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Mega Man X2

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TheLX5 edited this page Jul 22, 2026 · 7 revisions

Mega Man X2 on Archipelago aims to provide a short-but-sweet experience in "sync" sessions as the base game is quite short. The randomizer adds a lot of extra features in order to increase its replay value.

Goal

Defeat Sigma Virus at Central Computer! In order to do that players have to collect enough items in the multiworld to find how to access the X-Hunter Base levels.

Unlocking X-Hunter Base

The set of levels can be unlocked after fulfilling the requirements picked in the YAML option file.

  • Getting enough Maverick Medal items, which are held by Mavericks.
  • Finding the Access Codes item in the multiworld

Locations

Every collectible is a location in this implementation, alongside some other obvious staples in other Archipelago implementations to have a nice sense of progression in the session:

  • Mavericks & other bosses
  • Mid-stage bosses
  • Upgrade Capsules
  • Heart Tanks
  • Sub Tanks
  • [Optional] Pickup items (1-Ups, HP refills, Weapon Energy refills)

Items

Players can find as multiworld items the following unlockables and consumables:

  • Maverick weapons
  • Access codes (level unlocks)
  • Armor upgrades
  • Health upgrades (Heart tanks)
  • Sub tanks
  • HP Refill items
  • [Optional] Shoryuken
  • [Optional] Chip enhancement items from future games in the saga

Chip enhancement items

The following items require enabling Pickup Items as locations. Upon getting one of these their effect becomes permanent! Be sure to include the ones that sound nice to you.

Quick Charge (MMX5)

Halves charge time for X-Buster and Special Weapon shots

Speedster (MMX5)

Increases walking speed by 50%

Super Recover (MMX5)

Increases recovery from items by 25%

Rapid Five (MMX5)

Increases the amount of buster shots on screen to 5

Speed Shot (MMX5)

Increases default buster shot (lemons) horizontal speed by 50%

Buster Plus (MMX5)

Increases Buster damage by 1

Weapon Plus (MMX6)

Increases Weapon damage by 1

D-Converter (MMX6)

Refills the active weapon when taking damage

D-Barrier (MMX6)

Doubles the I-frames after getting hit

Item Plus (MMX7)

Increases item drop rates by roughly 33%

Spike Walker (MMX8)

Halves speed when sliding down a wall

Linked systems

This game implementation features some Link protocols that allows interacting with other players in interesting ways.

EnergyLink

EnergyLink is a protocol featured in several games that allows players to deposit Energy in a communal pool. Mega Man X2 players can use said energy to request healing or weapon energy and can contribute to the pool by collecting pickup items (1-Ups, HP refills, weapon energy refills).

Players can know how much energy is currently stored in the pool by reading a label in the SNIClient window. This information is also displayed on the Pause Menu.

To interact with the EnergyLink pool, players have two options:

  • Press SELECT on the X Buster weapon on the Pause Menu to refill HP, alternatively, press SELECT when highlighting the desired weapon to refill. This action will attempt to refill those to their fullest.
  • By using a set of commands in SNIClient:
    • /heal <amount> will heal you by that much HP.
    • /refill <amount> will refill the currently selected weapon by that much energy.

DamageLink

DamageLink is a protocol that allows players to share damage taken. Can get very chaotic with game variety. The damage is sent as "points" over the network, certain actions send more points than others.

Damage Source Damage points
Losing 1 HP 10
Touching spikes or falling into pit Treated as losing every single HP point

When receiving a damage signal, Mega Man X2 players will lose 1 HP per 10 points of damage received. Can't process more than 120 points.

DeathLink

Any time a player dies, everyone dies! Can be highly chaotic.

Changes from the base game

There have been severa changes to the base game in order to get this randomizer to exists at all. Those were made to increase replayability and some other Quality of Life additions to help less experienced players.

Checkpoint selector

Whenever a checkpoint is reached in levels they're recorded and saved. Players can revisit levels on any checkpoint they've reached before.

A Checkpoint label is present on the Stage Select screen, the number indicates which checkpoint players will teleport to upon entering the level. This number can be changed by pressing L or R.

Enhanced Helmet

Helmet upgrades are mostly useless to the player. In this randomizer by getting a Helmet Upgrade item, players will unlock every checkpoint in levels even if they haven't reached said checkpoint before.

X-Hunter selector

When the criteria is met, a new label will appear on the Stage Select screen. This label allows you to know which X-Hunter will be present in the level. The X-Hunter can be swapped by pressing SELECT on any level that's not the X-Hunter's Base tile.

X-Hunter's Base level selector

Players can select which level they want to play on the X-Hunter Base (as long they've unlocked it). They can swap the level by pressing SELECT on the X-Hunter's Base level tile on the Stage Select screen. A label will appear that indicates which level is being selected.

Shoryuken

Shoryuken received quite a lot of design decisions to make it more engaging... to me at least. The move now deals damage based on your current HP, this means it can't exactly one-shot bosses anymore. However, it does keep its ability to completely bypass weaknesses.

Skipped dialogs

Gotta go fast.

Arsenal refill on deaths

In the SNES trilogy, whenever a player dies in any level their arsenal keeps the previous energy gauges completely intact. In this randomizer the weapon energy gauges are completely filled on respawn.

Extended HP indicators

On this randomizer, players and bosses can have over 32 points of health with some options. Instead of letting the bar go out of bounds, there's a "second" bar that's being shown alongside a "label" in the form of a HP pickup that indicates there's a full HP bar on the background.

Think of it as a Energy Tank in Metroid games.

Dash buster shots are green

Players can know when they've shot a dash lemon instead of a regular lemon.

Infinite lives

Good. Life counter on the Pause Menu is now used as a numeric HP display.

Setup

This game is very similar to any other SNES game in Archipelago, you can follow any of these guides or keep reading this one. Your choice.

Required Software

How to play

  1. Place the .apworld in your Archipelago/custom_worlds folder, or double-click the .apworld to do so automatically.
  2. Use ArchipelagoLauncher.exe to open the Launcher, and click on Generate Template Options to create template YAMLs for your custom .apworlds.
  3. Place the desired player yamls in the Players folder, and customize them as you see fit.
  4. Use ArchipelagoGenerate.exe to generate the game.
  5. Upload the generated game (in the output folder) on the website at https://archipelago.gg/uploads and create a new room.
  6. Download the patch file from the session page
  7. Open the .apmmx2 file with ArchipelagoLauncher.exe, it should create a ROM file and open SNI Client.

Snes9x-nwa

  1. Click on the Network Menu and check Enable Emu Network Control
  2. Load your ROM file if it hasn't already been loaded.
  3. The emulator should automatically connect while SNI is running.

image

FxPak

  1. Open the patch file at least once with SNIClient (or the Launcher) to generate the ROM file and XML file.
  2. Ensure SNI is running on the background. It's open for you when launching a SNIClient game.
  3. Transfer the ROM and XML file to your FxPak. Using manage_files.exe inside of the SNI folder in your Archipelago install is recommended.
  4. Boot the game.
  5. Connect with SNIClient to the server. SNIClient should connect to the FxPak automatically as long SNI is running on the background.

NOTE: If you want to reset or swap games, ensure you're disconnected from the Server first! Otherwise SNI will tell SNIClient some dirty lies about the state of the game and may clear locations for you, or worse, goal the game.

Snes9x-rr

  1. Load your ROM file if it hasn't already been loaded.
  2. Click on the File menu and hover on Lua Scripting
  3. Click on New Lua Script Window...
  4. In the new window, click Browse...
  5. Select the connector lua file included with your client. Look in the Archipelago folder for /SNI/lua/
  6. If you see an error while loading the script that states socket.dll missing or similar, navigate to the folder of the lua you are using in your file explorer and copy the socket.dll to the base folder of your snes9x install.

Bizhawk

  1. Ensure the Snes9x core is loaded. BSNES core will NOT work.
  2. Load your ROM file if it hasn't already been loaded. If you changed your core preference after loading the ROM, don't forget to reload it (default hotkey: Ctrl+R).
  3. Drag+drop the Connector.lua file that you downloaded above onto the main EmuHawk window.
  • Look in the Archipelago folder for /SNI/lua/.
  • You could instead open the Lua Console manually, click Script 〉 Open Script, and navigate to Connector.lua with the file picker.

BSNES-plus

  1. Load your ROM file if it hasn't already been loaded.
  2. The emulator should automatically connect while SNI is running.

NOTE: Do not reset with the emulator options! It'll completely garble the game RAM and tell SNIClient some dirty lies about the state of the game, which can result on sending out a bunch of locations or goaling the game.

Trackers

Universal Tracker

Universal Tracker is a custom APWorld that allows players to generate a list of in-logic locations for the current slot, very useful when trying to figure out why is something suddenly appearing as reachable.

Feature Supported?
YAML-less tracking ✔️
/explain ✔️
/glp ✔️
Glitched Logic ❌
Deferred Entrances ❌
Map Tracker Tab ❌
Player location in Map Tracker ❌

Manager

The APWorld comes with a Manager software that gets added into the Archipelago Launcher which allows players to toggle certain options and swap palettes!

image

Linked Options

This section allows players to enable or disable Link protocols from a given patch file in case they don't want to run it. They overwrite their YAML setting.

Global Options

Those options persist across slots, so you don't have to deal with weird combinations in such cases where players have to play someone else's slot.

  • Enable X4 styled dash jumps: Previously known as long_jump in the YAML file. Allows players to perform dash jumps without having to perform a dash first, which means you can just hold the dash button and keep jumping to perform a dash jump.
  • Use Hadouken inputs for Shoryuken: For players that find the 623 motion too hard to perform and 236 easier to do.
  • Makes both Serges fights enjoyable: Edits some properties of those fights in order to not be a huge pain to play.
    • [Serges I] Serges can take damage at any point
    • [Serges I] Removed shield/No longer taunts
    • [Serges I] No longer gets stunned by weapons
    • [Serges II] Removed immunity from Serges' capsule
    • [Serges II] Actual hurtbox enlarged so it's easier to hit
  • Button configuration: Yeah.

Palette Options

Here players can select which palettes will be used for X and him using different weapons. This includes palettes from every SNES game.

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