Since it seems readily apparent that I’m not going to get what I had planned for today done with all these distractions, let’s do this instead. Zero’s been confirmed for MvC3! I think most of us were already expecting it, but hooray just the same! To celebrate, it’s time for some Carddas Zero action!
From Carddas’ Rockman X collection, X2 series:
Rear side:
ZERO
X’s Closest Ally
HP 1200
A Special A Class Hunter who belonged to the same 17th Battalion as X. He was X’s best friend, and the one who understood him the most. However, during the battle against Sigma, he was severely damaged after using a self-destructive attack in order to save X. Miraculously, his control chip remained intact, and was recovered to the Irregular Hunter Headquarters for safekeeping.
So the story goes, even though the Hunters had Zero’s control chip (essentially his electronic brain) available and in one piece, Zero’s body was too mysterious and complex to be rebuilt by Dr. Cain; Zero was as good as dead. It would take a shadowy character by the name of Sagesse (or Serges) to come forward and restore Zero’s body, with improved functionality.
Ready for more?
Rear side:
SIGMA & ZERO
The Confrontation! X VS ZERO!?
“Long time no see, X. How I’ve been looking forward to this day…… Allow me to introduce my new partner here. You two used to be comrades, back before he was liberated to fight as he desired.”
…At last Sigma had shown himself. And standing with him, appeared to be none other than Zero himself!! But why would Zero ever join forces with Sigma!?
This card is the very first officially published depiction of Black Zero. As you may recall from X2, when X recovers all of Zero’s parts, this dark colored copy will stand in for the real Zero, who arrives in the nick of time to wipe the floor with this impostor. If X failed to collect all the parts, Black Zero would still make an appearance at the end of the credits. The color of his armor gems in this image is a bit different from the in-game sprites.
Let’s do one more!
Rear side:
X & ZERO
Let’s crush Sigma’s evil ambition!!
HP x2
In the past, the repliroid Sigma was renown as the strongest warrior in history, and served as Commander of the 17th Battalion that X and Zero belonged to. Then, in order to create a world just for repliroids, he started a rebellion, but was driven back and defeated by X, his plans foiled… However, someone has managed to revive him, and now that insidious figure has appeared once again…!!
This card had more to do with Sigma than X and Zero. Still, we know that Sagesse and Sigma’s evil plan has backfired! X and Zero team up once more to send Sigma and his forces back to the grave. When these two combine their power, evil never stands a chance. Throughout the many changes to the X series, that’s one thing that’s always stayed the same.
Hope you enjoyed this brief look at but one chapter of Zero’s long history. We’ll see him kicking more booty next year in Marvel vs Capcom 3!
Zero in MvC3? Cool. 🙂 (Though I still wish that MvC3-X pic wasn’t fake…)
Didn’t realize that was the first non-game depiction of Copy-Zero. :/
I am always tail-waggingly happy to learn new stuff about Zero. It’s the 15-year-old inside of me.
Wow. Might be the first non game depiction, and yet still the only “official” depiction, as it were. Pretty cool.
Actually, do we know the artist who made those illustrations? because im going to assume it wasnt any of the X series artists (inafune included) who worked on the X-X3 art.
@RAD: I’m pumped for him being in MvC3! He looks like his combo powers have been enhanced even more from TvC, but I have a feeling that with the heavy 3-on-3 competition in Marvel, he’s going to need it. I’m still hoping for a third Mega Man character to fill out my roster, but I’m not sure what the chances are of that.
@Red: Much of this blog is directed towards recapturing those adolescent feelings of enthusiasm for me. I’m glad I’m not the only one!
@Flame: Card 78’s art of X2 Zero is definitely Capcom in-house art. I couldn’t say about any of the others. Any particular reason why you think they weren’t from Inafune or his crew?
Dunno, I would just assume that like many times, they just license it, and someone does an imitation style.
But thinking about it, theres no reason to believe it WASNT by the X-X3 crew…
I mean hey, the X-X3 crew as well as Sensei DID work on things like the model kit artwork, so its possible.
I´m a bit late seeing this blog post, but this reminds me that I´d really like some more information about X2. As you know, X2´s story was quite heavily altered during translation, not only in manual, but also in-game. We never got an actual translation of the manual, and we were largely left in the dark about many things such as Sagesse. The biggest questions on my mind are whether it was Sagesse or Sigma that produced the copy of Zero, and if Zero’s X2 design is the original Zero body recovered, or completely built from scratch. But any information about X2 would be much appreciated!
Well, I think we have to be honest here, and think about that for a second- If it was Sagesse who made the copy, then I dont think it would have been so easily dispatched.
Unless of course, he was just pissed that he didnt get his hands on Zero, and just made Sigma a shitty copy.
I’m planning to do quite a bit with X2, one of my first and favorite Japanese guidebooks was for Rockman X2 in fact! I’m not quite sure when I’ll get to it all though, since there’s a lot of DASH material I want to cover also in honor of Legends 3. It’s hard to prioritize! But it’s definitely something on the roster.
But I can answer your questions at least. The X2 Zero body was built from parts the Counter Hunters recovered from Zero’s old body that they repaired, plus his original control chip. The Copy Zero was also made by the Counter Hunters. Serges as the genius of the gang did the technical work. Even though it doesn’t say this in writing anywhere I can think of, it makes sense that Sigma could have a hand in it too as the Counter Hunters’ master and the one who actually appears with the Copy.
One popular idea explaining its weakness is that Copy Zero was like the Zero series’ Proto Style or the X8 Black Zero, high attack and low defense. Maybe there wasn’t time to properly fine-tune and balance him as they rushed to battle X. Hard to know what kind of attack power he had when we only ever get to see him attack a logo!
Some other alternate explanations on Black Zero’s weakness:
1. Could be a “weak to the real thing” deal ala Nightmare Zero.
2. Super NES gameplay being what it was, how deep does one realistically expect an NPC battle in a platformer to get? Sensei’s X5 recollection depicts the two facing off, which in and of itself is a step beyond the actual X2 events seeings how Zero blew him away before even appearing on-screen.
Keiji Inafune says you’re wrong about that.
http://www.capcom-unity.com/mega_man/go/thread/view/7461/30226081/i-met-keiji-inafune-at-gdc-today-and-asked-him-some-questions
That’s very interesting. For reference I’d love to see some actual quotes on the subject as the game itself is more than vague on the matter of Zero’s revival. But, that’s all in due time. Right now, going by what you said, I have to ask… how did the Counter Hunters acquire Zero’s body, but not the Control Chip? And vice versa, how did the Hunters acquire only the Control Chip and not the body? Or did the Counter Hunters at some point steal the body, forgetting the Control Chip?
The thing that bothered me about X2’s weird sort of ‘grab the parts’ scenario was that it just didn’t make any damn sense in the first place. The thing that makes Zero -Zero- isn’t his body, it’s his spirit. Didn’t Rockman Zero prove that beyond the shadow of a doubt? Who cares if it’s not the body that Wily built? That body wasn’t all that special anyway – it doesn’t even look like it was properly finished until Serges got his hands on it and brought it up to Wily’s original spec as it was. All this fuss about ‘parts of Zero’ just never made any sense to me.
I have to agree with another commenter that the whole US translation of the X series is a big, ugly mess. There really needs to be a do-over for all the games, since such radical liberties were taken throughout the scripting process. Words matter; the exact words are very important! It’s a big difference to say “now liberated to fight as he wishes” versus “it seems you let him die and he’s not happy about that”. Bleh.
This is why I pulled way back out of the fandom; there’s just too many frustrating contradictions and plot problems with it…
@Hyper: That’s very true for the medium of the time! A lot of the storytelling is subject to how we imagine it!
@Zan: I don’t remember if it’s ever confirmed, but I think you’re right. Some do say Cain tried to repair Zero’s body himself but failed, so I think he must have had it before the Counter Hunters stole the parts back. I guess the parts and the control chip must have been kept at separate labs or bases, or else they just messed up. But the other way could work too, harking back to the classic series where Rock takes the IC chips of his enemies, if X did that it makes sense that he might have taken Zero’s control chip with him. We’ll have to look into it more deeply when X2 time comes around!
@Cass: They must not have realized that part about the body not being important yet. XD Guess we’re left to assume there’s some reason the brain wouldn’t work with just any body. Some sci-fi universes have laws where robots aren’t allowed to swap bodies to protect identity and prevent fraud, but I doubt that applies to this series with all the copy chip stuff later on. But even if it probably shouldn’t have mattered what body Zero was revived in, X still wouldn’t want the bad guys to be going around using his departed best friend’s powerful ex-body for evil stuff! That’s just not nice.
I too love trying to choose just the right words. Even though these games tend to be translated a little fast and loose, I think they still managed to tell interesting stories much of the time. For X2 I still remember musing about the prophecy and who “last of the doctor’s creations” meant. Given the option though, I do wish they had kept a lot of things closer between versions.
If the Counter Hunters did indeed repair Zero’s old body instead of producing a wholly new one (which Sagesse should be wholly capable of), there’s definitely a lot of unseen stuff going on in X2. But, it would coincide nicely with what Rockman Online said about the Z-saber being given to Zero because his buster functions were lost in X1 and found impossible to repair because it’s Wily technology.
If it is a new body, though, it would surely simplify X2’s story, but ultimately prove problematic with things like Omega being the “original Zero” and definitely raises questions about his virus immunity before X2.
Iwamoto’s manga went with the idea of Zero’s original body being in Cain’s possession, then stolen by the Counter Hunters. But they took the Control Chip at the same time as the body, so I don’t think we can really use that to explain the events in the game.
I do remember the translation of Sagesse’s profile you did in the past, mentioning Sigma and Zero’s new bodies being constructed by him. It kinda made it sound as if Sagesse completed an all new body for Zero. Furthermore, from what I heard about Cain’s effort to revive Zero, I also understood it to be more about making a new body than trying to repair the old one. But as is, you seem to be more in favor of a repair in both cases. When you get to covering more about X2, I hope you’ll pay attention to little subtleties in phrasing so that it becomes entirely clear whether X2 Zero’s body is the X1 Zero body repaired or something wholly new.
I don’t honestly remember, but I can believe it. Those old things were riddled with little problems. That’s why they aren’t around anymore.