Capcom gives an SNES classic the update-treatment with mixed results.
My first impression of Maverick Hunter X was confusing. Let me elaborate via metaphor: Imagine you've just bought the first season of Happy Days. You've just arrived at home, all excited, and you drop the first disc into your DVD player. The disc spins up, and the show starts playing. It looks great, just like old times. As the theme song rings out through the speakers, a small speck of dust may or may not fall into your eye, depending on your age. When the song stops, you watch as Ritchie gets out of that sleek white convertible and goes to ask the Fonz where Potsi is. The Fonz looks up at Ritchie in his "I'm a rebel" sort-of-way, and that's when it hits you a fully charged buster shot: the Fonz has blond hair. His trademark slick black sex symbol has been replaced by a clumsy mop that makes him look like Fred from Scooby Doo. WTF, right? Well, that's about how I felt playing Maverick Hunter X.
Almost everyone who played the original Megaman X knew to head to Chill Penguin's stage first, where a capsule containing X's rush boots would randomly fall in your shiny blue lap about halfway through the level. In Maverick Hunter X, the boots are hidden in a passage in the ceiling in Flame Mammoth's level. Now, if you're a new player, I'm sure you don't care about these minuscule changes, but to us old fogies, Capcom's decision to stray from the original game design begs the question: "Why?"
At first I was very disappointed. After all, if but my disappointment soon gave way to my childish excitement, and I found myself enjoying kicking Sigma's metallic behind all-over again. After all, not all the changes are bad.
The controls are sharp and responsive, and the remixed soundtrack sounds nice, though admittedly, my poor memory is straining to notice the differences. Enemies behave in the same old ways and the game is still a challenge (though the default difficulty does seems scaled back a bit). Also, after beating the game, Vile is unlocked as a playable character. Remember Vile? He's the purple jerk who beats you up at the beginning of the game.
Vile's campaign is a breath of fresh air for the game. While Vile's stages are duplicates of the ones you just beat to unlock him, they are more heavily populated with enemies than X's, and therefore, noticeably more difficult. Vile's style of play is also drastically different from that of his predecessor. He doesn't get upgrade pods from Dr. Light; he gets upgrades from beating bosses. And rather than having one weapon equipped at a time, Vile has three, but they have to be chosen at the beginning of each stage, and thus cannot be switched on the fly. And rather than all of his weapons having their own energy bar, Vile's weapons all share one. Each weapon you equip uses a different amount of pips per shot, and if you run out, you have to wait for the meter to fill. No worries though, the meter fills very quickly (automagically), so you'll rarely find yourself unarmed against an enemy armada.
The original Megaman X had very little in the way of plot. Neither does this version. But Maverick Hunter X seems to truly believe that it is telling an engrossing story. It's not. Just for future reference Capcom, any game that has a villain named Spark Mandrill can safely be sorted into the "not an epic" pile.
The writing is terrible, not that that should be a surprise. But the voice actors are atrocious as well. Some of the voices just DO NOT fit the characters. Vile, for instance, who should be sporting a Darth Vader style rasp, sounds like a normal, everyday-kinda guy. Chill Penguin and Sting Chameleon stand out as truly horrible also (think Jar Jar Binks, except with a few extra shots of stupid). X's insistence on letting loose a Kiai every time he fully charges his X Buster will also get old faster than "The Song That Never Ends."
All told, Megaman: Maverick Hunter X is a worthwhile game. While hardcore MegaMan X purists like myself may find things to quibble about, the core gameplay is still fun and engaging. And since the Megaman franchise has really hit the skids in terms of fun lately, Maverick Hunter X is one big shiny "diamond" in a very large (fifty game plus) patch of "rough."