One thing after all the passes through the various areas where they're at "work"... what's the deal with worker Reploids (at least I presume they're not Mechaniloids based on their humanoid shapes and ability to take pleasure at your misfortune), like Axe Max (the lumberjack found here and in Sting Chameleon's stages) and Degraver (the pickaxe-wielding enemy from Flame Mammoth and Armored Armadillo stages, sometimes misidentified as "Dig Labor"...which would actually be a surprisingly easy mistransliteration to make)?

I mean, they're supposedly working, but the former hacks away at a self-replenishing mechanical tree stump (already pre-cut into segments, even!) and the other one just hangs around throwing tools at you... and besides already doing apparently nothing productive, they have the gall to laugh at their malicious actions striking a fellow sentient artificial life form... is this what it's like when the working-class goes Maverick?

Maybe I'm looking too far into this, because Jammingers (those annoying purple faces on helicopter blades, ALSO present in this stage) also laugh at X when they hurt him, and I'm a little more wont to believe that they're Mechaniloids... but they too take great pleasure in their "jobs" of annoying X.

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Chill Penguin stage
(a.k.a "Snow Mountain Stage," "Snowfield Stage," and "Abandoned Missile Base")
Hidden upgrades:
-Leg Parts (collection not optional)
-Heart Tank (requires Fire Wave)

Well, it wouldn't be entirely accurate if I left out the Leg Parts from the list of upgrades "hidden" in the stage, but as you might already have figured, they won't be here this time around as taking them the first time around was not an optional element of the stage. I guess for what it's worth, we're allowed to see that a capsule already collected will simply be absent on any repeat visits to its original location thereafter.

You might recall that I couldn't resist the urge to use my new dash ability to visit the roof of the small "cave" area in the brief Ride Armor segment from the far end. Well, this time around, I elected to use the Ride Armor to give me a boost and visit it from the other side.

The large, squat structures on the surfaces of this area are deployment points for the Tombot (the Japanese word for "dragonfly" is "tonbo") enemies seen flying about in the cave below. These exposed launchpads can be destroyed by the Ride Armor's fists, but if you want to be able to break them without one, you'll need to attack them with the Fire Wave. All other weapons will be repelled or otherwise blocked without harm (the sound you hear is pretty distinct, anyway, so it's always good to remember even if your shots don't fly off like a weak X-Buster pellet does), but if you focus some fire on it for long enough, it'll blow up violently. The wreckage of the first of these two roofbound platforms will reveal a Heart Tank contained within.

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