Shadow Devil

Shadow Devil (シャドーデビル) is a Devil type robot that appeared in Mega Man X5 as the boss of Zero Space Stage 1.

Shadow Devil attacks similarly to the original Yellow Devil, and his weakness (the eye) can appear on different parts of its body, which can throw the player off-guard.

His background music is a remix of the fortress boss music from the first Mega Man game, and a warped "W" appears in the background.

Strategy
The Shadow Devil can be a tough boss as its attacks can heavily drain the life gauge and may also lead to an instant death if the player is unprepared. Also, unlike most Devil robots, Shadow Devil's split attack has six patterns instead of only one.

The Shadow Devil can only be damaged on its bright-red eye, which is hidden most of the time. When the eye shows up, try to fire a fully charged shot on it. The eye can appear in six spots, five being around the body and one in the foot. It is weak to the Tri-Thunder (as X) and E-Blade (as Zero). This is a direct throwback to the original Yellow Devil's weakness to Elec Man's Thunder Beam (which itself is nearly identical to the Tri-Thunder). With E-Blade, because of how the move works, Zero has a chance of performing the move into the Shadow Devil and take a hit, so it is safer to perform the C-Sword instead.

When the Shadow Devil melts and breaks apart into sixteen parts, avoid the blobs as they travel across the room. The parts will move one by one to the other side until all parts move. The order the parts move varies, having six patterns. Three patterns consist of the parts simply moving to the other side, while the other three has half of the the parts going to one side then switching places with other parts before finishing to move to the other side. When it reforms, the eye will appear for a brief moment and it will shot from the eye.

It is entirely possible to avoid any and all damage from the split attack. To do this the player should position itself at the wall opposite to that of Shadow Devil and then Wall Kick constantly and as fast as possible to remain at the very top of the wall. By doing this the blobs will not harm the player and when Shadow Devil's blobs fall to the ground to reform, the player can dash over and resume the fight normally. It should be noted however that this can be tiring for the fingers and that nothing short of button spamming, can cause the character to be touched by the blobs rendering the entire strategy tiring. This is specially tiring during the second half of the fight when Shadow Devil separates into two blob segments, so pausing to rest is recommended. If successfully achieve, Shadow Devil's difficulty is significantly decreased.

Also, when the Devil migrates to the other side of the screen, he leaves behind a green outline of himself where it used to be. X and Zero will get damaged heavily if they touch the center of the outline. The outline disappears when the Shadow Devil has completely re-formed on the other side.

After losing half of its life energy, Shadow Devil will turn into Doctor Albert W. Wily's Wily Machine 6 from Mega Man 6. In this form, it will slide to the other side of the room and attempt to crush the player three times before returning to normal. During the short duration of this form, the eye will periodically appear at the dome of the skull after each attempt to crush the player.

Other appearances
Shadow Devil appeared as an event character in Elemental Story.

Archie Comics
In Worlds Unite, Shadow Devil makes a brief appearance in Mega Man #50, where it is revealed that Sigma-1 has rebuilt it alongside other Mechaniloids in his base on the Lost Hex.

Trivia

 * Early in its development, Shadow Devil was originally called "Metal Devil" (メタルデビル) and was silver. His color was later changed to black to better emphasize the lights around his eye.


 * To avoid the passing blocks across the screen, you can get above the Devil and simply hug the wall at its highest point by repeatedly hitting "jump" while moving towards the wall. However, this can be very taxing on the thumb considering how long this fight can take. In addition, it can be difficult to use this strategy if the player is using Zero, since he doesn't have a reliable ranged attack.
 * Its battle theme is a remixed version of The Yellow Devil's battle theme.