Game:

Mega Man X6 (2001)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 17:00

1,787 views

2

Time to break the weakness chain for a bit and move to Shield Sheldon's stage, the Laser Institute.

The Laser Institute is kind of a weird one. Throughout most of the stage are laser cannons that fire at intervals and mirrors that can reflect the lasers. The laser beams don't harm you unless you touch the ends of them or the points of reflection off a mirror. To get to Shield Sheldon, you have to make the lasers reflect off the mirrors and hit light-based locks on special doors, which will open up and allow you to progress. Halfway through the first part, there will be mirrors that are facing the wrong way. You can turn them around by shooting them (or slashing them, etc.), and you will need to in order to get through the stage. If you just want to defeat Shield Sheldon, this stage is amazingly short; after the fourth lock, the boss door will be accessible. However, the fourth laser actually has *two* possible locks that it can activate, and the other one takes you to a different area. If you take the second path, you will be faced with a really long laser puzzle involving another kind of laser cannon that fires only after being hit by another laser. This area can be rather annoying, but in any case, get all the mirrors in the right position and let the lasers hit them, and it will unlock the last laser-activated door in the stage, leading you to...yet another area. This one has spikes on the floor, another Dr. Light capsule, and a heart tank to get...and the secondary area portal, which this time, I actually entered.

Shield Sheldon's secondary area has no mirror puzzles, although the lasers do appear. What it does have is ropes...lots and lots of ropes. It's probably the longest secondary area in the game relative to the size of its stage, but it's not too tough. Just make your way across the ropes to the boss door, where we fight...whom? Nightmare Zero, as it turns out. (I think that's what he's called.) Once you beat Nightmare Zero, you unlock Zero as a playable character! You can switch between him and X every time you're at the stage select screen. Unfortunately, though, any powerups you get work only on the character you used to obtain the powerup, which is why I'm not going to use Zero at all in the rest of the game except for demonstration purposes. I recommend that all players do the same. If you like X better, use him for the entirety of the game; if you like Zero better, unlock him as early as you possibly can (and try to avoid letting X pick up any powerups) and use him for the entirety of the game. Just pick one character and stick with him; don't switch back and forth.

The main boss here, though, is obviously Shield Sheldon. Shield Sheldon, Shieldner Sheldon, Shield Shellfish, whatever you want to call him, he's the guy who resides in the Laser Institute. Since he is a shellfish, he can't be damaged when his shells are on. Once he moves his shells or throws them at you, then you can hit him. He has a total of 6 different attacks; I won't go into detail, but there's one in particular that makes him very annoying to dodge....

Upon defeating Shield Sheldon, you get the Guard Shell, which I think comes from a Proto-Indo-European word that means "useless piece of junk". The Guard Shell, when you have it active, will absorb a certain type of enemy shot and fire a shot back at the enemy, using up one unit of weapon energy. The problem is, it's extremely limited in what it can reflect and extremely SLOW. It doesn't even make a decent weapon against the boss weak to it.

I should also mention that this is the first stage I've done with a Nightmare effect active. The Nightmare System is something unique to Mega Man X6. Nightmare effects change something in a stage, adding obstacles that were not present before. Every time you exit a stage, it activates that stage's Nightmare effect (so there are 8 different Nightmare effects). Each Nightmare can affect 1, 2, or 3 stages, and each stage can be affected by 2 Nightmare effects, but they never occur simultaneously. If a Nightmare effect happens in a stage that already has a different Nightmare effect active, the second one will replace the first. For instance, both Commander Yammark's and Ground Scaravich's Nightmare effects happen in Shield Sheldon's stage, but since I did Ground Scaravich's stage after Commander Yammark's, the former's Nightmare effect replaced the latter's. Ground Scaravich's Nightmare creates large crates in your path, which cannot damage you but can block your path. Most of the crates in this stage are red ones, which can be destroyed by Ground Scaravich's weapon, the Ground Dash. In fact, 6 of the 8 Nightmare effects can be at least partially nullified with the weapon obtained from the corresponding boss. Shield Sheldon's Nightmare effect happens in Blizzard Wolfang's and Rainy Turtloid's stages.

In any case, that's three stages down, five to go.

Other Statistics