I hate to randomly bump in, but, I was digging around in X6 again, and I think I got an idea where those Shadow Armor charge shot poses came from.

These are frames ONLY used by the Shadow Armor, which also completely covers up these sprites. These frames, regardless, exist in VRAM. A similar set of frames exist for the Blade and Falcon armors, regular X layered underneath his armor.

But in X5, Capcom had made it so the only bits of X that would be "underneath" simply did not exist. What you see here is literally how X's sprite is in memory, with a composite just for the sake of how it looks put together. Notably, Capcom didn't do this for the Fourth\Ultimate Armors, which retain their unarmored sprites underneath. In addition, the Fourth Armor's Giga Attack is still in the game's memory, it's just been disabled. It can be called by glitching out the game, making it read the Fourth Armor's graphics data but the Ultimate Armor's "skillset".

And here, X's Falcon Armor is even subject to this weirdness. By all accounts, the Falcon Armor should've been the exact same as it was in X5, since it shared the same poses. But regardless, Capcom made new unarmored frames for X in poses the Falcon Armor in X6 would never use. I got lucky and glitched these frames out (Falcon Armor graphics, Blade Armor skillset)
I also noted that, while ripping these from VRAM, there were 6 duplicates of X's X4 palette loaded, though they are never used. It may have been part of a new Armor parts handling method. In X4, the Fourth\Ultimate Armor always had unarmored sprites underneath, probably just in case. It also had an Arm part that had a different palette from the rest of the armor that you could acquire, that also had it's own unique abilities. Therefore, I speculate that these unused frames were originally intended to be part of a new Armor system: Swapping out parts at will. The duplicates could've easily been used for the palettes for the separate armor pieces.
Though, if the above is true, it was either cut for three reasons:1. Too difficult to code in properly - 2: Time restrictions - 3: Too difficult to code within time restrictions. X6 was so rushed that the intro stage gained a new instrument on the international releases. |