Capcom releases Mega Man X for iOS. Nobody seems very happy…

Thursday, 22 December 2011 12:52 Last Updated on Thursday, 22 December 2011 12:52 Written by Kevin 21 Comments

The first Mega Man X is one of my favorite Mega Man games and even though I’m not a massive Mega Man fan it is a bummer to see Capcom once again giving as little effort as possible to their popular franchise. 

Now, I’m not as angry as some of the other gamer’s from the Youtube comments or on other message boards but I can see why they are upset. Watching the gameplay video Capcom made some very bad choices for this port to iOS and while it looks half decent in the video, when you think about it the game would be almost unplayable in real life. 

First off the view is zoomed WAY in. Instead of upping the graphics and making the view the full screen while keeping everything to scale or “letterboxing” the screen Capcom opted to zoom in to the scenes to fill the screen of your iPhone. This makes the HUD and more importantly the controls cover half of the gameplay screen! Watch how often Mega Man or an enemy goes behind the control buttons and then imagine how annoying that would be with your thumbs covering all of that screen space. 

There is also something odd about the graphics to me, they don’t look like the original game. Instead they look more like something made in flash a few years back, they just seem off. A minor complaint and I can’t put my finger on why I feel like this but I see it. 

If you watch all the way to the end you’ll also see them show you the store built into the game. What can you buy in the store? Your power ups of course! Want all the energy tanks and blaster power ups? Capcom wants you to send them another 5 dollars! How incredibly greedy and is almost insulting. 

Make sure you check out the video and let me know what you think in the comments below or on the forums. Let me know if  it is still an ok port or what else may be wrong. 

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 22nd, 2011 at 12:52 pm and is filed under Game News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
  • http://www.facebook.com/larry.bundy Larry Bundy Jr

    I don’t know,  it’s not Sonic 1 on the Gameboy Advance bad,  but methinks they programmed this game with the iPad in mind, rather than the iPhone.

    That or they’re trying to hawk some arbitary joypad controller with it.

    Who knows maybe you can zoom out the screen,  they’re vector graphics, so that would be a five seocnd job to programme.

  • Leonardo Gaiero

    well, these graphics were completely redesigned, that’s why they look off… this change was definitely for the worse. i don’t think i’m speaking as a nostalgic or anything when i say that these graphics are not the same as the old pixelated looks; these actually look blander, with a lot of nasty gradients going on and square feet of same-color areas. also, the on-screen gauges are terrible to look at. lastly, i’ve never been a fan of “touch gamepad” controls, unless they’re simple and fun to use.

    • http://www.retrowaretv.com RetrowareTV

      That is kinda what I meant. I assume thy did more than port the original sprites but I’m not sure what they did to make it look so bland. Like I said it has this feeling of a basic flash port. 

    • http://www.retrowaretv.com RetrowareTV

      That is kinda what I meant. I assume thy did more than port the original sprites but I’m not sure what they did to make it look so bland. Like I said it has this feeling of a basic flash port. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/kawaiineru Amber Short

    I think they seem bland because what I notice is that there really aren’t any effects to make it stand out. Like what the Genesis and SNES used to do with most of their games, and one example I can see is that there is no parallax scrolling so it just gives a sorta “cookie cutout” feel. Everything just looks too one dimensional. Perhaps they did use flash to port it. Dun know. Not my expertise in that department.

    I would never play games that rely on solid controls on the any touch screen device.

  • Ryan Rardin

    Capcom has been doing a lot to upset fans lately. I’m officially boycotting them because of their support of SOPA.

  • http://twitter.com/screenwavemedia Screenwave Media

    Look at the ridiculous achievements. “Make every section of bridge collapse in intro stage” “Do 10 wall kicks in a single playthrough” COME ON!

  • Daniel

    all the graphics look worse, the only thing that they didn’t mess up was the music, and tbh this should be offensive to any real mega man lover, as this probably has terrible control, and the graphics look worse, with pointless achievements.

  • Scott

    seems a lot easier?

  • Anonymous

    So, you can root your iPhone and play the REAL game, or spend X.99 and get a crap version of it? Thanks, I’ll stick with the version made almost TWENTY F***ING YEARS AGO…

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Travis-Baker/1356508724 Travis Baker

    Dude, forget you guys. Haha. This game is awesome. I’m glad that they even made it. Why complain? Gamers, man… gamers…

    My only “complaint” is that it isn’t released for other platforms.

  • Jamie Thorpe

    Seems to me they made it quite a bit easier due to the controls not being quite as snappy as on the SNES.  The final boss can be difficult on the SNES, I beat him first try on the iPhone with worse controls.

  • http://twitter.com/CherubDown CherubDown

    Getting the Charge Beam before the upgrade from Dr. Light? BLASPHEMY!

    • http://www.facebook.com/samgamgi Guilherme Rezende Rehder

      What are you talking about? In Megaman X we START the game being able to charge, already. Or am I missing something?

      • MrSaturn

         No you are right. You can charge from the get go. You get an upgrade later on.

  • http://twitter.com/Liam_McMahon Liam McMahon

    This looks like a missed opportunity.  They fucked it up.

  • Steveplaysdrums

    What happened to the music after Zero saves the day? They totally left it out.

  • http://www.facebook.com/Heisanevilgenius Tom White

    I’m not upset. I wouldn’t plan to own an iOS version of this game in the first place. That said, almost everything that’s different about this than the original version just seems like a horrible change.

    The fact that they infodump the storyline when you start the game? Horrible storytelling. Totally unnecessary.

    I understand why they might have felt the need to “upgrade” the graphics and I don’t necessarily see the graphics here as bad, but it’s definitely lazy. When Vile’s robot arm gets blown off, you don’t see the arm fall or all the smoke clouds and debris. The arm just disappears.
    The characters are way less expressive too. When X says “I guess I’m not powerful enough to defeat him” in the original, his expression was animated and showed him looking forlorn. Here it was just a still image that looks totally neutral. If you’re going to revamp the graphics you should actually revamp all the animations, not just the bare basics. Otherwise what’s the point?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Learvok-Corhime/100001845040530 Learvok Corhime

     this is just another reason for me not to get an iPhone.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Brandon-Smith/536470293 Brandon Smith

    the reason it looks off is because the pixilization of the orignianl graphics plus the optical blending that happened on crt televisions produced a sort of “haze” to the game that allowed your mind to fill in gaps and create images that looked better to your brain than they really did. Long story short, your brain will create life when given just a little information to do so. When given too much information, like in “HD” games, your brain sees it for just what it is. A graphical picture sliding around on screen. There’s no illusion of life to it.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002086595577 Horaz St Cruz

    Megaman X is my favourite SNES game.
    I can’t believe something like this came out.

    Purchase all weapons? Achievements? Redesigning of Maverick’s portraits? Blocky stage divisions?
    What the hell is wrong with Capcom??

    I guess this is what happens when you try to explain what Megaman is to the wrong audience…