https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DlGDuW4_mM

Even at an early age, social interaction is integral to healthy childhood development, which will have a lifelong impact on an individual’s personality and capabilities.

If, for whatever reason, a child lacks proper social relationships at a young age, he may seek stimulation from alternative sources.

Some may even grow up attempting something completely idiotic such as finishing Mega Man X2 without taking damage, collecting upgrades, or using weapons outside of the X Buster.

That's me.

Welcome to the Mega Man X2 Masochist Challenge. A challenge for me, by me. For reasons I dare not to dive into.

The rules are as follows:

* No damage can be taken at any point during the playthrough. Stages are completed in one sitting, which means one hit and the run is over and I have to restart the stage.

* No upgrades will be collected.

* Only the X Buster can be used, unless it's impossible to proceed through the stage otherwise.

Part of the reason I'm doing this is that I was simply so tired of seeing bad players on YouTube do bad playthroughs of my favorite games. Those being the Mega Man X series.

While very familiar, X2 is not second nature to me quite like X1 is, so X2 makes this is a more interesting challenge for me personally. I can not finish this game without taking damage with my eyes closed, it has taken and does take practicing and studying.

Mind you, I'm not doing this just for easy upvotes for a few minutes of work. These take a lot of time, effort and precision. Maybe a broken controller or two. Definitely premature wrinkles due to the stress and annoyance. A strain on my relationship. You name it. What you see in the videos is the finished result. They don't show the several times I manage a perfect run, just to be caught off guard by that one shot I forgot to dodge.

Unlike X1, X2 is sure of its identity as a fast-paced, thrilling and adrenaline-pumping game. X1 was still a bit of transitional period from the classic NES games to the new, 16-bit SNES Mega Man games.

X1 is my favorite game, but objectively speaking X2's level design is more smooth and fluid, enemy placement makes it trickier to speed through the stages without taking damage.

Throughout this run, I will attempt to keep moving. That's not a rule since I don't always manage that, but it's an unwritten rule to add to the challenge. It also makes the videos more interesting to the audience.

I guess I should say something about the video to you weird people into this sort of shit.

The opening stage is what the opening stages always are in these games: quick, easy and relatively painless. X2 doesn't need to introduce the player to any new mechanics the way X1 needed to, so the opening stage is just there for the sake of being there.

Flame Stag's stage is also not that threatening. You can fuck up the segment with the rising volcano at the start, but since we're not going for the heart tank in this run, it's not that big of a deal.

I'm not really in any danger at any point during Flame Stag's stage. I've seen a lot of people fail the climb with the green enemy lighting the fumes on fire, but all it takes is a little patience and timing.

Same goes for the boss. His pattern is easy to memorize and mess with and you can see me beating him with relative ease.

Flame Stag's stage by me is sloppy at times, but as a pathetic attempt to justify this, I will say that the game gets tougher from here, so I took this brief moment to enjoy the fact that I can record a successful run without too much stress.

But stress will happen. As we get further into the game, you will be experiencing pain, frustration, nihilism and overall hopelessness together with me. So even if you're not into Mega Man X2, you can still enjoy the front row seat to another human being completely breaking down into a broken shell of his former self.

Look forward to that.