June 10, 2004
Here’s an interesting bit of trivia. Did you know that X and Zero are not technically Reploids?
The reasoning is simple. When Dr. Cain discovered X in the capsule, he was so impressed with this new robot that he wanted to make copies of him. So he tried to duplicate X. Of course, he couldn’t figure out everything that Dr. Light had done, so he made some changes here and there (what kind of changes, exactly, is never mentioned). He named the end result “Reploids.”
So a “Reploid” is a robot created by Dr. Cain (or his subsidiaries) that is based loosely on X’s design. (The name itself derives from the word “replicate;” in Cain’s journal, he talks about replicating X, thus churning out “Reploids.”)
This means that X isn’t himself a Reploid, because he wasn’t made by Cain. And even notwithstanding that, by strict definition, only X’s duplicates are Reploids; X isn’t a duplicate of himself, so he doesn’t count.
This also means that Zero isn’t a Reploid, because he wasn’t created by Dr. Cain either. (And we don’t even know how much he is based off of X’s design.)
Of course, it seems that the word “Reploid” has since been expanded (even by Capcom themselves) to mean any robot in X’s day and age. In other words, all robots in the X series of any caliber are simply called “Reploids.” Mavericks are Reploids. Street cleaners are Reploids. The little fly robots that pester you during stages are Reploids. Heck, I assume even the Mets are Reploids now.
So when you take this more broad definition, you can consider X and Zero to be Reploids in addition to everything else, since they are, after all, robots.
I imagine this is probably another one of those little details that Capcom’s own employees have forgotten by now. That’s why I said it was an interesting piece of trivia. You know, if I can come up with another 1,500 of these, I could make a board game. Or a list of questions for the Mayor to ask in Mega Man Legends 3...
- The MegaMaster