Dare to be different

  • Developer: Inti Creates
  • Publisher: Capcom
  • Release Dates: August 8th, 2003 (Japan, GBA and Wonderswan), March 3rd, 2004 (US), March 19th, 2004 (Europe), July 30th, 2014 – August 14th, 2014 (Wii U Virtual Console, US/EU/AU/JPN)
  • Available On: Game Boy Advance, Wonderswan, Wii U (via Virtual Console)
  • Genre: Card Game (Deck-builder) – I guess?
  • Also Known As: RockMan EXE N1 Battle (Wonderswan version)

Let me lay out a particular memory of mine. My friends and I, avid Mega Man Battle Network fans, were stoked to pick up Battle Chip Challenge after how much BN3 consumed our lives. I started with the first one, but my friends weren’t really on board until 3 came out and absolutely perfected the formula. We’d play through it again and again in a desperate attempt to relieve as much of the magic as possible each time because we just couldn’t get enough. We did a little netbattling with each other, we’d try to figure out how to unlock different styles, and we did our best to proceed through the postgame even though none of us really understood how you were supposed to make a good chip folder. Based on that smashing success, Battle Chip Challenge was guaranteed to be amazing, right? Well… no. I remember it well; we were absolutely baffled by how different it was. It had a totally different battle system that was seemingly so much worse than what we were used to, the narrative was paper thin, and there was no world to move around in, only menus where you selected things. Suffice it to say, but our disappointment was immense and we all promptly got rid of the game. We still bring it up to this day on rare occasions with banter like, “hey, you remember Battle Chip Challenge? What a stupid game, you don’t even do anything in it!”. My brother was actually super into it, but even his attempts at convincing me weren’t enough to counteract the sheer whiplash I experienced on that game’s release day.

In the grand scheme of things, such an event is just a harmless blip on the radar. What’s one game that disappoints you, no big deal, right? There are a million good games to play out there, after all. But even knowing that, the game managed to linger in my memory. Was my brother actually right? Maybe younger me was just too uncultured to understand the game’s nuances and finer details? Sure, the game reviewed pretty badly amongst several critics who were definitely older and wiser than me, but maybe they just didn’t get it either. For years, part of me always considered giving it another chance, but until now, I never pulled the trigger. I went on to play and enjoy every other game in the series and even went on to play all three Star Force games, but between BCC being what it was and Battle Network 4 being an underwhelming follow-up after that, my friends ended up falling off the series until the recent Legacy Collection brought them back in. What ultimately made me make this post today is a revelation I’ve had in recent years: younger me was a total moron!

He’s not wrong!

Well, to be less comical about it, it’s more like younger me just had different tastes; I’ve encountered several games that younger me hated and I now love. 2013 me hated Trails in the Sky FC, but 2022 me played Trails in the Sky SC and loved it. Shenmue was something younger me didn’t understand at all, but coming back to it during my college years made it and its sequels something I adore. Chaos Legion was seemingly impossible to me as a kid, but as an adult with patience and an increased understanding of how the game works (plus learning that the “Normal” difficulty was actually the Japanese equivalent of hard mode!), I came to appreciate all the cool things that game does in spite of its flaws. Heck, younger me was crazy enough to not even like Katamari Damacy, and now I think it’s essentially a perfect game! Younger me was wrong about so, so much, both within video games and outside of them, that I think it’s reasonable I would want to reexamine things I didn’t like back then to see if they’re my speed now. Therefore, this is going to be the informal start of an occasional “feature” of sorts where I revisit games from my earlier years to see if my thoughts have changed and what I think they do right and wrong. I guess that’s not so different from what I do with the blog already, in a sense, but this objective opens the door for things in various series I probably wouldn’t cover normally, so that’s fun. Depending on how things go down the road, you may very well see me tackle things like Lunar: Dragon Song, Sonic Shuffle, 3D Worldrunner, and that GBA Revenge of Shinobi. It’ll be fun for you regardless of whether or not it is for me, and that’s what really matters, right?

If you’re familiar with Battle Chip Challenge, there’s at least one thing about it that you’re aware of: its reputation of “playing itself”. BCC uses a completely different battle system compared to the main Battle Network games, and while it’s genuinely unique and more strategic than it lets on at first, it makes for a terrible first impression and doesn’t do a good job of explaining itself at all. Read some reviews from when the game came out and you’ll see that many of them agree that the “lack of interactivity” is damning enough to ruin the game. Heck, the notoriously generous Play Magazine only gave it a C-! Still, there were some outlets like Gamespot that were surprisingly positive about it, so clearly some people were able to get along with Capcom’s curious pivot. In some ways, this game was ahead of its time, so the reception isn’t so surprising in hindsight. The concept of an “Auto Battler” wasn’t something that you saw in the mainstream back then, but nowadays, it’s a concept that has manifested in successful ways multiple times. Auto Chess was a big deal for a while (probably still is, but I’m not exactly following the genre) and other games that partially automate their systems like Vampire Survivors were tremendous hits. The inconspicuous looking Cookie Clicker spawned a cavalcade of idle games that reward you for “doing nothing”, and in construction games like Factorio, automation is a goal to fervently pursue rather than something to be disgusted at. If you wanna get more abstract with this, you could say watching a streamer play is similar to watching a game play itself because you’re getting to the end result without having to manually control the game, and we all know how big streaming is in modern gaming culture. It’s really a shame that this game wasn’t included in the aforementioned Legacy Collection because I honestly do think people would be more receptive to it nowadays, especially if they’re adults who struggle to commit to games on a regular basis. What seemed like the idea of madmen to kids in 2003 is actually something that tired and busy adults would find to be a genius creation that can be slotted into their lives in an infinite number of ways. Life is just full of surprises, ain’t it?

It seems downright unusual that Capcom would go from something they iterated upon for three games (and mastered with BN3) to letting Inti Creates take the helm in the strangest way possible. Usually, long running franchises like to keep making small additions, minor tweaks, or throw in a core gimmick on top of their foundations to give subsequent games some kind of interesting yet familiar identity. 3D Zelda games before Breath of the Wild loved to do this – take the same core fundamentals, define the next game by using some kind of exclusive gimmick that ties into the story, and you’ve got yourself something that feels fresh enough. However, look into the history behind Battle Chip Challenge and it begins to make some more sense. This wasn’t meant to be the lone game carrying the series towards its future as Capcom passed the torch to someone else – it was actually a simultaneous release alongside a Wonderswan spin-off game called Rockman.EXE N1 Battle! N1 Battle is essentially the same game as Battle Chip Challenge, only with fewer chips to work with and only one playable campaign instead of six. The Wonderswan got another game called Rockman.EXE WS about six months before this one, and it too diverged from the formula, being a platformer like Network Transmission on the GameCube would also be. A cool idea for sure (I legit really like Network Transmission), but WS wasn’t well received. I don’t know why they never tried to implement the traditional Battle Network gameplay on the platform, but clearly they saw the cool little handheld as a chance to try different things. The Wonderswan was certainly capable of quality platformers (check out Klonoa: Moonlight Museum or Buffers Evolution), so I can’t really speak to WS’ particular issues (I haven’t played it yet), but if you ask me, N1 Battle is a better direction for a portable spin-off entry regardless. With its passive gameplay that can easily be put down and picked up, you can play it without having to worry about being in an environment that lets you see every little detail. Not having to animate more elaborate movements probably allowed them to make flourishes elsewhere, too, because my goodness does N1 Battle look incredible compared to non-color games like Wuz↑b? Produce: Street Dancer; it’s practically identical to the GBA version! It just goes to show you that the Wonderswan had plenty of potential left in it that could have been further realized if it was already able to put up a fight against the GBA using older hardware.

Not just content to be different from a gameplay perspective, BCC takes a different approach to storytelling as well. Instead of one particular story to follow, you can now select from six different characters who each have their own tale to tell. If you’re boring, you can still play as Lan and Mega Man, but you can also select from Mayl and Roll, Dex and Guts Man, Chaud and Proto Man, and newcomers Kai and Mary who come with Turbo Man and Ring (a female counterpart to Mega Man 4’s Ring Man) respectively. The story is simple enough that you probably won’t feel the desire to play through all six campaigns to see what happens, what with the core premise just being an excuse to set up a netbattling tournament with different rules, but I do appreciate the ability to define my flavor of choice. I like Mega Man 7 quite a bit and I like new things as well, so Kai was my pick for protagonist and I came away sufficiently entertained. He’s a kid who was saved by Lan during an incident in BN1 with a train that was infected with a virus (the world of Battle Network is just Like That) and has wanted to follow in his footsteps ever since. Kai’s absurdly energetic, very naive, and obsessed with becoming a hero, so I can totally see lots of people disliking him, but I found that his unbeatable gumption was charming and led to some fun scenarios where characters didn’t know how to deal with his energy. During the tournament, Lan makes up a lie about there being secret evildoers looking to sabotage things because he didn’t want to look like a disappointing hero in front of Kai, but it ends up becoming the truth entirely by coincidence, which was a fun way to ever so slightly heighten the stakes while keeping the game’s breezy “Gaiden chapter” vibes intact. I could totally see myself going back to experience the other stories at some point in the future just because I enjoy being in the world of Battle Network so much. That’s the tough thing about wanting to play a million games and falling in love with a series at the same time – the desire to relive the memories nags away at you daily, but duty calls!

*Kermit the Frog voice* I’m looking for some baddies

You know about the strange automated battle system, so you probably wanna know how it works, right? Each combatant gets a program deck of nine chips arranged into three columns of 2-3-4 and two backup chips for “slot-ins”, which we’ll get to soon enough. Over the course of a turn, the game selects one chip from each column at random to determine what each Navi will do. The Navis go back and forth, using all three selected chips in order, then cap off the turn with a Navi attack unique to each character before the process repeats. As each side deals and takes damage, a gauge fills up (5% at a time, up to 100%) that allows you to slot in one of your two backup chips to use on the spot. This can instantly turn the tables with a sudden attack or emergency healing to prevent a loss, but slotting in can fail depending on the percentage at which it is used. It sounds simple and it is… technically. Aside from pressing L or R for your slot-ins (assuming you need them), all of combat is automated, and you can press B anytime during a match to make the text boxes describing what’s happening advance automatically. It makes for a game that’s more adaptable to one’s needs than pretty much anything before or since. You can leave it on while you watch TV or do things around the house! Have a kid you need to take care of? Your Navi’s got things covered in the meantime! You can always set it up, go to the bathroom, and come back to see if you won or lost, which is something I did several times! If you need a podcast game, this one’s amazing because you’re sure as heck not going to miss hearing the same few songs over and over again! Said songs are pretty good, honestly, but considering how there are only three battle tracks, one of which is reserved exclusively for the boss waiting at the end of the post-game story, you’ll be hearing the same two for more than a dozen hours, so this game lends itself well to playing on mute.

Convenience is nice and all, but you gameplay-loving sorts out there are probably wondering what the point is. Why do any of this if there’s no strategy to execute, no action to master, no need to take control beyond the rare moment of necessity? Well, let me shock you with this revelation: all of the mental stimulation you crave is here in spades, it’s just outside of the actual battles! You know how card game players spend hours thinking of decks to make and what cards to use to best execute their strategies? Battle Chip Challenge asks you to flex those same thinking muscles and that’s where the nuance of the game lies. Your deck only uses 11 chips (12 if you count the Navi), so every single one and its positioning matters to a significant degree, something the game doesn’t bother to highlight in its tutorial. This might be obvious, but in case it isn’t, the chips in the leftmost 2 slot column are the ones with the highest mathematical probability of being chosen. That’s right, it’s time to get into a brief math class refresher, so buckle up, baby!

Use this screenshot as a guide to go along with what I’m talking about below. There’s more to it than you might think based on the game’s reputation!

Since your first chip has to be picked from that column before any branching has occurred, those two chips both have a 50% chance of being picked each turn. Since that’s the case, those two chips are meant to be the backbone of your game plan. For example, if you wanna try a defensive strategy by setting up shields to counter the opponent’s moves, you’ll wanna put them here to ensure you always have something ready to protect you. The first and third chips in the second column have a 25% chance of being picked, but the one in the middle has a 50% chance. That’s because of how the branches within the deck are set up; folks, you’ll wanna use the screenshot above as a reference if you didn’t get the hint before! If the top chip in the first column gets selected, it branches out to the top and middle chips in the second column, but will never select the third chip in the second column. If the bottom chip of the first column is selected, it’ll choose from the second and third chips of the second column, but never the first chip in column #2. This pattern then carries onto the third column, where the second and third chips have a probability of 37.5% but the first and fourth only have a 12.5% chance of being picked. I got those numbers from this helpful Gamefaqs guide by rockrockx1, by the way.

An example of a deck and the screen you’ll be using to customize it

Even though I didn’t have the desire to run the calculations myself, I really appreciate how this factors into deckbuilding. Every chip you use is important, but you have to decide which ones are even more important than others, and based on how certain ones function, you’ll find natural places where they fit while having room to experiment with fine adjustments during the many fights you’ll be doing. You have to consider not only the chips you use, but the order they can get used in and how you fare when certain ones do or don’t get selected. To give you an idea of how tricky planning this out can be, let me illustrate using one of my decks. I had a setup with MagicMan that was mostly (but not entirely!) about hitting hard and fast. Using the Meteor series chips, which summon a random number of meteors for potentially massive damage, my strategy was to simply bank on the power of these chips in tandem with the inherent power boost they get from MagicMan being a fire type Navi to defeat the enemy before they had time to react. To sweeten the deal, I also had a GrassStage chip that changes the field to the wood element, which makes the next fire attack deal even more damage in exchange for reverting the field back to normal afterwards. When this works, it absolutely demolishes the opponent (if they’re a wood type Navi, you might even OHKO them!), but it’s not foolproof, and its weaknesses vary depending on where GrassStage is placed.

Taking advantage of elemental affinities and weaknesses is tremendously important in Battle Chip Challenge

Putting it in the first column basically guarantees it’ll go up quickly, but this comes at the cost of giving the opponent a free turn to blast you or set up. If they happen to use a fire chip that goes after your GrassStage, they get to steal the perks of your setup! What can also happen is that you get GrassStage, but either fail to capitalize on it with the chips that come afterward or you miss with your fire chips (yes, every Navi has a dodge rate alongside chips having their own accuracy stats), only to then get GrassStage again on your next turn and waste that turn since it was still active. You can move it down to the second or third columns (second slot of the second column was my personal choice), but depending on your luck and other chips, it could take you several turns to get GrassStage in your lineup at all. You could always make it a slot-in instead, but that means you’ll be without a key element of your game plan for several turns and said slot-in could potentially fail. This example does a pretty good job of illustrating the potential complexity of inserting even a single chip as it is, but I’ve actually been leaving out some vital gameplay mechanics on purpose so I can really emphasize how many layers there are to this game. I hope you like me getting this granular with gameplay mechanics because we’ve still got more to go! 

I’m still not sure I know what they meant by this, reminds of the days of Breath of Fire 2’s original English translation…

Aside from your Navi’s health, you also have to monitor the health of every single chip in your deck. Certain chips don’t just go for the jugular, but will also go for one of your queued up chips at random, all three of your chosen chips, or the chip selected from the third column. That third column is where your highest HP chips should generally go for that reason. As a general rule, support chips and chips that rely on soaking up damage like shields have a lot of HP, whereas strong offensive chips like swords and shotguns have very little to work with as a way of balancing out their ability to deal big damage to Navis and chips alike. Knock a chip’s HP down to 0 and it’ll be out of commission for the entire match, which is something that’s obviously a huge deal. This isn’t a mechanic you can just ignore; it’s an essential way to deal with certain strategies and taking full advantage of it can lead to some very powerful decks. Remember that GrassStage example from before? That chip has minuscule HP despite being a support chip, so putting it at the end of your deck or getting hit with a single sword or bomb can destroy it and ruin your plans! The most reliable of my various strategies for getting through this game was to rely on chip destruction by using MagnetBomb and TreeBomb chips en masse. By just chucking these things nonstop with electric or wood Navis, I was able to deal loads of chip damage and break my opponents’ decks into pieces, severely limiting the amount of damage they could do. Combine that with MagnetBomb’s stun bonus (which prevents your opponent’s Navi attacks from going off that turn) or Wood Man’s high HP plus healing on a GrassStage and you can make yourself virtually invincible! 

The last place you want to fight MagicMan is on a fire stage

“Virtually” doesn’t mean “completely”, though, because even this oftentimes successful strategy ran into trouble on occasion. Those pesky shields are a great way to counter chip destruction decks because they block all damage to both Navi and chip alike while usually offering some kind of counterattack for the user. If an opponent like Skull Man is smart enough to start with his CrushShields, he can protect his chips and his HP count, sneak in hits every turn with the counterattacks, and then use his exceptionally powerful Navi attacks without worrying about stun. When you hit the post-game, they start introducing these really nasty elemental ball chips, which make the user immune to a specific element and then retaliate at the end of the turn with an attack that has a power level determined by the amount of damage it absorbed. These chips single handedly make it impossible to rely on elemental weaknesses to achieve victory (the AI always knows to use the one that covers their weakness), which is something that works for the entirety of the main game. Like any good card game or similar equivalent, even these things have counters that the player can have ready. They can always rely on non-elemental chips to avoid feeding the balls, they can use chips like ShockWave (or some Navi attacks like Magnet Man’s) that pierce through shields, or if they really wanna lay it on thick, they can use chips that are designed to destroy shields in a single hit. If you really wanna get into the weeds, you can look into the research that has been done on how chip priority works to see which chips will let you act before your opponents. Because Battle Chip Challenge apparently didn’t have enough going on, every single Navi and every single chip has an invisible “priority” rating that determines which side goes first. I’m not going to go into it here for the sake of not overwhelming you even further, but GameFaqs is your best friend if you’re interested in such things!

This game manages to weave an incredibly elaborate and smartly designed web of checks and balances that prevent one strategy from completely dominating. Offense and defense alike are equally viable, chip destruction is incredibly strong but can be exploited in multiple ways, support chips often serve as a vital backbone to all sorts of decks, each elemental Navi can bolster that advantage in various ways, chip HP is always a factor, and chip placement allows for multiple approaches to using the same type of deck. What helps keep the game compelling is that trying to be prepared for as many types of decks as possible is a unique challenge the player has to deal with before matches even begin. You only get to use 11 chips in battle, but you can store up to 30 in your folder, which allows you to swap in chips in between matches. 30 chips might sound like a lot, but when you frequently have to deal with 15 or more opponents in a row, all of whom have different decks, you realize just how little that actually covers. Any Navi you decide to include that isn’t your starter takes up space in said folder, too, so if you wanna cover each element, that’s four slots reserved right there. Any elemental Navi that’s worth its salt needs several chips to take advantage of said element, so you’ll have to find a way to include several options for each one, leaving very little space left for curious gambles or things that don’t clearly fit in with a given strategy.

This limitation really requires you to understand how to build a deck and analyze its strengths and weaknesses. It gets to be really tricky fast! To deal with hyper aggressive opponents that relied on strong fist chips like Metal Man and Guts Man, I stashed a PanelOut chip in my folder, which removes part of the floor and makes melee chips ineffective (as well as anything that travels along the ground). This completely shuts their decks down, but because it affects both combatants, I also had to include long range chips to replace my swords and stuff. In order to get around shields, I kept a couple of chips that could break shields around as slot-in options. Wait until they pop a shield and then BOOM, their hopes and dreams are in shambles in an instant. While these examples covered my biggest weaknesses, there’s no way to cover everything, so there were times where I inevitably still had to struggle through certain matches and find a way to make things work with my limited resources. Let me tell you, Snake Man with protection against fire chips is a gosh darn nightmare to deal with! The word “Challenge” is in the title for a reason, I suppose…

Grinding through free battles can be time consuming, but it’s often rewarding, especially when you get exclusive Navis

BCC is at its peak when you have loads of chips at your disposal and a variety of opponents to try them out on, but it takes time to get there. Perhaps a bit too much time, honestly. When I first started, I was thinking that younger me was actually right. You start with very few chips, not much money to get more chips with, and depending on your main character, a Navi who may or may not even be good. Poor Guts Man may just be a worse Metal Man, but at least he’s useful early on; Turbo Man just kinda sucks! An unremarkable HP total and a weak Navi attack that only works well if GrassStage is in effect isn’t so helpful when you don’t start with GrassStage! His MB capacity is pretty good, at least, but that’s something that won’t be too much of a problem this early on. Oh yeah, I haven’t mentioned that yet, have I? To be quick about it, every chip has a MB cost and you’ll have to make sure your deck doesn’t go over your Navi’s limit. This makes using powerful chips early on difficult because you’ll have to leave blank slots in your deck to fit them, which isn’t usually a good idea. It’s a logical system that prevents the player from breaking the game if they get lucky or have a generous friend to trade them chips, but it can definitely feel like an arbitrary restriction you’re just begging the game to eventually lift. As you complete tournaments, your MB capacity is naturally increased, but this also competes with gradual capacity increases for slot-in chips as well. It’s good to have incentives to win beyond story progression, but having to complete the entire game before you can make truly great decks creates a environment that feels like it’s constantly holding you back, not because you aren’t creative enough, but because they don’t think you’re ready for it yet, and considering deckbuilding is the bulk of where the player’s input lies, it’s a choice that unintentionally feeds into the game’s bad reputation.

To get back to what I was talking about before, as soon as I unlocked the illustrious “NormalNavi2” after winning my first tournament, I replaced Turbo Man with him because his attack and MB capacity were both straight upgrades! Kinda puts a wrench in the story that’s supposed to have Kai and Turbo Man be inseparable, huh? I’m singling out Turbo Man with this, but it’s really something that’s bound to happen regardless of who you start with. You’re gonna need elemental Navis once you unlock them through the story, so there will be times where you bench your starter to get the job done. This is good for introducing tactical variety, but it does create a weird dissonance with the world of the Battle Network series. Navis and their operators are meant to have a strong bond and do everything together, something that’s evidenced by Lan and Mega Man as they tackle world-threatening problems and trust in each other to fulfill their part of the equation. Navis are a secondary manifestation of the characters and their personality quirks, equivalent to a person selecting an avatar for Twitter or a forum or whatever that best fits their identity. Dex is a rash, boisterous guy, and Guts Man follows suit. Mayl is a caring friend and Roll’s abilities revolve around healing to reflect her personality. Kai is extremely energetic as a byproduct of his young age and Turbo Man is constantly making car noises and car-related puns as a way of channeling that same energy. Every Navi throughout the series was chosen for their respective humans for a reason and the series leans into that for its storytelling, so it’s strange to see it thrown out for purely gameplay reasons here. I’m not going to pretend it ruined my experience or anything, but I won’t deny that it felt a little weird for Kai to be sending out villainous Navis like Magnet Man and Magic Man while he and Turbo Man were acting like it was exclusively their bond that got them through the tournament.

Winning tournaments gets you money for chips (they also cost money to enter!) and chips are purchased in batches of 1 or 10 at random or won off opponents you defeat quickly at random, so you can’t just walk down to the store and pick out what you want to make your dream deck. Getting a batch of random chips is kinda fun and brings me back to my Yu-Gi-Oh TCG days, but it does create an artificial bottleneck that makes the early game needlessly difficult and not representative of the game’s peak. Depending on your starter and what you get, those first few tournaments have the potential to be surprisingly difficult. My first chip packs weren’t anything to write home about, so I kept getting rocked by Guts Man, who just had way better chips than me; here he was rocking 120 damage MCannon chips while my pathetic NormalNavi2 could only hit as high as 80 with easily destructible swords! Aside from banging your head against a roadblock until you get lucky, your only other options are to grind up money to get more packs or try your luck in the free battles, which are lengthy gauntlets of randomized opponents. These free battles are how you unlock a significant number of the Navis, but they’re also harder than the main tournaments, making them difficult to grind until you’re really confident in your deck. Once you get going, grinding never becomes mandatory unless you’re a completionist, but this rough start surely contributed to my original bad impression of this game, and I have no doubt the same thing happened to others, too.

Yeah, real fair, buddy!

There’s another “bottleneck” of sorts that I think is so bizarre it deserves special mention. Even when you’ve hit post-game, if you’re trying to go for all the chips, you’ll notice there are several that you have no clue how to get, many of which are actually top tier chips often recommended by those in the know. They’re not from tournaments, free battles, or chip packs. Instead, they’re hidden away in the game’s Tournament mode. No, not the tournaments that make up the rest of the game, this one’s a different kind of tournament! Essentially the game’s equivalent of multiplayer, you can get passwords from other players that let you fight their Navis, which is a neat idea on its own. The tournament mode lets you arrange battles between 16 and 128 participants and by winning these tournaments, you can get some very powerful chips, especially from Tournament 128. The problem here, I feel, is kind of obvious: 128 people is a lot of people! Not only do you have to manually enter 127 passwords to have that many combatants, you need to play the entire thing out, make sure you win, and hope you get the chip you want, all while praying your GBA’s battery doesn’t run out! Passwords can always be sourced from forums and handpicked to find easy to defeat opponents, but that’s still a ton of time and effort in order to be able to build ideal decks, which is really unfortunate. A lot of my strategies, despite working well enough to carry me through the primary post-game, were all partially compromised and imperfect because I simply didn’t feel like entering over 100 passwords.

Games like Battle Chip Challenge are why it’s so important to go back and check on your taste every so often. It’s easy to try something, get off on the wrong foot for reasons that may or may not be your fault, and then dismiss it for good, but people change, and by assuming that you’re always correct about everything, you prove just how little you really know. Kid me from years ago would have sworn that BCC was nothing but trash no matter what anybody told me, but coming back to it with an adult mind and a more generous approach completely changed the experience in a humbling way. What was once something that I would have assumed would be easy Mega Man Youtuber bait is now something that I think stands on its own as a creative experiment within a massive franchise known for overdoing iteration. I know I went on for a while about mechanical stuff, but I think this game really deserves the deep dive to get credit for what it was doing. Most negative reviews and opinions about this game chalk it up to nothing more than an exercise in luck, but it’s actually a game about minimizing luck and trying to stack the odds in your favor to exponential degrees. Now that I think about it, it’s kind of like that Balatro game everybody’s going gaga for right now in that regard! It’s a shame that this game is so disliked for trying new and interesting ideas instead of sticking to the expected formula, especially since the way they stuck to said formula after this ultimately helped the series to its demise. Battle Chip Challenge isn’t always the smoothest or most exciting experience in the world, but the way it unravels itself to players willing to put in the time really resonated with me. I love it when games don’t just bend to your will right from the onset and instead prefer to be little puzzle boxes with their own rules and own terms. The way I went from struggling with early battles to knowing exactly what kind of deck archetypes existed, which ones I preferred, and how to best assemble them as needed was a form of growth that I crave and wish more games had the guts to do. Yu-Gi-Oh could really use something like this that helps teach its wild, modern day deck-building logic to newcomers because I’d be very much down to get back into it in video game form if it was ever something like this!

Games under the Capcom banner always did think about the long-term, huh?

Battle Chip Challenge isn’t just an experiment, it’s one that I think was simultaneously successful and misunderstood. The idea of this game “automating” combat really grinded some gears amongst series fans (still does, probably!), but the idea isn’t unprecedented by any means, both within the context of the Battle Network series and outside of it. The Battle Network anime, NT Warrior, depicted battles in which operators had to issue commands without full control, leaving their Navis to hopefully make the most of their instructions. Battle Chip Challenge is the closest the series had ever gotten to recreating those moments in video game form and I think that’s pretty cool! The idea was clearly something Capcom and Inti Creates wanted to play around with more because Battle Network 4.5 also has a similar focus on automation and making players trust in their Navis as they witnessed Lan do with Mega Man for years. That game is both an expansion upon this one and something completely different, which you could say makes it the last time the series would really dare to be bold before going on to “iterate” itself into the grave. Battle Network 5 and 6 are actually great, but you could really tell that reviewers at the time were sick of seeing these games! All that is to say that Battle Chip Challenge wasn’t a “bad idea” or a “fundamentally flawed concept” like some seem to think; it was a potential avenue for the series’ future, one that could have led it down an entirely different path if given the chance to reach its full potential, and I think there’s a lot of value in understanding these ideas rather than rejecting them. Maybe an indie developer could put them to use in one of their projects, or if Capcom ever decides to revist the Battle Network series, maybe they can recontextualize some of these ideas in a format that’s more obviously appealing to people who enjoyed the Legacy Collection. “Automation”, “AI”, and the like are dirty words nowadays thanks the increasingly hellish landscape for artists and creatives we all find ourselves witness to, but in this particular context, long before the days of plagues like OpenAI and Midjourney, I think this idea is charmingly confident and inspired. It always takes guts to make a game that people might not understand and it’s even more impressive when you try to make a game to achieve a specific creative vision that not everybody is going to agree with, even if said “creative vision” was probably made on the cheap with mostly reused assets. Hey, I’m very generous, but I’m not completely ignorant either, you know? Rather than settle for diminishing returns time and time again, why not dare to be bold when given the chance? Why not try something different? Why not dare to challenge expectations? If you ask me, the true Battle Chip Challenge is looking past the history of this game’s reception, trying it for yourself, and forming your own opinion!

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