Still waiting for MarshmallowMan's belated answer to my previous wall of text.
Sorry! My bad.
We know for a fact the facility in question was built to house him. How much time was needed to build this facility?
In a universe where fortresses spring up in weeks and whole cities in months, giving this construction a year to complete already seems generous.
Likewise, we could wonder if the idea of studying Zero's Sigma Virus came about immediately. Zero's initial purpose was to remove something from himself. Perhaps they spent a good portion of that time removing the thing in question?
If that thing and their experiments are both concerned with the virus' relationship with Zero which is not completely understood, then said testing is likely a necessary step in the very task Zero asked them to perform.
Perhaps Zero was put in quarantine for a considerable time in the hopes that his absence would stop the spreading of the Sigma Virus?
That would be an experiment, noting the effects of quarantine. Not that it makes sense for them to think Zero can contribute to the virus spreading while in cold sleep. The virus still spreads and survives to threaten the peace by other means while Zero is asleep, or we wouldn't need Mother Elf.
Perhaps for the longest time they ignored Zero under assumption that the samples of Zero's Sigma Virus were no different than the regular Sigma Virus?
In other words, they stuck him out on the back burner. The first scientist in X6 seemed apprehensive to even take Zero out of commission in the first place, much less waste time when he's already being handed an overwhelming work load.
There isn't a very easy explanation for what letting him sit and doing nothing accomplishes. Everything points toward a high priority project. Downtime between experiments could also fall under the same umbrella of the half century span either way.
We would also have to consider the trouble in properly avoiding the negative effects of Zero's Sigma Virus on the research in question. Studying the Sigma Virus under safe conditions is no small feat.
Proper precautions which the scientists needed to be taking into account during their experiments, so this doesn't add time.
The opposite proposition is considering the effectiveness of Mother Elf. With the completion of Mother Elf, Zero is purified from the Virus and his study comes to an end.
Maybe, maybe not. We can't be sure the Mother Elf cured Zero, his original body at least. If portions of Wily's programming did remain in it. For whatever reason Zero is immune to Dark Elf's control, he may be resistant to Mother Elf's purging. Perhaps only separation from that body into a new one was the solution. Grey area stuff.
But what about the rest of the world? Was her effect an instantaneous deus ex machina or did it take nearly half a century to turn all the Mavericks to normalcy? How long does it take to eliminate the Virus once and for all? Certainly "reversal" is incomparable to "immunity", conflicts will still arise and those irregulars will have to be stopped in order to cure them.
We can't really be sure that the virus was eradicated from the entire populace, only that the fighting quickly ended. Leading to a brief time of recorded peace where X ideally isn't fighting so much but might have been too brief for X to consider any kind of end to the fighting in retrospect. Followed by the 4 year down and dirty tragic Elf Wars.
But the entire time up through Omega's birth and copy Zero's emergence in the Elf Wars could also fall under the half century of experimentation from a conservative viewpoint. Omega's creation itself can be looked upon as a form of experiment that Zero was quite involved with.
To simplify the above even more, X did say "nearly" one hundred years. We can thus shorten the timespan that needs to be covered to considerably less.
I guess 51 years would be enough if he only rounded to the nearest 100, but I don't think that's what he meant. I guess I'd settle for 80-ish, but I don't really even see that many years being accounted for before Zero was woken up again.
It feels quite wrong to think of the utopia as never having truly known the peace Zero sealed himself away for...
It may be a lesson that giving in to the fearful humans and in effect running away from his problems wasn't really the best idea. Same situation for X sealing himself, he ducks out of the picture and things get a whole lot worse. Similar to X's lesson in X7, can't protect the world by giving up the fight, but long cycles of history are all about repeating themselves whether we want them to or not. X was square against Zero's final seal, and it seems to have even been done behind X's back to some extent. Not exactly a cool thing to do to your best friend. If copy Zero was still spreading the virus that would be one thing, but it doesn't appear to have been the case.
Having only some idea of why they both did what they did, it still doesn't mean that was necessarily the best solution. Model Z's discussion of the challenge of facing one's destiny and carving it, sounds better than ignoring or hiding from it. If from the beginning of Neo Arcadia they had tackled their problems head-on, together, the way they always used to, things may never have gotten to the dark place they were in the Zero series. It was only them coming together and relying on each other once again that pulled the world back from disaster.
Big 4
Maybe they were around for the Elf Wars, maybe they weren't, I don't have much to add at the moment.
From reading the Data Files of the three Mechaniloids (Eagle Area M, Hydra and Leon Area I) in Rockman ZX, started to malfunction after they were infected by some kind of virus. Either Inti Creates plans to involve the Sigma Virus in the the next ZX games or this was nothing but a little footnote for speculations and theories.
Viruses still exist in the Zero series, Cocapetri used some advanced virus he got from Weil to spread chaos in Z4. Dark Elf's curse and powers may be virus related as well. Sigma virus isn't necessarily the only virus in their universe. Some variant of viruses and diseases will probably always exist for robotkind (outside of Elysium).as it does in nature. Viruses like the ones mentioned in ZX, and the various body altering and mind control powers of Model V, might be a distant form of Sigma virus evolution, or may be unrelated phenomena.
Shining Arms speculation
The other day I entertained a brief notion that maybe all the Shining Arms made appearances in Z1, as a result of the early notion of Inti not expecting a sequel. I came up with:
Necromancess' staff - The power to bring back the dead is pretty cool.
Hanumachine's pole - Already based on a legendary weapon itself.
Asura Bazura's swords/shield - Not sure what specifically should be counted, but she's got unique handlheld weapons at least.
I didn't have a fouth handheld weapon though, so the last one would have to be attached to someone, breaking the pattern again, Maybe Falcon's wings or Anchortus' pincers or something. Ganeshariff's... Oh well, nevermind.
I wonder if Inti will ever touch on it again. That and the great Guardian mysteries, of which we know what, only one of..?
Ambiguousness can be nice, but in ZX it is just overused.
Probably, but it serves the hype and the mood.
We have the Guardians, a secretive vigilante group bordering on the fringe of what is legal or the social norm, and are likely to be guilty of circumventing the life span equality laws. They generally use codenames for each other, presumably not just because it's cool but for their own protection as well. For them a certain level of vagueness in identity may be a virtue.
Then we've got these kids, Vent and Aile. They're 14, orphaned at age 4, don't seem to know their history especially well, don't know what Cyber Elves are, spending their youth working (did they go to school?) with their legal guardian Giro, a man with many secrets he keeps to himself. During the game, they're getting a rushed sort of crash course on the past from people used to keeping secrets and talking in codes, inbetween and on top of accomplishing difficult missions of general urgency.
I'd like to think our hero(es) took some time after Serpent's demise and caught up on some of the missing details during the 4+ years between ZX and ZXA, off-screen of course. At least getting to know a bit about the personal histories of their biometal partners.
Doesnt it mention it in the manuals?
I think the English manuals just said something non-specific about the Z-saber powering the buster up.
How explicitly does that page say it?
【BUSTERSHOT】
レジスタンスが携帯する旧式ウェポン。
ゼットセイバーの柄をマガジンにすることで
強力なエネルギーブレットを射出することが
可能になった。
Bustershot
An old style weapon carried by the rResistance. Applying the Z-saber's handle into the magazine, it becomes possible to fire stronger energy bullets.
I figure that the reintroduction of Zero to his Z-Saber hastened his getting over Hibernation Sickness/made him remember something inside. I mean, haven't you ever been groggy?
Maybe he did remember something, seeing as he thought to put the saber into the gun's magazine in the first place. He still had a lot of skill remembering/relearning to do after that, though.
It just occurred to me that in a topic about the revisions the Z series undertook, we haven't discussed the change from the cross-like Heaven to the domed Neo Arcadia. Not that I can think of much to add about it, just seems funny we didn't mention it.