.png)
In January 2025, I released dumps of two pre-release builds of Mega Man X7: the E3 2003 Special Edition and a U.S. press event disc. Both builds already had their share of differences from the final game, including X being fully playable in the intro stage. But only now are we learning that there’s even more unused content hiding in the code.
Rockman Corner reader lucasfera15 has spent the last few months digging into inaccessible content from the U.S. press disc. His early work turned up unused textures and models, but his latest findings are easily the most interesting yet: full-blown unused areas and alternate stages
Among them are an early version of the Crimson Fortress/Escape stage with different layouts and camera angles, a scrapped version of Flame Hyenard’s stage built around a completely unused mission, and several other remnants that never made it into the final game.
Mega Man X7 may not be anyone’s favorite game in the series, but I don’t think I’m alone in saying its development is pretty fascinating. Seeing stuff like this for the first time is really interesting, and it makes you wonder why some of these changes and cuts happened in the first place.
I remember looking up X7's production studio at one point and found that it had been credited with work on Resident Evil titles. As well, Tatsuya Kitabayashi turned out to be a Breath of Fire series veteran. So on the surface, it explained why X7's core felt so poor. Nobody involved in production had likely ever dealt with anything Mega Man, much less the PS1 entries the team was expected to succeed.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually wondering if Capcom actually did copy Legends' design and try to refine the basic movement of it control-wise for the full 3D sections.
X7 final does have nice explosions and smoke effects.
ReplyDeleteThank you for bringing this project to the community's attention! More cool finds are coming soon!
ReplyDelete