For our final battle of the Den Battle Tournament we’re up against an old friend, Fireman. Fireman (and his Blue Moon counterpart Numberman) will never be fought in Normal Mode, only Hard and above. As an aside, you can only get two new Souls in Hard Mode, and the final one in Super Hard Mode. The final one is always from a Red Sun/Blue Moon Tournament opponent, which means that I’m going to have to do the Thunderman scenario again.
This time around, Lan is openly suspicious of Mr. Match (I guess since this is supposed to be the “first” time they meet in this game), and Match is as cavalier towards him as ever. Once he leaves Lan decides to go get something to eat, and luckily for him there’s that hotdog stand right outside of the Den Dome. You know how whenever you’re trying to avoid someone they just keep popping up? Yeah, Mr. Match decides to swing by the stand too. The woman working at the stand is quite pleased to see him, since he apparently helped fix her hotdog fryer at some point in the recent past.
Wow, I think I’m going to have to lie down. Mr. Match actually fixing an appliance, let alone a cooking one? Holy cow, that turns like, everything on its head. Heck, even Lan is shocked.
At this point two thugs wander over (I’m going to assume that they’re the same two guys from Tetsu’s scenario since they use the same sprites) and demand that the owner pay up protection money. Uh, it’s just a hotdog stand, not like a restaurant or anything. I guess with the expanse of cybercrime these days there’s no glory left to be had in good old-fashioned racketeering. Mr. Match drives them off and quickly takes his leave, and as soon as he leaves the cooker breaks again, necessitating Lan jacking in and having Megaman delete the virus. But that still doesn’t solve the issue, so Lan decides to go find Mr. Match again so that he can fix it himself. It seems that one of the tournament staff is looking for him too, since he dropped something called the Fire ID.
With the Fire ID item, we can open a door in ACDC Area 3 that leads to a warp that goes to a large platform in the center of the area. There, Fireman is meeting with two Heel Navis, hatching some sort of plan. Before they leave, he tells them to say away from the hotdog stand. After they leave Megaman tells him what’s going on, and Mr. Match goes back to the stand to fix it. Apparently the viruses that Megaman deleted were actually what was generating the cooker’s heat. Oops. After a brief lecture on how viruses can actually be helpful sometimes, it’s time for the match (pun not intended) to begin.
Or not, because just as the battle’s about to begin Mr. Match reveals that he’s indeed up to something. After the WWW collapsed he formed his own group of gangsters, and they’ve left firebombs all over the Den Dome. However, he decides to call the plan off when he sees the hotdog lady in the stands, but his underlings decide to go through with the plan anyway. So this means another Pixel Hunt to locate all five of the igniters and delete the viruses inside. After that, we have to jack in to the Net Battle machine and play a minigame involving cyber-bomb disposal. After all that, the tournament somehow isn’t cancelled and Mr. Match somehow isn’t arrested while his cronies are. Well whatever, it’s been a while since we’ve fought Fireman.
Fireman Alpha
HP: 1000
Element: Fire
Attacks:
- Fire Arm – Fireman shoots a sustained blast of fire down one row for 80 Fire damage.
- Fire Tower – Fireman creates a series of flame bursts that travel down one row while tracking Megaman’s movements for 80 Fire damage.
- Fire Bomb – Fireman fires two bombs into Megaman’s area. They explode upon impact, leaving behind rings of flame that deal 40 Fire damage.
Eh, he hasn’t really changed any since Battle Network 1. His attacks come a little faster and aren’t as telegraphed since they don’t have as many animation frames as they used to.
The scenario ends with Mr. Match basically walking off into the sunset after essentially turning the hotdog lady down out-of-hand. He don’t need no ball-and-chain, yeah! Oh, and I guess we get Fire Soul out of this.
- Activated by sacrificing a Fire chip
- Megaman becomes Fire element
- Charge Shot becomes a three-panel-long flamethrower
- By charging Fire chips with the A button Megaman can unleash a flamethrower blast that covers the entire row
- Upon activation a plus-shaped area of grass will appear on both sides of the field
- Megaman regenerates HP when on lava panels
Kind of a so-so Soul. The only real use I see for it is doubling Heat Spread’s damage with the grass panels.
After this Fireman Beta can be found in Town Area 2, right next to the warp that ultimately leads to the Elec Tower Computer. His chip is the same as it was in the first game – a flamethrower that travels down one row.
That’s all for the Den Battle Tournament, at least as far as the liveblog entries go.
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