Live Blogs Let's Play Megaman Battle Network

ComicX62013-03-10 15:10:46

The game picks up again several days later with a scene depicting ACDC at night. A mysterious figure approaches ACDC Elementary’s gates and chuckles to himself…

When we get back to Lan and Megaman, Lan is hurrying to school since he’s late. Once he gets inside instead of making a beeline for his homeroom he instead asks if he’s got any email, much to Megaman’s chagrin. The first piece is that student delinquency appears to be on the rise, and the second is from Yai, who tells Lan that he owes her because she covered for him during attendance, much to Lan’s chagrin. With that though, Lan decides that there’s no point in hurrying to class now, which gives us a little excuse to explore the school. Lan’s classroom is on the second floor in the opposite direction from the teacher’s lounge area. On the first floor we can get into the nurse’s office, where we can find a chip for Recovery 50 G in a medicine cabinet, and in an AV classroom next door we can get a Repair A from the teacher’s desk. There are two 1st grade classrooms on this floor too, but we can’t go in them since class is in session. Poking around in a pile of desks sitting in the second floor hallway is an X-Panel 1 B battle chip, and in one of the shelves in the library nearby contains Escape H. The backdoor of class 5-A is where we need to go. Once inside, Lan somehow manages to sneak over to his desk without anyone being the wiser despite being seated in the front row. Yeesh. Ms. Mari, meanwhile, is introducing an assistant teacher that’s going to be working with the class, Mr. Higsby◊, who quickly establishes that he’s a big-time collector of rare battle chips. The class generally thinks he’s weird.

After that is another quick “talk to everyone in the room to advance the plot” segment. Amusingly one girl talks about how in the old days people had to use this weird stuff called “chalk” to write on a blackboard and use an “eraser” to erase it. Given how I haven’t seen a chalkboard in use since I was in middle school, not all that long after this game would’ve come out, that’s another aspect of the then-future that Capcom seems to have predicted correctly.

More relevant, though, is what Yai has to say. She mentions how once she selected three Cannon chips in sequence and they turned into a new chip. What she’s referring to is a gameplay element called a Program Advance. Program Advances occur when three-four specific chips are selected in a predetermined sequence. They will combine to form a much more powerful attack. There are roughly thirty of them in each game, and they are always invaluable assets to have in battles where you need to hack off a good chunk of enemy HP at once. However, in this game the majority of them are rather clunky in actual usage, so I won’t be covering them. They’re much more viable in future installments, and like collecting battle chips, the library will have a separate section for them.

Bell rings, but instead of Ms. Mari it’s Higsby who starts class, claiming that she’s not feeling well. Like every student’s favorite substitute teacher, he gives them study hall, but like every student’s least favorite substitute teacher, he gives them work to do during it. After sending his own Navi into the classroom’s blackboard he leaves to let them work.

As soon as he leaves the blackboard begins flashing an error message and a voice begins to speak. It explains how the WWW plans to take over by hijacking military networks, starting a war known as the Endgame, and how all the students should study and become good servants for the WWW. Megaman states the obvious that this is a WWW reeducation program, and that is is likely the cause for the rise in student delinquency.

You know, this has to be the least-effective method of brainwashing people ever, since all the program is doing is simply repeating the WWW’s plan on blast. Unless of course the point is to just drive the kids insane until they want to smash anything that looks even vaguely electronic. But this is fiction-land, not the real world, where everyone not the main characters are simple sheep. But regardless of the message’s effectiveness, the fact that the class is locked in is the more immediate threat. This is a school-jacking, as Yai so eloquently puts it. Dex jacks in to the blackboard first but he gets wiped out in short order. It’s time for Lan and Megaman to step up to the plate, but first talking to Mayl has her give us the battle chip Roll R. These sorts of battle chips, or ‘Navi’ chips, are sort of like summon spells in other RP Gs. Upon use, the corresponding Navi will appear on the field and fire off one attack. Roll’s chip has her attack the nearest enemy before healing some of Megaman’s HP. Rather nice of her.

The school network consists of a rather jumbled path that connects each classroom’s online area. Glyde is nearby where Megaman first jacks in, and he warns us that someone has hacked in to the main server located in the teacher’s lounge. No prizes for guessing who’s responsible.

Heading down the path is a BMD containing Shockwave 1 K, and past that is the exit to the second area. This part of Area 2 contains a BMD with 800z to snap before doubling back to Area 1 on a second path. According to Glyde, the hacking is at fault for why the network is so jumbled. Back in Area 1 we encounter this network’s gimmick, password-locked doors. We are however, given a hint as to what the solution is, which is the number of chairs in class 5-A. Control switches over to Lan in the real world so that we can count the chairs, and then hit L to return to Megaman so that we can input the code. It’s 9. Not only is that a really tiny class, but that’s one self-defeating security system. Inputting the code not only unlocks the door in Cyber World, but it also unlocks the real world classroom.

Onward to Area 2 once again, the path splits up, with one fork containing a BMD with Hi-Cannon I, a more powerful version of the basic Cannon chip, while the other leads us to another password door. This one wants to know how many volumes of History of the World the school has. So, back to Lan, and to the library down the hall. We can also go into 5-B, the neighboring classroom for a Spreader J that’s hidden in a bookshelf. Examining the encyclopedia shelf in the library gives us the answer to the password hint: 30.

The path leads to a third door, but this one has no hint at all. Fortunately, we can still input numbers, and the game itself will give you hints as to whether the correct digit is higher or lower than what you put in. A little trial and error is all that’s needed to get through these. Continuing past this door leads us to Area 3, and a BMD containing 400z. A blue path leads us back to Area 2 (I think…? It’s starting to get confusing.) and two more doors. One has no password and leads to an HP Memory item, the second one has the number of doors in the school as its hint. This one’s a little tricky at first since it’s not clear if they’re count double doors or not, but apparently they are since going downstairs and tallying them all up gives us 15.

Things are smooth for a while after that, but then all of a sudden Megaman is paralyzed! He manages to tell Lan that he’s in the AV room’s space, and thus now it’s up to Lan to see if he can fix things. Amusingly enough, if you go into one of the 1st grade classrooms on the first floor you’ll find them sitting rigid at their desks, chanting ‘’Long live the WWW’’ and such. I guess the program works on someone. Outside of the AV room, Lan’s bowled over by Higsby, who hurries off with a hasty apology. How suspicious… Examining one of the desks inside reveals that its onboard computer has crashed, so all Lan has to do to help Megaman is to reboot it. One hint-less door later, and we reach the final area, which corresponds to the hall where the teacher’s lounge is. But of course there’s a door blocking the way, and this one we can’t just input numbers. We have to have a verification ID in order to even get to that. Megaman suggests finding Ms. Mari, but she’s nowhere to be found. Obviously she isn’t in the nurse’s office. Well, there’s only one place she could be, the one part of the school that we haven’t searched yet: the teacher’s lounge.

Indeed, Ms. Mari’s been bound and gagged and stashed away in a supply closet just outside of the lounge. Upon freeing her she expresses her disbelief at what Higsby’s doing, and gives us the School ID item so that we can unlock the lounge. Also, poking around the supply closet gives us a second HP Memory. Outside the lounge’s door is a card reader where we can use the ID, which lets us open the final, hint-less door.

Beyond that is Higsby’s Navi, Numberman. Now, just looking at him one would think that he’s the Battle Network counterpart for Megaman 4’s Brightman, but he’s actually the first of a number of Navis with no Robot Master counterpart. Higsby admits that the reason he’s with the WWW is because with the money they pay him be can buy as many rare chips as he wants, though he does feel some guilt. Numberman kinda eggs him on a bit too, which feels kinda strange if you’ve played any of the other games prior to this one.

Numberman

HP: 500

Element: Normal

Attacks:

• Number Ball – Numberman creates three balls on each panel in the column in front of him, and sends them down the field. These balls can be destroyed, and each one has a number on it indicating its HP. They deal 20 damage.
• Dice Bomb – Numberman throws a destructible die onto Megaman’s field that will create a rolling explosion. Damage is ten times the number the die lands on.
• Time Bomb – A destructible three-second time bomb is placed on Megaman’s field that creates a rolling explosion when detonated for 40 damage.

Numberman isn’t a Navi that’s really well-suited for combat, but he compensates slightly by staying exclusively in the back row, a trick many of the more annoying bosses pull. However, he also remains immobile, meaning that he’s a sitting duck. I find the Shockwave and Quake chips dropped by Mettaurs and Flappys to be the most useful for this battle, the latter due to its power and the former due to the fact that they can pierce through the Number Balls. He’s not hard overall.

Winning gives us 1500z.

But that’s not a bad thing. Higsby’s pledge was genuine and he’ll be back as a full-time good guy, and a highly useful one at that, given his expertise in battle chips. Until then.

• Flappy
  • I'm not the only one who thinks these things look like condoms with wings, am I? Anyway, these viruses will quickly flit from panel to panel before appearing above Megaman in the form of a giant metal weight and crashing down, cracking the panel below. Later versions can damage additional panels.
• Beetank
  • These viruses trundle up and down one column, periodically firing bombs into Megaman's fields. The basic form damages a column's worth of panels, but its second form explodes a plus-shaped area, and the final form a 3 x 3 area.
• Spooky
  • Similar to Boos, these ghost viruses are incredibly bashful, quickly warping away from Megaman whenever he aligns with them. Eventually they'll warp directly in front of Megaman and try to stick him with their tongue. If you don't delete them quickly they'll heal themselves with Recovery chips.
• Handy
  • These disembodied hands place time bombs on Megaman's field before quickly retreating to their back row.

• Running Through the Cyberworld
  • The theme for the school network and one of my favorite tracks in the series, and the first to rearrange the main theme.
• Winner!
  • The victory fanfare for the first three games. Because I forgot to include it before.

Comments

Hunter1 Since: Dec, 1969

Mar 11th 2013 at 12:54:42 AM

For those of you who haven't played the games, the bad guys in Battle Network have a high chance of either A, having a lousy disguise, B, preforming a Heel Face Turn, or C, both.

And yeah, Program Advances in BN 1 were hard to use; too many relied on the letter codes or chip types matching (for instance, the most basic PA in BN 1 is Cannon A, Cannon B, Cannon C; the second most basic was a same-coded Sword/Wide Sword/Long Sword). Admittedly this is partly the fault that BN 1 was in love with coded chips; as you go further along in the series, the universal *-coded chips became more common to the point that BN 6 drops the code system entirely.