Mega Man X: Regenesis v1.00.7 (full playthrough, most upgrades found)

Today I'm looking at "Mega Man X: Regenesis" a new game in the venerable and long-abandoned series (released within the last few weeks as of this posting). Capcom clearly has forgotten about it (last game was in 2004 if you don't count collections), but fans sure haven't. This here is an original fangame (which are always free by definition, only get it from the official itch.io page) made in the Godot engine, not a romhack of Mega Man X on the SNES. The fact that it feels so much like the first game in terms of both mechanics, graphical style, music style, and level/boss design is truly impressive given that it was built from the ground-up rather than re-using the original's coding with new stages added in. You can pretty much think of this game as a lost alternate sequel to the first game - it's structured VERY similarly to the first game with a few enhancements from X2. I played through the game start to finish on the "Hunter" (normal) difficulty. I will note that it's a bit different from other videos I've seen here - for example all bosses had dual-layer health bars and the upgrades were in different places (ie. I've seen video of the capsule in Bog Snapper's stage give a buster upgrade, but when I found it, I got the double jump) - I'm thinking maybe they were running an older version of the game and the itch.io page for the game shows that the devs have been making a lot of little balance tweaks and bugfixes over the last few weeks since the initial release so that would make sense. The premise of the game is that Sigma "retired" X at the end of the first game and then proceeded to do the same with Zero and the rest of the Maverick Hunters and decades later has near-complete control of the world. Dr. Cain had a backup plan for X, however - and X has been restored in a new body with capabilities on par with the start of the first game. The goal of the game is the same as ever though - take out 8 Mavericks and find upgrades in their stages to make X stronger for the final confrontation with Sigma in his fortress. Pro tip - don't play Hydro Axolotl's stage first... Most of the Mavericks aren't terribly difficult to defeat with the buster after a little practice, but that one is significantly tougher than the others, and having a movement upgrade or 3 will also make the stage a lot easier too. I didn't pre-watch any playthroughs before starting the game, aside from when I went back for a few power-ups after beating all the Mavericks (I looked up the locations of the 2 capsules i missed and one of the sub-tanks I missed and grabbed those after Sigma Stage 1), so this playthrough is FAR from optimized - I just went through with no prior knowledge of the stages and only my skills to carry me. Hence, you will see a lot of searching the environment for hidden paths to upgrades, and I didn't do a great job of guessing boss weaknesses so I ended up ALMOST doing a buster-only run of the Mavericks. I did end up getting most of the game's upgrades in a single run of the 8 primary stages though; even without looking anything up, I still found the majority of them just by exploring the stages. One thing I think could have been better is that a few upgrades are hidden (ie. blocked by foreground graphics) and the only way I knew I got "something" by the item sound playing, but I then had to figure out later what I actually got. In terms of gameplay, this feels like a great middle-ground between the first 2 official games. Everything feels like an official release from around that time period. It's an amazing achievement and I tip my hat to the devs for a job well done. If it wasn't clearly advertised as a fangame, this could easily pass for an official release - it's really that well done. X dashes around the environment jumping and shooting exactly as you'd expect and the stages are all similar in length and progression to the original - if you're familiar with the SNES entries in particular, you'll be right at home here and it was a lot of fun to play through. The upgrades you get are a combo of new and old, and work well. The game never actually tells you how to do the melee attacks though - it's L1 + Up for uppercut and L1 + down (in the air) for dive kick, by the way (I was using a playstation controller). On a side note, the game goes immediately into New Game+ if you resume after the end credits. In terms of graphics - it looks like the SNES games, but with some modern flourishes like particle effects for the snow, and environmental lighting throughout the stages. The music also has a similar sound (and is similarly catchy throughout) to the original, but again with some minor modern flourishes. Basically, "it looks and sounds like you remember, without being 100% accurate to original hardware specs". Overall, this is an amazing tribute (even with a few minor flaws as previously mentioned) to a great franchise, and I can't wait to see what they make next.