The upcoming Mega Man X Legacy Collection games will undo a contentious localization decision made during the development of Mega Man X5. The collection will drop the Guns N’ Roses-inspired names for the game’s bosses, known as Mavericks, and revert them to their original forms.
When Mega Man X5 hit North America in 2001, the PlayStation game diverted from the series’ boss naming conventions and changed the original Japanese character names to reference Guns N’ Roses: Spike Rosered became Axle the Red, Crescent Grizzly became Grizzly Slash, Tidal Whale became Duff McWhalen. It was a puzzling decision, even though Mega Man characters bear musical names (and Capcom borrowed Axl and Slash’s names for Final Fight’s rock and metal-inspired bad guys).
A new trailer for Mega Man X Legacy Collection 1 and 2 released this week — designed to highlight the collections’ Challenge mode — revealed that those GNR names are no longer canon. The trailer shows that Crescent Grizzly, Dark Necrobat (formerly known as Dark Dizzy, after keyboardist Dizzy Reed) and Burn Dinorex (formerly known as Mattrex, after drummer Matt Sorum) have been reverted to their original boss names.
In a statement issued to GameSpot about the change, Capcom said it wanted to unify the Mega Man X Maverick naming convention. The company said that to “make these collections an authentic Mega Man X experience, we took the opportunity to better align the naming of the Mega Man X5 Mavericks across all regions for better narrative cohesion across the series.”
Mega Man X Legacy Collection 1 and 2 are coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One on July 24. Rest in peace, Duff McWhalen.
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