Once again our round 1 contestant is one of the generics, but this time we’re finally up against the Heel Navi opponent. The Navi, Jammer, is operated by a boy from Netfrica named Paulie. They meet at the board, of course, and Lan’s amazed that Netfrica’s representative is a little boy. Since his ego’s been stroked, Paulie decides to take Lan to his village to show him their Water God festival. Right now. Thanks to the fact that this is a video game we can completely ignore the fact that a flight from Italy to somewhere in Africa is gonna take a number of hours, and that there’s no way that the tournament’s going to wait for us. We get to indulge in a little fast travel too, since Lan and Paulie are pretty much instantly warped to Netfrica. Each of the foreign countries are pretty small, but Netfrica is the smallest, with only a single area to explore. Apparently they use ostriches to get around since under normal circumstances examining one that’s hanging out takes us back to the world map. Distressingly, the leader of the village is white.
We’re told by Paulie that the main part of the festival is taking place online, so we’re told to jack in to a statue of another one of the village’s gods, Nupopo, so that we can access Netfrica Area. To get the passcode to unlock the security cube we have to do a three-round survival battle at a local Navi’s request. These battles introduce a new panel type – quicksand. Unlike the sand panels from the previous game that merely slowed Megaman down, these ones will temporarily hold him in place before fading away.
Jammer and the other Netfrica Navis are gathered near the Netopia-side entrance, and with them is the “Water God”, a tiki-shaped rocket. The ritual, which will decide the village’s annual champion, simply involves finding the thing after it rockets off. The hint given is that “last year, it flew clear to Sharo Area.” Now, you’d think that that means that it’ll be elsewhere, like in Yumland or Netopia Area, but nope, it’s in Sharo. Predictably, after we retrieve it Megaman’s victory causes a bit of a stir. The river in the real world that runs through the village suddenly goes dry, the culprit being the River Management System going awry. So the Water God stuff is apparently a Cargo Cult. Got it. Since the village is going to wither away without any water, Paulie suggests that Lan jack in to the Water God statue and take care of the issue, as he’s the champion of the village.
After retrieving the Recovery Drop item from Netfrica Area we can jack in to the Water God statue and it’s horrible. The place is a teleporter maze consisting of sixteen areas that all look exactly the same. A couple of them have signposts in the form of fallen Navis whose ghosts attack Megaman with viruses. Generally speaking the more fallen Navis you find, the closer you are to getting to the console that needs fixing. There’re probably FA Qs out there that make getting through this place a snap, but I toughed it out without one so I could fully experience the tedium. About the only redeeming feature of this place is that there’s a BMD at the end containing a badly-needed 10000z.
After the viruses infecting the console are destroyed and the Recovery Drop is used the river in the real world begins to flow again. Everyone celebrate, except for Paulie, who’s vanished. Lan figures he went back to the Coliseum, and decide that they should head back too. And so one nigh-instantaneous ten-hour-flight later, we arrive at the arena. Paulie’s there already, and his personality’s done a complete one-eighty from before, declaring that he hates Lan.
Jammer (Heel Navi Alpha)
HP: 800
Element: Normal
Attacks:
- Fighter Sword – Jammer swings a three-panel-long sword for 60 damage.
- Cannonball – Jammer throws a projectile into Megaman’s area that breaks the panel it lands on and deals 60 damage.
- Virus Summon – Jammer summons a Mettaur, Billy, Volgear, Gaia, or Boomer virus to the field.
- Area Grab – Jammer steals Megaman’s rightmost column.
Heel Navi opponents are considerably easier to deal with than Normal Navis at higher levels because they don’t have as many attacks or support. I guess their ability to summon viruses is a play off of how you always fought them instead of the Navis themselves in Battle Network 3 (and 5). They’re generally not very dangerous.
Paulie reveals after the battle that he was the one who messed up the Water God, out of jealousy that Lan was the one to become champion. He wanted to see Lan fail so that he could be the one to save the village.
Excuse me, what the hell?! In order to do that, he would’ve had to, within seconds mind, cross a river, traverse that hellish maze, plant viruses, and then get back to the other side of the shore without anyone seeing him at all, despite the fact that he would’ve had to have been in full view of anyone who happened to be walking by! Oh, and of course there’s the whole, “condemning the village to a slow and drawn out death by starvation and thirst” thing either.
The village leader arrives (I guess he came along on that flight too) and tells Paulie that he’s banished from the village, but just like with Chisao Lan stands up for the little asshole. The leader’s response?
“We’ll just pretend this never happened.”
Sums up the game in a nutshell.
Anyway, there’s a Spin Pink inside the Net Battle machine to grab, and after that it’s time to go check out the upcoming pairings.
/sees said pairings/
Goddammit.
Virus Listing
- Spidy
- These viruses are spiders that crawl around Megaman's area, dropping webs as they go. They have very low HP, so sword chips are adequate for dealing with them.
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