Mega Man Maverick Hunter X (PSP) Review
A Bad Remake with Good Bonus Content
-by tankMage (October 2025)
Score: 73/100 (Decent)
Before I begin this review in earnest, I want to talk about the SNES version of Mega Man X and why it’s so beloved. By 1993, the Mega Man series was in a rut. While all of the NES games were good, many of them didn’t innovate in any meaningful way and some of them felt very uninspired. Mega Man X breathed new life into the franchise when it blasted its way onto the scene with tight gameplay, new abilities, and a more somber, mature tone.
All of this is important, because Mega Man Maverick Hunter X fails miserably at reproducing MMX, let alone elevating it. Despite being on superior hardware, the graphics are worse (from a stylistic standpoint) and the music is hit or miss. But that’s not Maverick Hunter’s real crime. Whoever was in charge of the project took a simplistic, yet tragic tale and replaced it with schlock. MMX’s concise, punchy dialog was exchanged for drivel and important events were rearranged. If that’s not bad enough, the gameplay feels sluggish and sloppy compared to the SNES version.
While I don’t like the MMX remake aspect of this game, I really enjoyed the bonus content which allows the player to control Vile of all characters. Vile has a ton of special weapons which made it interesting to fight the Mavericks again, as well as redesigned stages. I’ll even go as far to say the game seems like it was designed with Vile in mind since a lot of the stages play more smoothly with him. That said, even Vile’s section of the game had problems, like poorly designed platforming sections, items that were hidden in an annoying manner, and an underwhelming final boss.
Story
Mega Man X was groundbreaking (at least as far as the series goes) thanks its plot, which felt more fleshed out and mature than that of earlier Mega Man titles. There were only a few paragraphs of dialog, but they were just enough to establish the cast and illustrate the world a bit. When something important happened in the original MMX, it was meaningful and had a sense of gravity which has rarely been replicated in other games.
So, for the most part, MMX’s story was just about prefect. If something is nearly prefect, you can rest assured it’s a bad idea to tamper with it. The team that made Maverick Hunter X didn’t get the memo, because they altered the story a lot. Just about all of the dialog was rewritten, the Mavericks were given unnecessary lines, stupid new characters were added, and essential plot points were changed.
A good example of this is the way Vile and X interact. Originally, Vile was a smug boss who looked down on X, but Vile’s hubris turned out to be his downfall in the end. In Maverick Hunter X, Vile has an irrational hatred for X and Zero that completely destroys the mystique of his original personality. The final confrontation between X, Zero, and Vile was also rewritten in the same clumsy fashion the rest of the game was handled. It’s puzzling why they felt the need to change so much instead of simply adding a bit of extra lore or perhaps a better translation.
They also added animated cutscenes that explain the story without contributing anything meaningful. For example, MMX starts out on a highway that is under attack by Mavericks. When X teleports in, the player sees cars frantically fleeing the scene and the highway becomes increasingly damaged as the player progresses, which was a great way of getting the point across without dialogue. Maverick Hunter X added a cutscene explaining how the highway came under attack, which completely demystified the story. Once again, the way the original game handled things was more than sufficient.
Graphics
The graphics are superior in a technical sense, but they don’t really work in my opinion. First off, the aspect ratio is different. This alone causes major problems. Old fashioned CRT television sets were taller than they were wide. MMX was designed with this in mind, so all of the stages have a lot of vertical sequences which are difficult to display in wide-screen. Consequently, it’s difficult to climb and deal with platforms in stages like Storm Eagle and Boomerang Kuwanger.
There are also a lot of objects and characters that do not translate well into 2.5D. Mega Man X himself looks really boxy and weird, let alone bosses like Flame Mammoth and Spark Mandril. On top of this, a lot of the little visual effects that made the original look so good were missing.
While I wasn’t impressed with the graphics overall, I have to give the devs credit for doing such a good job on Vile who has something like forty five weapons, each with their own graphical effects. Some of the weapons are recycled versions of X’s arsenal or enemy attacks, but I don’t really think that’s an issue since they look cool. If anything, more care went into Vile than the rest of the game.
Gameplay
Mega Man X featured superb gameplay, perhaps the best in the entire series. The ability to dash and scale walls reinvented the Mega Man franchise and defined what the X games would look like going forward. I’ll repeat myslef again: It’s generally a bad idea to mess with something that’s nearly perfect, so remaking MMX was a tricky proposition from the start. I hate to say it, but Capcom did a rather poor job at remaking their classic platformer.
First of all, the action doesn’t feel as crisp and responsive as it does in the first game. While this may seem like an issue with the controls, I think it was more due to the game running in a 3D environment where the camera was fixed in a side view.
This leads to another problem I mentioned earlier: the squished screen. The PSP used a wide-screen format as opposed to the SNES’s NTSC specs. Consequently, the original game was built around being able to see what was above X. The devs couldn’t figure out how to deal with this problem, so it’s really annoying to climb in many levels, because it’s so hard to see what is above your character.
At the same time, enemies pop up on the screen from a greater distance thanks to the wider aspect. X or Vile can often just snipe foes from a distance, which takes away some of the challenge.
To make the problems even worse, someone decided to change the size of the Mavericks quite radically. Bosses who were fairly big in the original, particularly Flame Mammoth and Spark Mandril, are huge in this game. I found it really difficult to get out of Flame Mammoth’s way when fighting him and Spark Mandril was an incredibly easy target, which made his fight even more underwhelming than it was in the first game.
I also hated how they moved around the armor upgrades in X’s story. The dash boots in Chill Penguin’s stage were put in an obvious place to demonstrate to players that there are upgrades hidden in the game. Chill Penguin was also a good candidate for a first boss, since he was fairly easy to fight without a lot of health or a special weapon. Well, for some reason, they decided to hide all of the armor upgrades in new places which really threw off the flow of the game. I spent a good bit of the early game looking for the dash boots, which just made the action feel even more sluggish.
Another thing they messed up was the energy drops. For some reason, health, weapon energy, and extra lives dropped by enemies disappear if they move off the screen even a little bit. I found this really annoying, because I would often see a power up drop, only for it to vanish off the screen forever. It was a particularly irritating in Vile’s story, since it was new to me and a little more difficult than the standard game.
I know I gave this remake a lot of negative criticism, but it’s not all bad. A lot of what made Mega Man X a great game is still present, plus playing as Vile is actually kind of fun. Vile gets weapons from bosses just like X, but he often unlocks three or four new abilities per boss instead of one. He also has three slots where weapons can be equipped, so players can experiment with different loadouts.
Navigating all the old stages and battling bosses as Vile really breathed new life back into the game. There are also emergent mechanics, like Vile’s ability to briefly hover when firing certain weapons and aim his shoulder cannon. Add that to all the different weapon configurations he can have and you have a game mode with a lot of replay value.
That said, Vile’s story is far from perfect. The aforementioned aspect ratio problems really haunt the Vile part of the game, plus it’s shorter than X’s story. Worse yet, the final boss and the ending were disappointing. I was able to beat the last boss on my second try, using only one sub tank and I probably wouldn’t have died at all if I just used a sub tank the first time. But at least the rest of the game is pretty good.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that they added a harder difficulty mode. At first, I was kind of excited, because new enemy arrangements and new moves for the Mavericks would have made the game more exciting for veteran players. Hard mode would have also been a better place to mix up the upgrade locations. Heck, they could have put the heart and sub tanks in new spots for good measure. Instead, they just gave all the enemies more health and boosted their damage, which made the game even more slow and tedious than they had already made it.
User Interface
I complained about the sluggish gameplay a lot, but I have to emphasize that I think this was an issue with the game’s engine, not the controls. If anything, the controls felt fine and everything worked as it should. Vile’s controls were also good, so they even managed to add a new character without screwing the UI up. Good for them.
Music and Sound
Mega Man X features one of the great sound tracks of the 16-Bit era. To be honest, I do not envy anyone who is tasked with remixing an excellent sound track like this one. Sometimes they turn out better on new hardware, the Final Fantasy remakes that have been produced over the years are a good example of this, but it’s just as likely that the remixes will turn out inferior to the originals. Maverick Hunter X is a mixed bag in this regard. Some songs sound way better, while others were not as good as their 16-Bit counterparts.
Then there’s the voice acting, which was just horrid and uncalled for. The original had no voice overs (aside from X comically shouting “hydoken”) and was better for it. In this version, X is constantly shouting and even goes “Rawr!” when he charges his weapon. The Mavericks also talk and have a lot of meaningless, rather badly acted dialog.
Not only were the VOs often annoying, but they were not particularly well done. Everyone sounded like an intern who was called in to read a few lines or someone fresh out of acting school. To be fair, I think some of the voice actors had potential and probably went on to do greater things, I don’t know for sure since I didn’t read the credits. If you’re gonna add voice acting to a classic, you damn well make it good.
Final Thoughts
Mega Man Maverick Hunter X is a disappointing mess and one of the reasons I’m so reluctant to play remakes. Sure, some remakes turn out great, but they are nearly as likely to fail. Maverick Hunter X certainly falls into the latter category and I’m not sure how Capcom managed to fumble what should have been a slam dunk. Somehow, this game got great reviews, which is really mind boggling to me, but nostalgia is a powerful drug.
I’m tempted to say it’s my own bias towards the original Mega Man X that caused me to be so disappointed with this remake, but something tells me that’s not the case. Why do I say this? Well, Capcom never bothered to remake MMX2, or MMX3, so this game must have sold poorly. The also released a similar remake of the original Mega Man (which I want to play) that must have sold badly. Of course, the PSP didn’t sell all that well in general, but Capcom loves sequels and will pump them out as long as they think they can turn a profit. If you don’t believe me, look at the Monster Hunter series, which took a long time to catch on in the west. If Capcom believed they could have successfully remade the entire MMX series and turned even a modest profit, they sure as hell would have done it.
The most tragic thing about Maverick Hunter X is it had so much potential. This may sound crazy, but I think a spin-off where Vile was the anti-hero going through the series parallel to X and Zero could have worked. Vile’s game was good enough to stand on its own and would have been better if the devs were allowed to focus on it more, rather than jamming a bastardized version of Mega Man X into the disc. They could have even made the original 2D game unlockable after beating Vile’s story. Konami did the same with Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night and it worked great.
Alas, Mega Man Maverick Hunter X is what it is and we’re stuck with it. To anyone interested in this game, I would say try it out for Vile’s story. Otherwise, play the original which has been re-released on a multitude of platforms over the years and is superior even though it lacks 3D graphics.
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