Mega Man X6 Masochist Speedrun Part 07: Attempt #231 at Ground Scaravich

Attempt number 231 was the lucky one. I gave up several times, thinking this is never going to happen. Never ever.

Out of those 231 attempts, I'd say about 20 got past first few screen. Only one attempt made it all the way to the boss, and you're looking at it right now.

This stage was not designed to be cleared without taking hit.

Just by looking at the video, and the sequences of extremely specific actions taken in order to attempt to manipulate the sheer hordes of Nightmares, should make it obvious just how much time, repetition, practice, and most of all luck, it took to get this done in one go.

The amount of randomness in this stage prevented me from doing any sort of consistent routing. There were instances in every single screen, in every single attempt, where I was caught off guard by something. In 230 of those attempts, being caught off guard meant tanking a hit.

Luck played a much bigger role here than any sort of skill.

To make things even more fun, one of the possible rooms I could end up in includes a pit that's simply impossible to clear as Unarmored X. So, after getting a run going, ending up in the pit room meant I had no choice but to reset.

That happened several times, and it was equally soul-crushing each time it did.

And just so that we're clear on exactly what it took for me to do this:

Before this successful attempt, I spent an entire day on this. The entire day. On this one stage. And that's not counting all the countless of hours and days I grinded this prior to that.

Nowhere else in X6 are the Nightmare enemies as prominent and as insurmountable as they are in Ground Scaravich's stage. There's simply so damn many of them, and they're so equally spaced out, it's usually impossible to scroll on off-screen without running into another.

And if I'm in the same screen with one of them for longer than about six seconds, I'm taking a hit. No questions asked.

The only thing way to survive is to pull every trick in the book to manipulate the fuckers in any way that I can. This makes for slow-paced, clumsy, and tedious gameplay, but I simply didn't see another way out. Not under the ridiculous limitations I'm under during this challenge.

The most ridiculous problem areas are the two rooms that, of course, I run into on this attempt because why not. Those being the vertical climb at the start, and the capsule room near the end. The fact that on top of the million Nightmares, the obstacles spawn randomly, makes it so every attempt is a crap shoot. I can only plan things so much until some random element just appears from out of nowhere and fucks me in the ass.

The last troll move by Ground Scaravich's stage is that Nightmare guarding the last totem.

I can't land anywhere near him to fire off the X-Buster without taking a hit. I ended up in this screen several times, and I tried my hardest to land just next to the Nightmares hitbox in order to take him out, but the only way to stand next to him is by having X' back turned against him. Turning around means making contact with the hitbox.

So, my only choice is to abuse the forgiving hitbox of the Z-Saber, which allows me to hit the Nightmare even with my back turned.

And after the hell I went through, the fact that Ground Scaravich himself is a joke is almost insulting.

Note: I can upload the version with the original audio in case someone is suspicious. I replaced the audio simply because two weeks of that godawful fucking music was enough for me. Just ask for the original recording. The footage is not spliced.

My video is at DLive