Our story begins like many an RPG. Lan is asleep in his bed while a voice is urging him to wake up, in this case because he’ll be late for school. This is a recurring thing with Lan, and it will continue to be repeated ad nauseum throughout the series. The voice also mentions that he’s received an email reporting a rise in net crime and a warning that the WWW’s plan for cyber domination may be starting, as well as a message from his father.
Once Lan gets up we can move him around with the D-pad, holding B makes him run (or rather skate, since he wears snap-on roller blades), and A lets him examine objects. His bedroom’s a cozy little space, with a bookcase, some sort of terrarium on the windowsill, a computer that looks like it’s from the 80s, and a poster of what I believe is supposed to be Trigger, the protagonist of the Legends series. I believe the Battle Network series was conceived, developed, and designed by a number of the Legends staff, so expect the occasional nod here and there. Anyway, what we want is the device sitting on Lan’s dresser, his Personal Terminal or simply PET which contains his Navi, Megaman.
With the PET and Megaman in hand we can now access the main menus through pressing START. Hitting L will have Megaman give Lan a little hint as to what they should be doing. It’s basically to push players along should they have forgotten where to go to progress the story. We can do numerous things in the menu, such as saving the game, looking at items, or looking at Megaman’s stats, but I’ll get to those functions as they come up. For now we can look at our email to read the bulletin on the WWW for ourselves and see a message from Yuuichiro apologizing for being away at work. He does give us the battle chip Cross Gun C as a way to make up. Downstairs is the kitchen/living area of the Hikari household, where Lan’s mom paces. Talking to her urges us to eat the breakfast that’s set out on the table for us, and doing so nets us the battle chip Recovery 10 A. This series makes extensive use of Always Check Behind the Chair – there are chips and a plethora of other items scattered all over the place, and some can be rather obscure. Any battle chips found or purchased by either Lan or Megaman will automatically be added to our pack, and any new ones will be automatically recorded in our chip library, both of which can be accessed from the main menu. Every game in the series has an extensive library of battle chips, this one has one-hundred-and-seventy-five, and collecting all of them is mandatory for 100% Completion. Anyway, with that done, it’s time to leave the house.
Waiting for him outside is his friend Mayl. Lan is less than pleased to see her, given that their morning walks to school apparently consist of his ear being talked off. I don’t think this tendency of Mayl’s is really referenced at all in the series after this scene, and Lan’s characterization in this game seems a little more recalcitrant, or at least snarky, than it is later on. Not that Battle Network characters ever were or are bottomless fonts of characterization, but given that the characterizations remain pretty flat and basic for the most part it is a shame that these aspects weren’t retained in later installments. Anyway the two automatically walk down the street towards the school gates, and the subject of the day is that there’s been a rash of arson cases recently where people’s ovens begin spitting fire. Mayl thinks it has something to do with the WWW, but Lan’s doubtful. Ha, we’ll just see about that!
We’re automatically taken to Lan’s classroom once this sequence ends. In here we can poke around and meet another one of Lan’s circle of friends, Yai. Weirdly enough, despite the fact that she’s clearly wearing a dress in both her sprite and artwork, her mugshot is drawn as if she’s wearing a turtleneck sweater or something. She explains what PE Ts are should you talk to her. They’re multipurpose devices, and in function are pretty much iPhones, so good on Capcom’s part in predicting them. Also talking to a generic NPC boy tells us that the WWW’s plan for taking over involves creating some kind of special virus. Hm.
To advance things we have to talk to Dex, who’s apparently itching for a Net Battle with Lan. He’s pretty easy to spot, being the largest person in the classroom. However, before we can begin Yai, in standard class president procedure (despite not being class president herself) runs up to inform us that Net Battling is against the rules. What’s more, class is starting. Dex grumbles at being interrupted, but he has no choice but to back off for now.
The class teacher Ms. Mari
◊ starts off the day with a little current event discussion, in which we get another instance of snarky-Lan when he puts down Dex’s bravado concerning the WWW. Then it’s time for the first lesson of the day, Virus Busting. This serves as the game’s battle tutorial. Every game has this tutorial, even if the battle mechanics between games remain unchanged, and it’s impossible to skip. But since this is the first game, I’ll be covering it in full.
Battles in the Battle Network series take place on a 6 x 3 grid, divided up into two 3 x 3 areas. The red half on the left is Megaman’s side while the blue half on the right is the enemy’s side. All combatants can move freely around their own area, but they cannot cross over onto the opposite side unless they are using an attack that allows them to do so. Battles consist of dodging enemy attacks and using Megaman’s classic Mega Buster and battle chips to delete the enemy as fast as you can.
Battles start out with the Custom Screen open. This window displays five battle chips randomly taken from your folder of thirty. Hitting the R button will give you a brief description of what the highlighted chip does, but these descriptions are more often than not hamstrung by the game’s character limit. Once you’ve selected your battle chips, hitting the OK button starts the battle proper.
In battle, hitting the B button allows Megaman to fire his Mega Buster at the enemy viruses. Unlike the platform Megaman games, the Mega Buster is not your main weapon. By itself it’s pretty weak, and relying on it will get you eaten alive. Battle chips are Megaman’s main weapon, and the A button is what activates them. At the top of the screen is the Custom Gauge, which slowly fills over the course of ten seconds, and once full pressing either of the shoulder buttons will pause the action to open the Custom Screen once again, allowing the player to select more battle chips. Megaman starts with 100 HP, and once they hit zero he’s deleted and it’s game over.
That’s the first of three parts to the tutorial. The second introduces chip codes. Chips codes are those standalone letters after the chip name. Normally you can only select duplicate chips (like two Cannons), but you can also pick different chips with identical codes. This gives you the benefit of having access to combos and being able to dish out more damage per turn. The game demonstrates this by having us select the chips Steal (known as Area Grab in later games) and Wide Sword in sequence. Wide Sword deal 80 damage, a lot for this point in the game, but it’s short range, only hitting the column immediately in front of Megaman. Steal, however, allows us to temporarily turn the leftmost column of the enemy field red, expanding Megaman’s area while simultaneously reducing their’s. This allows us to delete the enemy which would normally be out of Wide Sword’s range. Management of one’s chip codes are the bread and butter of the battle system. While it is entirely possible to get through the game with an alphabet soup-coded folder, it’s slow and not very efficient for advanced play. A good folder should minimize the amount of codes as much as possible so that the chips flow better.
Admittedly, there’s a bit of a de-emphasis on that in this game, since you can have up to ten copies of a single chip at a time in your folder. As I said, this game is pretty much a beta compared to later entries.
The final part of the tutorial concerns the ADD system. The ADD system lets us increase the number of chips we can access from the Custom Screen, however it works a little differently, and in my opinion more cumbersome, than it does in Battle Networks 2 and 3. By hitting the ADD button Megaman goes without battle chips for one turn, but when the Custom Screen is opened again we’ll have access to ten chips instead of five. Using ADD again will bump that number up to fifteen after another turn. That’s half the folder, but since that means going without battle chips for two whole turns I rarely use it in this game. Still, it can be pretty useful if you’re not that concerned with speed and are just looking for a certain chip or combo. Anyway, that wraps up the virus busting tutorial. For this game at least.
After that we immediately skip straight to the end of the day, and we’re free to talk to the students again. The true attraction left in the classroom is that we can finally battle Dex and his Navi Gutsman.
Interestingly enough, the pre-battle dialogue with him uncovers another bit of Early-Installment Weirdness. Dex mentions buying “the latest version (of Gutsman)”. While it’s true that there are plenty of generic market model Navis out there, in fact they make up the vast majority of NPCs in the series, all of the unique or “-man” Navis are supposed to be one-of-a-kind upgraded and customized specimens. Megaman, naturally, was programmed by Yuuichiro, which will become very important later on. For now, it’s time to fight Gutsman.
Gutsman
HP: 200
Element: Normal
Attacks:
- Shockwave – Gutsman smashes the ground, unleashing a shockwave that travels down one row for 10 damage
- Guts Hammer – Gutsman smashes the ground, cracking one row of panels.
- Guts Punch – Gutsman moves up to his front column and punches the panel in front of him, knocking the target back a panel for 30 damage.
You know you’re a Warm-Up Boss when you don’t even get the boss battle theme to play. Being the first real battle of the game, hell series, Gutsman’s a pushover. All one has to do to completely neuter his attacks is to deliberately break one of the cracked panels, as Shockwave cannot pass over them and Guts Punch cannot hit Megaman at all if he’s not in his front column.
Oh, might as well explain panel conditions. While later games have more diverse panel types, this one only has two – cracked, and broken. Cracked panels can be stepped on but as soon as they are stepped off of they break and become impassable. Not to worry though, for they will regenerate as good as new after a short while.
With Gutsman beaten, there’s nothing more to be done here. Time to leave.
Virus Listing
- Mettaur
- The classic Mascot Mook of the Megaman franchise appears in this series as the most basic enemy virus. Mettaurs will move up and down one column, and upon aligning with Megaman will swing a pickax, unleashing a shockwave that will travel down one row. If there are more than one Mettaur on the enemy field they will only attack one at a time, and stronger versions of the virus are able to hide under their helmets to block attacks when not attacking themselves.
Soundtrack
- Theme of Megaman Battle Network
- The main theme of the series. It's everything you want for an RPG's main theme: upbeat, catchy, and instantly recognizable.
- In the Room
- Soundtrack for Lan's house. In this game it's used for pretty much all indoor locations, but in the future games it's restricted to just the homes of Lan and his friends.
- Hometown
- The theme of Lan's home, ACDC Town. Similar to the above track, this one's used for every outdoor area, but in the future it's exclusive to ACDC. Battle Network 4 is the only game that doesn't use this track in some capacity.
- School
- Track for ACDC Elementary. Does it inspire learning?
- Operation!
- The battle theme for standard encounters. Appropriately upbeat considering it's probably the track one is going to be hearing the most.
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