Oozora Subaru Plays Mega Man X for the First Time and Hunts for Boss Weaknesses

HOLOLIVE — Oozora Subaru of Hololive’s second generation spent a 200-minute stream on her first run through Mega Man X, played in the Mega Man X Legacy Collection, and ended it saying she expects the game to take her through the rest of November. She said she had decided to start Mega Man once the month began, and that her only earlier attempt, at Mega Man 2, had been difficult enough that she smashed something in frustration.

The opening highway stage nearly stopped her, and she got through it with frequent close calls. After a scene with Zero, she picked the penguin boss’s stage first and was handed the dash ability by Dr. Light’s capsule. Dash jumping then became the main obstacle: she kept stepping backward on screens where enemies respawn when the player retreats, and she repeatedly dropped off the ledges she was climbing, saying she had not realized she was pressing up. She beat the penguin boss, then took on a mine-cart stage and reached a boss she judged too strong to fight yet.

“I’m starting to get what kind of game Mega Man is.” — Oozora Subaru, after about three hours of play

From there she played Mega Man’s stage-select format, choosing stages by guesswork about which boss is weak to which weapon. She tried a theory that a weakness sits diagonally across the stage-select screen, which chat disputed, and several guesses with her ice weapon failed. Around the two-hour-twenty mark a boss finally showed it was weak to what she carried, and she said the theory had held. A later guess that an electric weapon would work did not. Spikes, scarce health pickups and a stretch of fairy-like enemies cost her lives along the way.

She wrapped up by saying that Mega Man, which had only felt hard when she first tried it, was now fun, and that the distance to each boss was just short enough that she wanted to try again. She changed the key configuration to put dash on the R button, found it easier, and said she planned to continue about once a week and expected to need about four sessions in all. She noted that the game is said to take about four hours, a figure she did not expect to hold.