When people rank their favorite Mega Man X games, the PS1 title Mega Man X6 usually winds up appearing towards the bottom of the list.
Released in 2001 (or 2002 if you live in Europe), the sixth entry in the Mega Man sub-series is often viewed by many fans online as a bit of a rush job, with the game coming out a mere 12 months after Mega Man X5, which was originally envisioned by series producer Keiji Inafune to be the end of the story.
Because of this tight production timeline, it ultimately ended up featuring a lot of rough edges and ideas that didn't necessarily come together (like the Nightmare System), making it one of the more challenging games to recommend to newcomers in its original form.
Thankfully, over the years, we have seen some amazing fan-made hacks being produced, which have sought to give the game a much-needed overhaul (like Mega Man X6 Tweaks and Megaman X N's Edition), but it appears that there is also another option that will soon be available to players: a PC fan reimagining from the developer Cat Yard Games (thanks Rockman Corner).
This PC reimagining, which is being called Mega Man X Viral Nightmare, is being developed "from the ground up" in Gamemaker Studio 2, and is Cat Yard Games' own vision of what he'd like to see in X6, as well as Mega Man games in general.
The armor system, for example, has been tweaked, letting you wear armor pieces as soon as you get them (rather than having to collect all four parts) and can be mixed and matched, as in Mega Man X8. There are also new abilities for some of the less useful armor parts, to give them something to make them more desirable.
In addition to that, how you acquire parts has also been changed. In the original game, parts are acquired from rescuing Reploids, with the number of parts you can equip being dependent on your Hunter rank, determined by the number of Nightmare souls you've collected. But this will apparently be the opposite in Viral Nightmare.
Parts will now be bought directly from Douglas and will be paid for with Nightmare Souls, with your rank instead being determined by the number of Reploids you save. New parts will become available in the shop by completing levels, with these parts being based on the level.
The plan for the game seems to be to release it in chunks, with the first volume set to contain the intro stage, and four levels (Commander Yammark, Rainy Turtloid, Blaze Heatnix, and Infinity Mijinion). Of these, 4/5 are complete, meaning the first release shouldn't be too far off (hopefully).
You can watch Cat Yard Games' explainer video here for more information on the project. He's also posted a couple of videos of the game in action, including the Rainy Turtloid boss fight and Commander Yammark's stage.
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