For the final round of the tournament we are up against Burnerman, whom I will always have a soft spot for because I really enjoyed his portrayal in the anime, original and dub both. Lan comments that fire makes him think of a certain person, who of course is Mr. Match
◊. Who promptly shows up to say hi. What? Why isn’t he in jail?! Or at least still in the hospital after what he pulled in the last game?! In the surest sign of this game’s dumbed-down writing Lan doesn’t express one iota of wariness around the man, when in the past games he was always initially suspicious of him. At least Match’s mugshot no longer has the suspicious-as-hell shit-eating grin plastered on it. Anyway, he asks Mr. Match if he’s Burnerman’s operator, but Match says that he isn’t. In fact, the reason that he’s here at all is to check the fellow out, to see if he’s worthy of operating a fire Navi. On cue Burnerman’s operator, a punk named Atsuki
◊ (har har) swaggers over and quickly gets into a dick-waving contest over who’s the more hot-blooded of the two. The two end up deciding to have their Navis duke it out and they both leave, completely forgetting about Lan, which is fine by him.
After wandering around a bit though, he gets an email from Haruka exclaiming that his PC back home has started smoking. Uh oh. When we get back there Haruka gives us the Water Gun item (unlike in the very first game, this is a program and not an actual water gun), and once we access the Net from Lan’s smoking PC Megaman sees that ACDC Area is on fire (déjà vu), with pillars of flames blocking the paths. They conclude that this is due to the fight between Mr. Match’s and Atsuki’s Navis, but the Water Gun is much too weak to put out the flames. Fortunately, Lan gets the idea of going to see Higsby, who has just the thing ready for him: the Fire Buster. This weapon shoots blasts of water powerful enough to douse the clusters of flame on the Net, but there’s of course a catch. When in use a fluctuating pressure gauge will appear, and how strong the pressure is when the B button is pushed determines how powerful the blast is. The higher the gauge is the stronger the blast is and the more fire that can be put out. If the gauge is maxed out when pressed all of the flames in that cluster will be put out simultaneously. If any fire remains after the buster is fired, Megaman will be set on fire and take some damage. Upon putting out all of the fires in ACDC Area 1 the Net returns to normal, and Lan and Megaman take that as a sign that the battle is over, as the tournament match will soon start.
Only not, because once Lan gets back to Castillo he noticed a concession stand smoking, and soon discovered that the entirety of Park Area is now on fire. So once again we have to slog our way through the Net, putting out fires as we go until we reach, yet again, the back of Park Area 3. Here we find Fireman
◊ squaring off with Burnerman, and the two Navis are getting along just as well as their operators did. Megaman tries to break up the fight to no avail, but Lan manages to get Burnerman’s attention by telling him that Megaman has beaten Fireman before. Atsuki thinks this is hilarious and jacks Burnerman out, since if he beats Megaman at the match it’ll prove once and for all that he’s stronger than Fireman. Mr. Match and his Navi are furious at being emasculated like that, but Mr. Match at least does tell Lan that he better win or else he’ll make Fireman look even worse.
So off to the stadium to deal with these hotheads.
Burnerman
◊
HP: 700
Element: Fire
Attacks:
- Strike Burner – Two gas cylinders roll around on the top and bottom rows, shooting a jet of flame down the column if they align with Megaman for 40 Fire damage.
- Burn Sword – Burnerman shoots a jet of flame down a three-panel-long range for 40 Fire damage.
- Burning Jet – Burnerman blazes down one row for 60 Fire damage.
I remember having a lot of trouble with this guy when I was younger. The Striker Burner canisters can really hem Megaman in. Destroying one of them with a breaking attack will give you some reprieve, though they do eventually regenerate. They can’t roll over Megaman, so bodily blocking their way can be effective as long as you don’t get carelessly hit by the one on the opposite side of the field. Since they’re so constantly I try to stay away from using chips that immobilize Megaman like Gun del Sol during this battle. The cylinders make inviting targets for a Hyper Burst or Heat/Bubble Spread Program Advances, though.
Atsuki throws a tantrum over his loss, and Mr. Match rubs salt into his wounds from the stands. Temper flaring, Atsuki tries to have Burnerman burn the stadium to the ground but only succeeds in lighting himself on fire. Ablaze, he runs off, presumably to throw himself off of the castle battlements like Denethor did in the Return of the King film. There is such a thing as too hot a spirit, Megaman notes.
So we are now the champions of the Eagle Tournament. Just like with the last one, Lan gets a trophy, but the fun doesn’t end there! No, as he heads to the elevator after the ceremony a voice asks him if he thinks that he’ll leave here alive. The voice identifies itself as the leader of Nebula, and demands that Megaman be jack in to the Net Battle machine, else he’ll destroy the entire castle. Once inside Megaman notes that he feels a buzzing sensation, and the voice says that it’s just him resonating with his own darkness. A large black Navi appears before him, and he introduces himself as Nebula’s leader, Laserman
◊.
Laserman is one of the three winners of this game’s create-a-Navi contest. For the type of role he has, I really like his design. Large, imposing, dark, Tron Lines, understated inhuman touches like the lack of a face, subtly flickering visor and the clawed feet, and just the general Darth Vader-esque look (and voice in the anime). A perfect Evil Overlord design.
Unfortunately he’s in Battle Network 4, which means as a character he’s as deep as a kiddie pool and his dialogue is a fountain of Evil Overlord stock phrases. Oh well, design’s still cool.
Laserman starts going down his cliché checklist by offering Megaman a chance to join Nebula due to his innate evilness, and when Megaman rebuffs him he calls him a hypocrite, since it’s his Dark Soul that drives him to fight and delete enemies. Oh, and Nebula aims to destroy the world and plunge it into darkness.
His “speech” is interrupted by Gutsman jacking in to come to Megaman’s aid. It’s important to note that this is Red Sun exclusive. In Blue Moon it is instead Aquaman, the first of that game’s version-exclusive Navis, who arrives. No matter who it is, their presence is weakly handwaved (at least with Gutsman you could assume that Dex is in the crowd rooting for his friend, but Lan isn’t shown to be particularly close to Aquaman’s operator, and in playthroughs where Megaman doesn’t fight him this scene makes absolutely no sense), and Laserman decides to use them in a little demonstration. He does something to draw out Megaman’s Dark Soul which manifests as a second pitch-black Megaman. It quickly possesses Gutsman, and we’re forced to fight him.
Gutsman DS
HP: 800
Element: Normal
Attacks:
- Guts Machine Gun – Gutsman fires a rapid volley of buster shots down a three-panel-long range for 35 damage.
- Guts Quake – Gutsman smashes the ground with his hammer, cracking one random panel and dropping three rocks onto Megaman’s area for 30 damage.
- Guts Punch – Gutsman moves up to his front column and punches the panel in front of him, knocking the target back a panel for 50 damage.
This battle mainly serves to introduce the gimmick of DS bosses, that they can freely use any chip that Megaman has in addition to their own repertoire of attacks and copy any beneficial programs that he may have installed. The more Megaman has used a certain chip attack the more likely the boss is to use it. This goes for Program Advances too. This isn’t that much of an issue at the moment since most of the chips available at the moment aren’t that strong or dangerous, but later in the game they can rip up an unsuspecting player. For what it’s worth, Gutsman DS isn’t terribly hard right now, and he doesn't seem to attack all that often either.
With Gutsman defeated (this never gets brought up again, mind you) the Dark Soul returns to Megaman and Laserman decides to leave, saying that he looks forward to Megaman joining him next time, leaving Megaman to angst about his Dark Soul. You’ve got no one to blame but yourselves, buddies. Not to mention that this is barely brought up again.
The scene shift to NAXA, where we see that the team has finally completely their giant laser cannon-cum-antenna. Since Shilly’s the dumb newbie of the group we get some brief exposition on how the Red Sun Laser Gun (called Blue Moon in Blue Moon) can only fire a single shot, as the power involved will burn itself out. Great design work all around guys, maybe the weapons’ guy should’ve been in charge of this and not the networking guy. They power up the laser and wait for it to complete charging. According to Yuuichiro the gun needs to be overclocked at 200% maximum power to shift the asteroid, so after a dramatic charge-up sequence that makes the sky darken and the building shake it fires…
…and fails. The laser weakens just as it fires, failing to alter the asteroid’s course. Dr. Regal wonders who could be responsible, and Yuuichiro that it was probably a malicious Navi, albeit one that had to be quite powerful to operate inside of the laser’s computer. He goes off to run a systems’ check on the rest of NAXA’s systems while the rest of the team clusters around Regal in a panic. But not to worry, Regal says, he has a backup plan. All he needs is a strong operator and Navi.
Uh oh, we know what that means! Another tournament!
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