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The Gaea Armor (ガイアアーマー Gaia Āmā) is a set of Armor Parts for X found in Mega Man X5. It grants him white and black armor with emphasized defensive abilities.

Characteristics[]

The Gaea Armor is a prototype armor that Dr. Light created a long time ago. With a robust and tough looking aesthetic, the Gaea Armor incorporates more evident physically outward defensive features, including more prominent layered armor plating, the use of thick metal beams on the extremities, and stud bolting. Despite the heavy features, the armor utilizes streamlined designs, further evocative of practical functionality and the vintage of older technology.

The Gaea Armor focuses on defense, granting X complete immunity to spikes at all times, as well as mitigating the damage he receives. Additionally, X is surrounded by a green field which pushes back blocks with a tell-tale "V" on them when he dashes, and his grabbing strength is increased, allowing him to hang onto walls indefinitely without sliding.

However, in exchange for the strength that the armor offers, it has its own set of drawbacks. Due to the armor's weight, it has a notably slower running and dashing speed, cannot air dash, and relinquishes the use of any Special Weapons and Parts, being limited to its buster and Giga Attack. Combined, this further gears the armor towards use as a straight forward protective and enhancing armor to be used in exploration and steady and safe progress in dangerous and unknown areas.

The armor's buster functions differently from most others. Its shots dissipate after a moderate distance, but are notably stronger than normal buster shots and a fully charged shot can destroy certain enemy projectiles by shooting them. Its charge time is also much faster, completely omitting a half-charged shot. The Charge Shot is also capable of destroying the V Blocks. Its Giga Attack is extremely short in range, but also very powerful. When executed, X pulls his hands back and charges a large sphere of green and black energy, then thrusts it forward, severely damaging anything directly in front of him.

Functions[]

Note: Specific parts do not have individual effects as this armor can only be equipped when complete.
  • Head Parts - No effect is specified.
  • Body Parts - Halves received damage and converts damage accumulation into Giga Attack energy. The Giga Attack emits a large energy shot directly ahead, similar to the Hadoken in Mega Man X; however, the energy shot stays right next to X until the move is complete. X is invulnerable to attacks during this move's duration.
    X5GigaAttackGaea

    X uses the Gaea Armor's Giga Attack

  • Arm Parts - The X-Buster only has 2 levels of charge; the default shot is similar to a semi-Charge Shot but with shorter range, while the fully-Charge Shot is a Gaea Shot. The Gaea Shot resembles the Fourth Armor's Plasma Shot but green, and it shares a shorter range. However, it is incredibly powerful and has a Shot Eraser effect. It can also destroy "Gaea Cubes" - black-colored blocks with a "V" sign on them - found in some stages. Special Weapons are unusable with this upgrade. Similar to the Third Armor, it also increases X's ladder climb speed by 10%.
  • Foot Parts - X can stand on spikes without receiving damage and can cling to walls without slipping. X's can also move the "Gaea Cubes" - Black-colored blocks that have a "V" sign on them just by dashing straight at them. However, X's movement and dash speed are greatly decreased, limiting his mobility. In addition, X cannot air-dash with this armor equipped.

Locations[]

Location
X5 FootParts-G
X5 FootParts-G
Gaea Armor Foot Program
Jungle Stage (Spike Rosered)
During the second area with a wire above a pit, find an opening in the ceiling just before the end of the wire. Fly into the opening with the Falcon Armor to find the capsule.
Location
X5 HeadParts-G
X5 HeadParts-G
Gaea Armor Head Program
Planetarium Stage (Dark Necrobat)
Descend the hole just before the boss shutter to find the capsule behind a blue wall. Navigate Flash Laser through the small tunnels to destroy the wall, gaining access.
Location
X5 BodyParts-G
X5 BodyParts-G
Gaea Armor Body Program
Reploid Air Force Stage (Spiral Pegasus)
In the open sky area with the diagonal elevator, instead of getting on the elevator, use the Falcon Armor to fly up to a ledge with the capsule on it.
Location
X5 ArmParts-G
X5 ArmParts-G
Gaea Armor Arm Program
Magma Stage (Burn Dinorex)
Use the Falcon Armor to fly underneath the boss shutter to Burn Dinorex's room, where the capsule is hidden above the lava. Alternatively, pilot a Ride Armor through the lava underneath the ledge; then eject from the Ride Armor at the peak of a dash jump to reach the capsule.


Other game appearances[]

  • Gaea Armor X appears as a playable S Rank Hunter Program in Mega Man X DiVE. His Action Skills are his Gaea Shot and Giga Attack.
  • Gaea Armor also appears in TEPPEN as one of X's selectable Hero Arts.
    Gaea Armor

    Gaea Armor as it appears in TEPPEN

Production Notes[]

Gaea Armorbig

Empty Gaea Armor.

Developer Comments
Once again, a やってもうた的な armor. (sweat) Finally, you could walk on top of the thorns. Once you make me crouch down on my heels, I've started my mad dash. (grin) Is it because the concept of X5 is a mad dash? (grin) I lie. In order to contrast it design-wise with the Falcon, I had it made with no projections and colored black. All sorts of ideas cropped up, like making the arms symmetrical, and I'm glad the design turned out as fantastic as it did. Actually, this will be the first armor the designer Sensei designed.[1]

Designer Comments
It was to look hard, heavy and strong, so I tried giving it a thudding, weighty feel. The chest is a point to note. I even tried making its color subdued, just using the vivid colors seen on armors to date as a point. This was to distinguish it from the other armors.[1]

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

  • The Gaea Armor is the very first upgrade in a Mega Man game to offer complete protection against spikes.
  • The English language manual for Mega Man X5 erroneously labels this armor as the Gaia Armor. Note that both Gaia and Gaea are legit Latinised transcription from the Greek word Γαῖα (Gaia).
    • It is worth noting that the manual only mentions the Gaea Armor can't charge special weapons, yet in the game, the armor itself can not use special weapons, even uncharged. In the early prototype build, it was possible for Gaea Armor to actually use uncharged special weapons. However in the final build, this feature was effectively removed and attempting to access this feature via hacking will freeze the game.
    • Even more interestingly within the final build is that leftover sprites for Gaea Armor's Special Weapon palettes still exist.[2]
  • The name for the Gaea Armor in one of the prerelease prototypes was "Heavy Armor", referencing its weight.
  • If the player selects the "Auto Charge" while in the Gaea Armor, the player could fire fully charged shots as soon as the charging animation appears.
Biochemical Buster

Biochemical Buster

  • In the game Mega Man X DiVE, the weapon Biochemical Buster, known as Mad Boiler (マッドボイラー Maddoboirā) in Japanese, is based on the buster of the Gaea Armor.
  • The Gaea Armor's Giga Attack strongly resembles Street Fighter's Chun-Li's Kikoushou technique, referencing the Hadoken and Shoryuken attacks from previous titles.
  • The limited range of the Gaea Armors uncharged shots is very similar to that of the Power Mega Man's uncharged shots. Both armors are heavy and restrict movement in some way, so this could be intentional.

See also[]

  • Shadow Armor - Another armor which is not capable of using special weapons and is invulnerable to instant-kill spikes.

References[]


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