The exterior of the Government Complex has some employees wandering around, and it also has a new character named Sal
◊ who is selling boxed-lunches (or bento, if you can read the hiragana printed on her stand’s banner). She’s an environmentalist and the operator of Woodman. Sal and Woodman are the first of a number of bosses that don't really have any story importance - they're just there to be fought. In this game it's mandatory to beat each of them at least once so that we can access different areas of the Net.
Woodman
◊
HP: 500
Element: Wood
Attacks:
- Green Wood – Every time Woodman moves, several wooden spears pop out of random panels of Megaman’s field for 50 Wood damage.
- Wood Tower – A seed drops onto the field and turns into a series of wooden spears that move towards Megaman in the standard Tower pattern for 50 Wood damage.
- Death Forest – Woodman leaps into the air and puts his hands to the ground upon landing, performing his Green Wood attack several times in sequence for 50 Wood damage.
- Growth – A seed will fall onto one of Woodman’s panels, sprout, and create a fruit. When Woodman lands on the panel with that fruit he’ll recover 200 HP.
At this stage of the game I found Woodman to be a lot harder than I remember him being. While he himself is slow, his attacks are randomized and pretty fast as far as how they hit is concerned, plus he’s one of the very few bosses who can recover HP, and a lot of it at that.
Assuming you have a number of them though, his Achilles’ Heel is Fire element attacks. While I’ve mentioned them before, this is where the game's Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors begins to come into play. There are five elements in this game: Fire, Aqua, Elec, Wood, and Normal. The coverage looks like this: Fire > Wood, Aqua > Fire, Elec > Aqua, Wood > Elec. Normal isn’t strong or weak to anything.
Hitting an enemy with the element that they’re weak against deals double damage. There are no resistances either, meaning that if you hit say, a Wood element enemy with an Elec attack, the damage won’t be halved. So chips like Fire Tower, Fireman, or Fire Sword if you happen to have it will eat through Woodman’s bulk like nothing else.
Winning gives us 2000z.
After the battle Sal gives us the /Sal item, which will allow us to go through one of the exits in Internet Area 2 that was blocked off before giving us access to Internet Area 3, which corresponds with the Government Complex. We can jack in to Sal’s stand where we can get @Sal which will allow us to access Internet Area 3 from here later on, as well as a Recovery 120 A. The viruses inside are pretty strong, though.
The Government Complex houses a number of facilities. It’s split into three main sections, the city’s waterworks, an underground power plant, and finally SciLab, the country’s top technology-based thinktank where Lan’s father works. The Waterworks’ lobby is immediately inside, and though there’s not much to do here at the moment we can jack in to a TV in the smoking area to nab an Escape L and a vending machine with a Spreader J. Down a hall is SciLab’s lobby which lacks a jack in-able TV but does have a vending machine containing 5000z. Talking to the receptionist allows us to take the elevator up to where Yuuichiro’s lab is.
Unfortunately, Yuuichiro’s not in. However all is not for naught, because we can still poke around the place. There’s a monitor we can jack in to for a Hi-Cannon J. It’s also got two Navis inside, one of which ponders its own sentience, while the other lets slip that a new type of Navi using human…something was developed here. Examining the PC in Yuuichiro’s cubicle prompts Megaman to suggest that we jack in to see if the Power UP is inside. We do, but according to the Program, it isn’t. Shucks. While we’re in here though we can get @Dad and examine a machine that generates a random virus battle.
The trip isn’t a total bust though, since when we return to ACDC we get an email from Yuuchiro apologizing for missing us before revealing that he managed to compress the program and attaches it to the mail. We get both a Power UP and an HP Memory at once. Nice.
Once home, it’s time to explore the new section of the Net. Using /Sal we can access Internet Area 3 from Internet Area 2. Sal’s access point is just past the entrance, and nearby is the main attraction of the area for the moment, a merchant with the following:
- HP Memory – 4000z
- HP Memory – 6000z
- HP Memory – 9000z
- HP Memory – 12000z
- HP Memory – 15000z
- Wood Armor – 15000z
- Wide Sword S – 3000z
- Hammer I – 3000z
- X-Panel 3 G – 3000z
- Mega Cannon L – 10000z
The Wood Armor is the thing to buy first here. Remember how I said that there are no elemental resistances in this series? Well, the armor system is kind of an exception to that. With an armor piece equipped, Megaman takes half damage from all attacks except for the element that it’s weak to. So since we have Wood Armor on, getting hit by a Fire attack will damage Megaman as normal. From this point forward the game expects you to have an armor set equipped at all times, as the enemy damage output begins to increase noticeably from here on out. You’ll see for yourselves when I list the damage values for future bosses. Buying armor increases Megaman’s level, and there are three sets in the game – Wood Armor, Aqua Armor, and Heat Armor. I assume the reason that there’s no Elec Armor is due to the dearth of Wood element viruses and Navis in this game.
Past the merchant is Yuuichiro’s access point. This point is important because it’s near a secret path to Internet Area 9. That’s postgame territory, so I’m not going to bother with it yet, but if a player’s willing to do some Sequence Breaking, they can get some pretty powerful chips if they play their cards right.
Continuing on the main path is an open platform where Stoneman’s second form resides. Beating him gives us Stoneman S. Stoneman’s chip has him randomly drop rocks on the enemy field three times in a row for 100 damage each. With each successive version of his chip he drops more rocks at a time, making him great for crowd control. At the very end of the path is another access point, but we don’t have the right item for that yet.
That’s it for now. Time to jack out and hit the sack.
Virus Listing
- Dynamite
- These viruses can be real nuisances. These living camouflage cloaks lay grenades on the front column of Megaman's field. Each grenade has a sensor aimed either directly forward, up or down, or up and down diagonally. Stepping onto any of the these red dots will cause the grenades to explode in that direction.
- Popper
- These viruses usually stay high above the field before temporarily descending long enough to fire off a Wood Tower at Megaman. Popper 2's and Popper 3's are located very deep in the Internet and drop the rare Leaf Shield and Dropdown battle chips.
- Cloudy
- Cloudys remain locked to one panel, occasionally drifting into the air to spit a small raincloud to move up and down one of Megaman's columns.
- Ratty
- These rat viruses move quickly and do their best to stay out of Megaman's row. They shoot rattons, small projectiles that can make a ninety-degree turn to track Megaman. Rattys move faster and fire more rattons more quickly when low on HP.
- Puffy
- These blowfish viruses remain stationary, attacking by spitting a bubble which bounces from panel to panel. When the bubble hits either an obstacle or Megaman, it explodes in a 3 x 3 pattern. Puffys can be either Aqua or Fire element.
- Billy
- These guys can be real annoying in certain situations. They fire slow-moving balls of lightning at Megaman. Upon getting hit he'll be electrified. As a result, any time he moves he'll take damage until the effect desists. But the duration of the electrification is extended with each movement...
Soundtrack
- Game Over
- The game over jingle for the first three games. Because I got deleted when first exploring Sal's network.
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