After hurrying home to jack in to the Net we find a trail of carnage throughout ACDC Area in the form of numerous drained Navis, courtesy of Shademan, no doubt. In ACDC Area 2 a merchant has now set up shop.
- HP Memory – 1000z
- HP Memory – 3200z
- Bubbler R – 800z
- Energy Bomb E – 2400z
- Spreader * - 3200z
- Tornado L – 7600z
One nice convenient feature this game introduces with shops is that chips in their stock that Megaman doesn’t have are highlighted green. But yeesh, that stuff’s pretty pricey this early in the game. If you try buying everything from shops all at once in this game you’re going to go destitute pretty quickly.
Megaman finds his friends cornered by Shademan in ACDC Area 3. Glyde and Gutsman
◊ are of course down already and after some rapey-sounding dialogue Shademan snatches up Roll and flies off into the next area. Megaman has Gutsman and Glyde jack out and then he goes off in pursuit of the vampire Navi. He gets an email from Yai with the Yai Code item too. The next Internet area is Town Area, corresponding to Elec Town. There’s a teleporter there that a Navi says that Shademan just took, and to get there we have to go to Town Area 2 and double back via an alternate route. Town Area 2, incidentally, is split up into two levels, and it’s important to note that there’s a shortcut from the start of the area to the exit in the form of a very narrow pathway, similar to the pathways that required Press in Battle Network 3. Fortunately the method to cross them will turn out to be different once we get that far, but it still manages to be a little aggravating in its own way.
So, the teleporter leads to a gloomy-looking network called the Elec Tower Computer. Heading forward, Megaman finds his way cut off by a gap in the pathway, with Shademan on the other side taunting him. And this scene introduces another common “typo” in this game, that of the wrong character’s mugshot being used for individual lines of dialogue. Weak translation aside, the line “It would be great if I could fly…” is supposed to be said by Megaman, but the mugshot used makes it look like Shademan, who can already fly, is saying it instead. QA testers, what are they? Anyway, Shademan leaves and since Megaman for some reason can’t just jump over the gap he and Lan decide to jack in to this network from the real world, deducing that it has to be somewhere in Elec Town.
The Elec Tower is actually the speaker tower from the Elec Town square, but a scientist is blocking the way because apparently it’s emitting dangerous sonic waves, presumably thanks to Shademan. There is an alternate route though. By examining some fencing nearby we find that the closed gate is actually unlocked, allowing Lan to climb up on to some scaffolding that runs along the outside of Jomon Electric’s upper floors (in the process we can jack in to its giant advertising monitor for a Regular UP 2) and onto a catwalk that connects directly to the tower. However, the giant set of speakers comes to life and begins to let out a high-pitched screech just like the scientist said. Lan can’t get anywhere near the tower thanks to the pain and is forced to retreat.
Rule of thumb when faced with such a situation is to look for solutions or anything that could help in the nearby area. Talking to some people reveals that the promotion at Jomon Electric, the one with the earphones as a prize, has started up again. So there we go, we simply have to talk to the Navi inside the display stereo to get things started. This introduces us to a small feature that I wish was retained in later games. In the past we always had a proxy virus battle whenever we fought a generic Normal or Heel Navi, but in this game we fight them directly. They’re pretty much minibosses that use simple, basic battle chips to attack. It’s a nice change of pace. Heel Navis can still summon viruses in battle too. Beating the Navi in battle nets us the pair of earphones as promised, which enables Lan to completely block out the speakers’ noise. He’s able to reach the console on the tower itself and jack in.
The two areas of the Elec Tower Computer are very small, even taking into account the fact that this is the first dungeon of the game. There’s a door blocking off both exits, and to get the key data needed to unlock it we have to use a sonar system in the center to reveal wandering “cyber bats.” The sonar only works for ten seconds at a time, so we have at least that long to get a single bat. Thing is, they’re fast and highly mobile, following no set pattern as they fly around the pathways. Getting interrupted by virus battles doesn’t help either, and the hit detection is pretty wonky. Either you catch the cyber bats quickly, or this becomes more annoying and protracted than it should be. Shademan’s at the back of the area with Roll, and when Megaman shows up he activates two speakers sitting on the platform to immobilize him. Control shifts to Lan and the solution is to go around to the giant speakers and manually turn the volume all the way down, muting the device. And so, the fight with Shademan can begin…
Shademan
HP: 500
Element: Normal
Attacks:
- Red Wing – Shademan summons three small bats that behave like slow-moving Rattons, traveling down the row and making a right angle turn to strike Megaman for 20 damage.
- Crush Noise – Shademan fires a sonic beam that hits the panel in front of him and the following column for 20 damage as well as either paralyzing or confusing Megaman.
…except not. This isn’t actually a real boss battle. Shademan is completely invincible. Whenever’s he’s hit by an attack, whether it be a buster shot, cannon blast, bomb, or sword slash he merely fades away and reappears elsewhere on the field without taking any damage. The battle automatically ends after a few turns.
It should be noted though, that from now on confusion merely reverses Megaman’s controls rather than make them go completely crazy like they did in Battle Network 3.
Megaman acts surprisingly unconcerned that he’s fighting an invincible enemy. A voice calls out and says that he should leave this battle to an Official and Protoman
◊ jacks in to join the fray. He has about as much success as Megaman did, but Shademan decides to take his leave and not fight two opponents at once anyway. Chaud
◊ orders Protoman after him and he jacks out almost as soon as he arrived. Since I’m not playing Blue Moon that’s the extent of Protoman’s role in this game. Chaud makes two really short cameos later on, and that’s all for him. Since I don’t plan to play Team Protoman, he’s pretty much going to sit the rest of this Let’s Play series out until Battle Network 6.
Megaman makes sure that Roll’s okay once Shademan and Protoman are both gone and then notices that Shademan appears to have left behind some sort of strange-looking purple battle chip. He and Lan decide to pick it up and ask Higsby about it.
Higsby’s is open, surprisingly enough, but we can’t buy a thing from it yet. It too has been hit by the Chaos Architecture bug that every recurring location same Lan’s house has gotten, but the place does look a bit bigger than it used to. The basic Chip Trader has already been set up, and there’s a poster of Bass on the wall and an electronic bulletin board at the back of the place labeled “FREE SPACE.” What the board is for is that the player can link up with the opposite version and have themselves a little three-round tournament, with the opponents being the opposite version-exclusive Navis. However, and this is big “however”, do not, under any circumstances use this function before all the version-exclusive Navis in this version have been encountered and defeated in the story. If you do, the free space tournament will virtually brick the cartridge, a literal Game-Breaking Bug. I mean, wow, how did something as big as that slip through?! Jesus, the debug and QA team must have been asleep at the wheel here, and considering the rest of the game, that’s probably what happened.
So, Higsby
◊ himself is shocked when he sees what Lan’s got. That strange chip is called a Dark Chip, something that has the power to corrupt Navis with the power of darkness. That will be the theme for this game and the next – someone at Capcom must’ve liked the concept of the dark hole-required chips from Battle Network 3 and decided to run with it. Higsby explains that a Dark Chip is incredibly powerful, but its energies draw Navis deep into a place called Murkland (this is where the entities summoned via dark holes in Battle Network 3 supposedly came from) where their very souls are destroyed (the anime clarified that a Navi’s “soul” is really just their personality and emotion programs). He tells Lan that he needs to get rid of it immediately lest its effects are already affecting Megaman, but since he says that he’s feeling fine Lan decides that it should be safe to keep it as long as he doesn’t use it.
Ugh. You’d think he’d be smart enough to ditch the thing out of fear of losing or otherwise corrupting Megaman, his twin brother reborn, but nope it’s the Idiot Ball for him. This is a blatant case of characters acting at the whim of the plot instead of the other way around since if he did get rid of the thing, like giving it to Chaud, the plot, what little there is, would have no reason to occur. Pah, well whatever. Battle Network 4 does what Battle Network 4 wants.
We’re supposed to head home next, but since we have time we should loot our friends’ houses like we always do, and we get an email from Dex with the Dex Code item to encourage us, but there’s not much to find. Both Dex’s and Yai’s homepages have BBS boards, and there’s a Program on Yai’s that’ll set up a shortcut link back to Lan’s homepage. Each homepage in the game will eventually have this feature, which is very useful. There’s nothing to get at Mayl’s house, not even Roll’s chip. This game makes us work for those. The Game Cube in Dex’s room contains a Counter 1 T. Link aside, that’s a worse haul than in the last game.
After Lan goes to bed the scene switches to NAXA, where the scientists are gathered. All four of them. And three of them are generics. The NAXA chief cuts straight to the chase by telling them about the asteroid that will destroy the world in a mere few months and – wait a minute, a few months?! It should take closer to nine years for an object to travel the distance between Pluto and Earth! Well, okay, there’s an implied handwave later on, but I’m reluctant to give the writers credit. Yuuichiro compares the situation to that of the dinosaurs, and the chief says that mankind is different since we have science on our side! Her speech is interrupted by a new arrival finishing her thought by saying that technology will be our savior. Yuuichiro’s inner monologue identifies the man as Dr. Regal from Nation Z. He apparently has a bad reputation, but as long as he’s an ally he’ll be an invaluable asset. After putting their heads together the scientists come up with a plan that is, giant laser notwithstanding, surprisingly scientifically accurate. Instead of opting to outright destroy the thing like you’d expect, the laser will merely push the asteroid just enough to alter its course so that it’ll miss Earth entirely once it eventually reaches its vicinity. Unfortunately, this scene loses any brownie points it might have scored with me for scientific accuracy with Yuuichiro proclaiming that he’ll be in charge of developing the laser gun. Geez, talk about being an Omni Disciplinary Scientist!
And that’s it for now.
Virus Listing
- Lark
- These viruses don't have very fitting names since they look more like glasses-wearing manta rays than birds. They move slowly about their areas and fire three-panel-wide bursts of water down the field.
- Boomer
- Boomer viruses look like clothespins, amusingly enough. A boomerang is gripped in their "mouth", protecting them from non-breaking attacks. They attack by letting the boomerang fly around the perimeter of the field, during which time they are vulnerable to conventional attacks. Stronger versions will start shooting their boomerang down single rows once they're the last virus left standing.
- Melody
- Melodies look like music notes and are constantly hopping around their area, occasionally jumping into Megaman's in an attempt to squash him.
Soundtrack
- Versus
- The new confrontation theme, which doesn't get a lot of play.
- Invisible Wing
- Damn cyber bats.
- Battle with Myself
- The boss theme, which also doesn't get all that much play in the main story either as the tournament battles that make up the bulk of the bosses use a different piece.
I'm going to have to double check to make sure, but I just realized that so far I don't think that Shademan has actually spoken his name aloud, yet somehow Lan and Megaman know it by the time they meet with Higsby. I imagine Shademan referred to himself in third person at one point in the Japanese script, but isn't the last instance in this game of characters being psychic.
Comments
