![A negative-space cutout of Mega Man superimposed over a red-filtered photograph of a drummer playing a hi-hat, their sticks a blur of motion.](https://unwinnable.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Rubeck.jpg)
Mega Man X Doesn’t Begin Until Dr. Light Sings “My Blue Suit”
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #173. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
———
Wide but shallow.
———
Is there any term as
disgusting as “flow state” and the
weight, the gall, the bileit carries for low wattage
imaginations
I tilt my head back and
where skull meets spine a cracklike knuckles or soccer knees
It’s been like this for a year or so,
tilting my head fully to the starsThis time I jolt, and I
see myself flash with the
price of invulnerability,
flow interruptedGamers have some idea of
flow state but we do not de-
base ourselves with general
gamerisms here. It’s notinstinct unbridled like silver
fox Goku, an unearned lean
into cellular primacy, as if everybody carried a godliness instead
of potential for cancer
or communityCloser to playing music or dancing,
sports if I ever drilled,
washing cars if karate is to be
believed, muscle in concertwith mind, Whiplash without
the white men spoiling
jazz, power decoupled from
the threat of decisions. MegaMan X was my first stage
for conducting instinct,
a game so completely
played through the SNEScontroller almost a relic’d Les Paul
or a Rock Band SG dumped
at Goodwill, but with more
respect (where did my
SNES end up one wonders)Mega Man 2 came after 3 only
because that’s how libraries
and lending and a nascent global
supply chain still wired with
warehouses operated andthese were fine games
carried on the shoulders of
the new wave of British heavy metal
(man) and figuring out
the twist fromleft to right in thumbs of three
on the pellet button while
developing a sense of momentum
that spurns physics but pleases
the balletic
Here we’re learning tempo
(that Whiplash again), each level
a swamp of midi and slow down
and CRT lines blooming with
dust in the cornersstep forward jump run charge
(later) slide (later) A Bflat C /
I V vi IV / tap tap tap taptaptap
et cet eraBut too thick for flow, more of
a polo state, a gravity chamber
waltz (not blue yet), speed
yet undiscovered, not my tempoMega Man X, a non-sequel, not
the tenth Mega Man game (see X-Men
and House of X[avier]
and Powers of X[10])a future vision of the future where
the war rages and you, X (not Mega [Rock]
Man but not-not) are ill prepared
though still four buttons stronger from
the other games we
are not following exactlyThe key changes: charging
a shot and jumping
off walls, taught from stage zero
(which ends with Zero)
(and violet Boba Fett)which doesn’t smack of much
but it’s one of two steps that
set a new range of flow and
without the walls it’s the old
pre-20XX Mega ManThese walls are friction, resistance,
slow down, reflective, the Y
axis, an exponentially tall
second dimension to what
was possible before and ifyou aren’t dancing up and over
the penguin or the kuwanger
there’s no music in you or
it’s a stringless ukulele for some
thumbs but what pissed away
potentialWalls are the surface, but the
dash is the beat
Mega Man X doesn’t begin
until the ghost of Dr. Light sings
“My Blue Suit” to X and
teaches you to flowbut before that how
much time have
you spent fighting VileWhen you play now
(we still play now right)
does X interrupt Vile’s
flow state as he dashes in his
tugboat GundamWe push that rock up the
infinite mountain and we
must endure we must match
tempo and dodge shot and
blank out this immortal
subordinateSurviving against Vile
is a paradiddle, the circle of fifths,
a fundamental, a piece of performance
I’m sure speedrunners have hacked
to hell and back but
I refuse to look, I think onlyof the flash and
the jump and one of
three scenes with Zero
which serves to proof a legend
and from there we
are finally warmed———
Levi Rubeck is a critic and poet currently living in the Boston area. Check his links at levirubeck.com.