In an effort to avoid the status quo, Capcom decided to experiment, throwing in a leveling system and story-based launch scenarios. Beyond that, it's really just a Mega Man X Zero game.
This is the first game in the series to allow character choice before each stage. Zero is chosen as often as possible, leaving X behind to gather dust. The abusable sword physics highlight Zero's superiority, especially when the sword is used while standing on the ground. Bosses fall very quickly, even when they have 127 health. See the Game Resources page and the author's comments for an explanation of how these tricks work.
There are about 5 minutes of action in this run, which consist mostly of flying through levels and a boss rush on the hardest difficulty mode, Xtreme.
This run is 00:12.90 seconds faster than the previous run.
We also have a run which completes all stages and a 100% run.