and combat knives and he's like kind of he he's pretty cool and he's actually one of the tougher bosses of the game at this point if you thought you could have like you thought you had you sometimes have like iframes and stuff his stuff like pierces through it if you happen to have that type of effect like this dude's a badass
Andrew Pinkston looks pretty huh wild
Cole But then he sees Nage and he's like, what the fuck are you doing here? And Cyril's like, what the fuck does that mean? What do you mean? And then Kraft takes Nage and disappears. And it's like, what what the fuck is going on with this?
Cole And the humans are like, oh, hey, by the way, you gotta to go savor.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole And it's like, but we're reploids. And they're like, yeah, but like, we kind of like her and we're starting to respect you and blah, blah, blah. So Neige and Kraft have a romance between each other, a robot and a person, real bicentennial man situation here.
Andrew Pinkston oh Nice.
Cole um So Kraft is realizing that he doesn't have to have a life of being just a machine that fights, and Neige realizes that humans and reploids aren't actually that dissimilar at this point.
Andrew Pinkston Nice.
Cole If you didn't know any better, they're basically one-to-one in terms of like real life, morality, conscience, all this other stuff.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, like they've evolved.
Cole But they thought they'd had to break up because Kraft was still following Weil's orders with no real reason to do it. And Kraft at this point is realizing the way Zero fights for these people and everything that's been going on with the destruction of Area Zero.
Cole Kraft's like, I've made a mistake. I gotta go correct it. So, Weil says, hey, so, while you've been playing ball with all of my robots, I'm gonna fire a death laser from space.
Andrew Pinkston Okay. No more nukes.
Cole You're like, wait, what? We're skipping past the newt part. We're going with like, microwave laser from space.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole So, he had made a flying space station called Ragnarok,
Andrew Pinkston Nice.
Cole and we're still, yeah, we're going full tilt, like we're taking all the Norse mythology stuff.
Andrew Pinkston He's on the Viking theme still.
Cole I don't, I think there was a Yggdrasil somewhere in here, I can't really remember, blah blah blah. So he fires the Razor in area zero as a warning shot. he says okay well if you keep this up i'm gonna fire it again and you won't have much of a choice and everyone's like okay um how the fuck do we get to space like we can't do that just yet um and then just when you think everything's over like the humans are protected like they got removed somewhere the laser fires again but this time the laser fires on neo-arcadia
Andrew Pinkston Huh.
Andrew Pinkston Okay. Yeah. Jeez.
Andrew Pinkston well okay
Cole and we're talking about again another population of like millions possibly billions of people in this mega city cyberpunk dystopian future place so the laser fires and kills like millions of people and you're like why did wile do that like is he already going off the chain and they're like
Andrew Pinkston yeah ge
Cole ah We just got word that that was ah Kraft who shot the laser.
Andrew Pinkston Huh.
Cole You're just like, what the fuck? So he communicates with ah the resistance and is like, I have to kill Wylde. That's why I shot.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Cole And you know what? It didn't fucking work.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, cool.
Cole But he was going to try and do it again because this guy, this robot that's so desperate to have some sense of control, thought it didn't matter the casualties as long as Wylde died. ah Unfortunately, it failed, and so Zero, using cyberspace, was digitally transferred himself physically into digital space, beamed himself up through the digital network as like a signal into the base, fought craft, and you're like, great.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole Okay, destroy the control panel, we're good to go. And then you hear Dr. Weil laughing through the microphone.
Andrew Pinkston okay
Cole And he's like, I'm here too, bitch. I survived. And you know what? where I got you exactly where I wanted you. And you're like, oh crap. So now it's zero versus while all juiced up with the technology that Ragnarok has to offer.
Cole He's fully armored. He can teleport around. For ah for an old guy who's like part, like he's an android or a, or, uh, no, that's not the right word.
Andrew Pinkston Okay. Cyborg.
Cole Cyborg, like the most juiced up old man Cyborg you've ever seen in your life, puts Robocop to shame, just starts teleporting around, summoning old ah robots from games past in the Zero series to like fight you and you're like, he fuses with ah like a weapon system and you kill him and he disappears off the screen and you're like,
Andrew Pinkston Yeah.
Andrew Pinkston Of course. Jeez.
Cole ah Okay, and then Ragnarok starts to explode and Zero's suddenly standing outside of the, like on the roof of it. You can see the horizon of the atmosphere in the background. Wires are flickering out in space as it's rushing towards Earth and Zero's like,
Cole Okay, so all we need to do is like blow up the core and then we'll we ah have Ragnarok break up in the atmosphere. Easy peasy. But of course, no one can stay down and you hear a while laughing as his broken body flies back up from the depths and he's like, I'm not done with you bet yet. We're coming down with me as we descend on area zero, causing another apocalypse now moment.
Cole And then you see two minutes and 30 seconds pop up on your screen as as as these pipes start flowing into the back of Wile's broken body, and he fuses with the engine core of Ragnarok.
Andrew Pinkston oh no it's all a metro ah and so
Cole He is the most mix of like machine and weird flesh, as you've ever did seen, and he's just like, let's let's fucking dance, Zero, at the end of our time.
Cole ah as ah this heartbreaking kick-ass theme pops to the background and you've got two minutes and 30 seconds to go through three full health bar equivalents of while as you're descending in the atmosphere.
Andrew Pinkston Oh no. It's all on Metroid.
Andrew Pinkston Oh my gosh.
Cole And at this whole time, CL's like, you gotta get off, and Zero's like, no chance. I got no chance. If I don't stop this, everyone's dead, including me. So... you beat the clock, you have wild blow up in his engine, and Ragnarok breaks up in the atmosphere, and Zero fades into the white light in red of ah but burning pieces, and that's it.
Andrew Pinkston goes with them.
Cole He goes down with the ship.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, whoa.
Cole CL and the Resistance run out. They see shooting stars, the broken pieces of Ragnarok flying through the atmosphere, but there's no radio connection with zero, nothing, just...
Andrew Pinkston What a weird appendix. It felt like it ended really good on the third one, but then you get out here and you're like, this just feels like an ex, like the DLC to the third one, you know?
Cole Yeah. um And then at the very end of the game, the credits roll and you see the ah crater with the rising sun in the background and the broken helmet of Zero in the rubble. He effectively, 100%, totally definitely has died saving humanity against Wile's original intentions. If anything, after the whole trilogy of classic X and now Zero, despite everything Dr. Riley intended back 200, 300 years beforehand, it wasn't
Cole ah lights creation that ended up saving humanity, it was zero.
Andrew Pinkston Jeez. That's pretty cool.
Cole um And yeah, you you end the game, Zero's story is finally over, they're both at rest, both him and X are at peace, and we definitely totally didn't get a sequel.
Andrew Pinkston we deaf therere I'm going to type in MegaMan05 right quick. Let's see if he's telling the truth.
Cole ah Hey, I would like you to type in Mega Man ZX cuz we're going full Power Rangers, baby. We're fucking It's not over you just can't keep a good guy down forever Don't worry about it
Andrew Pinkston ZX. Oh my God. Oh my God. What the hell is this? MegaMan0 ZX Legacy Collection. so I guess both of these are available, right? like
Cole Yeah, it is a bundle deal. What ended up happening was, you know, Cash Cow new game system was coming out called the DS.
Andrew Pinkston Mm hmm.
Cole And so they realized they can make a couple extra sequels out of it.
Cole And that was a sequel. It was supposed to be a sequel trilogy, but it only got it caught off on the second game. And it's a little unfortunate, but oh well, it is what it is.
Andrew Pinkston Cash come.
Andrew Pinkston Ran out of gas.
Cole But yeah, like Mega Man Zero was, despite the fact how the fourth game, yes, did kind of feel very abrupt. And I probably skipped a lot of details, like how CL might have been the descendant of the scientist that made Zero's body 200 years beforehand.
Andrew Pinkston OK. That's cool.
Cole and ah possibly that Wily somehow converted his will into an AI that became the maverick virus that was in Zero.
Andrew Pinkston Oh.
Cole um There's a lot of stuff in the background that went on this these games. And then of course, um Capcom's like, hey, can you make X6 through 8? And then Nifune is like, oh, for God's sakes, maybe.
Cole Um, but yeah, like, and also this is rated like E 10. And I'm like, you literally just talked about like a 90% death rate of a, of a race of beings and like, uh, uh, unknown destruction.
Andrew Pinkston Right, billions of people.
Cole I'm like, this is not a kid's game. Who who said that? But yeah, Mega Man, Mega Man zero is pretty fucking cool.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, it is. quick It's yeah way deeper than I thought it was. Like I played the first one for a little bit, like I said, kind of handed it over. If you only look at the art, it looks kind of. But it seems like it's.
Cole it's ah It's a little different, right?
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, it is way different, way different. Definitely a darker tone, though, to it because I've been like flip it. Yeah, honestly, like it's it's definitely.
Cole if you If you take a look at the artwork, there's like a there's something called the Mega Man Zero Complete Works and it goes in the background of like concept art and lore stuff in behind the scenes and like what was X doing and what was the trade-off point between X and Copy X and where did CL get involved in all this?
Andrew Pinkston like
Andrew Pinkston me
Cole The who's the who? in you learn that like some characters also did like bombing runs and all this other stuff like the most egregious war crimes you could think of and you're like in this little pixelated game are you are you kidding me this is the gay boy advance man and and
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, wild, how much? so You can tell they put some like effort into it for real. It's just so crazy that like
Cole And Indie Creates then went on, like they were the company that made the four games. They made Mega Man, ZX, and ZX Advent. And then they made their own spin-off series called Azure Striker Gunvaults.
Andrew Pinkston what okay
Cole And they're all about that time attack, side-scrolling platformer, shoot-em-up genre. um dave They've made a lot of cool games. They're kind of a little quirky and weird though when you look more into their stuff, but they nailed. They nailed the lore, presentation, the gameplay. Everything about Zero could not be what it was if it wasn't for this company.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, I really enjoyed that. That was pretty wild. I did not expect to have that level of depth. The Game Boy Advance was a ah good console, man. They had some really crazy banger games on it.
Cole yeah ah if If I could put two games on the top of the list that made me break my Game Boy Advance, like the right ah the right on the D-pad and the R-tricker, would be because of Mega Man Zero 2 and Mega Man Battle Network 6.
Andrew Pinkston It was a...
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Andrew Pinkston yeah
Cole Those were the games that I played the absolute shit out of.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah. Yeah. And they were kind of coming out in tandem, right? Like these, these theories.
Cole Yeah, so like they go hand in hand. And then, of course, like kind of to wrap everything up kind of all together, because ah Nintendo's like, hey, here's all these e-reader cards and all these event things and all this other stuff. um In Mega Man Battle Network, you could find references to Mega Man Zero. One of the battleships that you could use, like the the card that you could use, was a card called the Z Saber that defected the silhouette of Zero.
Andrew Pinkston Oh, cool.
Cole And then in Mega Man 0.3, if you use the e-reader cards, you could summon Mega Man battle network enemies in the cyberspace areas that you would go to.
Andrew Pinkston That's very cool.
Andrew Pinkston Huh.
Cole And so you'd have like all their little side-scrolling enemies there doing the exact same stuff that they were doing in the battle network series.
Andrew Pinkston Just a little crossover.
Cole And yeah, and because, you know hey, same company, Nintendo's like, here's a gimmick, do the gimmick. And Capcom's like, yeah, OK, cool.
Andrew Pinkston Yeah, they liked doing that, right? like What is it? Oracle Ages and Oracle Seasons had like, yeah, yeah they were doing a bit of those.
Cole why where where's the or Where's that Oracle bundle? That would be a cool thing for Nintendo to release. But ah yeah, so the Mega Man Battle Network Collection and the Mega Man Zero ZX Collection are available for out there.
Andrew Pinkston I bet they will.
Cole Or you know you can, like I don't know, get an emulator, a Game Boy Advance emulator, and play those things.
Andrew Pinkston I just get it.
Cole But you want it on the big screen? That'd be they'd be the way to do it.
Andrew Pinkston That's the way I'd do it. I wonder how it'd look, like the fidelity they're bringing it up.
Cole It actually, oh, it's crisp. It's actually really good. I played it on PC.
Andrew Pinkston Okay.
Cole ah They have like a bunch of filters, a bunch of settings. They have their own little time attack multiplayer thing where you and a friend of yours can like race against each other, like not in the same thing, but you have like a ghost that you kind of like follow.
Andrew Pinkston Hell yeah. That's cool.
Cole And yeah, they, they souped it up. They really did their work and getting collection out there. And then they somehow even managed to make the DS games that are part of the ZX collection to work on a single screen.
Andrew Pinkston Hmm. That's sick. Oh yeah. Cause yeah, DS was the dual screen. I forgot about that.
Cole The dual screen, yeah.
Andrew Pinkston Well, thanks for doing that call. That was pretty wild. yeah Good Lord. Holy smokes.
Cole Thanks for my two-hour TED Talk.
Andrew Pinkston There's just a ton of lore there. That's pretty cool.
Cole oh and All because Dr.
Andrew Pinkston 400 years later, 400 years later, 200 years later.
Cole Light didn't get any puss.
Andrew Pinkston yeah That's the, that's the clincher.