December has come once again and that means it’s time for another extensive look at the MegaMan franchise. In the past three years, I covered the original “Classic” series, the MegaMan X games and the Legends, Zero and ZX series. But this year, I’ll be writing my last proper retrospectives on the series as a whole. While the previous articles all focused on a single timeline of events that spun off from the original 1987 release – well, as far as we know – this year’s set of retrospectives will be covering Capcom’s most substantial reimagining of the series to date. MegaMan Battle Network [better known as “Rockman EXE” in Japan] is going to be celebrating its 20^th anniversary early next year, so now seems like the perfect time to discuss the series that represented the most lucrative period for the entire franchise in every conceivable realm… except for the games themselves. As with the previous write-ups in this series, I’ll be focusing exclusively on the games, mostly focusing on the mainline numbered entries in the series, but occasionally looking at certain spin-off titles. I’ll also be discussing the follow-up to the MMBN: MegaMan Star Force [better known as Ryūsei no Rockman or “Shooting Star Rockman” in Japan] to wrap up this look back at the Blue Bomber’s storied history.

MegaMan Battle Network

In 2001, the sixth console generation was completely underway. The PlayStation 2 was just beginning a period of dominance that would culminate in what is, to this day, the best-selling home console of all-time. Sega’s last stand in the hardware market, the Dreamcast, had met its untimely end in North America and would only continue on as a niche platform in its native Japan for a little while longer. Meanwhile, both Nintendo and console-gaming newcomer Microsoft would be preparing their own challengers to Sony’s throne – the Gamecube and Xbox, respectively – each boasting stronger hardware than the market leader, as well as unique gimmicks meant to entice buyers. But Nintendo had a second market to deal with: handheld gaming devices.

Since 1989, Nintendo had assumed an all-but-unchallenged dominance over this portion of the video game market with its line of Game Boy portables and in 2001, a new successor to the lineage sprang forth. The Game Boy Advance had more in common with the then-archaic Super Nintendo Entertainment System than either of its predecessors, leading to a leap in just what handheld systems were capable of that was on par with the revolutionary strides made by its counterparts in the home console field. The Game Boy Advance (or “GBA” for short) launched in Japan on March 21^st, 2001 and brought with it a plethora of titles both familiar and unique. Of the games available at the system’s launch, however, there was perhaps no game that epitomized both of these traits quite as well as our first subject in this retrospective: Battle Network Rockman EXE, or as it’s better known in the West – MegaMan Battle Network.

Surprisingly, the game’s original concept deviated significantly from the final product – Battle Network was originally envisioned as a horror title, likely inspired by the runaway success of Capcom’s top series at the time, Resident Evil. Regardless, Capcom Production Studio 2 (the same team behind the Legends series) decided to reimagine the MegaMan franchise for modern gamers, focusing on children in particular, courting an entirely new audience as opposed to the existing fans of the previous action-heavy incarnations of the Blue Bomber. In fact, they decided to take inspiration from Nintendo’s Pokémon franchise, a decision that gave the game’s director Masahiro Yasuma some difficulty when trying to blend “the kind of fun you get from a Pokémon game” with the traditional action-platforming synonymous with the MegaMan franchise, to the point where it was present even in the Legends games. In fact, most of the difficulties stemmed from the fact that there were no direct precursors to what Battle Network would become: the game basically had to invent itself entirely in the process. Of course, the connections between Battle Network and Pokemon was also likely what led Capcom to commissioning an anime adaptation, set to air on Japanese TV in the afternoon and offering fans exclusive content for the game through various special events.

Long-time series steward Keiji Inafune served as the game’s producer and he stated that the development team wanted to create a setting that was far more relatable to its audience, building a reality that focused less on the fantastical science-fiction of robots like previous games in the series. Instead, they decided to focus on something that younger players had grown up with and utilized in everyday life: the internet. Inafune also claimed that he handled the reimagining of MegaMan, now MegaMan.EXE, but said that the game’s character designers were reluctant to give him that responsibility and altered his illustrations. In fact, MM.EXE went through many changes from the initial concept art, leading to a simple design that even young fans would be able to draw. And while there were many original characters, the bulk of the game’s characters were based on existing characters – most were taken from the Classic series, with a few exceptions – and while some bosses closely resembled their namesakes, others were significant departures, a choice that lead character designer Yuji Ishihara said was made consciously to “provide a little bit of surprise and excitement” to old-school fans that were familiar with their classic designs.

While the original Rockman EXE was a Game Boy Advance launch title in Japan, the Western releases came a few months after the GBA’s launches in North America and Europe – where the system launched on June 11 and June 22, 2001 respectively. The game came out in North America on Halloween 2001, while Europe saw the game release a month later, on November 30^th. I wish I had an interesting story to tell about my start with the original Battle Network series, but I was clearly focused on the more traditional Zero games at that point in time. Still, I remember wanting to start the MMBN series from the very beginning and by the time I decided to get around to it, finding a new copy in brick-and-mortar stores was a difficult undertaking and since online shopping was still in its infancy, that was my only option. Fortunately, I still managed to do so, though I can’t remember if it was from GameStop or somewhere else. Still, MegaMan had become a niche series in North America at this point and portable systems were still receiving significantly less attention in the West compared to their home console counterparts. What I find shocking is just how much I got hooked on the series, given my distaste toward JRPGs in general at the time.

In the year 200X, a rapid advance in internet technology has led to the start of what is now called the “Network Age”, where the Net has become an important part of every single aspect of daily life, ranging from schools and workplaces all the way to everyday household items like ovens, televisions and even doghouses – don’t laugh, this kind of thing was still considered science-fiction back in 2001! Likewise, the internet itself has expanded into a fully-fledged digital universe in its own right becoming far too large to be explored by conventional means. Thus, digital avatars known as “Net Navis” (short for Network/Internet Navigators) were created to maintain the inner workings of these improved devices and traverse this expanded internet. But Navis were more than mere programs, they’re fully sentient artificial intelligences that reside in devices known as PErsonal Terminals (or PETs, for short… somehow). These handheld, tablet-like gadgets can “jack in” to any Net-compatible device, allowing the Navi to enter the cyber network within. It can also perform take calls like a cell phone, allow its user to check their email… and various other functions that modern-day smartphones are capable of.

Unfortunately, such a groundbreaking advancement was eventually followed by a new wave of Net-based crimes. Hackers and viral epidemics caused many problems for this new society, ranging from bank theft to outright terrorist attacks, with appliances being rigged to explode and vehicles going out of control. The most prominent cyber-criminal organization out there is the mysterious World Three (WWW), an unstoppable group that intentionally infects networks with powerful computer viruses to cause chaos and hack vital information. To protect their PETs and networks, people have begun installing Battle Chips: data storage cards containing special battle programs that can fight off viruses and hackers alike – an activity known as “virus busting”, which has become so important that it’s taught in schools. Of course, the ubiquity of virus busting has led to a more-carefree variant known as “NetBattles” to become a popular pastime in the process, allowing friends and rivals alike to test their skill and see who is more skilled.

In MegaMan Battle Network, players take on the roles of fifth-grade student Lan Hikari [Netto Hikari in the original Japanese version] and his NetNavi, MegaMan.EXE [Rockman.EXE]. Lan’s just an average boy, living a normal life in ACDC Town [Akihara Town], a small town nestled within the DenTech City [Densan City] area. He lives a normal life, attending the local elementary school with his friends Mayl Sakurai [Meiru Sakurai], Dex Oyama [Dekao Ōyama] and Yai Ayanokoji [Yaito Ayanokōji]. His father is renowned scientist Yuichiro Hikari, a man famous for several breakthroughs in PET technology, while his mother Haruka is a stay-at-home housewife. One day, after a typical day at school, Lan returns home to find a repairman inspecting of the Hikaris’ household technology for viruses, a precaution made in response to the reports of ovens randomly exploding throughout the area. But after the repairman leaves, the unthinkable happens: the Hikaris’ oven explodes into a burst of flames. With no other option, the young and headstrong Lan quickly jacks into the burning oven, sending MegaMan.EXE to check out just what’s going on. While traversing the oven’s network, MegaMan quickly discovers that the viruses’ data signatures belong to the WWW. Worse still, it turns out the infection itself came from the repairman, who reveals his true identity as one of WWW’s top agents, Mr. Match [Kenichi Hino]. He brags about his latest arson attack to his victims as the flames continue to spread throughout their kitchen. With quick thinking, Lan uses a watergun to douse some of the flames, giving MM.EXE enough time to reach the source of the problem: FireMan.EXE. The evil Navi claims that he and his Operator are more than a match for two children. After a hard-fought battle, FireMan is defeated and Mr. Match makes a hasty retreat, claiming that his true plan of stealing a computer program from the Hikari family’s oven was a success regardless and the first step of World Three’s master plan was already complete. But have Lan and MegaMan.EXE truly seen the last of WWW? And just what is the evil organization planning?  

At its core, MMBN falls within the purview of the traditional turn-based JRPG – even if the way they handle many of its aspects in an incredibly unorthodox manner. While the game generally splits the time spent playing as Lan Hikari in the “real world” and taking on the role of MegaMan.EXE in the “Cyberworld” of the Internet and various other devices relatively evenly, the game starts with the former, so that seems like the best place to start. Planning as Lan is akin to the towns commonly found in the genre. There’s no real feeling of danger from a gameplay perspective, there’s just buildings that can be entered, various friendly NPCs to talk to and even a store for buying or trading battle chips for MegaMan.EXE (more on those later). Lan’s ability to travel is limited from the start as only his hometown ACDC Town is available, with only Lan and his friend’s houses and the school building being the only major locations worth visiting. Eventually, the aforementioned Chip Shop and a subway system known as the “Metroline” open up, the latter of which allows Lan to travel to two locations that most fifth graders wouldn’t be able to reach on foot. The first new area that opens up is the Government Complex, which comprises of various government-run facilities like the Waterworks, the Science Lab where Lan’s father works and the local Power Plant. The other is DenCity, the major city in Lan’s home prefecture, which appears as a labyrinth of crosswalks and traffic lights, but also includes a few active businesses, like an antique store and a one-room schoolhouse.

MegaMan.EXE’s portion of the game better resembles the traditional overworld and dungeon areas typically found in JRPGs. There are three major types of areas in Cyberspace. Most electronic objects contain small Cyberworld areas, usually containing a handful of “Programs” – NPCs that are less humanoid than Navis and represent exactly what they’re named after – the occasional Navi and an item like some Zenny (the game’s currency, like in other MegaMan games), a battle chip or even the occasional power-up. Next, there’s the “internet” itself, which is the largest area in Cyberspace. Split across multiple screens, the internet must be accessed from a terminal. At the start of the game, the only terminal that Lan can use to access the Net is his own home computer, but by finding a special code (usually located within its corresponding terminal) and finding its access point on the internet itself, MegaMan gains the ability to other characters’ personal Terminals, which spawn him at different points on the Internet. These range from other characters’ computers to even unique objects that better reflect their owner’s personality, like Mayl’s keyboard and the antique shop clerk’s mirror. Considering how big the internet itself is, this becomes increasingly useful as the game progresses, though while Lan’s terminal is straight-forward, the rest are a bit more… elaborate in scope. Of course, the internet itself is split into multiple areas and some of the early areas require additional passcodes to access, which are guarded by boss fights with rival NetBattlers that would be optional otherwise.

The final (and arguably most important) type of area is what serve as the game’s dungeons. Generally located in a larger computer system (like an oven or the master control in a power plant) or an otherwise-isolated network (like across traffic lights in a city or a school’s blackboard system), this is effectively where the meat of the game takes place. Half of these areas are separated into different sub-areas similar to the greater “overworld” internet, while the rest take place across multiple jack-in points. Regardless, both styles of “dungeon” contain various puzzles that need to be solved – like putting out fires with only a limited amount of ammunition for an “IceBlock” program needed to extinguish them or turning faucets on and off while navigating across treacherous icy terrain – and are capped off with a boss fight with a NetNavi in the service of the WWW organization. All three area types are prone to random enemy encounters (one of my big pet peeves when it comes to Japanese RPGs), to the extent where I’ve gotten sucked into battles in Lan’s miniscule Terminal.

Of course, having two player characters would be somewhat pointless if they didn’t interact with one another. Fortunately, MMBN delivers in this regard. The most obvious way Lan and MegaMan interact is that Lan has to “jack in” to a device in order for MM.EXE to interact with it in the first place. This is achieved by pressing the R button near any device that is compatible with Lan’s PET. Likewise, certain dungeons require Lan’s help to complete. For example, one area requires decoding number locks to proceed and most of them have clues associated with objects in various areas in Lan’s school. Another involves Lan running between various traffic signals in DenCity, slowly reactivating each one by jacking MegaMan into them. Also, pressing the L button at any point during the game allows Lan or MegaMan.EXE (whichever one isn’t currently the active player character) to relay hints to the player. The hints themselves range from cryptic to downright obvious, but it’s a nice touch that helps to portray the relationship between Navi and operator.

What really sets Battle Network apart from traditional JRPGs is its unique battle system. I’ve seen many people refer to the MMBN series as “real-time tactical RPGs” just due to how unorthodox the battle mechanics are. Battles essentially consist of two ever-repeating phases. First, the player as Lan is able to send “Battle Chips” – which I’ll explain in greater detail shortly – to MegaMan.EXE from the Custom Screen, preparing him for the upcoming battle. 5 Battle Chips appear per draw and the player can choose to either set specific chips, go straight into battle or essentially pass their turn to increase the pool of chips available in the next turn by five, which can be done twice in a row for a maximum 15 selectable chips at a time for a single turn.

Once the Chips are set, the battle enters its main phase. The battle area is split into a 6×3 grid: the red side is MM.EXE’s battle area, while the blue side belongs to his enemies. Once the battle starts, MegaMan can move freely between the nine spaces on his side of the field. He can attack with his Mega Buster, which is slow and deals minimal damage (at least at the start of the game) by pressing the B button and using a Battle Chip by pressing the A button. The Battle Chips must be used in the order they were selected. At the top of the screen, there’s a bar (referred to in-game as the “Custom Meter”) that slowly fills as the battle continues. Once the Meter is full, MegaMan can obtain another batch of Battle Chips from Lan by pressing the L or R button. However, any unused Chips currently in MM.EXE’s possession are automatically discarded, so it’s a good idea to consider that when activating the Custom Screen.

On the other hand, when enemies attack, the spaces on the battlefield that will be affected flash, to give the player an indication of what areas to avoid taking damage. The battle continues until either all the viruses (or the enemy Navi) is defeated or MegaMan.EXE runs out of HP, which of course leads to a game over. Fortunately, successfully completing a battle results in MegaMan being completely healed – at least until the very end of the game (but I’m getting ahead of myself). Likewise, after winning a battle, the player is given a rank, which is determined by how long it lasted, how much damage the player took and perhaps other factors I’ve yet to quantify. It’s usually represented by a number ranging from 1 (the worst score) to 10, with top performances earning an “S” rank. Each battle’s rank also determines their reward for completing a battle: usually either some amount of Zenny or a Battle Chip associated with one of the enemies that was defeated.

Battle Chips are perhaps the most important aspect of the game’s combat, roughly on par with the Weapons found in the Classic and X series. Players are allowed to customize a “folder” of roughly 30 chips that MegaMan can draw from throughout the duration of each battle. Using the vast majority of these Chips result in attacks that deal damage immediately. To name a few, there are cannons that do far more damage than the standard Mega Buster in a single shot, swords which deal damage at various ranges, shotguns that can attack multiple spaces at once in a specific pattern and even a ground wave attack that travels straight through a row on the battle field. However, there are other forms of Battle Chips that provide more strategic functions. For example, by achieving various objectives – usually either progressing through the story or defeating other Navis under certain conditions – players can add Chips themed after other Navis that allows MegaMan to summon them to perform a devastating attack. There are also Recovery chips of numerous values that allows MegaMan to heal damage during battle. Finally, there are even chips that allow the player to modify the battlefield temporarily in any given battle: this allows MegaMan to steal territory from their opponents or even destroy squares in their area, limiting their ability to dodge and attack.

Of course, it wouldn’t be MegaMan without some form of “weakness cycle”. Of course, Battle Network’s take on the concept is also slightly inspired by the Pokémon franchise, going for universal elements rather than specific weapons. While the majority of Battle Chips in this game have no element, many Chips – and their corresponding viruses/Navis – do. The four elements are Heat (fire), Aqua (water), Elec (…electric) and Wood. Aqua extinguishes Heat, Elec zaps Aqua, Wood insulates Elec and Heat burns Wood. Of course, these weaknesses only work one way: attacks of a certain element do double damage on enemies that are weak to them, but there’s no corresponding defense boost on same-element attacks or attacks from elements that are weak to the enemies’ element. Of course, MegaMan isn’t always immune to these, but once again, I’m getting ahead of myself.

There are a few limits to which chips a player can select per turn. After selecting their first chip, players can only choose other chips of the same type or with the same letter code for the rest of their hand and the game limits to player to one choice or the other. So, for example, players can choose to choose a hand that consists of multiple Cannons with different letter codes or different chips that have an “A” letter code. However, these limitations are the cornerstone of what may be the Battle Chips’ most interesting mechanic: the “Program Advance”. By putting specific chips with specific letter codes into the player’s hand in a set order – for example, Cannons A, B & C or Sword, WideSwrd and LongSwrd S – the chips temporarily combine and give MegaMan access to an incredibly powerful attack. As such, this leads to an additional layer of strategy to building folders. Will the player choose to shove nothing but their most powerful individual chips into their hand or focus on placing the building blocks as many Program Advances as possible in the hope that a lucky hand could turn the tide of battle in their favor?

Much like the battle mechanics themselves, Battle Network’s take on leveling is also unique. This is the only game in the series that actually recognizes the traditional numerical levels commonly seen in JRPGs, but even then, that’s used more for show than any sort of tangible indication of MegaMan.EXE’s strength. Instead, MegaMan’s power can be increased via three types of items that can be found throughout the game world, rather than by “gaining experience points” through battle. First, there are the “HP Memory” power-ups that increase MegaMan.EXE’s maximum HP by 20 points. Next, there’s the aptly named “Power UPs” [known as “Buster UPs” in Japan] which allow the player to improve the Mega Buster. These can be applied to one of three categories: Attack increases the Buster’s attack power by 1 damage point (naturally), Speed increases its rate of fire and Charge not only enables the charge function in the first place (which can multiply the damage of each shot) but also decreases the charge time with each additional Power UP. Finally, there are the Armors. Each armor has an elemental affinity and doubles MegaMan’s defense but takes extra damage against specific element attacks. The Wood Armor is weak to Heat attacks, the Heat Armor is weak to Aqua attacks and the Aqua armor is weak to Elec attacks.  Obtaining any of these power-ups increases MegaMan.EXE’s numerical level, but in different ways. Each HP Memory increases MM’s level by one, Power UPs increase them by three levels apiece while MegaMan jumps a whopping six levels for each Armor he obtains. Having said that, it’s hard to gauge MegaMan.EXE’s power from the numerical value alone, which likely explains why the concept was dropped relatively quickly in the series.

Finally, there are the game’s shops, which can be found both in Cyberworld and the real world. The former appears in the form of Navi merchants that show up in various points of the greater Internet, selling their wares. They sell Battle Chips, but also offer a limited supply of HP Memories and Power UPs and are the only places one can find the Armors. Meanwhile, the only shop present in the real world appears in ACDC Town, opening partway through the game. Run by Higsby – an ex-member of the WWW – he focuses entirely on chips, but also offers unique features that can’t be found in Cyberworld. Higsby has Chip Trader machines, which allow the player to trade 3 or 10 chips for a new one, with the latter option offering a better chance at new and rare chips.

Owing to the game being inspired by Pokémon, the game also has some minor multiplayer components. By connecting two Game Boy Advances via a link cable, two copies of the game can interact with one another by selecting the “Network” option from the pause menu. Players can trade Battle Chips between one another and also participate in NetBattles with their friends. They have the option to do “practice” battles and “real” ones, the latter being counted toward both players’ win-loss record on their save file. Honestly, the prospect of battling with friends is a lot more interesting at this point, though the utility of trading wouldn’t emerge until later in the series.

Like some of the best JRPGs out there, MMBN has more to it than just the mandatory story segments. Story-critical bosses will respawn in the various internet overworlds, offering much more difficult challenges than the original fight. There’s also the Undernet – the Battle Network universe’s equivalent of the “Dark Web” – which contains far more powerful viruses than anything found elsewhere on Cyberworld and deadly secret bosses, like PharoahMan.EXE, ShadowMan.EXE and the strongest one of all, Bass.EXE [Forte.EXE]. There are also over one hundred Battle Chips that can be collected, affording plenty of replay value for any completionists out there. And later games in the series would only expand on the already-vast post-game content present in the first MMBN game.

Honestly, replaying this game for this retrospective made me thankful that it was the first Battle Network game I’d ever played. Combining a unique battle system that’s equally action and strategy oriented with a traditional JRPG system was a brilliant way to reinvent the Blue Bomber for a new generation – of both players and video game consoles. But aiming for that level of inventiveness in a Game Boy Advance launch title of all things led to some weird design flaws, some of which Capcom Production Studio 2 saw early enough into development to recognize as issues, but too close to their deadline to do anything about them. In that sense, it’s a lot like the original MegaMan game for the NES.

Don’t get me wrong, MMBN isn’t a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, but it has some fatal flaws that makes it a slog to replay at times. I have three particular points of contention when it comes to the original Battle Network. First off, the high random encounter rate gets incredibly annoying, particularly in areas with puzzles that are more complex and reflex-oriented than anything found in the average JRPG, even by today’s standards. Secondly, there are times where the movement during battle feels a bit sluggish, to the point where even having the best reaction time imaginable won’t allow MegaMan to dodge certain attacks. My biggest gripe with the game is the fact that MM.EXE’s ability to Escape from battles – a valid strategy given the lack of conventional leveling – is tied to a Battle Chip, which means that not only is escaping battles locked to the luck of the draw, but the player also has to waste at least one slot in their folder for the ability to do something that essential. But despite all those annoyances, the game does sort of hold up, but due to a few difficulty spikes, I would only recommend it to players that are already familiar with the series at this point.

The graphical style of this game reminds me of MegaMan 8 and especially MegaMan & Bass in terms of appearance. In fact, I’ve had a gut feeling since the first time I ever played a Battle Network game that EXE’s battle sprites are just heavily modified versions of Classic’s from those games. Despite that, the designs for many of the characters lean more toward the Legends style, as opposed to Classic and X’s look. As I said last year, playing through the other two Legends games for the first time really served as an epiphany for just how the designs for the human characters in Battle Network designs came to be in the first place. Makes sense considering that the game’s lead artists both had some experience with the Legends series: Shinsuke Komaki did some work on The Misadventures of Tron Bonne and Ryuji Higurashi eventually did artwork for the PSP re-releases of the two mainline titles. The designs of the NetNavis, on the other hand, are significantly more diverse than any of the robots from previous games – never really sticking to any particular theming. Seriously, try comparing the designs of StoneMan.EXE, NumberMan.EXE, ColorMan.EXE and MegaMan.EXE himself and tell me that they look like they came from the same game. Of course, the first game was a bit more experimental when it came to designing the NetNavis, while future titles would aim for more consistency among designs. I’d imagine that the point was to embody Cyberspace as a place where the only limit is the user’s imagination, while previous iterations on MegaMan seemed to ground their robot designs in “reality” by adhering to a set of design specifications across multiple designs, regardless of any change in how the characters themselves are drawn.

The in-game graphics themselves do ape the kind of look one might expect from an obscure JRPG from the days of the Super Famicom – despite the constant implication that the Game Boy Advance was meant to be a “32-bit” system back when it was released. The battle segments do a great job in terms of style and readability, keeping everything clear and visible, even on the Game Boy Advance’s small screen and manages to stay bright enough to combat the original model’s lack of backlighting, while avoiding the oversaturated look that some developers chose to compensate for this technical drawback. The isometric perspective in the overworld portions of the game serves it well for the most part, though it is a bit underwhelming to see the borders of most areas in the real-world represented with a solid color, whereas the backgrounds throughout the internet typically incorporate a cycling animated image. I guess that helps to differentiate the two areas (plus it really makes sense that the Cyberworld would be more visually dynamic than reality), but sometimes the colors chosen for the underlay in certain areas don’t seem to match any other part of the area. It never really clashes to the point of being a distraction and it’s not exactly like this is unique to MMBN when compared to other isometric games from this era. I guess I just think it’s a bit odd that in many cases, the lower parts of many areas in the game showcase more of the underlying background layer than the actual environments themselves.

The game’s sole composer was Akari Kaida, who you might remember worked on MegaMan & Bass previously and would go on to provide Blade Man’s theme from MM10. And despite this being her first solo run with the MegaMan franchise, she does an absolutely stellar job. One of my major complaints with the music from the MegaMan Legends games was that they leaned a bit too hard into the JRPG nature of the game, sacrificing catchy melodies for environmental resonance in many cases. Ms. Kaida, on the other hand, manages to juggle keeping her compositions in line with their context while still making them an absolute delight to listen to. For example, the main battle theme “Operation!” is upbeat and catchy, while the boss theme “Net Battle” sounds far more imposing and dangerous, which the final boss’s music (simply titled “VS. Dream Virus”) takes even further. Even more amazing is that she managed to pump these songs out of sound hardware that was (and is) generally considered poor quality compared to its contemporaries (and even many of its predecessors), which is especially impressive considering that this was a launch title. My favorite tracks in this game are the aforementioned “Operation!”; FireMan.EXE’s theme “FIRE FIELD” (which even takes minor influence from his namesake’s theme from the original 1987 classic); “COLD & SILENT” which plays in IceMan.EXE’s area; the title screen, aptly titled “THEME OF ROCKMAN EXE” and “end roll”, which accompanies the game’s credits. However, my absolute favorite piece of music in the game has to be the theme from ColorMan.EXE’s area, “RED OR BLUE”.

The game’s sound effects were programmed by Shinji Amagishi, who previously worked on several MegaMan games, including MM8 and the entire Legends series, as well as the sound design fro the console versions of Street Fighter Alpha and Cyberbots: Fullmetal Madness. As such, he does an excellent job of providing sound effects that sound sufficiently like they belong in a MegaMan game, while taking into account that it exists in a totally different setting compared to more traditional games in the series. In fact, Mr. Amagishi clearly did such a good job with the first game, he would eventually go on to provide the sound design for the entire Battle Network series.

Despite making an almost hollow declaration that they would do everything in their power to stop the WWW’s plans, both Lan and MegaMan.EXE would continue to find themselves in the middle of the terrorist organization’s schemes. First, a World Three operative attempts to infiltrate Lan’s school as a substitute teacher and locks all of the students and faculty in their classrooms with a program designed to brainwash everyone into loyal soldiers for the WWW. Then, to make matters worse, the opening of a new station in the Metroline subway system in Lan’s hometown is sabotaged by an independent WWW navi, which the pair easily dispatch. Next, the two investigate a World Three plot that involves blackmailing one of the lead workers at DenCity’s Waterworks by kidnapping his son, leading to a massive drought. Lan and MegaMan manage to locate and rescue the child, but not before running afoul of an Official NetBattler, the child prodigy Eugene Chaud [Enzan Ijuuin] and his powerful NetNavi, ProtoMan.EXE [Blues.EXE]. Chaud has no time for interlopers and even though Lan and MegaMan saved the day, they also interfered with an official investigation. Lan gets let off with a warning, but should the two NetBattlers cross paths again, Chaud would have no choice but to take drastic action.

Things only get deadlier from that point forward. While looking for a birthday present for his friend Yai in DenCity proper, Lan happens upon a WWW operative that hacked the traffic signals at a busy intersection, thus hijacking the auto-pilot program in most cars, leading to several accidents. She offers a fix to the panicking citizens… at an exorbitant cost. When Lan jacks in and solves the problem himself, the operative, one Ms. Madd [Madoi Iroyaya] promises swift revenge. Soon after, Lan receives a call from his friend, Mayl, who is on a bus that has just been hijacked by a cyber-attack! And while Lan and MegaMan decide to use the signals to slow down the bus, Madd calls to gloat that not only is the bus out of control, but the bus was also being slowly sabotaged from within and would soon explode. Fortunately, with some quick thinking, Lan manages to hack some traffic signals in order to bring the runaway bus to a halt and defeat the World Three Navi behind the sabotage.

A rare visit with Lan’s father doesn’t go much better: another WWW operative named Count Zap [Elec Hakushaku] hijacks a power plant located below an underground restaurant at a special state dinner being attended by the Hikari family, which in turn, is below the SciLab where Dr. Hikari works – don’t ask – and Lan and MegaMan are forced to crawl down to the power plant through a trash chute and restore power to the building before the oxygen runs out. But soon after MegaMan defeats ElecMan.EXE, he is confronted by ProtoMan.EXE and Chaud, who scold them for ruining a sting operation which would have allowed them to locate World Three’s headquarters. Tired of a child interfering with official business, Chaud challenges Lan to a NetBattle that could prove fatal, but somehow MegaMan.EXE prevails over his skilled opponent. Humiliated, Chaud leaves in a huff, but not before ProtoMan asks a simple question: “What is your Operator to you?” MegaMan answers my friend, a statement that perplexes the stoic Navi.

After foiling an attempt at tracking down WWW’s base of operations, Lan decides to investigate it himself, eventually tracking down more ex-members that give him and MegaMan the means to delve into the deepest reaches of the internet. There, he finds another WWW Navi, standing guard in front of the way to the organization’s personal server. The battle is hardfought, but MegaMan.EXE is victorious over his opponent, but with the last of his strength, he destroys the path forward, leaving our heroes with little more than their address data. Nevertheless, Lan takes this data back to his father to decode and hopes for a quick answer.

He receives just that, but from an unexpected source. Lord Wily, the true leader of World Three, hacks all television broadcasts to announce his organization’s master plan: to launch a hacking rocket at various military satellites to begin what they call the “EndGame”. As it turns out, the programs that the WWW were collecting were being used to synthesize the ultimate virus, dubbed the Life Virus [Dream Virus – yeah, I think the English name was definitely better in this case]. Fortunately, Lan’s father was able to track down the location of their secret base, but unfortunately it’s seemingly in the middle of nowhere, unable to be accessed by any means of transportation, despite the fact that its operatives seem to be capable of striking… well, anywhere. As it turns out, they had a secret Metroline of their own and Lan uses it to make his way to the base, with only his Navi at his side. Or so he thinks. As he hacks his way through the fortress, his friends and even a few defectors from the WWW help him make his way through the base, until he finds its inner sanctum. There, MegaMan does battle with the most powerful of the WWW’s Navis, MagicMan.EXE. MegaMan seems to be victorious, until MagicMan gets his strength boosted by the Life Virus and deals a fatal blow to our hero. ProtoMan quickly avenges him, but it seems as if MegaMan’s days of virus busting are at an end.

Suddenly, Lan’s father appears on the scene and reveals a disturbing family secret to Lan. As it turns out, MegaMan.EXE’s data was built off of the DNA of Lan’s dead brother, Hub [Saito], in the effort to create the perfect Navi partner. However, the ramifications of such a creation were dangerous, so he slightly tweaked MegaMan’s data to protect Lan. Applying a batch file to revert these changes could save MegaMan, but the full synchronicity between Navi and Operator could lead to Lan quite literally feeling MegaMan’s pain, perhaps even dying if he gets deleted. But this doesn’t deter Lan in the least, he revives MegaMan and acknowledges him as his brother for the very first time –  MegaMan even admits that he knew about being Lan’s brother the whole time but kept it under wraps, per their father’s request. Turns out they were worried that if Lan knew the truth, then he wouldn’t use MegaMan to his full potential. Together, they head out to the base’s roof to stop the rocket, but not before Wily explains his actions. It turns out that 30 years ago, Wily and Lan’s grandfather – the original Dr. Hikari – were colleagues, with Hikari focusing on the internet and Wily focusing on robots. Eventually, their country participated in an international competition and chose Hikari’s research over Wily’s, leading the now-mad scientist to swear revenge by destroying the very world it created. With no other option, Lan plugs into the rocket and sends MegaMan to destroy the Life Virus. The battle is hard fought, but the Hikari brothers end up victorious. With the virus neutralized, the rocket detonates, slowly taking the base with it. Lan and his friends barely escape, but Wily stays behind, screaming “WWW… forever!” at the top of his lungs as his laboratory is engulfed in flames. After that, life returns to normal, with Lan thanking his friends and family for their help in saving the world. But a malfunction with his family’s security system shows that there are still viruses to bust, so Lan jacks MegaMan in one last time as the game comes to a close.

Sales data isn’t readily available worldwide when it comes to MegaMan Battle Network. The game debuted in 12^th place on the Japanese sales charts with roughly 43,048 and the game eventually sold a grand total of 208,346 copies according to the Game Data Library’s data from Famitsu. Dengeki Online, on the other hand, says that the game sold 224,837 units in Japan during 2001 alone, which made it the 50^th best-selling Japanese video game that year. Data for the other regions is much harder to come by, with VG Chartz estimating that the game ended up selling roughly 420,000 copies worldwide – and despite their relatively accurate stats for Japan, I’m still inclined to take their numbers with a grain of salt. Regardless, the series clearly did well enough for Capcom to pursue other mediums. A manga would begin running in CoroCoro Comic that same year and the anime would debut the following year on TV Tokyo. But in spite of all of that licensing, Capcom was only just getting started…

MegaMan Battle Network 2

With a burgeoning empire of multimedia and toys on the horizon, it would’ve been hard to blame Capcom for resting on their laurels and let the most profitable era of the MegaMan brand wash over them like a calming ocean of money while focusing their development resources on the IPs that they profited from directly. Instead, Capcom Production Studio 2 was tasked with creating a sequel for the game… and quickly. Battle Network Rockman EXE 2 launched in Japan on December 14^th, 2001 – less than nine months after the release of the original game and extremely close to both of its Western releases. MegaMan Battle Network 2 would eventually hit Western shores the following year, with North America receiving the game on June 17^th, while Europe would have to wait until October 18^th, almost a whole year later.

Fortunately, as I said earlier, the staff figured out exactly what kinds of tweaks and improvements they wanted to make to the first MMBN’s mechanics well into the game’s development. Likewise, Battle Network 2 would see a return of a popular event from the Classic series: fans could submit their own designs for boss Navis. To celebrate the revival of this concept, a new NetBattler named Mr. Famous [known as Eguchi Meijin in Japan] – loosely based on the series’ scenario writer, Masakazu Eguchi – was implemented into the game as a non-playable character and the contest’s winner, GateMan.EXE, served as his Navi and an optional boss in-game. This trend would continue for the rest of the series: all of Mr. Famous’s future Navis from the fourth game on would also be designs taken from fan contests, but additional winners would be implemented elsewhere in future titles as well.

It’s been three months since Lan and MegaMan.EXE stopped World Three’s plan to destroy the world and life has returned to normal (as far as we know). We rejoin our heroes on the last day of school and the beginning of summer vacation. While everyone’s thinking about their plan for the holiday, Lan’s classmate Dex has heard about something happening online: in the new Square area on the main internet, they’re looking for candidates to become “City NetBattlers”, essentially civilian operators and Navis that serve as deputy “Official NetBattlers” to help fight cyber-crime. Dex invites his friends to join him, but while Lan and Mayl are interested, Yai couldn’t care less about it. After passing a strange man who claims to be from the gas company standing outside of his house, Lan is about to jack in to meet with his friends online, when his mom looks over his report card and scolds him for his grades. Before Lan can do anything, he has to do some homework. One redundant virus busting tutorial later, Lan receives a message from Dex, who is growing impatient, so Lan sends MegaMan off to meet up with his friend’s Navis in the nearby Square. The trio take the “ZLicense” test as their first step to becoming an official “CityBattler”.

MegaMan, Roll and Gutsman all succeed in the test, but after jacking out, Lan receives a phone call from Glyde, Yai’s Navi. It turns out she’s been spending an unusually long time in her afternoon bath, which is particularly worrisome since the alarm on her house’s gas-powered water heater – the game’s words, not mine – has been going off, which is particularly odd considering it was just repaired that day. The three kids all set off for Yai’s house. Dex decides to go in first, but after not returning for five minutes, Lan goes in after him, while Mayl keeps watch. Just as Lan enters, the door locks behind him. Worse still, the smell of gas permeates through the entire house. MegaMan activates a gas sensor program on Lan’s PET and the two investigate. Eventually, the pair find Yai and Dex unconscious, surrounded by gas clouds and discover that the water heater is malfunctioning. Lan jacks in and MegaMan investigates, eventually turning on the ventilator by Dex, reviving him. As MegaMan continues to navigate the heater’s computer, Lan is forced to use one of Yai’s prized paper fans to make his way toward her, to no avail. Then, the true culprits behind the hack reveal themselves: Arashi Kazefuki, the strange man Lan saw earlier and his Navi, AirMan.EXE. They planned to attack a child from any rich family, blackmailing them into paying a massive ransom to save their beloved child’s life – Yai just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. MegaMan makes quick work of AirMan, but his operator swears revenge at the hands of his “group”. Lan, Mayl and Dex all take Yai to safety and keep watch over her until she recovers and the friends all share a laugh as the danger has passed.

As it turns out, Arashi is a member of Gospel, a net-mafia organization planning to follow in the footsteps of the WWW. But while World Three’s goal was that of world destruction, Gospel’s plans are obscured in mystery. They’re also far more cutthroat than their predecessors: Arashi’s punishment for failing his mission is a fatal encounter with an exploding briefcase, carefully placed in the Metroline station where he was making what would be his last report to his mysterious employer. With mysterious agents hidden throughout the world, will Lan and MegaMan have to spend their summer vacation stopping another terrorist plot? And are the chaotic and petty actions of Gospel hiding ambitions even more dangerous than the Life Virus?

Despite the quick turnaround in terms of development, Capcom Development Studio 2 used what they learned from the first game – particularly certain mistakes they were too late to adjust – to make the second Battle Network into an entirely superior game over the original. All three of my major issues from the first game have been amended: MMBN2 boasts a rebalanced random encounter rate, improved responsiveness in battle and best of all, the ability to attempt escaping battles by pressing the L button on the Custom Screen. Escaping this way works more often than not, except in boss battles, but the “Escape” Chip returns from the previous game allows MegaMan.EXE to escape from all but the most stubborn enemies. Also, the Add function in the Custom Screen has been slightly modified. Now, instead of the original MMBN’s method, players can now discard Chips to expand their hand (up to 10 chips, double the original size) for the remainder of the battle. Battle Network 2 also typifies what each Mystery Data color represents: greens generally contains a randomized item and respawn upon jacking out, blues contain specific items and don’t respawn and purples are similar to blue, except they require a special item to unlock, more on that later.

Folders have also seen a bit of a rebalancing from the original Battle Network. Players are now limited to only 5 instances of the same Battle Chip per folder, dropped from the downright ludicrous “10 per folder” from the previous game. MMBN2 also adds a brand new letter code to Battle Chips: “*” effectively serves a “wild card” denotation, allowing players to use “*” chips with those of any other letter, so long as the other chips for that turn are all of the same letter. Chips have also been given sizes, listed in megabytes. These correspond to the new “Regular Chip” mechanic – players have the ability to set a specific chip in their folder to appear regularly on their first draw in every single NetBattle. However, the size of the Chip can’t exceed the player’s limit, listed in the player’s folder, but this can be increased with a specific power-up, the REGUP, which can add between 1 and 3MB to the player’s maximum. Stronger chips often have larger filesizes, which means the player must be more strategic when building their folders and selecting their Regular Chip.

At the climax of the previous game, MegaMan.EXE lost the ability to heal after every battle. But Battle Network 2 offers a new mechanic that not only mitigates some of the new difficulty that sprung up from that design decision, but so much more. SubChips are items that can be used in Cyberspace outside of battle. “MiniEnrg” replenishes 50HP, while “FullEnrg” replenishes all of MegaMan.EXE’s health. Unlockers unlock the purple Mystery Datas, SneakRun allows MegaMan.EXE to avoid random battles with weaker enemies for a limited time and LocEnemy makes it more likely to encounter the last enemy fought in battle. From the start of the game, MegaMan can only hold four of each type of chip, but by finding “SubMem” power-ups, his overall SubChip inventory increases by one.

Likewise, the battle mechanics have been developed significantly from the previous game, particularly in terms of the battlefield itself. While panels in the previous game could be cracked and temporarily destroyed by specific attacks, leaving them unusable for a brief period, MMBN2 introduces the concept of special “elemental” panels, which are generally themed with current area’s gimmick and broaden the importance of the elemental cycle. For example, grass panels allow Wood-aligned viruses and Navi to heal but getting hit with a fire-based attack while standing on a grass panel deals double damage. And when a non-fire-aligned character stands on a Lava panel, it deals damage to them (while also removing the lava itself), but hitting someone with a Water-based attack while standing on there deals double damage as well. This mechanic would carry on through the rest of the series, with more variants popping up in later entries.

Other aspects of the game have also been expanded upon. For starters, the greater Cyberspace overworld that is the internet has seen some significant improvements. The setting itself is far more navigable than the previous game and even separates into different themes, based on each segment’s location, ranging from Lan’s home country of Electopia [Nihon], the land of delicacies known as “YumLand” [Asina], the overseas metropolis that is Netopia [Amerope] and even the seedy underbelly of the world wide web, the Undernet [URA Internet]. There are also new Net Squares on the web, areas where Navis can meet up without having to worry about Virus Busting – effectively serving as town equivalents in Cyberspace. Likewise, Lan’s new position as City NetBattler plays a role in gameplay as well as the story.  While he starts with a Z License, his rank has to increase in order to continue the story at a couple points: he only becomes a proper NetBattler with a “B License” and is only able to travel to other nation’s internets with an “A License”. However, his rank can be increased even further, all the way up to “SSS”, even if all the higher ranks exist merely for bragging rights. The side quests of the previous game have also been expanded upon. While the random NPC interactions from the original Battle Network still exist, MMBN2 adds the Request Board, a Message Board in the Official Center that can be used to request help from NetBattlers of all stripes. There are only a few points in the game where it’s mandatory, but most of the time, the rewards for completing these side-missions are so great, they’re not worth missing.

Finally, the Armors from the original MMBN have been dropped, replaced with the new “Style Change” mechanic. Instead of simply increasing MegaMan’s defense, Style Changes grant him brand-new abilities and are determined automatically, based on the player’s habits in battle. Buster-focused players unlock the Guts style, which doubles the base attack power of their Buster and prevents MegaMan from flinching, even after the most powerful attacks. Those focused on using Battle Chips earn the Custom style, which increases their starting Chip hand to 7. Players who prefer using Navi Chips to do the heavy lifting unlock the Team style, which increases the number of Navi Chips a Folder can hold from five to eight. And finally, avoiding damage and using recovery and defensive Chips unlocks the Shield style, which starts MegaMan off with a Barrier activated and the ability to produce a Shield to block attacks at any point during active combat. The styles themselves are also randomly assigned an element, which gives MegaMan a new Charge Shot (generally based on a Battle Chip with the corresponding element) as well as elemental strengths and weaknesses. MegaMan can hold up to two styles at a time – as well as his original form, dubbed “Normal Style” – and can change between them at any time from the pause menu. And for completionists out there, there’s even the insanely powerful “Hub [Saito] Style”, which can only be unlocked in the post-game. Better still, players can actually trade styles via the Game Boy Advance’s link cable.

It’s hard to dispute that MegaMan Battle Network 2 is when the fledgling spin-off hit its stride. Honestly, for anyone new to the series, this is the entry that I would recommend starting with. MMBN2 buffed out all of the major issues the original game had and added some quality of life fixes, but it’s also early enough in the series to avoid confusing new fans with the universe’s terminology or story elements. The vast majority of references to the previous game effectively retell pivotal events of the original Battle Network’s story in a way that’s informative to players new to the series, if not a little dry for those familiar with the first game. Likewise, the gameplay is still simple enough to allow players to get a handle on the series’ core concepts without having to worry about any of the more complex mechanics that would crop up in later titles. Having said that, I’d still probably rank MMBN2 as my third-favorite game in the series. Not because of anything it did wrong, just simply because there are future games manage to improve on the refined framework BN2 left behind.

The best word there is to describe the graphics in Battle Network 2 is “more”. The majority of assets from the original MMBN return in full force in the sequel, but compared to the first game, BN2 just has a significantly more diverse world to look at. As I mentioned earlier, the various areas of the Internet overworld itself are themed – with the kind of personality that was reserved for the dungeon areas in the previous game. Likewise, the real world itself has significantly more to look at: the new Official Center in Marine Harbor, a man-made island in Electopia; the Okuden Valley campground; the local airport and even Netopia, an entirely different country, all have their own unique look and feel to them. Better still, there are so many more generic NPCs (both human and Navi), that it just makes any repeats in the same area less common and less noticeable. The animation that plays whenever jacking into a network is also more ornate than the previous games, but the Western release had a less visually impressive transition compared to the original Japanese release, supposedly due to the former using a smaller cartridge.

Composer duties for the second Battle Network game were passed onto Yoshino Aoki, who previously worked alongside Ms. Kaida on the third Breath of Fire game and composed Breath of Fire IV’s soundtrack solo. She also performed the vocals for Roll’s theme from MegaMan Battle & Chase and contributed to the soundtrack arrangement for the CD-based versions of MegaMan X3. Overall, I’d say that the soundtrack was a lateral move from the first game: not necessarily better, but certainly not worse. A solid effort overall, especially given that this was her second soundtrack as a solo composer. My favorite tracks in the game are “TIME LIMIT”, which plays in QuickMan’s area; the standard boss battle theme “Battle Spirit”;  “Alley”, which plays on the backstreets of Netopia; MagnetMan’s area, fittingly titled “MAGNETIC AIRPLANE”; “Busy Street of a Foreign Country”, which serves as the general theme for Netopia and the theme for the game’s final dungeon, “YOU CAN’T GO BACK”.

After the incident with Airman, Gospel’s plans get more audacious. First, a nature lover named Speedy Dave [Daisuke Hayami] attempts to blow up the Okuden Dam in an effort to flood the entire DenCity prefecture to allow nature to reclaim it. Unfortunately, it just so happens that Lan and his friends Mayl, Dex and Yai (as well as a hesitant Chaud) were going on a daytrip at the nearby campgrounds. While Chaud and ProtoMan.EXE tried to disarm the bomb, Lan and MegaMan were tasked with disabling the four detonators hidden throughout the forest. Eventually, the pair came face-to-face with Dave’s NetNavi, the blindingly fast QuickMan.EXE. After making quick work of the scarlet speedster, it turns out QuickMan was the final detonator himself and is set to blow up the dam as his final act when the villain is struck with a fatal blow before he can react. ProtoMan and Chaud appear on the scene to make the save and the crisis is averted.

With two failures under their belt, Gospel gets even bolder with their schemes, hiring a mercenary known only as “Mr. Dark” [Dark Miyabi] and his NetNavi, the cyber-ninja ShadowMan.EXE to sabotage the networks in various nations. He starts with the YumLand’s Net Square, leaving it a barren wasteland. Lan and MegaMan just so happen to discover the desolate Square after Lan finds a balloon with a message from the foreign land in the local park and decides that having a pen pal from the country would mean he could eat a lot of tasty food be an interesting topic for his upcoming school project. There, they encounter CutMan.EXE, the (self-appointed) Vice Commander of Gospel’s YumLand occupation force… who doesn’t put up much of a fight. Soon after, Gospel reveals that Electopia is their next target and despite being able to prepare a special weapon to destroy the Navi in one shot, ShadowMan eventually makes his way to the Mother Computer, the main computer located at the Official Center and the epicenter of Electopia’s network. Eventually, ShadowMan and his forces whittle down the Official NetBattlers, leaving just Chaud, Lan and their Navis to defend their homeland. Eventually, they split up: ProtoMan corners ShadowMan at the last security checkpoint, while MegaMan goes ahead to defend the Mother Computer itself, but it turns out the real ShadowMan has already arrived. A tense standoff leads to ShadowMan shrugging off the attack after the last of his minions sacrifice themselves to protect him, but he eventually falls to MegaMan in battle – an act that cements Lan’s status as a true NetBattler in the eyes of the public.

That newfound recognition comes with an important responsibility: as one of the top NetBattlers from Electopia, Lan is asked to attend a meeting of Officials from all over the world in the far-off land of Netopia, with the promise that new information regarding Gospel’s true plans would be revealed. After suffering a few set-backs in transit – including getting mugged twice, taking out his frustration on MegaMan and eventually regaining his stolen Battle Chips – Lan makes it to the meeting, located in an antique castle that was retrofitted with advanced technology. According to the Officials’ intel, Gospel’s true plan is the development of an invincible “SuperNavi”. However, just as the meeting is getting underway, a Gospel operative hacked into the system, deletes all of their information on how to counteract the SuperNavi and drops the officials down into an underground dungeon, filled with death traps, all computerized. Lan and MegaMan make their way through, but many of the other officials aren’t quite so lucky. As Lan makes it to the end of the room, he finds Raoul, a Netopian native that helped him out earlier on, badly burned but still alive. Raoul tells Lan that the Gospel agent had infiltrated the meeting from the start, but before he can reveal their true identity, Chaud emerges from another room and assumes that Lan is the true culprit. Chaud sics ProtoMan on MegaMan, aiming to delete the “rogue” Navi and apprehend his operator, but MegaMan emerges victorious, deleting his opponent in the process.

As it turns out, the true culprit is Princess Pride, a royal from the small nation of Creamland. One of the first countries to embrace the internet, Creamland thrived at first until larger countries made their stakes in the online world. Princess Pride joined Gospel along with her NetNavi KnightMan.EXE to protect Creamland and perhaps even restore it to its former glory. And while KnightMan is hesitant to fight, his loyalty to his operator wins out in the end. MegaMan defeats the towering warrior, but Princess Pride has one last trick up her sleeve: she’s still in control of the traps in the castle. Unfortunately, she sends herself down a pit, leading to a hospitalization in Official custody. To make matters worse, Lan encounters another Gospel member on his flight home. Gauss Magnus [or Gauss Magnets in Japan], the CEO of Gauss Inc. [Gauss Concern], is bitter about the hardships he had to endure in his life. He grew up poor, while his brother was taken in by a rich family. He was forced to watch as his parents grew ill and died, so he wants revenge on society by any means necessary – and what better way than by joining the Gospel net-mafia? His NetNavi MagnetMan.EXE hijacks the plane by sabotaging various instruments onboard, while searching for the HighPower program necessary to complete Gospel’s SuperNavi project. As Lan’s the only Official NetBattler currently available, MegaMan is forced to regain control of the plane before facing off with MagnetMan, who is soundly beaten. Gauss is apprehended after the plane lands and it seems that things have finally calmed down.

But hours later, natural disasters begin plaguing the entire world. Electopia is being shaken to its core with massive earthquakes, YumLand is suffering from massive floods and the UV radiation in Netopia is quickly turning deadly. Worse still, these strange phenomena are even occurring online, with multiple chunks of multi-colored ice containing viruses springing up all over the Net: they even managed to infest each country’s Environmental System, leading to the real-world weather emergencies. The white ones are easy enough to break, but the rest are impossible to clear. Lan does eventually find a fragment of the red ice, which allows his father to create a way to destroy that variant. However, MegaMan has to travel deep into the Undernet to find the Navi expert, who goes by the name “Doc”, to create a solution for the yellow ice. But the final strain of ice will require three fragments to synthesize an antidote. MegaMan manages to track down the first two, but the third is contained within the source of the disaster: the lead Navi from Gospel, FreezeMan.EXE. After tracking down Gospel’s secret server, hidden within “KotoSquare” (the Net Square associated with Kotobuki Town, another area in Electopia). MegaMan’s battle with the self-proclaimed leader of Gospel is fierce, but he emerges victorious – but FreezeMan’s defeat doesn’t yield the last fragment. Fortunately, the ice shards throughout the internet soon begin to shatter, unable to maintain their form without their creator.

With Gospel’s base discovered and their latest plan crippled, one might expect that the net-mafia may be on their last legs. But with the Official NetBattlers’ numbers still depleted from the earlier attacks and those few that remain dealing with seemingly endless copies of their previous Navis invading every corner of the internet, the Official Center puts out an alert to the City NetBattlers, asking them to investigate the remains of KotoSquare for any clues and both Lan and MegaMan.EXE jump at the opportunity. But when they end up only finding another hotspot generating evil Navis, they consider travelling to Kotobuki Town itself… when they realize they don’t know how – in fact, KotoSquare is the only evidence of the town’s existence. Perplexed, they go to visit Dr. Hikari at SciLab, who tells them that the area seems to be emitting electro-magnetic radiation at levels that humans couldn’t survive. He’s reluctant to let his sons go, but when Lan convinces him that he and MegaMan are the only ones that strong enough to check it, he relents. He gives them a pass to reactivate the decommissioned Metroline station in Kotobuki and a special shielded “MagSuit” that should protect him from the radiation. Entering an insulated train car, the pair head off to what may very well be their final battle with Gospel.

When Lan and MegaMan arrive in Kotobuki, they’re shocked to find a massive apartment complex that is seemingly deteriorating into pure data. As they enter the warped building, they find Mayl, Dex and Yai exiting, boasting MagSuits of their own (courtesy of Yai) and retreating after making little progress. They were only able to make it to the second floor, as the building just seemed to… end at that point. They also warn Lan that servers are sprouting up throughout the building, almost as if they’re growing naturally. Thanking their friends, Lan and MegaMan enter and manage to hack the building back into some semblance of order, though the control for the elevator is guarded by mindless copies of AirMan, QuickMan and Cutman. They’re quickly dispatched, which allows Lan and MegaMan to reach the top floor. Unfortunately, the radiation is beginning to get to Lan as they approach the inner sanctum, but they’re able to hack into another server and knock out the control for the radiation, itself guarded by copies of KnightMan, MagnetMan and FreezeMan. With that, Lan and MegaMan encounter the true mastermind behind Gospel: a humanoid being, seemingly comprised of pure data and energy. He commends the duo for making it as far as they did and offers them the chance to rule the world by his side, which our heroes quickly refuse. Undaunted, Gospel’s leader challenges them to take on his invincible SuperNavi, comprised of hundreds of bug fragments collected throughout the internet. But as Lan plugs in one last time and MegaMan makes his way to the final showdown, the latter is assaulted by Roll, GutsMan and Glyde – Lan’s friends’ Navis! The leader gloats, saying that he stole and customized them to destroy MegaMan, but when all seems lost, the real Navis swoop in to save the day. But suddenly, ProtoMan slashes through the trio and sets his sights on MegaMan, only to also be defeated by the real deal. Turns out, Chaud was done facing off with the disruption forces all over the world. But it was all just a distraction: the bug fusion is complete and the ultimate Navi emerges. Bass is capable of recording chip data at any time and Gospel plans to clone an army of these invincible Navis. Despite these seemingly unstoppable odds, MegaMan faces off with the SuperNavi… and emerges victorious.

With Bass defeated, the leader of Gospel’s true form is revealed: turns out he’s a young boy, no older than Lan. Absolutely irritated by this setback, the boy decides to up the server’s power to dangerous levels, in an effort to recreate the SuperNavi. The radiation quickly becomes too much and while Lan stays behind, Chaud ushers out their friends to safety. But as Bass reforms, the servers get out of control, far exceeding the boy’s plans. Eventually, Bass contorts and mutates into a “multi-bug organism” [christened “Gospel” in-game, but not in-universe]. The radiation slowly gets to Lan and Gospel’s leader, finding themselves literally paralyzed. Lan can’t even operate his PET even more, leaving MegaMan completely vulnerable to the Bug Beast. With the last of his strength, Lan calls out to MegaMan – no, to his brother Hub – apologizing for being so weak. But Hub (no, MegaMan) activates a special ability known as “Full Synchro”, which allows Lan to operate him from his heart. The pair fend off the abominable monster, eventually destroying it and saving the world for a second time.

With Gospel (both the net-crime organization and the bug-based digital organism) destroyed, the servers begin to shut off. Lan regains full mobility and walks toward the young boy, who is still unconscious from the radiation. He finds a book next to the boy and it turns out to be his journal. The young boy’s name is Sean [Shun] Obihiro and five years ago, his parents died in a plane crash. He was sent to live with cruel relatives and despite the generous inheritance that was left to him, he felt isolated. The only things he could trust were computers and machines. Suddenly, Sean awakens and backs toward a window, afraid of what consequences await him after he lost what power he had in a world that hated him. Lan reaches out to him and tells him that everything’s okay. Sean will have to stand trial for his crimes, but once he’s served his sentence, Lan will be there… as his first friend.

As summer break concludes, Lan, his friends and family all have one last cook-out at the Okuden campground. While most people are celebrating, Lan’s father is staring vacantly at the river, when Lan notices him. Something doesn’t set well with him – he believes that Sean may have been manipulated into starting Gospel in the first place. But soon after, the arrival of Ms. Mari reminds Lan of another impending disaster. He forgot to do his homework over summer break! With no time to lose, he notices that the wood stove is on fire and decides to jack in to distract everyone save the day one more time. Meanwhile, in some unknown part of the Undernet, plastered with the all-too familiar letters “WWW”, one of Gospel’s Bass clones is wandering mindlessly before it is mercilessly gunned down by an unseen assailant. As it turns out, this is the original Bass, who comments that while he has taken to ignoring the activities of humans, “manipulating some brat” into making copies of him is unforgiveable. Before disappearing, he casually mentions that someday very soon, humanity would know his wrath…

MegaMan Battle Network 2 sold just under 40 thousand copies in its first week in Japan, but according to the Game Data Library, this number would eventually grow to a whopping 446,938 sales – more than twice the original game. VGChartz says that the game sold roughly 310,000 copies in the West, but their figures for Japan are significantly larger than the other figures I found online, so I still wouldn’t take their data too seriously. It’s just the closest thing to any concrete information I can find about sales in North America and the PAL regions. Regardless, the popularity of this MegaMan reimagining had clearly cemented its popularity – at least in Asia – so its future was certainly secured. And things were only going to get better…

MegaMan Battle Network 3

Considering how much the second game improved upon the first (both mechanically and in terms of sales), not to mention the continued popularity of the ancillary media and associated merchandise, a third Battle Network game was clearly a no-brainer for Capcom, even if only to provide more fodder for the corresponding anime to spin into gold. Besides, 2002 served as Rockman’s 15^th anniversary, so it only made sense for the most popular series at the time to receive another entry – remember back when MegaMan’s anniversaries guaranteed new games? Sigh, those were the days. With almost an entire year between the release of the second and third MMBN, Capcom Production Studio 2 would deliver what many (including myself) consider to be the series’ apex.

Battle Network Rockman EXE 3 would initially release in Japan on December 6^th, 2002, retaining most of the key staff from the previous game. However, for whatever reason, it seems that Capcom decided that this initial version just wasn’t good enough. A few months later, on March 28^th, 2003, Capcom would release an enhanced version of EXE 3, dubbed “Battle Network Rockman EXE 3 BLACK”. This new version included various bugfixes, certain bosses, Battle Chips and other gameplay elements being replaced with brand new ones to further differentiate this new and improved version over the original. Of course, with two slightly different versions of EXE 3 to work with, Capcom decided to finally cement the inspiration that MMBN owed to the Pokémon games when it came to the international releases.

As most people know by now, when Nintendo and Game Freak first brought the Pokémon franchise to the West, they used “Pocket Monsters Blue” as the basis to create the Western release of “Pokémon Red” and “Pokémon Blue” (which used the unique rosters from the original Japanese releases of Pocket Monsters Red and Green, respectively). Capcom’s Western take on BN3 operated under a similar premise. Capcom would release MegaMan Battle Network 3 with both a “Blue Version” and a “White Version” in North America on June 24^th, 2003 – less than three months after Black’s Japanese release – and PAL territories would receive the exact same release a couple weeks later, on July 4^th. “Blue” would essentially be nigh-identical to Black in terms of content, while “White” was effectively a newly enhanced version of the original “vanilla” release of EXE 3 containing the various bugfixes and other improvements present in Black. Having said that, due to Black’s status as almost a “special edition” compared to the original release, there was some clear (albeit minor and unintentional) favoritism when it came to both versions in terms of content. Future games in the MMBN series and its own spinoff sequel (more on that later) would adopt the Pokémon mentality of having multiple versions from the start, which meant for a more even split across each version in future titles.

It’s been a few months since the insidious net mafia known as Gospel’s evil ploy to create an invincible SuperNavi was stopped by the dynamic duo that were MegaMan.EXE and his Operator/twin brother from another life, Lan Hikari. Since then, life for the two of them has returned to normal. One day, Lan and his class are on a field trip to SciLab’s new Virus Lab, where a non-descript scientist lectures the children on the basics of Virus Busting – that’s right, people: we’re three-for-three on tedious tutorials! After this “brief” lesson and wrapping up at school, Lan and his friends make plans at the local park about when and where to chat online later that night. Suddenly, a strange fellow decked out like a cowboy walks up to them, asking if they’re elementary school students. In perhaps the most unrealistic part of the game, it turns out he’s Noboru Sunayama, a producer at the DenCity News Network (DNN). They’re holding the N1 Grand Prix, a competition to find the top NetBattler and are inviting the four friends to participate at the preliminaries, being held at ACDC’s own NetSquare. All four agree to do it and make it past the first round. To celebrate this achievement, they decide to meet up at Yai’s homepage to hang out after dinner. As usual, Lan and Dex have forgotten to do their homework, but to make matters worse, Dex left his disk back at school and decides to break in to get it back. Yai and Mayl think it sounds interesting, so Lan decides to join in too.

The four of them meet out front, only to find that the school’s gate is locked. The key is hidden in their hometown’s Cyberworld, so Lan and MegaMan decide to jack in and unlock it, making sure to look out for the “scary” Navi keeping guard. After returning to the now-opened school, Lan goes ahead to make sure the coast is clear, but they don’t find the disk at Dex’s desk… so they decide to retrace his steps to look for it – with Lan eventually finding it. But as the four kids decide to leave, they hear something and Yai gets a strange premonition. As they exit, they hear some rattling over by the teachers’ lounge. Lan goes ahead, but his friends join him only to find a strange man riffling through a laptop, congratulating himself for finding “the first TetraCode”. They confront him and he dismisses them until he recognizes Lan and decides that it might be worth it to take care of them personally, as Lan and his Navi are prominent listings on his organization’s blacklist. Lan’s friends try to protect him, but they get blasted with a burst of hypnotic light, sent forth by the stranger’s own NetNavi, FlashMan.EXE. Dex thinks he’s a train, Yai begins pirouetting like a swan and Mayl lurches forward like a zombie. FlashMan explains his powers and more importantly, that the only way to stop it is by deleting him. Lan retreats and while the mysterious man (Rei Saiko) curses his luck, his priority is on completing his original mission, leaving the task of finishing off Lan and MegaMan to FlashMan.

Lan checks on his friends, who are all still in their hypnotic stupor. He and MegaMan try to figure out how to get close enough to FlashMan to stop him without falling victim to the same fate. Then, Lan remembers that another class went on a trip to an umbrella factory that day and they all received a special type of parasol, capable of deflecting all forms of light. Fortunately, one of the students left theirs behind in the classroom and with parasol in hand, Lan returns to the lounge to save his friends. Lan manages to evade the Hypno Flash and jacks into the Principal’s computer to stop FlashMan. But the cyberworld is too dark to search and the lights are connected to various rooms throughout the school: which means that Lan has to search for the right light switches, while MegaMan searches for the KeyCards and Passwords necessary to confront FlashMan. Eventually, the two battle and MegaMan stands victorious, but FlashMan escapes at the last moment, setting off a beacon that temporarily blinds MegaMan and claims will set off “a major catastrophe”, whatever that means. After that, Lan goes home and decides to get a well-earned rest… all while probably forgetting to do his homework again. Elsewhere, Rei walks into a familiar laboratory, confident from the success after completing his mission. Behind a large desk plastered with the letters “WWW” stands the devious Lord Wily, who apparently survived the explosion after the Life Virus was deleted. Wily congratulates Rei, who takes his leave, and turns to the man next to him – a large, bestial man with three deep, claw-like scars over one of his eyes – and tells him that next time, it will be his part to play. The man confidently states that he will succeed without fail in destroying the one thing Wily hates most, human “love”. With that, Wily cackles as the scene fades to black. How did World Three return and just what are they planning this time? Will history repeat itself or will whatever evil machinations from the warped mind of Lord Wily come to pass?

Considering the heavy lifting that the previous game did with Battle Network’s core mechanics, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the third game keeps many aspects of BN2 intact. However, there are a few minor tweaks worth mentioning. For starters, BugFrags returns as a form of currency, but instead of collecting them from various Mystery Datas, MegaMan now collects them in battle by finishing off an enemy with a counterattack – that is, hitting them with a Chip or his Buster just as they’re about to attack him. Each enemy finished off with a counterattack given MegaMan’s Busting Level a Star and these stars determine how many BugFrags he receives as compensation. Chips are now separated into three separate categories: Standard Chips, Mega Chips (which include the Navi Chips from the previous two games) and the extremely powerful Giga Chips. With few exceptions, folders can only hold four of each type of Regular Chip, 5 Mega Chips per folder and a single Giga Chip at a time.

Speaking of folders, Lan can hold multiple folders of Chips and switch them on the fly. From the start of the game, he only has access to one customizable folder and can also obtain various secondary folders that can be equipped, but not edited. For the most part, the player can switch between folders at any time outside of battle from the pause menu. Later in the game, Lan gains access to a second customizable folder, which can allow players to set up different folders for different playstyles without having to completely recreate old folders. Likewise, the Library is substantially more important this time around, even giving players the ability to trade Library data. Partway through the game, Higsby’s Shop even gains the ability to do special orders on Battle Chips, allowing the player to order any chip in their library. It’s a nice way to grab duplicate Chips without grinding and better yet, players can even compare libraries via the Link Cable to fill in missing gaps without losing valuable chips.

The biggest change to Battle Network 3’s gameplay comes in the form of the new Navi Customizer. Gone is the old “Power Up” system that gave MegaMan’s Buster a permanent, irreversible upgrade. With the Navi Customizer, the player can manipulate MegaMan’s abilities (not simply the Mega Buster) at any time outside of battle. The Navi Customizer comprises of a 4×4 grid – which can be expanded with power-ups called “ExpMemory” – where various programs can be slotted in. These programs are made up of arrangements of squares in a variety of orientations and colors. The Navi Customizer also contains a command line, generally found in the lower-middle row of the layout. Standard blocks come in two different textures: programs with a blocky appearance must avoid the command line, while the solid ones must be touching the command line partially. Likewise, programs of the same color cannot be touching. Finally, the only colors that can be used are those that appear in the top-right corner of the device. Failing to follow these rules results in bugs, which can be detrimental to MegaMan’s continued survival. Of course, certain glitches can be circumvented with the ModTools, which use special cyphers to mitigate specific errors. While the Navi Customizer allows the player to improve the Mega Buster’s attack power, speed and charge capabilities like before, it also allows for various other perks. It can allow the player to increase MegaMan’s health beyond the traditional method of collecting HP Memories, allow MegaMan to avoid random battles with weak enemies (like the SubChip “SneakRun”) and even filter out all but a specific type of enemy from random encounters. And while the shapes of the programs are unchangeable, collecting “Spin” items of the corresponding color allows the player to rotate them, to allow for better fits across the board. Programs can also be traded among friends via the Link Cable, like Battle Chips and Style Changes in previous games.

The Style Change mechanic has been slightly altered as well. While the Hub Style has been removed from Battle Network 3, it’s been replaced by 3 new styles – though two of them are version exclusive. The Blue Version contains the “Shadow” style, a ninja-inspired look that allows MegaMan to go intangible for a brief period with his charge shot and allows him to counter various attacks with the “Anti-Damage” program. The “Ground” style, on the other hand, allows MegaMan to break panels with his charge shot and also manipulate the battlefield from the start with a variety of Navi Customizer programs. The last one is the Bug Style, which is incredibly powerful and gives MegaMan total immunity from Navi Customization bugs… but requires continuous busting with those bugs to unlock it in the first place. The returning Styles from the previous game (Guts, Team, Shield and Custom) all also get brand-new abilities and can use specific colors of Navi Customizer programs. However, to compensate for this, the game only allows MegaMan a single Style Change in addition to his Normal form.

The final major addition to MMBN3 is the “Virus Breeding” mechanic. While it doesn’t really play that big of a role in the game itself and it doesn’t get unlocked until after defeating the third-to-last boss in the game, it is an interesting mechanic. MegaMan can discover specific instances of Virus lines throughout the Cyberworld and capture them as opposed to destroying them as per usual. These benign viruses can be taken to the Virus Lab at SciLab and can be redeemed for special Battle Chips that allows MegaMan to summon these viruses to assist him in battle. Honestly, it’s an interesting mechanic, but it’s completely optional, to the extent where I never really made any use of it during my first playthrough. In fact, it actually never shows up in any other titles in the series. I guess it just goes to show that not all of the Battle Network series’ experimental mechanics were received warmly.

There are a few other key differences between the White and Blue versions of Battle Network 3. For starters, the color palettes for various menus and objects on the overworld are different – White uses the traditional colors from the previous two games, while Blue mixes things up. White and Blue also have version-exclusive Battle Chips and even boss encounters: one of White’s late-game bosses is the djinn-like MistMan, while Blue pits MegaMan against the sporty BowlMan. Finally, Mr. Famous returns in the Blue version where he challenges players with his new NetNavi, Punk.EXE. But the White version boasts his far-less impressive assistant, who gives the player hints on how to improve their NetBattling skills.

Honestly, while the second MMBN did a lot to improve the first game’s various foibles, MegaMan Battle Network 3 refined it to the point of perfection. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not only the best game in the BN series, but probably also the best RPG Capcom has ever made (and likely, will ever make). The game feels like a magnum opus in its own right and if it had concluded the Battle Network series – as most people assume the original intention was – it would literally have been the perfect ending. It’s one of those rare, special portable RPGs that transcends the platform’s limitations and can easily stand side-by-side with the best RPGs of all-time, period. Considering it was released in 2002, itself still a point where portable game systems were essentially considered second-class at best, this is an incredible achievement.

The graphics are about the same as the past two games, so there really isn’t that much to say overall. They did redesign Lan’s PET to match with the initial anime design for some reason though, but they seemed to justify it by calling it a “custom” model. All of the new characters and backgrounds fit in perfectly with those recycled from the previous games. One interesting thing to note is that pretty much every returning setting in Cyberworld has been totally redesigned, both thematically and the layouts themselves. Honestly, that’s one of the things I liked about the MMBN series – the constant flux of designs just sort of fit with the futuristic internet theming. Real-world areas, on the other hand, generally look the same as they did in the previous game, though in many cases, certain redundant sections of returning areas that don’t play any role in BN3’s storyline have been excised. And just like the last game, the Western release did have certain visual elements pared down: the plug-in animation was replaced with a blank screen, the start-up screen for the Navi Customizer was completely removed and the Game Over screen is a simpler logo on a black screen compared to the more ornate Japanese version, which had a foreboding purple background. My only other complaint is that when using the Press program (which shrinks MegaMan, allowing him to navigate smaller passageways), it can be a little hard to make out where he is on the GBA’s small screen.

Yoshino Aoki takes up composing duties again for the third Battle Network game and this time around, she completely surpasses the already-stellar soundtracks of the first two MMBNs – both in terms of overall quality and having better compositions than the best the previous games have to offer, at least as far as I’m concerned. Honestly, it’s nearly impossible to narrow it down to just six tracks worth highlighting for this write-up, but since I’d like to keep things even, here are my choices. “BLIND MODE”, the theme that plays in FlashMan’s area; the self-explanatory “Boss Battle!”; “Tree of Life”, the theme from Seaside Hospital; the Undernet’s theme “DANGEROUS BLACK”; “FINAL TRANSMISSION”, which plays in the final area of the game and of course, the end credits theme, simply titled “farewell”. Of course, there are many other good songs in this game, and honestly, by the time this article is posted, I would probably swap out three of these choices for other compositions. 

Of course, Lan and MegaMan have their fair share of misadventures. A young boy named Chisao blocks the entrance to the Metroline in ACDC Town, demanding that someone bring him his big brother, “the #1 NetBattler in town”. Everyone assumes that means Lan, which comes as a surprise to him and MegaMan – whose pet has been glitching out big time after that big flash FlashMan left the other day. Turns out Dex has been telling his little brother, who lives in Netopia with their father, some tall tales and after a quick NetBattle between MegaMan and GutsMan, the truth comes out and the little guy’s despondent (unless you decide to let Dex win but I never do, because I’m a monster that likes making little kids cry). But there’s no time to cry (or cheer): the next round of the N1 Grand Prix preliminaries has begun! Lan and all of his friends all complete the three trials with little problem, but when all is said and done, MegaMan’s PET glitches out so much, he can’t jack out remotely. After a treacherous trek back to the terminal where he plugged in in the first place – without Lan’s witty repartee or (more importantly) any Battle Chips – it’s clearly time to take Lan’s PET in to get serviced. Unfortunately, his dad is busy with another meeting and since the PET itself is a custom job, he’s the only one capable of fixing it. But Lan doesn’t go home empty-handed: he’s given a dinky little Sub-PET for the time being.

The next day, Lan and his class go on a trip to Yoka [Yokayoka Village], a faraway town famous for its zoo and hot springs. Unfortunately, the zoo is closed on the first day due to some strange issues, so the kids decide to make the most of it at the local inn where they’re staying, taking a nice hot dip in their hotsprings and meeting with the energetic gift shop owner Tamako Shiraizumi and her Navi, MetalMan.EXE. Fortunately, that night, Dr. Hikari was able to fix MegaMan’s PET and even sent the new experimental Navi Customizer with it. Better still, the zoo is open again the next morning. But these good circumstances are short-lived: the new zookeeper turns out to be a World Three agent named Takeo Inukai and he’s hacked the health monitoring chips in all the animals to make them go berserk and attack the patrons, with the condor even abducting young Chisao and hoisting him atop an antique transmission tower. Lan plugs into the zoo’s computer to track down the source of these problems, which turns out to be Takeo’s personal NetNavi, the savage BeastMan.EXE. After defeating him, the animals go back to normal, but poor Chisao is still stuck atop the dizzying structure – until he falls to the ground only to be caught by his big brother, reaffirming just how much he looks up to the big lug. But in all the chaos, Takeo Inukai manages to escape unabated with the second TetraCode in his possession.

Sometime later, after a particularly foreboding lesson on compression and Lan, Dex and Yai making it to the N1 Grand Prix Finals, Mayl invites Lan over to her house to see the new BubbleWash – a dishwasher that connects to the internet (to allow people to run it remotely) – being delivered to her home. As it turns out, both their teacher Ms. Mari and the chip shop owner Higsby are also apparently interested in the device, so they also come over to see it. After a nice spot of tea, Mayl and Ms. Mari decide to try it out, only to be encased in some unbreakable bubbles. It turns out the BubbleWash was a WWW invention and those bubbles will explode after a set time. It turns out the bubble bomb program is being controlled by BubbleMan.EXE, an independent Navi. After acquiring the PresData necessary to navigate the narrow corridors of the Net from SciLab, getting some much needed help reprogramming it to work with MegaMan’s new Navi Customizer from a mysterious ally and chasing his “Bubble Brigade” on a roundabout chase through the Internet, MegaMan faces off with the nautical nuisance but spares his life, hoping the evil Navi could turn over a new leaf. BubbleMan mulls over this decision, giving his bombs ample time to detonate when a quick slice from ProtoMan.EXE manages to save the day. Chaud chastises the two would-be heroes for their hesitation and says that he’ll make short work of them in the N1 Grand Prix, before ProtoMan jacks out. MegaMan remains chipper as usual, but as Lan is being thanked by Mayl for saving her life, Chaud’s words begin to weigh on him.

After a weird scene that explains why Chaud is so cold to everyone and a chaotic pre-tournament meet-up, it’s finally time for the N1 Grand Prix, which is being held at the DNN studio on Beach Street. After meeting up with the other members of Block D, including an arrogant jerk from Swapopolis [Akindo City] named Tora [Torakcihi Aragoma], Lan heads off to Hades Isle [Hell Island] on a small ferry when he is suddenly hit with knock-out gas. When he awakens, he finds that he’s been given a special folder to be used for the early rounds of the tournament and must participate in various trials to make it to the semi-finals back at the studio. First, there’s a scavenger hunt, followed by a battle with MetalMan and then scrambling to find a new folder from various talkative representatives before a quarter-finals battle with Dex, who Lan soundly defeats.

After a quick trip back to DNN’s Studio, it’s time for the semi-finals, but Lan finds out that Yai got injured after her elimination from the tournament and is being held at nearby Seaside Hospital. He almost opts out of competing, when he gets a call from her, urging him to win it all for her sake. With the knowledge that Yai is just fine serving as inspiration, Lan takes on Tora and the chess master themed KingMan.EXE, while Chaud takes on the mysterious NetBattler Q, who reveals himself to not only be Sunayama but also an operative of the WWW. His NormalNavi also transforms into its true form: the devastating sand dune DesertMan.EXE! Sunayama runs off but Chaud gives chase, only to find that the publicity-preoccupied perpetrator is holding a purloined prize: Chaud’s dear-old dad and president of IPC, an electronics conglomerate with its hands in just about everything. Sunayama nearly forces Chaud to hand over his PET when Lan and MegaMan save the day (by chucking his PET at the crooked cowboy’s head). After Sunayama regains consciousness himself only to find himself face-to-face with an 11-year-old boy, he does what any logical person would do – and challenges MegaMan with DesertMan. With his Navi defeated, Sunayama attempts to “pull a BubbleMan”, but gets stopped by Chaud and is arrested. Unfortunately, that means that the N1 Grand Prix is cancelled as the Official NetBattlers begin to investigate just how a terrorist organization like World Three was able to infiltrate a TV studio so subtly.

A week after the N1 Grand Prix fizzled out, Lan, Dex and Mayl are missing Yai, who is still in the hospital. They decide to visit her after school and find a very healthy (but very bored) Yai still in the hospital. After being sent out to get her a drink, Lan hears from a nurse that a young boy named Mamoru has gone missing and decides to look for him. Eventually, Lan finds Mamoru sitting out in a wheelchair on the beach. Excited to see his favorite NetBattler from the N1 before his very eyes, the two chat about NetBattling before Lan convinces him to return to the hospital for another battery of tests. After doing some various odd jobs for Tora in exchange for learning the secret behind Chaud’s skills, Lan goes to school the next day to find that Dex isn’t there. Turns out he decided to move to Netopia to be with his brother and father and didn’t want the class to know, because he’s bad with emotional send-offs. Lan storms out of class to say goodbye to Dex in person and confronts him about leaving without telling anyone, only for the rest of his class to show up and give the big lug the sendoff he deserves. All the same, Lan still feels a bit down about his friend moving away, so he decides to visit Mamoru at the hospital. The young boy is sitting out on the beach as usual and the two decide to have a heart-to-heart, about life and NetBattling. During this conversation, Mamoru reveals that he has been suffering from “HBD” for his entire life, which shocks MegaMan. Turns out that was the very ailment that claimed Lan’s twin brother Hub’s life when he was still a baby. But things get even worse, when Mamoru suffers from a flare-up of his condition and Lan is only barely able to get to the doctor in time to administer some much needed first aid.

Mamoru recovers, but the medical staff are concerned because after multiple surgeries failed to make him feel any better, he’s refused any more. But there’s a new experimental procedure that may save his life and Mamoru’s becoming weaker by the day. Lan asks Mamoru to reconsider, telling him that his brother Hub had the same problem and that Hub would probably want him to do whatever he could to survive. Lan even promises to find Mamoru a rare chip to reinforce their budding friendship. With that kind of faith, Mamoru agrees to the new treatment. But as he enters surgery, the Hospital’s Tree of Life begins sprouting vines, shorting out equipment throughout the hospital. After a daring escape from a second-floor window into the ocean, Lan makes his way to the basement to find the source of these new problems. The culprit is another member of the WWW (who would’ve guessed?): the easily influenced ecoterrorist Anetta and her Navi PlantMan.EXE, in search of another TetraCode. Eventually, PlantMan’s tendrils reach into the operating room, where the TetraCode is located, shorting out its equipment. Absolutely incensed at the idea of Mamoru dying, Lan and MegaMan fight the floral fiend with all their might. He’s defeated, but mocks them – in the end, the WWW only needs one final TetraCode to cause a Cyber-geddon of epic proportions. To add insult to injury, PlantMan’s interference left the equipment for Mamoru’s surgery without power, so MegaMan sacrifices his own energy to get everything up and running again. Emotionally and physically drained, the pair decide to wait at the hospital to see just how everything went. If not for the cyber-attack, the surgery would’ve gone perfectly. Hours later, Mamoru awakens, fully recovered. He mentions that while he was out, he could swear he heard Lan’s voice and saw another boy – one that looked an awful lot like Lan – surrounded by blue light.

Sometime later, Lan, Mayl and Yai are meeting in the park and bemoaning over Dex’s departure, when their teacher Ms. Mari stops by to congratulate Lan for his bravery at Seaside Hospital but also asks him to be careful in the future. She’s also been informed that he’ll be receiving an award at SciLab that night. But as he receives a certificate, he notices a familiar face: former WWW operative Mr. Match has resurfaced, claiming to have reformed and joined SciLab as a researcher, using his experience with the organization for good. Lan and MegaMan, recalling their first encounter with the cackling pyromaniac, maintain their distance, when reports that WWW-affiliated NetNavis were attacking various locations throughout the Internet. Lan and MegaMan make quick work of most of them, but eventually get cornered by a group of three of them after an exhausting gauntlet. It seems like MegaMan’s days are finished when who should arrive to save him but Mr. Match and his new Navi, FlamMan.EXE FlameMan.EXE! This act of heroism is enough to convince Lan that Match has turned over a new leaf. But a mysterious Navi sends Lan a foreboding message, warning him not to trust Match’s reformation. Later, after checking on Mamoru (who has been recovering quite nicely), Match asks Lan a favor. He needs to install a few programs in SciLab’s systems but isn’t familiar with their hardware. He wants Lan to help him out, which the young hero agrees to. But when the internet is covered in flames and the SciLab goes up in smoke, it’s clear that Mr. Match was still a member of the WWW through and through and better yet, he even manipulated young Lan into doing his dirty work – that means Lan’s just as much of a villain as Match is!

With their father’s life hanging in the balance, Lan and MegaMan maneuver throughout the entire internet, putting out Match’s flames, before the red-haired rogue challenges them to a final fight with FlameMan, who is hiding out in the UnderNet. After making their way into the internet’s seedy underbelly, they’re met with some unforeseen problems. First, a massive earthquake destroys the path forward and then, MegaMan gets the sensation that he’s being watched. But eventually, he comes face-to-face with FlameMan and the two face off. MegaMan struggles against the WWW’s latest threat, but before Mr. Match can immolate him with FlameMan’s Flame Breath, the mysterious presence makes itself known. It’s Bass, the real Bass, who shows up to challenge the powerful Navi he senses. FlameMan readies himself for battle, but Bass wasn’t referring to him – so he obliterates him with a wave of his hand. No, the power Bass desires is coming from MegaMan, so the two do battle, but the young hero is no match for the legendary SuperNavi. Just when all hope seems lost, the mysterious Navi from earlier appears, boasting an unbreakable DarkAura. While he survives Bass’s ultimate attack, he’s unsure if he can take any more damage. But before Bass can finish off this strange interloper, he is interrupted by Wily, who he is begrudgingly working for. The leader of the WWW informs the disobedient Navi that the fourth and final TetraCode has finally been recovered and that he should return to base to make preparations to awaken the Beast that will bring about the end of Net society and the world itself, “Alpha” [or “Proto”, as he was called in Japan]. After Bass departs, the mysterious Navi leaves before MegaMan regains consciousness and jacks out to recover.

Three days later, Lan has holed up in his bedroom, refusing to even go to school. The guilt over his part in the cyber-attack at SciLab is eating him up inside, to the point where he snaps at his friends when they try to cheer him up. It takes a visit from his rival Chaud, meeting with the ex-leader of Gospel, Sean and a heart-to-heart with his father (who’s still recovering at Seaside Hospital) to get Lan out of his funk and willing to make up for his mistake. He decides to take on a mission from the officials: tracking down the “Forbidden Program”, a mysterious program thought to be the only thing capable of stopping Alpha. To find it, they have to seek out the highest-ranked Navi in the UnderNet, known only as “S”, but since Official NetBattlers are utterly despised by its denizens, they need to resort to a lesser-known operative to investigate this lead. But while MegaMan is making his way through the ranks of the UnderNet, Lord Wily is sending his stronger Navi, the destructive DrillMan.EXE to uncover Alpha’s final resting place. As MegaMan finally makes it to rank 2, he is granted an audience with “S”, or “Serenade”, the Rank 1’s true name. Serenade grants MegaMan the Forbidden Program but warns that only a true Chosen One can wield its power: all others will freeze solid forever. When all hope seems lost, MegaMan turns out to be perfectly capable of wielding “Giga Freeze”, the true name of the forbidden program. As it turns out the UnderNet’s servers are hidden below the hot springs at Yoka and its current administrator was none other than young Mamoru. The UnderNet was a creation of SciLab, meant to hide Giga Freeze, which was developed to fight Alpha, should it ever return. Meanwhile, DrillMan has finally tracked down Alpha’s whereabouts in SciLab’s Network, uses the four TetraCodes to liberate it and proceeds to drill his way through Cyberspace. MegaMan gives chase and finds himself back in the UnderNet, before facing down the maniacal miner. As it turns out, DrillMan has a score to settle with our heroes – BubbleMan was his cousin and he wants revenge. But while the family resemblance isn’t clear in terms of appearance, DrillMan is just as bad a fighter as his cousin. But as MegaMan begins to retrieve Alpha, he is stopped once again by Bass. And while MegaMan attempts to use Giga Freeze to stop them both, the mysterious SuperNavi merely grabs the program himself. Bass, as it turns out, was the other Chosen One. With that revelation, Bass teleports away with Alpha in tow. And while Lan and MegaMan decide to report back to the Officials, Lord Wily is cackling in his secret laboratory, awaiting the oncoming Net apocalypse.

The next morning, Lan is awakened by a nightmare. He’s in Cyberspace, and sees MegaMan, but MegaMan wishes him farewell, thanking him for the memories and walks off. Lan cries out to MegaMan, calling him “Hub”, but cannot move. Upon waking up, Lan and MegaMan discover that martial law has been declared, in an effort to prepare against the WWW’s next cyber-attack. But as expected, Lan and MegaMan aren’t willing to wait around and see what happens and begin making plans to help with the initiative against World Three. After receiving a special pass to use the MetroLine during this emergency, Lan listens in on a briefing from the Officials that explains that Alpha was the original internet and a glitch in the system had caused it to grow a rudimentary for of consciousness which nearly brought civilization to an end. Not long after that revelation, an alert is sounded: the WWW has managed to hack the military’s internet-ready tanks and is using them to attack innocent civilians. To make matters more terrifying, this devastating hack was perpetrated with just a small piece of Alpha’s data. Once the tanks themselves have been disabled, Lan receives even more frightening news – his father has snuck out of the hospital, despite still being horribly injured. Eventually, he finds him working to locate the WWW’s base of operations in a secret office within SciLab. Lan and MegaMan plead for their father to rest, but he feels personally responsible for stopping Alpha, because it was his father’s creation. With that in mind, Lan decides to take it upon himself to stop the WWW… alone. He only asks Yai for help with repairing a ship to make it to the location of World Three’s new base of operations, an island located deep in the dangerous “Demon Waters”.

Of course, Yai can’t keep her big yap shut, so Lan is reluctantly joined by Dex, Tora and Chaud, while Mayl and Yai stay behind. Eventually, they reach the WWW’s new hideout, a castle covered in skulls (natch). After making their way inside, they find computers with detailed readouts depicting the human body all attached by wires to a bizarre mechanical chair. There, they meet Cossak, the mysterious programmer that has been helping Lan throughout his latest conflict with World Three and the creator of the AutoNavi that was originally blamed for Alpha’s catastrophic history. Cossak explains that the chair is a Pulse Transmission Device: a machine that can transfer the human brain’s electrical impulses into cyberspace, but at a dangerous cost, the user feels every bit of harm they face in Cyberworld in the real world. He gives a quick demonstration in order to open the path to the castle’s inner sanctum, when he is confronted by Bass – his creation and the aforementioned AutoNavi. Bass reveals that it was Cossak’s own “Get Ability” program that allowed him to survive his deletion. He then attacks Cossak, seemingly destroying him but fortunately, he was merely rendered unconscious from the shock. As our four heroes make their way deeper into the WWW’s base, they are attacked by a modified tank, one that fires attacks that greatly resemble FlashMan’s Hypno Flash. After jacking in to try to disable this tank, it turns out FlashMan was revived and his operator can use Full Synchro themselves via another Pulse Transmission Device hidden in the fortress. After defeating them, Lan and his friends are attacked by three other tanks, each containing more WWW Navis and their operators, all using Full Synchro, until Lan alone reaches the inner sanctum. There, Wily gloats that Alpha has nearly been decoded, before pulsing into cyberspace himself, dead-set on becoming the savage net-beast’s mind. With no other option, Lan chases after Wily with a spare Pulse Transmission Device and he and MegaMan become one as they chase down Alpha. But before they can stop Wily, Bass emerges and absorbs the last failsafe keeping Alpha in line. With that, Bass decides to destroy MegaMan once and for all… only to be defeated. It turns out that Wily had manipulated Bass the whole time: he had manipulated Gospel behind the scenes to create a false copy of him to lure him out into the open and that last failsafe was Tadashi Hikari’s “Guardian” program, the last thing keeping Alpha at bay. With that, Alpha absorbs the weakened Bass… and then absorbs Wily’s consciousness. With that, the Net Beast manifests itself and MegaMan stands as the last thing between it and the collapse of Net society.

After a hard-fought battle, MegaMan and Lan stand victorious… as a mysterious door emerges from Alpha’s remains. Inside, they find an image file of an unfamiliar room. There, they meet with a digital representation of their grandfather, Tadashi Hikari himself. He congratulates the two for stopping Alpha and hands them a note to give to his son, before ushering them out: with Alpha’s destruction, the entire system it inhabited is collapsing. The brothers merge once more and attempt to escape but are eventually absorbed into Alpha itself. With no hope, MegaMan makes the ultimate sacrifice and uses all of his strength to free Lan from an eternity of oblivion. As Lan regains consciousness, the island base is exploding, so the four boys quickly escape the island, though Lan is reluctant to leave MegaMan behind. Eventually, they make it back to Beach Street where they are met by their friends and family. After Lan says his goodbyes, he wistfully looks back at the ocean, mourning the death of his brother and feeling hopeless. But then, Dex, Mayl, Yai, Chaud, Sean and Mamoru all come to comfort him, reaffirming that continuing to live his life to its fullest is the best possible tribute Lan can make to MegaMan’s sacrifice. With that, Lan rededicates to live the best life he possibly can.

Four months later, the operatives of the WWW have been recovered from the wreckage of their base and are awaiting questioning after a long hospitalization and Lan Hikari is on the cusp of starting the sixth grade. He comes back to Beach Street, talking to MegaMan about all the changes he’s been going through and how he needs to get a new Navi for school. After a familiar ringtone yields nothing, Lan says goodbye to his brother one last time and goes home. After preparing for a big first day of school. Lan goes to sleep shortly before his father returns home from work. Disappointed that he missed speaking to his son, he is nonetheless excited to show Lan his new Navi. The next morning, Lan’s alarm goes off and he awakens to a familiar voice, who is impressed that he woke himself up. As it turns out, Dr. Hikari was able to use the notes left to him by his father to recover MegaMan from the remnants of Alpha’s data. And with that, the brothers are reunited in a happy ending that was truly earned.

It’s a shame that MMBN3 didn’t manage to crack a million sales, at least according to Capcom’s Platinum Games list. Having said that, I’m pretty sure it has a lot to do with just how the game’s sales were broken down – which seems to be a recurring issue with many modern Capcom games as well. The initial release managed to sell a whopping 500,001 units in Japan with first week sales of 91,351 copies. The Black revision, on the other hand, sold significantly less in Japan – first week only managed 28,708 copies, which would eventually lead to 168,946 unites overall. VGChartz seems to imply that the game sold nearly 400,000 copies in North America alone, with other regions contributing a respectable 50,000 sales of their own… but their assessment that the game managed to sell nearly 1.3 million copies worldwide seems suspect. Regardless of how well it sold, Battle Network 3 was essentially the perfect finale for the series. But alas, there was still money to be made. But while Capcom was determining what bold new directions to take the series in, they commissioned a trio of spin-off games from various partners. And believe me when I say the first two look awfully familiar…

Rockman EXE WS

Earlier on, I mentioned that while MegaMan Battle Network managed to keep in line with Capcom’s meager expectations for the series, it also managed to spawn a wildly popular anime series and various mangas. The former was the real jackpot though, as it would go on to spawn a plethora of associated licensing deals. In addition to various toy lines, the anime also managed to spawn various other products. There was even a collectible card game and a board game associated with the series’ English dub, rechristened “MegaMan NT Warrior” by the infamous 4Kids Entertainment. But perhaps the most baffling bit of cross-marketing for the anime series was the fact that it received a video game adaptation on the Japan-exclusive WonderSwan Color handheld of all things. That’s right, just like Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game before it, Capcom’s attempts at marketing one of their IPs ended up resulting in the release of a video game developed by an outside company.

I’ve seen two conflicting sources about the origin of Rockman EXE WS. Most sources say the game was published by Capcom and developed by Bandai – not unlike Rockman & Forte: Challenger from the Future – but another source I found says the game was merely published by Bandai themselves, while the fine people at Tose appear to have been the ones who developed it. Although if the latter is true, Tose went uncredited. The game would see release exclusively in Japan on February 8^th, 2003, nestled right in-between the release of the original Rockman EXE 3 and the Black revision. The game was released on the WonderSwan Color, a second revision of Bandai’s handheld that offered backwards compatibility with the original monochromatic model, but could also run on the SwanCrystal, Bandai’s third and final foray into the portable video game market. None of these systems left Japan but did manage to enjoy some small popularity within their home country. Unfortunately, while the WonderSwan Color seemed to be poised to compete with Nintendo’s Game Boy Color system, Bandai was unable to release it before Nintendo announced the Game Boy Advance, which would proceed to dominate both it and the SwanCrystal throughout their respective lifespans.

Unlike the last three games I discussed, this game follows the storyline of the anime, which deviates a fair amount from the game’s timeline. I’m not going to go into vivid detail, but Netto actually doesn’t receive Rockman as his NetNavi until his first day of fifth grade, while the games seem to imply that the two have been together much longer than that. As such, it’s essentially an unnecessary exercise for anyone hoping to gleam any more information about the main Battle Network timeline established in the video games made by Capcom. Because this is a licensed game based on a property with a strictly linear narrative, there’s obviously a few changes made to the source material – several episode plotlines effectively happen simultaneously due to the game’s structure (more on that later). Regardless, Rockman EXE WS effectively sends players through a truncated version of the events of the anime’s first season. I’m not going to go any further with my description than that.

So, as I said earlier, Rockman EXE WS is a “jump-and-shoot” platformer in the same vein as the Classic and X series (et al.), as opposed to the real-time tactical RPG gameplay present in the mainline MMBN games. But it isn’t exactly a 1:1 recreation of the traditional MegaMan gameplay. EXE WS made sure to involve certain elements from the Battle Network games to differentiate it from the rest of the pack. Certain enemies drop Battle Chips after being defeated and up to four of them can be mapped to the Y buttons on the WonderSwan – that is, the second D-Pad generally intended for vertical-oriented games. These Battle Chips can be used and changed from the pause menu, which can be activated any time the “Netto Gauge”, effectively a picture of Netto in the upper-right corner with three waves (resembling a Wi-Fi indicator), is active. It doesn’t exactly fall in line with the mainline method of waiting for the Custom Gauge to fill up, but from what I can tell, it seems to be more accurate to the anime… which makes a lot of sense given the fact that that’s what the game is supposed to be based on.

While the vast majority of Battle Chips can only be used once before being expended, there are various special Battle Chips that are hidden in set locations of the various levels. Some are alternate attacks that replace the Mega Buster, like various Sword and Punch Chips. Others provide passive buffs, like increasing Rockman’s speed (AreaGrab), jump height (AirShoes) and even his defense (UnderShirt). Rockman can also perform Program Advances by equipping the necessary chips – resulting in all of them being surrounded by a red, flashing border – and pressing Down on the main D-Pad multiple times, though this results in all the Chips in Rockman’s hand being unequipped.

Style Changes also show up in this game, though they behave like special weapons from the traditional MegaMan platformers. Players can unlock the five “standard” Styles seen in promotional art and the anime itself: HeatGuts, AquaCustom, ElecBrother, WoodShield and “Saito”. But instead of them showing up based on the player’s play style, they are unlocked by defeating bosses under specific circumstances. But better still, the Style Changes do more than just give Rockman special charge shots and elemental weaknesses like they do in the mainline games, they also boost a specific attribute. HeatGuts and WoodShield increase Rock’s attack and defense as per usual, AquaCustom gives him a faster charge shot and ElecBrother boosts his speed significantly – to the extent where I’d just suggest sticking with WoodShield and ElecBrother whenever elemental weaknesses don’t come into play. The Saito Style gives Rockman increased speed and armor, as well as making the charge shot into his standard one, but it also cuts his health in half.

The game is also unique in the sense that the majority of the stages have branching paths. That’s right, the second through the fifth stages all split in half partway, generally starting in a more generic internet-themed area before a branch splits the stage into an upper and lower path, before transitioning to an area that is themed after the anime episode and the boss Navi at the end. A fitting mechanic, given the fact that the game requires two playthroughs to reach the true final stage, with a boss encounter against the dreaded bug beast Gospel. Likewise, most of the special chips and the Style Changes are split between multiple paths anyway, with the four main Style Changes being unlocked by defeating each boss of Stage 4 and 5 respectively. It’s a fascinating gimmick that absolutely guarantees a replay if the player wants to see the entire game, not unlike Capcom’s Ghosts ‘n Goblins games. Also of note, beating the true final boss unlocks Extra Mode, a boss rush. And collecting the secret chips contributes to the game’s total completion, which unlocks additional goodies.

Honestly, I’d say that Rockman EXE WS is likely the best “licensed” MegaMan game of all-time by a wide margin. But don’t get me wrong, that essentially damns the game with faint praise. EXE WS is a decent platformer, but it doesn’t feel like a proper MegaMan game. And despite how bad that sounds, I’m not trying to be elitist about my perception of the game’s quality. EXE WS’s physics – effectively one of the most crucial elements of any platforming game – feel way off from a traditional MegaMan game, though it is definitely way closer than things like the DOS games and Challenger from the Future. The level design relies almost entirely on memorization and blind leaps of faith to a ridiculous degree. Seriously it would make the first MegaMan Zero game blush. Granted, the game does make various concessions to balance its unfair game design: there’s an incredibly generous save system and it gives the player nine lives to complete every stage, which regenerate each time a new level is started. But that just ends up feeling like a surface level solution to a problem inherent to the game itself

EXE WS’s graphics can be summarized in a single word: functional. It’s easy to tell what everything on screen is and the user interface is clean and clear. The game also makes great use of the WonderSwan Color’s palette to produce images that look like they would be at home on a far more powerful system. Having said that, many of the in-game sprites aren’t pleasant to look at. Some Navis and viruses have weird proportions that give me flashbacks to the odd graphics from Rockman & Forte: Challenger from the Future, the previous Rockman platformer on the WonderSwan line of handhelds. Having said that, the graphics might actually be the game’s best quality overall.

As far as I can tell, the composer for this game went uncredited, though I’ve seen some sources cite Akari Kaida as the game’s composer. Personally, I doubt that that was the case because the music in this game is utterly forgettable. And it’s clearly not the fault of the WonderSwan’s sound hardware: EXE WS uses a fairly decent rendition of the anime’s first opening theme for its title screen. Like, they probably would have been better off if they had just done what happened with Challenger from the Future and just rearranged existing tracks from the mainline Battle Network games. Better still, maybe they could’ve even transcribed some of the background music from the anime itself. The sound effects aren’t much to write home about either, but they do their job far better than the game’s music.

The game didn’t manage to sell many units either. According to our friends at the Game Data Library, all of the game’s sales appear to have been made in its first week: a scant 1,024 sales, making it both the worst-selling MMBN game of all-time and the worst-selling WonderSwan game with anything approaching concrete data behind it. But considering just how many games are missing from their data (including Challenger from the Future, no less!), there’s still hope out there that it wasn’t the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the forgotten WonderSwan. But to make matters even worse, this wasn’t the only platformer designed with the Battle Network series in mind…

MegaMan Network Transmission

Honestly, it isn’t really that surprising that Capcom decided to try their hand at creating a platformer based around the MegaMan Battle Network series. After all, that was how the entire franchise started in the first place. Plus, as stated earlier, Bandai had had the same exact idea when devising a licensed game based on EXE’s anime series. The problem is that clearly, Capcom must have decided that given just how different the Battle Network games were from the Classic and X series, it needed a unique take on the formula to pay homage both to the series that came before it and the contemporary iteration this new platformer would have to be based around.

Enter ARIKA – who you may remember from my retrospective on the Street Fighter EX games from last year – a small development studio made up of several ex-Capcom employees and founded by Akira Nishitani, one of the key figures behind previous Capcom hits like Final Fight and Street Fighter II. This game would not only be ARIKA’s final collaboration with Capcom (as of this writing) but was also the only game they ever developed for Nintendo’s GameCube. The game was originally released under the title “Rockman EXE Transmission” in Japan on March 6^th, 2003, nearly a month after the WonderSwan game. The game would also eventually see release in North America and PAL regions later that year, on June 17^th and June 27^th, respectively.

Despite releasing after the third game in the mainline Battle Network series, Network Transmission actually takes place in between the first and second game. One month after Lan and MegaMan defeated the Life Virus (which is actually depicted on a grand scale in the opening cutscene), life has finally returned to normal for our two heroes. Then one day, Lan receives an email from his friend Mayl telling him that Roll hasn’t returned from an errand she sent her on this morning and she’s getting worried. After a brief search on the Net, they find Roll… who is unable to make her way back home due to her path home being bathed in flames. After making their way inside to see what’s going on, Lan and MegaMan are surprised to see FireMan going berserk in the area. But this isn’t a new ploy by the WWW or even Mr. Match himself, FireMan took a vaccine to protect himself from the mysterious “Zero Virus” that’s been going around, but it turns out that it was just a fake, distributed by the shifty NetNavi StarMan.EXE. Soon, several Navis across the Internet have gone berserk due to the false vaccine and so it’s up to Lan and MegaMan to save the day once again. But just how dangerous is the Zero Virus and what are its true origins?

As I mentioned earlier, MegaMan Network Transmission decides to transpose the basic gameplay style of the traditional MegaMan platformers into the Battle Network continuity – much like the WonderSwan game. In Network Transmission’s case, the game clearly leans very heavily into the Classic series when it comes to gameplay, which honestly makes sense given just how much the MMBN games borrowed from the Classic series in terms of theming and characters. In fact, MNNT even adds to the references by recreating several enemies (particularly ones associated with the Classic counterparts of the NetNavi bosses in NT) from the Classic games as unique viruses in this game. Of course, by that measure, that means that the game relies very heavily on precision-platforming, with very little in the sense of options to use momentum to traverse the various obstacles impeding MegaMan’s path. There is one notable exception: the zipline mechanic from the fifth and sixth MegaMan X game is rechristened as the “cyberbar”.

However, this is still a Battle Network game through and through. The biggest difference from the majority of MegaMan platformers and MMNT is the fact that the game still uses the Battle Chip mechanic from the mainline MMBN games, custom gauge and all. However, this game does handle it somewhat differently. Folders can hold a maximum of 20 types of Chips. But the number of each type of Chip determines how many times the player can use it per “online session”. Collecting additional chips by defeating their corresponding viruses increases the number of uses instantly, but MegaMan can only hold a set number of each type of Chip. Likewise, there’s also a Weapon meter – referred to as “MP” and “MB” interchangeably in-game – which determines how often MegaMan can use Battle Chips at a time as each Chip expends a certain amount of MP per use. Fortunately, this meter replenishes automatically whenever MegaMan’s not using Chips and can be expanded by collecting power-ups called “MemUPs”, which can be found throughout the game along with the PowerUPs, HPMemorys and RegUPs associated with the first two BN games.

Higsby’s Chip Shop and the online NetMerchants also return from the mainline series and generally function identically. Zenny coins of a variety of denominations can also be found scattered throughout cyberspace, dropped by defeated viruses and a large sum is dropped after defeating an area’s boss. The “default chip” mechanic from MMBN2 also returns, essentially making an early bird cameo. The Letter Codes associated with Chips have been removed from this game, likely due to the rebalancing of how Chips and Folders were handled in Network Transmission. By that measure, the game also uses a similar method to expand the Custom Screen’s loadout size as the second game: the player can choose to use all five chips given in a turn, but for every chip they don’t select, an additional slot is given to them in the next hand, once again maxing out at ten Chips at a time. Likewise, accessing the Custom Screen with unused Chips in MegaMan’s position doesn’t discard them, they just return to the menu for later use. Program Advances also return in NT, but they’ve been modified significantly due to the aforementioned loss of Letter Codes. This time, they rely on selecting all of the Battle Chips in a “family” of Chips, like Cannon, HiCannon and M-Cannon to receive “Z-Cannon”. Finally, the Armors from the very first Battle Network make a return, though this time, the game has been significantly rebalanced in their favor. They no longer have their elemental weaknesses, but enemies of a particular element do massive damage if the player hasn’t equipped the correct Armor.

But while Network Transmission attempts to combine the best of both the Classic and Battle Network iterations of MegaMan, it also tries to do its own thing. For starters, the stages in the game itself are linked via the wider Internet, effectively making Network Transmission the closest thing to a proper “Megatroidvania” in existence, even outclassing both the original MegaMan Zero and the ZX games in terms of representing the conventions of the “search action” sub-genre. In addition to the aforementioned weapon meter, MMNT also reimagines the concept of extra lives. Dubbed “Backup Chips” in-game, collecting these power-ups don’t just give MegaMan an extra life, they permanently increase the number of lives MegaMan starts out with per session. Also, the game puts in various unique Battle Chips that never appear in any mainline MMBN game. The most prolific of these are likely the ones that allow MegaMan to use the NetNavi bosses’ signature attacks himself, though honestly, I feel like the traditional summons were more useful in practice. But the game even includes a “Double Jump” chip, which is actually surprisingly more mandatory than one might expect for a game that generally focuses on allowing players to customize their arsenal to play to their strengths. Finally, the game essentially excises Lan’s segments completely: the real-world has been relegated to menu-based map that allows MegaMan to jack-in from various locations, visit Higsby’s shop or fight previously defeated bosses in the “Net Battle Simulator” to grind for Zenny and double-up on the all too important Navi Chips.

MegaMan Network Transmission isn’t a bad game, but its flaws can be difficult to overcome. For starters, the perspective issues that plague most early “2.5D” games are in full force here, making the precision platforming from the MegaMan games that MMNT sought to emulate difficult to parse at times. Another major issue with the game would have to be the balance of its difficulty. Network Transmission is a textbook example of “early game Hell”. MegaMan is armed with a nigh-worthless pea shooter for his Mega Buster and a folder of limited-use Battle Chips – both trademarks of the mainline Battle Network games – but instead of navigating a short-form battle with these tools, the player must traverse a winding road with constantly respawning enemies that serve as bullet/Chip sponges before making it to a boss that absolutely needs Battle Chips to take it out. Of course, once the player gets their hands on some PowerUPs and improves the Buster’s attack power (and unlocks the charge shot), things level off pretty quickly. Not to mention, once they get their hands on more and/or better Battle Chips, the difficulty begins to level out quickly and the game becomes significantly more fun.

Perhaps the most blatant issue I have with this game is that Capcom continued their weird trend of draconian continue systems in sixth-generation titles. Run out of lives and the player is sent back to their last save, again much like the mainline MMBN titles. However, there is a way around this that is so mind-numbingly simple, you have to wonder why Capcom or ARIKA would think to implement it in the first place: just jack out on your last life. MegaMan’s lives regenerate, the player keeps all of the items they collected, and the only downside is playing through the stage all over again, which might actually be easier due to the familiarity with the layout and said items.

But when it comes to comparing the game to Rockman EXE WS, there’s no contest: Network Transmission is clearly the superior game. Ironically, the WonderSwan and GameCube games actually serve as perfect compliments to one another, as both games seem to lack their counterpart’s fatal flaws. But MMNT’s problems feel more like annoyances, while EXE WS’s flaws are far more difficult to overcome. But what I find particularly sad is that some of my biggest issues with Network Transmission are actually self-inflicted due to its place in the timeline. The Style Changes were one of the best parts of the WonderSwan game but imagine how awesome it would’ve been if they were in MMNT instead! Imagine if ARIKA had been able to implement the Navi Customizer as opposed to the far more limited PowerUP mechanic. And even though I’m getting ahead of myself, what if they’d been able to debut the Soul Unison mechanic from future titles? ARIKA would’ve literally been able to beat MegaMan 11 to the punch by well over a decade! If anything, it seems like Network Transmission’s biggest mistake might have been being period accurate.

Graphically speaking, Network Transmission was a significant watermark for the series: it was the first MegaMan platformer that blended 2D gameplay with 3D graphics. MMNT attempts to use 3D models to perfectly recreate the format of old-school 2D MegaMan platformers, in a way that few games at the time sought to do. Even more impressive, it’s the first time the MMBN series was represented using 3D models, with the only other deviation from 2D being a guest appearance for MegaMan.EXE himself in Onimusha: Blade Warriors, as well as in the menus of an enhanced port of a later mainline game on the DS. Having said that, the concept of “modern 2.5D games” was fairly novel back in 2003 and many of the early pitfalls of the concept are front and center in Network Transmission. At times, it’s difficult to gauge how high and how far jumps are going to go – a cardinal sin for any game as reliant on precise platforming as the Classic MegaMan series. The game itself also comes across as a bit blurry in motion, effectively making certain details hard to recognize at times. Having said all that, the choice to go with cel-shading for the 3D models in the game was a brilliant choice on ARIKA and Capcom’s part. Better still, the cinematics that play before the majority of the game’s boss battles are well-directed and a visual treat, even nearly two decades later. In other words, MegaMan Network Transmission has the dubious honor of simultaneously being hard to look at and easy on the eyes.

The game’s soundtrack, on the other hand, is absolutely stellar… to the extent where it feels unfair to compare it to even those of the mainline series. Composed by Shinji Hosoe, Ayako Saso and Yousuke Yasui, Network Transmission’s music leans more into the electro-techno style that Hosoe and Saso reveled in throughout the Street Fighter EX games than the tone the compositions from other games in the Battle Network series. In fact, the trio remix a couple of songs from the original Battle Network and even the anime’s first theme song with their trademark flair. And given the downright “period piece” style present throughout the game’s visuals and setting – essentially predicting a future internet akin to the retro-futuristic predictions the 1950s made about how people would be living in the 2000s – it’s oddly fitting. Taken in context, the game’s whole presentation begins to feel like one of those vaporwave compilations on YouTube. But isolated, it’s still a damn fine listen. My favorite tracks in the game would be “Peaceful Event”, a piece that plays during calmer story segments that take place in the real world; the theme that plays in BrightMan.EXE’s stage, “Electric Town Cyberspace”; “Internet on Fire”, which blends the Fireman themes from the Classic and MMBN series seamlessly; the main boss fight theme “Navi Battle”; “Zero Gravity Area”, the theme from StarMan’s stage and of course, ColorMan’s theme “Game Center Cyberspace”.

The sound effects are a little on the goofy side at times, to the extent where the foley design in this game almost feels like the direct descendant of MegaMan 8. I guess given the digital nature of the setting, it makes a bit more sense that the sound design wouldn’t necessarily be serious. What’s really impressive is the game’s voice acting. Not satisfied with simply using the same basic concept as the WonderSwan game, Capcom also decided to hire the voice actors from the Rockman EXE anime to reprise their roles in this game. Even more surprising, Capcom also managed to keep the vast majority of these voiced lines (with a few exceptions) intact for the Western release. It seems a little surprising that neither the North American nor European branch decided to do a dub with the actors from the anime’s English dub by the infamous 4Kids Entertainment. Maybe they didn’t have the budget for it. Either way, I’m glad they managed to keep most of the Japanese voice acting intact for the English release, as opposed to dubbing it or even just excising the whole thing. It kind of helped the game stand out at the time, at least as far as I was concerned the first time I played it.

After defeating more Navis that succumbed to the fake vaccine and quarantining them to their PETs until a cure can be found, MegaMan and Lan follow a few more leads involving ex-WWW members ColorMan and ElecMan, but to no avail. Worse still, MegaMan finds himself succumbing to the Zero Virus itself, but fortunately, Lan’s father is able to come up with a temporary cure. Eventually, he makes his way to an abandoned sector of World Three’s data that was pivotal in the virus’s creation: the Zero Account. After defeating its guardians and saving an infected ProtoMan, they discover a real cure for the virus and a mysterious piece of data, which they send to Dr. Hikari for analysis. Soon, they eventually encounter and battle with the true manifestation of the Zero virus itself. An almost Navi-like digital creature who refers to itself as “Zero”, the being apologizes for its actions and acknowledges that its viral nature is a danger. But before the cured ProtoMan can deal a fatal blow, Lan’s father discovers that the encrypted data included the means to turn off Zero’s virus-producing capabilities, turning him into the full-fledged NetNavi, Zero.EXE.

Unfortunately, this only causes the true mastermind of this viral epidemic to reveal himself. A man known simply as “The Professor” was a former programmer affiliated with World Three and, using the profits from the fake vaccine scam, he intends to resurrect the Life Virus and bring about a war that would end civilization as we know it. Lan and MegaMan make their way to the UnderNet, but are transported back to SciLab instead and must do battle with PharoahMan.EXE and ShadowMan.EXE (both secret bosses in the original Battle Network) to make their way to the seedy underbelly of the digital world. There, MegaMan must first battle his way through a firewall, guarded by copies of various Navis fought previously before facing off with the revived Life Virus R. After a long-fought battle, MegaMan destroys the powerful virus once and for all. But just when the Professor decides to retreat, the Officials were able to track down his secret lair (thanks to Zero and his viruses) and arrest him. With that, Zero decides to explore the cyberworld and with the world at peace once again, Lan and MegaMan go back to their everyday normal lives.

Unfortunately, Network Transmission’s sales were absolutely dwarfed by the mainline Battle Network games. According to the Game Data Library’s archive of Famitsu sales reports, the game only managed to move just shy of 80 thousand copies in Japan. VGChartz claims that the game sold roughly 170,000 copies throughout North America and PAL regions: an assessment that should be taken with the usual grain of salt, but probably feels the most accurate of their figures regarding the MMBN games. Either way, it seems likely that being a GameCube-exclusive title hurt the game’s sales prospects worldwide, due to the platform’s contemporary unpopularity. It’s really a shame because despite its problems, Network Transmission is a fun take on how the Battle Network games would’ve looked had they gone with a more conventional approach. And despite being the most prominent of the BN-themed spinoffs, chances are it won’t receive any sort of nod should Capcom decide to produce the long-requested Legacy Collection for the series. Oh well, if they decide to do anything regarding various spinoff games, I hope they keep MegaMan Network Transmission on their shortlist.

And with that, we’ve covered half of the mainline MegaMan Battle Network games and two of its four spinoffs. It’s funny, the last time I had to split a MegaMan series retrospective across multiple entries was the X series. And when I concluded the first part of that retrospective, I made a big deal about how I’d covered all of the worthwhile games from that series. Not so much this time around. No, the remainder of the Battle Network series is a rollercoaster with dizzying highs, terrifying lows and creamy middles.

See you next time.