Blizzard Buffalo

Blizzard Buffalo, known as Frozen Buffalio (フローズン・バッファリオ) in Japan, is a bison-based Reploid from the Mega Man X series. He appears as one of Dopple Town's eight Mavericks in Mega Man X3.

Characteristics
Blizzard Buffalo is a large Reploid whose design is based on a buffalo. He possesses the horns and snout of said animal, and his feet are cloven like hooves. His body is covered in tubes, and he has a loincloth-like tasset at his waist. His mouth has two vents on either side that can emit frigid air.

Blizzard Buffalo was originally created for ski slope security, being designed to operate in extreme cold. As result, Blizzard Buffalo is exceptionally well suited to snowy regions and he loves the cold, but can't handle heat well. Despite his fearsome appearance, Buffalo is a gentle artist whose hobby is making ice sculptures. However, after being infected by the Maverick Virus, he now charges his enemies in a blind fury, smashing foes too slow to dodge. As a Maverick, he became part of Dr. Doppler's army and froze a residential area from Dopple Town, and unfortunately needed to be stopped by X, being another innocent victim of the Maverick Wars.

Strategy
Like Flame Mammoth before him, his room is much larger than the screen, requiring the player to damage him while he's onscreen. When his health is depleted by 50%, Blizzard Buffalo shoots a very large ice beam that will freeze his target if it connects.

Blizzard Buffalo's attack patterns and boss fight strategy is similar to fighting Tunnel Rhino, charging forward most of the time and occassionally using other attacks.

However, there is a glitch with which he can be easily defeated. Here are the basic steps:


 * 1) At the beginning, let him start ramming towards X. Wall Kick over him before he hits X (X should be facing towards his back now).
 * 2) When he turns around, don't move around; just jump. He'll try to ram away from X.
 * 3) Repeat Step 2 to be free to shoot as much as needed.

Attacks

 * Charge (突進) - Blizzard Buffalo's main form of attack. There are two versions of this move:
 * Blizzard Buffalo normally skates across the room using the rocket boosters on his back as propulsion, ramming the walls which would cause X to fall to the ground, or X himself if he does not get out of the way.
 * When X gets too close, Blizzard Buffalo uses his horns to grab X and slam him at the wall.
 * Ice Bullet (氷弾) - Blizzard Buffalo throws non lethal ice spikes on the ground and on the wall when he's not on the screen. X can normally shoot at these.
 * Freezing Beam (冷凍ビーム) - Blizzard Buffalo shoots a massive beam of ice that freezes X in his path. It doesn't cause damage, but he follows with his Charge move to ram into X.

Other appearances

 * In Mega Man X4, Blizzard Buffalo makes an appearance at the very start of Frost Walrus's stage, frozen over in the background.
 * Blizzard Buffalo appeared as a fire attribute Battle Memory in Rockman Xover.
 * Blizzard Buffalo appeared as an unit card in TEPPEN, and in the background of the action card Uncanny Chill.

Mega Man X3 stats

 * Power: 9200rp
 * Speed: 3200rp

Rockman X
In the Rockman X3 manga, during his Maverick rampage at the start of the chapter, Blizzard Buffalo had been battling X and overpowering him with his attacks. When he was about to skewer the Maverick Hunter with his horns, he was immediately stopped by a human boy named Toshihiko, who threw himself in front of the charging Buffalo, causing him to halt and suddenly grab at his own head in agony and leave. X was about to take aim to stop him, but Toshihiko insisted he stop and then took him to see a smiling snowman up in the mountains near the town Buffalo had been attacking. The boy explained that the snowman is something Buffalo helped him with; in a flashback, Toshihiko had made the snowman on his own but didn't like its expression because it reminded him that he made it alone, unlike the other kids. He was about to punch it in anger when Buffalo stopped him and simply changed the expression to a smile for him, which made Toshihiko happy that he had a friend help him. From that point, they ended up being very close...until Buffalo started rampaging wildly, leading up to the present. Even though Buffalo froze the entire town in ice and endangered innocent lives, Toshihiko never lost faith in his new friend. After a violent and drawn out battle with X inside an evacuation shelter, which resulted in a heavy hit in his head (to the point both his horns were broken), Buffalo returned to normal and realized what he had done. Buffalo requested X to end his life, feeling he could never atone for his crimes. However, the Maverick Hunter intentionally missed his charge shot and put a hole through the wall behind them instead, which allowed Buffalo to see that, just below, Toshihiko had been creating snowmen one after another the entire time so that he could reach out to his heart the way the Reploid had done for him earlier. The chapter ends with Buffalo and Toshihiko being together again, with X stating that Reploids can indeed understand humans because like humans, they have hearts.

Later, Blizzard Buffalo, alongside Blast Hornet, Neon Tiger, and Tunnel Rhino, are examined by Dr. Cain to discover what caused them to become Mavericks, finding Worms inside them. After recovering, the four assist X and Zero in their first battle against Bit and Byte. While X and Zero were fighting the Nightmare Police a second time, the four, alongside Volt Catfish, retrieved the four Power Up Parts for X and held back Dr. Doppler's army for Dr. Cain and Marty to send the Parts for X.

In the Rockman X4 manga, Blizzard Buffalo fought alongside X against Frost Walrus, but he ended up sacrificing his life to save X, who got heavily injured in the battle. When X awoke, the sight of Buffalo's destroyed body having been impaled on one of Walrus's Frost Towers drove X to seek vengeance. When Dr. Cain's team went to retrieve Buffalo's body, he was completely frozen, the icicle in his chest having spread all over his body.

Mega Man (Archie Comics)
The body of Blizzard Buffalo was seen frozen in Sigma's arctic base in Sonic Universe #76. Sigma later revived Blizzard Buffalo and dozens of other Mavericks in order to form an army to plant his Unity Engines and conquer all worlds. In Sonic Universe #78, Blizzard Buffalo went to the world of Street Fighter, where he attempts to set an Unity Engine in Thailand but is destroyed by M. Bison, the latter also learning about Sigma's plans for his world after interrogating the Maverick.

Trivia

 * In the CD versions of Mega Man X3, Blizzard Buffalo's name is misspelled as "BILZZARD BUFFALO" in his introductory cutscene.


 * Blizzard Buffalo is one of the six Mavericks to survive and reform in the Rockman X3 manga, and the only one to have a major role in the Rockman X4 manga.


 * Blizzard Buffalo is one of only five ice-themed robots known to create ice sculptures. The other four are Chill Penguin, Frost Man, Cold Man, and Fenri Lunaedge. Additionally, he and Chill Penguin are the only ones from the Mega Man X series to have this talent.