I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but “Mega Man X4” was my first “Mega Man” game. Even as a tremendous Capcom fan and a child of the 90s, I never crossed paths with the “Mega Man” franchise until one fateful day at Blockbuster (RIP), when I saw this box art for the very first time:

But Mega Man wasn’t who caught my attention — it was the red guy with the beam sword who really made me want to try the game out. Zero was ultimately my reason for picking up the game and started me on my journey through the “Mega Man” series.

I’d beaten some “Mega Man” games but, as many of you know, this series is hard. As a child, I couldn’t fathom beating any of these games. As a young adult moving into adulthood, I could beat some of the newer games but nary an older title without convenient checkpoints and saving capabilities.

Hell, the first “Mega Man” game I ever beat was “Mega Man 10” and I used Bass, the “easier” character (but my favorite non-Zero “Mega Man” character) of the bunch to beat it. It was only after I beat “10” that I went back and beat “Mega Man 9.”

But now, at the ripe age of 35, I finally beat the first “Mega Man” game I ever played — and I have “Mega Man X DiVE” to thank for it.

For the uninitiated, “Mega Man X DiVE” was a “Mega Man” mobile game that went offline in 2024 but lives on as “Mega Man X DiVE Offline,” a single-player version that brings back most of the content available from when the game was live.

The main story recaps many of the previous games in the “Mega Man X” but is playable with a wide variety of characters from games past, including many holiday and, of course, swimsuit variations.

It was recently part of a Steam sale so I picked it up for cheap and now I’m hooked on the game, mostly because I’m playing as Black Zero, the same exact character I used in “X4.” Seeing him in “DiVE” made me think about that six-year-old “X4” save file I had in the “Mega Man Legacy Collection” and I knew I had to go back and beat the game. I was at the boss rush right before the final fight, how hard could it be?

It turns out that this was very hard. I mean, look at this shit and look how easy this person makes it look. I can assure you it’s not this easy.

It took two hours of resetting after losing to Magma Dragoon in the boss rush and constantly dying to Sigma’s phase three, but I finally did it. I beat “Mega Man X4” for child Jeff, teenage Jeff, and adult Jeff.

Let this be a lesson to all of you out there — you can and should go back and beat the games you couldn’t from your youth. It’s a wonderful feeling.