August 4, 2007
Someone asked me once why I keep mentioning that Zero dies a lot, and asked for a list of all of the times that Zero has kicked the bucket. So I decided one day to sit down and go through the games, noting either games where Zero “dies” during the game itself, or he spends at least part of the game out of commission.
(Note: “Death” doesn’t mean his body was completely obliterated, just that he was rendered non-functional. Since Reploids aren’t humans, you can’t really say a Reploid “dies” at all, so this just means he’s put out of commission and has to be rebuilt.)
- Mega Man X:
- Near the end of the game.
- Mega Man X2:
- Zero’s not really destroyed in this one; however, his “death” from the previous game is a major part of the plot here, so it warrants a mention.
- Mega Man X3:
- Player option. The player can kill off Zero or not. To get the Beam Saber you have to kill him. (X has infinite lives, but if Zero dies once, he’s out of the picture for the entire game. Gotta love it.)
- Mega Man X5:
- Any ending. All of the endings. You could almost count this as three deaths.
- Mega Man X6:
- Zero’s ending (he’s not destroyed, but he puts himself out of commission for 102 years).
- Mega Man X(?):
- Sometime before the Zero series, Zero has to somehow end up hanging in a device with only half a body so that Ciel can find him and Passy can restore him.
- Mega Man Zero 4:
- Ending. (And it looks as though Capcom is actually going to stick with this one, for once!)
And yet, through all this, Zero exists as a Biometal in the ZX series. Given this, why anyone worries about Reploids “dying” is totally beyond me. You know, in Mega Man X4, what Zero should have said was: “Sorry, Iris. I’ll have them rebuild you later.”
- The MegaMaster