A single Nova Strike uses the entire weapon meter of energy, but the meter refills relatively quickly.

If you release the button before the game gives you control, you lose your shot (and its difficult to tell when you have control, sometimes.

If you try to shoot and get hit at the same time, you lose your shot.

Unlike the Ice Wall, you cant stand on your own walls.

You can stand on Trilobytes.) When charged, the walls that X forms have life or weapon energy capsules embedded in them.

This can be a good way to quickly refill your health if you are in danger.

This is also this games form of the Rush Search: depending on where you put the wall, you might pull up other objects (like rare metals) instead of the random energy.

Note that you can only have one wall formed at a time; pressing the special weapon button when there is already a wall on the screen has no effect.

When charged, X surrounds himself with some shards of ice which circle him in spirals, and if any enemies come into bodily contact with the shards circling X, they are frozen.

When charged, X shoots a missile off the top of the screen; moments later, several missiles come raining back down.

This will go for a decent distance before it wears out on its own.

When charged, the flames go in both directions from X, instead of just forward.

You have to be on the ground to use this, and you can only have one fire burst on the screen at a time.

When charged, several larger bursts come out all at once, and chase after enemies for a good few seconds before disappearing.

Cant be fired while in the air, which somewhat limits its positioning.

When charged, this forms what are essentially fireworks: multiple bursts of the eight-pointed rays.

When charged, this creates a large black hole in Xs location which fills the screen briefly, then goes away.

When it hits an enemy, sparks of lightning seem to stick on the enemy for a few seconds, possibly doing multiple hits of damage and stunning it.

When charged, its basically the same thing, only the lightning bolt is slightly bigger and forked.

Press the special weapon button while not equipped with a weapon to activate this.

Although it doesnt always look like it, this hits all enemies on the screen.

One use requires your entire weapon energy bar, but the Giga Crash slowly recharges its energy over time.

You can actually use this to weaker effect even when the weapon meter is not full, so you dont have to wait for the meter to completely fill to use it.

While active, all of Xs abilities are increased, and the weapon meter slowly decreases.

The effect wears off when the weapon meter runs out of energy.

Press the special weapon button while not equipped with a weapon.

Megaman X8 Item Guide