Proto:Mega Man X6

This prototype of Rockman X6, dated Sept. 28, 2001, was circulated around the internet in 2010. It is mostly complete, but the developers made plenty of significant changes before release of the final. If you've played it, you'd know they probably should have kept going.

General Gameplay Changes
Dr. Light's capsules were not yet implemented in the proto.



Dynamo doesn't appear in the proto at all. If you enter his boss chamber, his music plays and you hear a few sound effects, but no boss. Since you can't escape or die your only option is to restart the game.


 * The duration of the dash maneuver is longer than in the final.
 * While wearing the Falcon armor, the regular air dash (X, O) is the same as the 'double jump' air dash (X, X).
 * On character selection, the cursor always defaults to X regardless of which characters/armors are available; in the final, the default is Falcon armor.
 * No Heart Tanks, Weapon Tanks or Energy Tanks were implemented yet.
 * The game hangs permanently when trying to load Gate's Lab, making playing past the first 8 stages (+ intro stage) impossible without hacking.
 * Dropped items are extremely rare - only large weapons energy powerups seem to appear. Health powerups seem to appear only on easy mode and from specific enemies.
 * Alia's ! message symbol symbol appears on the lower left corer of the screen; in the final, it's on the lower right. The button to answer it is mapped to L2 instead of the final's select.
 * Items do not show up properly in the inventory once found.
 * The flies produced by Yammark's nightmare have less health, but accumulate in greater numbers. Hitting them doesn't produce the metallic ching sound/visual effects, they just fly away.
 * The steel blocks from Metal Shark Player's nightmare are destroyable by the X-saber, and not effected by the charged Metal Anchor at all.
 * Douglas and Signas's names in dialog are colored green in the proto, instead of the final's yellow and dark blue respectively.
 * The cheats for unlocking X and Zero's ultimate armors were not implemented yet.

Weapons Changes
The Falcon armor's giga attack is missing both its sound effect and its animated background at this point.



As a consequence, some background objects in Metal Shark Player's stage can be seen when using it. This may occur in other stages as well. The final version's animated background makes this irrelevant.

Yammark Option has Ice Burst's palette and Metal Anchor's icon. The charged version fires at half the rate as it does in the final.

Ice Burst has Guard Shell's palette and icon.

Magma Blade has Meteor Rain's palette.

The sprite used for its fully charged version has a different (uglier) animation.

They almost got Metal Anchor right except for the icon.

Ground Dash has Yammark Option's palette and Arrow Ray's icon.

Meteor Rain has Magma Blade's palette.

Guard Shell has Ground Dash's palette and Yammark Option's icon. The charged attack is completely different also:

See that black spot? Instead of the final version's screen-border shell cannons, the proto has a discolored shield sprite which bounces around the screen like a ping pong ball. Sometimes it gets caught on the top of the screen and jiggles rapidly without ricocheting. The projectile's behavior is highly reminiscent of the Bubble (flying skull enemy) from Zelda II.



The palette corrects itself when you do an air dash.

Arrow Ray has Ground Dash's icon. The attack itself however is completely different: It is a graphically corrupted and silent version of Wing Spiral, a leftover weapon from Mega Man X5.



Here's what its charged version looks like.

Zero's arsenal was effected similarly with misused icons for certain weapons. Aside from all palettes being messed up, both Shoenzan and Rekkoha's names are displayed as ????????, and the button combinations for their activation are not present on the row of text.

The Z-saber retains its green palette when using Shoenzan in the proto.

The background for his Rekkoha attack is blue lightning instead of red vertical lines. The right hand side of the screen is covered by a graphical glitch.

Boss Portraits
All of the boss portraits seen after selecting their stages are in a preliminary stage, some of them still sketches.

Others
Stage images were not yet drawn, instead displaying their Japanese names. Killing a boss does not change its portrait to grayscale, and the stages effected by the nightmare system do not turn red. Gate's headshot is missing entirely.

Both the inventory and rescued reploids screens are incomplete sketches in the proto.

High Max is a slightly lighter hue in the proto. Also, note the health bar's skull icon instead of the purple diamond used in the final.

The bricks left by Ground Scaravich's nightmare are pretty basic in the proto, so much that you might not realize their presence is unnatural.

The portals that take you to each stages' alternate paths have two additional animation frames which were removed in the final. Also, they're green. This does not apply to the portal in Metal Shark Player's stage, which is still blue (but with the two extra frames).

Nightmare Zero retains his regular colors in the prototype. Considering his face portrait and sprite in the intro stage had the correct palette, this was probably an error.

Opening Stage
This Junkroid enemy was moved back a bit to be less annoying.

They removed one Meta Wheel F in the final. However, it is still present on Xtreme difficulty. Several enemy placement changes between proto and final are also differences between the final version's normal and Xtreme difficulties.



The demonstration seen by leaving the game idle on the title screen shows X shooting and slashing into nothing and generally acting like a moron. He never gets over that pillar to the right before it goes back to the title.


 * The sound effect when Nightmare Zero finishes D-1000 is absent.

Commander Yammark
The projectile dust from the Killer Moths was changed from yellow to an ugly purple, probably so you wouldn't think it was harmless.

A Nightmare Virus was added to the same room as these helpless reploids in the cave portion of the stage.

Yammark's stage also seems to be a testing ground for a less nasty behavior pattern for the Nightmare Viruses themselves. Normally, they will always charge straight toward a helpless reploid if one exists, but in the proto they're programmed to ignore reploids in this stage. They also have a habit of flying into you and killing you through violation of personal space, but in the final they courteously stop a few inches away allowing you to kill them.


 * The sound effect heard when Yammark fires his weapon is different.

Blizzard Wolfang
A single Wolfloid was removed from over this ladder, probably because its presence makes it difficult to escape if you climbed down while it was still alive. It retains its position over the ladder in the final's Xtreme difficulty, however.

The avalanches in the second part of the stage were changed from the regular 'wall of ice' variety to single bouncing ice blobs. The avalanche sound effect was also changed to something a bit less crude.

In the proto, the first falling ice block section doesn't include Wolfloids. Getting hit on the head by an ice block does negligible damage as well. In the final, they kill you in two hits. Getting frozen is instant-kill in both versions.

Rainy Turtloid
Another enemy was added guarding the weather machine at the end of the stage's second acid rain section. This enemy is also present in the final's Xtreme difficulty.

The prototype has a single-use health recharger sitting around in the third acid rain segment. The final replaces it with a bunch of small and large energy capsules.

Rainy Turtloid isn't weak to Wolfang's weapon. Instead, he is frozen by the ordinary X-saber. This is probably a bug.


 * The Sea Attacker ST enemies move slower in the proto.

Blaze Heatnix
The green lights on the Nightmare Snake miniboss were made to look glassier. It was also given the ability to shoot tiny homing shots.

The magma was changed from orange to an ugly purple, probably so you wouldn't think it was harmless.

Metal Shark Player
This Junkroid was moved to the far end of the nook, making it less likely that you'd die from hitting your head on the ceiling.

A single Nightmare Virus was removed from the long compactor leading to the alternate exit. Doesn't seem like a big deal, but its presence makes it almost impossible to get through. Unfortunately, it is still present in the final version's Xtreme difficulty.

This misplaced tile appears in the second part of the stage with the conveyor belt.


 * Likely due to a sound effect priority glitch, the trash compactor in the second part of the stage is silent.
 * The music stops after destroying Nightmare Pressure (the miniboss fought before confronting Metal Shark Player).

Ground Scaravich
The blue color and transparency effects on Scaravich's totems weren't implemented yet.

The location of the portal was moved to another part of the same room.



Part of the animated terrain has a glitch where it flashes black occasionally.


 * There are significantly more Nightmare Viruses present in the proto.

Shield Sheldon
This background object is slightly glitched.

Infinity Mijinion
At the beginning of the stage, you are contacted by Infinity Mijinion in the proto. This is the same message he has for you when meeting him in his boss chamber. In the final, you get a message from Alia instead.

Illumina has electric wires in the proto which it didn't get to keep for the final. Its weakness was changed from Yammark Option in the proto to Meteor Rain in the final.

After depleting its health bar for the first time in the final, a continuous electrical buzz sound effect is heard. In the proto, this sound effect is only played once.


 * There are significantly more Nightmare Viruses present in the proto.

Music
Two BGMs in the prototype are partially incomplete, missing a few instruments.

Opening Stage Rainy Turtloid Stage


 * The music heard when Zero joins you is absent in the proto.
 * All of the music tracks in the final are looped several more times than in the prototype, taking up much more disc space. There is also a common glitch in where after fading out, the background music skips to the next numbered stream in the game's data.

Sound Effects


The WARNING when confronting a boss is vocalized.


 * There are no background sound effects in cutscenes (e.g. wind blowing).
 * The swish heard when picking up a robot soul is silent.
 * Alia's ! pager beep is absent.
 * The ride armors (e.g. the one in Metal Shark Player's stage) do not produce sound effects.
 * Bosses do have voices but they are used inconsistently. They remain silent if they are the first boss you killed.
 * After killing a boss, you do not hear a sound effect when absorbing its soul.