Megaman X Tutorial Level Analysis

Megaman X Tutorial Level Analysis

Jarod Reizian Frank

Anyone whose played a Megaman game before knows how well structured and paced the games are, showing small conflicts and minor threats prior to combining them in crazy scenarios to keep things interesting; while simultaneously testing the player’s ability. In classic Megaman fashion the level layout is designed to introduce small obstacles in controlled environments prior to combining threats in challenging manors. You start out in a flat zone with no enemies, allowing you to push buttons and run around on your own. The first flying enemies you encounter are not only slow, but start their attacks nearly off screen from you, giving you plenty of time to see that not only is stage destruction possible, (their attacks crush bits of the floor out) but also that certain enemies are only able to be hit while jumping. And the two mini-bosses crash down and take you to a chasm environment in which you cant get out using just running or shooting. However, when you do the only thing the game has previously encouraged and start running to the right of the screen your character slides down the wall, showing that your character can interact with vertical surfaces. This allows you to experiment with what you know, jumping and shooting, and you teach yourself how to wall jump. The game even shows a sneak peak of what your wall jumping could lead you by showing the possibility of a power-up (extra health) on the other side of a wall you see in the first chasm. The only way to get it? The wall jumping mechanic you just taught yourself.

The structuring of the game is fantastic, giving the player plenty of time to learn the controls of the game without invasive “tool hints” or an annoying dialogue chain. The game starts out with simple, ground based enemies that don’t require you to aim, and then introduces the concept of jumping with small gaps, two very simple, hard to mess up repeatable tasks. But then it teaches you the concept of jumping and shooting at the same time by having flying enemies, along with walker enemies. The walker enemies in particular display how certain enemies can only be hit in certain weak spots (their glowing giant orb eyes) but introduces you to the concept at a slow pace, not only taking time to unroll and deploy, but also with a relatively slow walking animation. The difficulty is in how the game combines obstacles, flying enemies over gaps that can knock you to your death, mini-bosses combined with walkers to protect them, and even some mobile enemies in cars. But through all of this you are shown an example of what’s to come in a stable, non-threatening environment where you can observe and learn how to beat a single type of obstacle. Then, using the knowledge YOU discovered, overcome enhanced versions of those obstacles, the difficulty is increasing over the level surly but you never feel like the game threw something at you at random. Throughout all of this the basic story of “the robot apocalypse” is very prevalent, even if you do assume Megaman is a man, (he’s not) the countless robots firing on you with missiles and electric based weapons combined with the ruined city in the background AND the collapsing bridge under you give you the idea that things are not great. Possibly my favorite narrative concept of Megaman X is, (excluding encounters with Vile and Dr. Light) its dedication to showing and never telling; lengthy dialogue talking about how bad the future is isn’t necessary when your surrounded by all the visuals you need to figure it out on your own! The game doesn’t hold your hand in many scenarios, but rather shows you a few dangers in isolated instances and then leaves it up to you to learn; a model that respects the basic reasoning of human beings.