Memorable Music

Around this time the music started leaning back a bit to what Mega Man X was known for in terms of music. In X4, it reflected much of what inspired Capcom back then which was techno, jazz, and dance inspired music. X5 went back to its rock roots a bit with hard riffs and rousing melodies. Since this was supposed to be the last entry in the MMX series, there were a few nods in the music, one of which I’ll talk about below.

Izzy Glow

Composer: Naoto Tanaka et al.

 

Probably one of the few songs I remember without any kind of reminding from MMX5. In the long gap between when I played this game and now, this was how I remember a majority of the music being in the game. The song itself ain’t too bad though.

Duff McWhalen

Composer: Naoto Tanaka et al.

 

This is one of those songs I remember very, very well. This is in large part to that wailing guitar riff that carries the melody of the song. This went down, to me, as one of the coolest underwater themes I’ve heard in videogames. Of course, since I never played Mega Man X2, it blew my mind when I found out that this was actually a modern remix of Bubble Crab’s theme from X2. It was actually pretty cool knowing that the Fortress Boss theme from MMX1 wasn’t the only one to get a remix. The Yellow Devil theme also got a remix in the Shadow Devil boss.

X vs. Zero

Composer: Naoto Tanaka et al.

 

The song here would probably tie with Duff’s theme as my favorite theme in the game. This plays regardless of who you play as. It really goes in tune with the situation as X and Zero are finally squaring off after those reservations they had in X4, especially how crazy Zero was when he beat the shit outta Sigma in the flashback. As for the composition of the song, it’s very metal and the favorite of many MMX remixers online. We really wouldn’t hear a song like this until the next game, MMX6 with Blaze Heatnix. Slowly but surely after this, the music of the MMX series started going back to its rock roots fully.

Keiji Inafune planned this to be the last game in the Mega Man X series and wrote the story to lead into the Gameboy Advance iterations of Mega Man Zero. However, Capcom went head and greenlighted Mega Man X6 without notifying Inafune about it. He was understandably furious over this as it toyed with the canon of MMX and MMZ. So Inafune had to alter his story to accommodate for any story choices Capcom made in the X franchise. So far no other Mega Man X games have been made beyond X8.