Mega Man's 15th

In the year 2002 Mega Man would be approaching his 15th anniversary. To celebrate, Capcom would begin working giving the US it's own celebration of Mega Man in the Anniversary collection which would come out two years later. In the mean time we had quite a few things to hold us over.

This would be the year Mega Man Zero would finally launch, and arguably the best Battle Network, Battle Network 3 would also hit stores. I'll be reviewing those games separately, but here's a list of games that came out that deserve mention.






Mega Man and Bass (GBA)
Although it's a port, it's worth mentioning because this was the first time this game was released in the United States. The music isn't as good, and it does have some annoying vertical scrolling since the game wasn't re-sized to GBA's aspect ratio, making an already really fucking game even harder. Still this is your only legal method of obtaining this game in the states without importing the original. It also has a translation change concerning Quint, but I've already beat that into the ground.

Rockman 123 (PC)
This is a simple port of the original NES games, although I believe it actually uses the Complete Works versions. I normally wouldn't mention a port, but this is a Taiwanese only game, and the title often confuses people. It's not worth your time to track this down unless you want to own every version of every game.

Kobun Flies Xmas
There were also a couple of Cell Phone games released in Japan. This one is essentially Kobun Flies? with graphics in a Christmas theme... Wow? Really Capcom? Really?

15 Panel
As if that wasn't bad enough, they also released one of those annoying sliding panel picture games with a few Legends characters plastered on them. The artwork barely even looks like Legends, talk about your waste of money.

Rockman.exe Plug-in PET Game
And speaking of money, you'll need a lot of it if you want to import this LCD game. Shaped just like the PETs from Battle Network and coming with some battle chips, this thing costs $130 bucks to import. Jesus. It's cool looking to be sure, but what a fuck ton waste of cash if you ask me. Later the US would get a few versions of their own with the popularity of Mega Man NT Warriors. A side note, I got a few Battle Chips for this thing when my sister went over to Japan, so that's kinda cool.

2002 was a good year for Mega Man, right before a really bad one in 2003 where X nearly died, the cell phone games got out of hand, and Battle Network was shilled out like you wouldn't believe. Hell, a lot of people even consider Mega Man Zero 2 to be the worst out of the Zero series, although it really is the high light of that year. We've covered 15 years of Mega Man so far, only seven more to go! Coming up next, Battle Network 3, Blue/White.

Mega Man Battle Network 2

Battle Network 1 was a flawed game, but introduced a brand new and fun combat engine and unique gameplay style. A sequel seemed inevitable but Jesus Christ, Capcom pumped out a new one within the same year! As much of a disaster as this could have been, Battle Network 2 proved to be a very good entry in the series, improving upon every aspect of Battle Network 1 and introducing a lot of new elements. Much tedium was removed without taking away to much of the necessary exploration and strategy elements set by the first.

New Features

• MegaMan.exe can run from battles by pressing the "L" button, thank god.
• MegaMan.exe no longer refills his energy automatically after combat, you need to refill it either in combat or with the new subchips system.
• Subchips are introduced and do a variety of things, from healing the player, allowing them to avoid most combat encounters, locate certain enemies and untrap and unlock certain items.
• The pickups in the Network series (called Mystery Data) are color coded. Blue Mystery Datas are one time pick ups that usually contain a battle card or HP-Memory, Green's are randomly generated, and Purple's are locked requiring a subchip to get. They usually have the best items.
• Style Changes introduced!
• The Battle Chip library now keeps track of program advances.
• The post game content has been expanded upon and the game now keeps track of your post game achievements.
• This game features a hidden Hard Mode... although it's not worth your time.
• Bug Fragments are introduced in this game. You collect them and buy certain chips with them.

Story

Since the fall of the WWW in Battle Network 1, a new group has risen calling themselves Gospel and they're off committing their own brand of crimes. Lan on the other hand gets news of the Netbattle Officials holding trials to allow people to become City Netbattlers. Lan and MegaMan still seem to find themselves in the wrong spot at the wrong time, but as they become more recognized

Lan stops attempted bombings of a Dam, an out of control airplane, and saves his friend Yai from a terrorist attack on her own property. Eventually the City Battler position Lan obtains puts him in a more active role in combating Gospel and eventually he locates their head quarters, a radio active building. Lan, having the best parents in the world, goes in to stop the criminals. There, he finds out the leader of Gospel is building a "Super Navi" named Bass who he plans to copy and use to take over the world. Lan and MegaMan take out Bass and the leader of Gospel turns out to be a little kid. The kid, named Sean, flips out and infuses Bass with more energy, transforming him into a giant monster creature (who resembles Treble from the Classic Series). The monster goes out of control and turns up the radiation to extremely dangerous levels and Lan passes out.

Not wanting to miss out on this games bullshit quota, MegaMan.exe syncs himself to Lan's heart so Lan can control him that way... what?

Ok whatever, they beat Gospel, find out Sean had a shitty child hood but he'll reform after paying his debt to society. Lan and his friends go on a barbecue where Lan's father tells Lan that someone was manipulating Sean all along and he wasn't really the one who created Bass. Just then, Lan's teacher Ms. Mari shows up and asks if everyone did their home work. Uh-oh! Lan and MegaMan were too busy to get it done! Cue a corny sit-com laugh track.

The credits roll and then we see the "Real Bass" destroy one of his copies. He curses the humans and vows that one day they will feel his judgment! Dun dun dun!

Post-game content has a little side story of it's own. While out browsing the Undernet (the evil part of the internet, you know where furries live) Lan and MegaMan find a mysterious part of the internet. They go inside and are acosted by a series of guardians, PharaoMan, NapalmMan and PlanetMan. When they reach PlanetMan, he informs them that these trials were to find new members for WWW! Whaaaaa? PlanetMan offers them a position, but of course Lan and MegaMan reject him. After they destroy PlanetMan, MegaMan makes his way out and is confronted by the real Bass.exe. Bass had been watching MegaMan and wants to test his strength. They fight and beat him, but Bass promises the next time he won't hold back. Get used to Bass saying that...

I believe most post-game content in this series is non-canon, although it's hard to say for some of the games.

Aesthetics

While the sprites used for our main cast are mostly the same, the whole game appears a bit sharper and more defined. The environments are more varied and the internet looks a hell of a lot better, varying in it's own looks for the different countries. Bass himself is a little tweaked in appearance since this is his first official introduction and his sprite is brighter than the last game.

There's a lot more animations in this game and MegaMan's different style changes all have unique touches that look real good. Once again the high light of the game is the character design.

There isn't much else to say though as the over all looks of the game didn't change much within the year that the game was developed.

Sound

The theme starts out again with a hard hitting drum and carries the main them over from the first game. A lot of tracks are reused but there are unique tracks for new areas as the game calls for them. I take back my sentiment that the main theme wouldn't be overused as the last few sequences of the climax go ape shit with it. It's still enjoyable but they really don't even try to save it...

Everything else sounds decent as well, with electric sounds going zap, water making bubbly sounds and fire blazing. None of it's amazing but its hard to get anything sounding good out of the Game Boy Advance. I'll try not to harp on this point though.

Design

The main core of gameplay is the same but with more polish. I won't cover the basics anymore so lets get straight into what makes this game work.

First off, we can run, big improvement. This combined with the subchips help in mitigating the combat which can get tedious really fast. Subchips also heal up MegaMan, meaning you need to be a bit more careful this time around although this doesn't hurt the game at all.

The biggest change here is the introduction of style changes. Through out the game MegaMan's appearance and abilities will change based on your play style. If you use a lot of chips, you'll receive the Custom Style which will increase the number of chips you can use. Stick with your Buster, you'll get the Guts style to increase that. If you find yourself using defensive chips then the shield style will protect you. Use a lot of Navi chips and the team style will increase the number of them you can carry. They each come with a random elemental effect, allowing you increased damage against some elements and you taking more damage from others. You don't have to use it for when the situation calls for it, but you'll be finding it all to useful to avoid using. Even if you don't like your style, you can level it up or wait for a new one.

Some of the stages are better this time around, but others are just boring or annoying. The Mother stage is fantastic, asking you to solve riddles to advance and the Gas Stage has you taking your time to utilize the environment. The Airplane and Bomb stages are more or less mazes in disguise and the castle stage is a nice pain in the ass as it steals your money and makes you restart the damn thing over and over. Traveling through the internet is about a thousand times easier with the place of short cuts and teleports through out the web. As a whole this one is designed better overall as it benefits from having the time needed to recognize the flaws with its predecessor.

More side-quests have been introduced with the jobs system where people will ask you to do jobs for them. In battle network 1, there were hardly any side quests.

Post game content has changed to keep track of your efforts in collecting all the battle chips, program advances and even some multiplayer achievements. New chips have been introduced as well under the * code which will work with any other code, giving the player more options to work with when building a folder.

Other changes involve attempts of balancing the folder system. Now you can only have 5 of the same type of card instead of 10. This was probably done for multiplayer more than single player, but they went ahead and introduced a bunch of new game breaking program advances so it's almost a moot point anyway.

Playability
Not much new to say here. As I said in the last review, the problem is the learning curve. This game is a bit harder than the last one as well, so if you didn't figure out the basics of folder building before, you better this time.

Extras

• There is a hidden style in this game called Hubstyle. You need to S-rank all the V3 Navi's, including Bass. The next time a style change occurs, you'll gain Hubstyle. It'll only show up once, but you gain all the benefits of the other styles without an element.
• Want some quick cash? Go to Undernet 5 and save in front of any of the green mystery datas. Open it up and reload if it doesn't give you 50,000 zennys. This will help you buy everything you need as you can keep doing it.
• Unfortunately there aren't many people left in the world still playing this game to trade with. Luckily you can use a glitch to duplicate some of your better chips after you beat the game. Detailed here.
• An easy and devastating folder to build is the Gater folder. Wind G, Fan G, and Gate G to unleash 900 points of damage across the field. This one won't beat Bass though, for that, try a folder built around the Bodyguard PA and add some +30 attack chips. That'll fuck him up.
• Speaking of PA folders, the custom style makes them so much easier to use, so I recommend you go for that style.
• Wood Style + GrassStage = regenerating health. You can exploit this even further in the next game.

Battle Network 2 is a huge improvement over Battle Network 1 but 3 tends to get the most praise as the story actually has a few well written sections to it. Still there's nothing wrong with this game that someone not dead set against changing the Mega Man play style won't enjoy. Of course if you hate Battle Network because it really isn't like most Mega Man games, this one won't change your mind.

Playthroughs
N/A

Mega Man Battle Network

It seems every major video game character goes through a silly RPG phase. Mario's had his share of RPG's, Sonic has just started his own series of Chronicle games and Mega Man has Battle Network. A typical RPG game is just about the furthest thing from an action packed game like Mega Man and Capcom didn't want to just straight up abandon the action for stat management. Mega Man Battle Network introduces a completely unique engine that blends the action and rpg elements together and even if its not your personal cup of tea, it's hard to argue with the success of this series.

Battle Network 1 introduced the whole concept of the series and it worked well enough but when taken with the series as a whole, its design seems incredibly primitive. While this game is fun, Battle Network 2 is ahead of it by leaps and bounds by just polishing away some of the more tedious elements of this game which do start to become apparent quickly as you make your way through this one. But it is really trying something new and different, and the core gameplay doesn't really change even in the coming sequels. Many of the design problems which I will address below are fixed as soon as Battle Network 2, so I tend to give this game a break even for its more frustrating elements.

Story

RPG games have a tendency to focus on story and Battle Network is no exception. Mega Man games tend to have terrible stories and Battle Network is also no exception. Uhg...

Battle Network takes place in a world where networking technology has expanded civilization is many unique ways. Everyone is connected to the internet basically all the time through hand held devices called PErsonal Terminals or PETs. Each PET comes with a helper program that manages the functions of the PETs and acts as the security for them. These programs are called Net Navi's and are fully functional AIs in the very literal definition as opposed to the gaming definition.

Everything is hooked up to the networks, buses, traffic lights, the water works, the power plant and all of the schools just to name a few examples directly from the game. And all of these networks have programs and net navis protecting them.

5th grade student Lan Hikari is the grand son of the innovator of these new technologies and has his own personal net Navi MegaMan.exe. Lan is a big fan of netbattling, the act of having Net Navi's fight each other either for fun or security. Him and MegaMan.exe are constantly training to hone their own netbattling skills because they aim to be the best.

Not everyone likes this technology though, as a group calling themselves World Three (WWW) has taken to cyber terrorism to wreak havoc on the networks by infecting them with computer viruses. WWW is headed by the dreaded Lord Wily.

Throw away everything you know about computers now, because when I say computer viruses, I mean little monsters that literally attack the networks by like... hitting them with pick axes and shit.... right just play along ok?

Through out the game WWW causes random acts of terror that just happen to be affecting Lan who is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lan, being himself a really one dimensional hero character sends in MegaMan.exe to solve these problems. You'll have to stop fires from breaking out of hacked stoves, unfreeze the water works, restore power to the air circulation of a government building and stop an out of control bus just to name a few things.

All of these problems prove to be merely distractions however as WWW is constructing a new virus called the Life Virus, which Wily plans to launch into space to destroy the entire cyber network! Oh no! Lan, with the help of his friends and Net Official Eugine Chaud infiltrate WWW's base of operations... because... you know... that's the kind of work children should do? Lan really has the worst parents in the world...

Anyway, MegaMan.exe gets critically injured after his fight with MagicMan.exe and the only way Lan can save him is to introduce into MegaMan.exe's programing a file called Hub.bat. Are you ready for this plot twist? I don't think you are...

Ok... so apparently Lan had a twin brother named Hub who died very early after birth. Dr. Hikari, Lan's father, decided to take some of Hub's DNA and infuse it into MegaMan.exe's early programing as this would... somehow... make it so MegaMan.exe would be more advanced than any other Navi out there, being able to feel and have an emotional bond with Lan. Effectively, Hub would live on through MegaMan.exe, making MegaMan.exe Lan's brother. HOLD ON I'M NOT DONE WITH THIS NONSENSE IT GETS WORSE!

Ok... so Dr. Hikari was worried that since Lan and Hub were twins that since their DNA matched, MegaMan.exe having matching DNA would some how sync them too closely and actually harm Lan whenever MegaMan.exe got damaged. So what he did was change the DNA by .01%. However, Hub.bat would change it back so that Lan and MegaMan.exe would have the same DNA again... which would some how save MegaMan.exe from dying some how...

Man, I'm actually wishing for Kojima's genetics right about now... Anyway... after you some how swallow all of that, MegaMan.exe heals up and defeats the Life Virus. I'm sure you have many questions after seeing all of that, and to answer all of them, I simply say, "magic." The more you think about it, the less you will enjoy the stories, and trust me, they aren't going to let this whole set of events fade off into your memory in future games.

I should note that this never comes up in the cartoon, but that has its own set of bullshit...

The story is pretty light hearted and even though a lot of the dialog is pretty horrible, you should just take everything at face value and keep in mind that this is a kids game at heart. Analyzing all the problems with this plot is actually more pathetic than swallowing all of it and enjoying it for what it is. None of the characters are particularly interesting, but none of them are horribly annoying either. Even though Lan himself doesn't have a lot of depth as a character, he is charismatic enough to carry the story along, and hell, he was the star of the anime so there is something here to be said for him.

Aesthetics
This is a pretty early game boy advanced game and about on par with everything else at the time. It should get points on just not being another fucking pokemon game as even this early that shit was out of control.

The overall environments are pretty bland looking and uninteresting. The internet areas are just downright ugly for the most part too and there aren't many different settings as it is.

I do like the character and enemy design however. MegaMan.exe has been tweaked in appearance to start off this series and he looks pretty good. Familiar but different. Lan and his friends have diverse looks and personalities to them, even if most of them serve to delivery the same horrible jokes over and over again.

The highlight here though are the Net Navi's. Your favorite Robot Masters from the classic series have all had some redesigns and all of them look great. One of the exciting things of this series is seeing how the characters have come into this one. Banking on nostalgia? You better fucking believe it!

Sound

The theme of Battle Network is one of my favorites and the game knows when to hit it just at the right moments. It pumps you up as you get ready for the climax... unless you die 40 times... then you might not be as pumped up... but it's still enjoyable.

The game remixes it's theme into the other tracks to cover the overall emotional tones of the game. It's really good and that's hard to do with the GBA's really shitty sound chip. The rest of the sound track is great too, as is the standard with Mega Man games.

The other sound effects suit the game well enough, but the Game Boy Advanced is ill equipped to deliver anything spectacular.

Design

The rules of the game stay mostly the same through out the series with a few tweaks here and there as it goes on. I'll explain the general rules in this review here though.

The battlefield is a grid, with a 3x3 section for both MegaMan and his opponents. MegaMan can dodge the attacks thrown at him within the grid, and fire back with his buster. At the start of and during the course of battle, Lan will feed in battle chips to MegaMan into his PET. Battlechips contain extra attacks and support functions for MegaMan. Each Battlechip is coded with a letter. When selecting battlechips you can select up to 5 of them for a single round providing the battlechips are identical in name or letter code. You hold 30 battlechips for combat in what's called your "Folder." You need to optimize your folder to whatever strategy you come up with. If you use certain battle chips in a certain order within one round, you can perform a Program Advance, a much more powerful attack.

You gain battle chips from combat, which ranks your performance during each battle. You receive a ranking from 1-10 to S based on your number of movements, how much damage you take, the amount of time you take to finish combat and how many enemies you take out in a single shot. The higher your rank in combat, the more likely you are to receive a new battle chip. This makes the basis of the entire engine.

In this game you can have up to 10 of the same battle chip in your folder and up to 5 of the same navi chip (a battle chip that calls upon the aid of another net navi).

Exclusive to this game, MegaMan.exe will heal up to full health after each combat, so as long as you win the fight you won't have to worry about damage. MegaMan gains more health by collecting items called HP-Memory and powers up his buster in a similar fashion. This is as close to experience as you will get with this series.

This game has a lot of problems that are addressed in other games. The first of which is comes from escaping battles. Now one of the flaws in the design of this game is that eventually you get to a point where most of the battles are a waste of time for you. There's no experience to be gained and grinding out cash through battling is a really slow way to do it. The only way to escape from a fight in this game is to use a battle chip. The problem is the chip selection in this game is random, so if you want to escape a fight, you need to get lucky and have the chip ready to be selected. Not only that, but if you want to prepare to escape fights, you'll need several escape chips and that just wastes space in your folder you could use for attack chips.

Another problem deals more with post game content. Each Battle Network game has a chunk of the game that takes place after you beat the final boss. Generally to reach the final parts of these sections you need to collect all the battle chips in the game. This means finding a specific enemy and beating them a specific way to get the chip. This can take hours since their appearance is random and can get extremely tedious when looking for certain Navi's like ShadowMan.exe. Add to the fact that running from a fight is a pain in the ass, and you'll be doing this forever if you want a chance to fight Bass.exe, the hidden final boss.

Like I said though, sequels take care of these problems so I don't hold the game as accountable as I probably should for it. What I can do is talk about the individual stages.

Each scenario comes with a network stage for MegaMan.exe to tackle, and each stage has a certain gimmick to it. In this game, a few of them are alright as the Water Works has you sliding across ice, and the Traffic Lights have you switching lights on and off to provide walkable paths. Other stages... such as the power plant can just fuck right off and die. The other thing that is really annoying about this series, but this game especially is the reliance on making mazes more than levels. The whole internet section of the game is just a gigantic fucking maze that you'll have to go through about a billion times and it is so fucking tedious. In future games they tone the maze shit down, and even in the remake they are giving you a map this time, but I hate games that make you walk alllllll the way around in a circle before reaching your destination which is actually a few inches away that are obstructed. This game has so few short cuts to help alleivate that problem to and it only just worsens the need to run from battles in this game.

I feel like an apologist with this game here, but most of the tedium you will experience in this game is reduced in the rest of the series and just about perfected in Battle Network 6. It is unavoidable to say that this game suffers from being the first in the series as by the time you get to the other much better games, this one really does feel primitive.

This game also features a multiplayer capability allowing you to trade or battle your friends... This is kind of an old game though so good luck finding anyone even capable, let alone interested in playing with you. You'll have more luck with Mega Man Star Force 3 or the up and coming Operation Shooting Star.

Playability
Battle Network isn't a hard game to pick up, but the learning and difficulty curves will hit you really hard if you don't learn some of the basic strategies and the game isn't particularly helpful about this either. When I first played this game I did okay for a few chapters and then got blind sided where it seemed every boss encounter was almost fucking impossible, and this could easily happen to anyone who just puts whatever the hell chip that comes along in their folder.

That's one of the problems with this game is that you can't really just use any chip you get and experimentation more often than not leads to failure. This problem is almost non-existent in Star Force, which is why I prefer that series over this one, but in these games, unless you are a master strategist, you'll need to have someone explain to you proper folder building.

When I went through this game after I had known how to build a folder, it was almost stupidly easy compared to the hell I had been through my first run. Comparably, this is probably the easiest game in the series once you know how to really play it, but it can take a while before you get comfortable enough to understand it. I really recommend if you are picking up this game for the first time to check out some strategies online at gamefaqs or something. I'll be listing a few in the extras section as well.

Extras

• The best strategy is to Unicode your folder. That means only taking chips of a certain letter. You should try not to have any more than 2 letters in your folder so you can flow with multiple attacks in a single round.
• If you want a cheap folder, build around a single program advance and set your folder up to do that program advance multiple times. A really easy one you can get early is called Guts Shoot. Use MetGuard G, Dash G and GutsMan G and GutsMan.exe will show up and toss MegaMan at a target for 500 damage. It's an extremely effective against Net Navi's and the Life Virus.
• Power up your charge first, then attack. Rapid is pretty useless.
• Search EVERYTHING. You never know when you'll find an HP-Memory.
• Need cash? Try fighting Dex over and over for quick cash. After you beat the game you can generally find 3000 zenny pick ups in the last section of the internet, but that's a real pain in the ass to get to.
• Some chips are just a pain in the ass to get to. You'd be surprised at how helpful the chip trader can be to get those missing chips.

Battle Network 1 is a decent game but most people put it towards the bottom on their list in the order of which games here are best. Not because it's bad, but because the other games are much better. There's nothing in this game that you'll miss to much by skipping it for even at least Battle Network 2. With the remake coming along, there's even less reason to play this one.

Playthroughs
You do not want to watch someone play this game... trust me, it would be really boring and take forever... then again people watch pokemon let's plays...

The Battle Network Series

With the classic series on indefinite hold, the X series turning into an unplayable pile of shit and the Zero series about to introduce it's own levels of melodrama, Mega Man was starting to lose it's kid friendly setting. Not only that but the Mega Man formula is certainly lacking in innovation churning out the same style of gameplay over and over. Yeah it's fun, but playing it safe only works for so long.

Eventually you have to try something new to survive and Capcom finally decided to take Mega Man in a new and unfamiliar direction with Mega Man Battle Network. Well... then again maybe Capcom was working on something new, they weren't sure if it was going to work or not, so they slapped Mega Man on it to generate some sales. Who knows?

But you know what? Whether or not Mega Man was there in the beginning Capcom managed to put together a pretty good game. That game would go on to a decent series. That series would fucking explode into comic books, a cartoon series, toys, spin offs and remakes. Battle Network, called Rockman.Exe in Japan is the second most popular series in the Mega Man franchise, with only the classic series ahead of it.

Battle Network throws away all the standard conventions of Mega Man games and takes an RPG approach instead. But Capcom didn't want Mega Man to abandon his action roots so they came up with a totally unique engine that blends the two elements together. During the course of the game MegaMan.exe collects powers known as "Battle Chips" which aid him in combat. Tbere are special rules related to how to use the Battle Chips, but over the course of the game you'll get enough to increase your power tenfold. You'll also have your buster and a limited space for movement for dodging incoming attacks adding more action to the game over standard RPGs.

You'll also be able to power up Mega Man by collecting items and programs which will raise his health and give him other special abilities. Later in the series MegaMan.exe would gain abilities more similar to his original counter part in taking his opponents abilities through something called Double Soul and later the Cross System, but thats a ways away at this point.

The biggest change however is the focus on story. Yes, really, Capcom decided to try and write a narrative for these games, rather than a half assed scenario that vaguely gives the player motivation to play on. Are the stories in these games any good? Uh... Listen, it's the effort that counts, and they do have their moments. I mean, Battle Network 3 actually has a really well written ending except the last 5 seconds of it, but we can forgive that because Battle Network's stories at heart are for kids. You won't want to think about it to seriously otherwise you'll ask questions like, "Why don't any of the villains ever just carry guns and shoot Lan instead of wasting their time virtual fighting him?" The answer to that question is that it's a kids game and you need to just go with it.

Battle Network takes place in an alternate universe where Dr. Light worked on making the Internet much better, and Dr. Wily's robotics technology got largely ignored and dismissed. Dr. Light is called Dr. Hikari in this series, which I believe is the Japanese word for Light actually.

Let me allow the introduction from the cartoon show set the premise for you:

"It's the year 200X and it's almost like living in a video game. I'm Lan Hikari. Welcome to DenTech City, where the whole city is linked together through a cyber matrix that connects everything. My friends and I have these powerful handhelds called PETs that let us battle in a virtual world with our cyber warriors. They're called NetNavis and my NetNavi...is MegaMan! There's also an evil force, World Three, that wreaks havoc on the city by infecting the cyber matrix with computer viruses! Along with my friends and their personal net warriors, MegaMan and I are gonna delete these viruses and rid society of all chaos and crime!
Jack in!! MegaMan, power up!"

So you play as Lan Hikari, Dr. Hikari's grand son and his net navi MegaMan.exe. Just about all the robot masters from previous series make appearances all accompanied by new characters who act as their operators. As Lan, you'll take on the majority of the story by interacting with these people, and then as MegaMan.exe you'll take on the majority of gameplay in battling them. There are a lot of familiar faces in this game, each with new designs to suit their new world. This game practically runs on nostalgia and I often wonder if the series would have survived without the Mega Man label. I doubt it myself as the first game is a bit of a shakey start to the series.

I didn't like this series when I first played it, but it grew on me as I learned the details of it and learned some good strategies. What can I say, I am not a strategy gamer. This series plays almost nothing like any of the 2d games however, so your own mileage may vary. If you're going to try it out, check out Battle Network 3 or 6 first to see if you like the series as those are two of it's bests. Battle Network 4 and 5 can just rot in hell though.

The games in this series include

• Mega Man Battle Network
• Mega Man Network Transmissions
• Mega Man Battle Network 2
• Mega Man Battle Network 3 Blue/White/Black
• Mega Man Battle Network 4 Red Sun/Blue Moon
• Mega Man Battle Network 5 Team Colonel/Team Protoman
• Mega Man Battle Network 6 Cybeast Gregar/Falzar
• Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge
• Rockman.EXE WS
• Rockman.EXE 4.5 Real Operation
• Rockman.Exe Operation Shooting Star

Chip Challenge isn't specified when it takes place in the series and really could take place at any time. The Wonderswan game is a retelling of the anime so it follows it's own continuity and Real Operation is a spin off unrelated to the actual events of the series. There's a few others too, a couple of cell phone games and arcade games, but I'm filing those under the miscellaneous games. Operation Shooting Star is a re-imaging of Battle Network 1 and hasn't come out yet.

Now I want to point something out before I get started on reviewing these games. I have replayed each game so far before reviewing it to refresh my memory of the game. I won't be replaying these games all the way through as they take way to fucking long and I do not want to overwrite my saves all which contain post game content and really difficult folders to build. I will however re-beat the game from my save file, grab a few screenshots of different areas, and make sure to get a screenshot of Bass.exe while I'm at it. So expect that at least in these reviews.

If you do like these games, check out Mega Man Star Force as it continues the same style with a few tweaks to the formula. If you like the stories in these games (what the hell is wrong with you?) there is also an English Dub anime called NT Warriors that is... interesting. Hey, the actual anime lasted fucking forever in Japan and Capcom made a fuck ton of money on it so who am I to argue. You can find fan subs online of most of those episodes if you look hard enough.

Mega Man X6

I've often said that any game engine can be used to make a good game and a real bad game. Play a round of Doom and then take a chance on a random fan-made wad (albeit chances are better for a good wad these days), play Super Mario World and then try a Romhack. It's all about design. A weak engine can still produce something worth playing with good design and a strong engine can turn up a pile of shit with bad design. Mega Man X6 is the latter example of design theory.

There are all kinds of problems with this game. Mega Man X6 is a really hard game, but instead of relying on well thought out challenges the game pulls out "fuck you" instant death traps left and right expecting you to memorize every inch of it. Gate's stages really test your patience and are practically intolerable.

X6 also has a terrible story to accompany it. Nothing new for Mega Man, but this one really asks you to take a hell of a lot of bullshit this time. We'll start with the biggest problem, Zero is back. Why is he back? Why does this game exists? Money. X6 had a ridiculously short development cycle coming out exactly 1 year minus a day after X5. Not only that, but without Keiji Inafune on board the project as well. He went off to Inti Creates, which is basically smaller developer that Capcom publishes for, to work on the Zero series.

If you read any article about X5 and X6 they say that X5 was supposed to be the end of the series and Inafune had to rewrite the Zero series when he heard that X6 was coming out. Just about 99% of these stupid sites copy and paste the same article from Wikipedia where the actual source of this rumor is not listed anywhere at all. For awhile I was actually starting to doubt the validity of this rumor because technically the next game Inafune is credited with is battle network, of which he is the producer, which came out the same year and that was an in-house development.

Luckily for you, I have found the quote of which this rumor originates. It comes from an interview with Inafune from the now dead retro faction website. Inafune says this:

"I was originally planning on ending the series at around X4 or 5," Inafune reveals. "I really expected that to be the ending. And so I was all happy... 'OK, done with X5. That series is now closed off, now let's start Zero. I'm really excited to start Zero series.' Here's Zero, you know, he's kind of dead, and you power him up and he comes back to life, right? In my mind, in X5, Zero died. And so I'd always planned to make Zero come back to life in the Zero series, but then X6 comes out sooner from another division and Zero comes back to life in that, and I'm like, 'What's this!? Now my story for Zero doesn't make sense! Zero's been brought back to life two times!"

The site is dead as I mentioned and you can't find the interview anywhere to my knowledge, but there is a good lot of evidence to support that this is genuine so I'm inclined to believe it myself now but keep in mind I haven't seen the actual interview page myself.

As bad as this game is though, it still has it positives, keeping it from being the worst official Mega Man game in the franchise. Trust me, there are a few that are much worse.

New Features

• The parts system has been revamped so that in order to gain parts you now must rescue reploids. Watch out though because the Zero Nightmare can actually turn them Maverick right before your eyes.
• The ranking system is now based on how many Nightmare Souls you collect.
• X gets his own sword through out this game.

Story

"Zero!? I thought you were dead!?"

"Nope!"

"Cool."

LATER

"Sigma! I thought you where dead!?"

"No you didn't"

"Yeah I guess you're right."

The End

Aesth... what you want more than that? Bah alright. Three weeks after the events of Mega Man X5, the Eurasia colony disaster has completely wrecked the ecosystem of Earth forcing the humans underground while the reploids help rebuild the planet. One reploid named Gate goes to Ground Zero (pun intended) where he finds a mysterious circuit board looking object. A week later he's gone maverick and hatched a plan to build a Reploid utopia with him as the ruler.

X has been having dreams related to Zero every night and is then called to the scene of one of the colony clean ups where a giant Mechlanoid has gone Maverick. X battles it but then he sees something in the shape of Zero come down and destroy it. Just then a huge Reploid named High Max shows up and fights X. He determines that X is a Maverick Hunter and stops. He is investigating what him and a guy he is with named Isoc are calling "The Zero Nightmare." Apparently a virus in the shape of Zero is going around infecting reploids, screwing up the environments and creating these little bastards called "Nightmare Viruses" which you will hate a lot. Isoc and High Max send 8 investigators around to world to examine the areas mostly contaminated by the Zero virus. Gee, what an odd number... 8...

Commander Signas sends X to investigate the areas as well but every time he meets an investigator they appear to be controlling the virus instead of stopping it. Furthermore all of the Maverick investigators are former Reploids that a former colleague of Alia built. That would be Gate our villain.

From here our story splits depending on what the player does. If you go out of your way to stop the Zero Nightmare itself, Zero becomes a playable character. He shows up saying "I hid myself away to recover." What the fuck ever Capcom. Anyway eventually Gate reveals himself and you can go battle him with X or Zero. You also can choose to not bring Zero back but that only slightly tweaks the story.

Anyway X or Zero fight Gate and we find out that what Gate found was a piece of Zero's DNA from the crash site. Damn that Zero virus making people reploids go crazy. After he is defeated, he activates Sigma who he had rebuilt for some unexplained reason. Sigma is like "pfft, I can't die" and then Gate dies. Zero and X are literally rolling their eyes when Sigma shows up, as if even they are sick of this games predictability. So you fight an unfinished Sigma who is the easiest fight in the entire game which is really disappointing when you've just finished all the other bullshit to get here.

If X beats Sigma and rescues Zero, the two of them bring Gates fallen body back to Alia and talk about how they are going to build a new future for Reploids and Humans.

If X doesn't rescue Zero, the same thing happens except Zero is hidden from Alia and X but within earshot. He laughs smugly that he has to do something before returning to the Hunters, and X and Alia wonder if they heard Zero. So this ending is Zero just being a lazy fuck the entire game.

If you finish the game with Zero, well this gets interesting... Zero meets up with some Reploid scientist. He feels responsible for all the troubles caused by the Maverick Wars because... you know... technically they are his fault and decides the only way to end them for good is to seal himself away for a hundred years in a capsule to purge the virus from his body. This ties the X series to the Zero series which takes place next canonically. But because Zero shows up in X7 and X8 this scene doesn't make sense until Capcom blatantly said in the complete works books (Classic series coming in October and X series in December) that this scene takes place some time after the X series concludes. In other words they can make as many X games as they want so long as this is what happens at the end of it.

Anyway, the story is terrible and in addition to its very poorly translated as well.

Aesthetics

X6 doesn't really have much in the way of improvements over X5. The levels are more diverse in look compared to X5 and X4 to be sure so I can't fault them there. There aren't a hell of a lot of enemies in this game though. Most of the stages are made up of the Nightmare Viruses, killing any chance of variety. The ones that aren't Nightmares are mostly X5 enemies you've already dealt with.

Some of the bosses look alright like Rainy Turtloid but a few feel all to familiar in design. Blaze Heatnix, Blizzard Wolfang for example feel like rehashes and High Max isn't particularly interesting looking. Commander Yammark feels a bit like a throw back to Gyro Man design wise and the Mother Nightmare is just a couple of Squares... bleh. Sigma looks cool in Zombie form, but he's disappointing in other ways.

X has a new armor in this game that just looks awesome though. The Shadow armor is a black ninja like suit that is completely different from standard X armors and is really the high light of this game, both visually and design wise. However this game doesn't do a lot to distinguish itself visually from X4 and X5 although it's not like it's a particularly ugly game.

Sound

The best part of X6 is the sound track. There are a couple of reused tracks from X5, but only with certain characters themes, such as Dynamo who makes a hidden appearance. Where to begin on my favorite tracks in this game, they're all so good showing that even in their shitty games Capcom dominates video game music.

I think my favorite is Blizzard Wolfang whose whole level is a diamond in the rough so to speak. Commander Yammark's music is also really a nice relaxing Jazzy tune that fits the level well. The boss fight music is good too without being over the top metal thrashing. Infinity Mijinion appears to be a tribute to "The Final Countdown" itself.

Few games I would say would be worth buying strictly for the music (ZX comes to mind), but the sound track in X6 at least add to the small list of reasons as to why this game is playable. Other sound effects are pretty much straight from the X4, X5 sound library.

This game contains the original Japanese intros which sound alright I guess, and the PSX version even has the original Japanese voice acting... which sounds terrible to to an English speaking American like myself who isn't a numb nuts Otaku, not that Capcom exactly did the other X games justice on the voice acting front for the US anyway, but hey Legends was good so it's not like they couldn't have put in the effort. They really just wanted to get as much cash as they could out of this one.

Design

The design of this game is developer vs. player to a point where the game is not fun. Some stages are great as I already stated with Blizzard Wolfang and I enjoy Infinity Mijinion's as well. Others...

Blaze Heatnix's stage is a series of mini-boss fights. You fight the same stupid mini-boss 5 times in a variety of arenas that restrict your movement more and more. The mini-bosses biggest challenge is his size as the bosses patterns are essentially moving in a straight line and firing occasionally at the player. These fights are so fucking boring and you have to do it every time you come back to the stage. Its tedious as hell.

Metal Shark Player's level is a nice way to lose all your hair until you learn how to do it, but CHRIST, parts of it are so long without check points in between putting all the really dangerous parts JUST before one. You are likely to die here a lot.

Ground Scaravich's level is also randomly generated from a set of about 10 or so different make ups all filled with Nightmare Viruses, really annoying enemies that shoot at you and teleport into you. You will hate these fucking things. To make matters worse, there's a piece of X's Blade armor in this stage that you might not find until multiple visits and the Blade Armor is REQUIRED if you want to finish the game with X. You'll either need it to get through Gates god awful fucking stages, or to get the Shadow Armor or Jumper part as alternatives to make it through that stage. What the hell Capcom?

Speaking of Gates stage, there are spikes EVERYWHERE. Just to start the stage you need to set down a block of ice from one of your weapons, jump on it, then with either the use of the Blade armor or Jumper part, scale your way up the stage in that fashion. OR you can go out of your way to get the shadow armor which makes you immune to spikes, but gets rid of your weapons and you'll have to make a really fucking tricky jump in Gate stage 2 if you go with that instead.

Another problem with the stages are the "Nightmare Effects." Essentially depending on which stage you just left, one of the other stages will turn red on the stage select screen indicating that a nightmare effect is taking place. It'll stay like that until you get it highlighted again. The Nightmare Effects are almost always stupid extra pains in the ass, such as little dragon flies blocking your shots, placing extra blocks in your way to fuck up the precision sections of the game and the worst of the worst, the screen goes black and lights up a small section of the window lights up blocking out most of the screen... UGH FUCK THIS NIGHTMARE!

Let's talk about boss fights though. X6 for all it's bullshit, probably has the best boss fights in the series until you get to the final stages. Each Maverick has it's own little gimmicks that make it a lot of fun. I tend to go at the stages in an order that minimizes the bullshit of the Nightmare effects, so I myself usually buster duel these guys. Metal Shark Player despite having the stage I hate most, is the coolest boss, a hammerhead shark who summons bosses from the SNES games to fight you. Awesome! Oh and his weapon summons Storm Eagle for you if you charge it!

The final stages are hell though. The Nightmare Mother as I said is a couple of Squares rotating around the room. Words cannot describe how horrible this boss fight is, check out HideofBeast's run through of it to see it. Next you fight High Max who is just an exercise in tedium. He's not particularly tough to dodge but he has a shield around him that gives him an incredibly small hit box that you have to hit with a charged shot, but that's not what does the damage. You have to hit him with one of X's special weapons or Zero's extra moves to actually damage him. God this fight takes forever.

Speaking of Zero, this game is hell to play with him, especially Nightmare Mother. Zero's design in X4 and X5 made him better at stages but tougher at boss fights. Well since X gets a sword and a suit of armor that makes him immune to spikes, Zero isn't quite as appealing as he once was.

It should be noted that you can power him up all the way this time as the heart tanks are better spread out. A few parts still require X to get though. Speaking of parts, you get them by rescuing reploids, which is actually a fun gimmick of this game and it stuck around for X7. If you let a Nightmare Virus touch a reploid however, they'll go Maverick and you won't be able to save them unless you reload the game. A bit annoying for anyone who wants to 100% the game in this respect, but for what it's worth most of the important reploids carrying things like extra heart tanks and parts are usually out of range of the Nightmares so don't worry too much about it.

This game also has an XTREME mode just like X5 and the bosses and levels will take new moves and setups into account. Unlike X5 though, X6's XTREME mode is actually really really really fucking hard. Don't even bother touching this one until you have a good idea of the bosses patterns and a general knowledge of where the items are.

Oh by the way, Alia's conversations are optional this time! HOORAY!

Playability

This game is hard by design, not by any fault of the controls like Legends 2. One thing that is annoying is you can't cancel a dash from the Blade Armor and on occasion you'll trigger it on accident and send yourself flying off in the wrong direction. That's a real minor complaint though and the rest of the game plays as fluidly as it's predecessors.

Extras

• Boss Order: Forget the weakness chain here. Get the annoying shit out of the way. Commander Yammark, Rainy Turtleloid, Infinity Mijinion, Metal Shark Player, Blizzard Wolfang, Shield Shelldon, Blaze Phoenix, Ground Scarab. This should avoid most of the annoying Nightmares during your normal run through. I usually mix up my runs through this game though so I may revise this in the future.
• You need Nightmare Souls to raise your rank. Raising your rank allows you to equip more parts. Nightmare Viruses won't drop new souls until you switch the Nightmare effects back on their stage after clearing it. The best way to farm souls however, is to get Zero, fight High Max, and then fight Dynamo. Use Meteor Rain on him and it'll stun him, then hit him with a buster shot and he'll drop a soul worth 200 points. You can do this three times during the fight for a total of 600 points per fight. I find the quickest way to get to him is through Infinity Mijinion's stage.
• Speaking of Infinity Mijinion, if you want to unlock Zero as soon as possible so you won't power up X to much, pick his stage first, then take the teleporter when it comes up. You'll fight Nightmare Zero whose weakness happens to be the Z-Saber so he's not an especially hard fight. Congratulations, you'll now have Zero who you can easily fully power up at this point.
• Mega Man Xtreme 2 gets a nod in this game when Alia mentions the Erasure incident.

X6 has a lot of questionable design decisions that make it frustrating beyond belief, but has a few saving graces to make it playable. There's no reason to skip picking this one up since it's part of the X collection now, but take your time with it and don't jump straight into XTREME mode if you value your sanity.

Playthroughs
X6 Minimalist Speed Run by HideofBeast (the most impressive run of this game ever done)

Mega Man Xtreme 2: Soul Eraser

Mega Man Xtreme was a pretty good game, a bit on the short side, but a good game. Xtreme 2 continues what was a good thing, and throws Zero in for good measure. Xtreme 2 takes the game boy series the extra mile over Xtreme 1 though. Where as Xtreme 1 was just short of remixed port, Xtreme 2 features all new levels that, while they work with the themes of the bosses of the games they take place with, are entirely new levels. Like every Game Boy game before it, Xtreme 2 combines 2 different sets of bosses, this one from X2 and X3.

If you recall, the way Xtreme 1 worked was that you would play through one set of bosses, then on the next difficulty you'd play on the others. This one works a similar way, except you play as X through one set of bosses, then Zero through a different set, and then you unlock a difficulty where you can fight all the bosses and switch between X and Zero at any time. This game works from the formula of different play styles that X and Zero bring stemming from the X4 and X5 games, and seems to set the precedent of swapping characters mid level that X7 and X8 would follow with later.

New Features

• You can play as Zero.
• The parts system from X5 has returned, however you buy them like you would Auto's store.
• Later on you can switch between the two protagonists.
• Unlockable Boss Rush Mode
  

Story

This game takes place between X3 and X4. Reploids have been having their programs mysteriously erasing, causing them to cease to function. This is known as the "ERASURE" event and Reploids everywhere are in terror. Hunter HQ intel points to the "Laguz Island" as having something to do with the event, X and Zero go in to investigate with Iris acting as their navigator.

Oh hey Iris, you're going to be killed by Zero soon. Good to see you!

X and Zero investigate the island and are attacked by Maverick mechlaniods. A transmission comes in to Hunter HQ from a Maverick named Gareth who tells X and Zero they must battle his guardians before he'll face them. The guardians are revived Mavericks that X and Zero had battled in X2 and X3. X and Zero split up and take 4 mavericks each. So if you've been paying attention to the X timeline, this is the first time Zero ever does anything remotely helpful. The Mavericks they fight are dropping the programs the reploids had lost. They call these programs DNA Souls... riiiight. X and Zero do the ethical thing and build parts out of them.

Meanwhile we find out Gareth has a buddy named Berkana and they are studying X and Zero. The point of this scene is to show you that there are two villains.

After they defeat the Mavericks, Gareth contacts HQ and tells them they're hanging out at the Reploid Research Lab (which is apparently covered in tons of instant death traps for convince) and will await their arrival. They figure they can take them out one on one and split X and Zero up. X goes after Berkana and Zero takes out Gareth. Despite the brilliant plan of splitting up two individual Maverick Hunters who have saved the world multiple times, Gareth and Berkana SOMEHOW lose. X and Zero are glad they stopped the ERASURES from continuing but Iris wonders if they had really restored peace. The credits roll.

Gee that was anticlimactic huh?

BUT WAIT! Now you must go through the game with the hunter you didn't pick! The story is the same, but the levels are different. Once you do that you unlock XTREME MODE! Now you must fight all 8 Mavericks and you can switch between X and Zero at any time. You get to the end of the game and while X and Zero are patting each other on the back for a job well done, SIGMA APPEARS!

You didn't think we'd get away with having an original villain did you? It turns out Sigma was responsible for the whole thing! X and Zero kinda sigh and roll their eyes as Sigma is once again destroyed forever (until the next game). Suddenly all of the lost reploid data returns to their reploid owners mysteriously. Hooray!

Aesthetics

I don't have much to say here as Xtreme 1 and Xtreme 2 are almost identical in their overall looks. The graphics make use of the Game Boy Color's graphical power over over the game boy... but guess what? Game Boy Advanced is out now... so... I guess that makes this dated when it came out. It's not an ugly game, but the levels aren't particularly interesting to look at. They play well, but are visually lack luster.

I like Xtreme 1's looks better on one small tiny stupid nit-pick. That nit-pick is that there is a cutscene shot of X and Zero where you can tell the artist just altered the sprite of X to make Zero. It literally looks like they traced over each other. It is a nit-pick as I said, but you really have to do that when they are pretty much exactly the same visually.

Sound

Nothing memorable, nothing offensively bad, unless you hated Neon Tigers music before. The themes are recreated with the game boy limitations but none of them were that great to begin with.

Design

X plays just like the last game, but Zero surprisingly plays well for being on the game boy, giving the idea of an 8-bit Zero game for the NES some merit. The levels are ok, but a bit on the short side. They were creative enough to not just straight up copy the levels like Xtreme 1 did, so you do have more reason to check out this one on that alone. It is pretty easy though.

The parts system seems to make the characters really overpowered, especially Zero who already has an easy time as it is. Fully upgrade his Saber and you'll cackle with your mad power. The boss fights are close to their originals but coming at them with Zero changes things up a bit. The fights between Gareth and Berkana are too easy though, really anticlimactic if you aren't playing on a mode in which Sigma is the final boss.

Even though it's easy it's still pretty fun. After you beat XTREME mode you unlock a boss rush mode too! Well ain't that just dandy?

The weapons for X aren't all that useful and the weapons Zero gets during his run are just god awful. However, if you play as X first then start your next game with Zero you'll start with his moves that actually are good. Zero also gains some armor in this game, but the only one worth a damn is the body armor. Zero gets head and feet parts that break blocks... but there isn't a single part in the game where this is even used... what the hell was the point?

Playability

Dash has been remapped to Down + A so it controls like Mega Man's slide. An improvement to be sure, but double tapping still works. This game controls much better than Xtreme 1 and you should have no troubles at all.

Extras

• Boss order: Neon Tiger, Volt Catfish, Launch Octopus, Flame Mammoth, Wire Sponge, Overdrive Ostrich, Blast Hornet, Tunnel Rhino. What? You're not playing on XTREME!? You should decide if you want an easier time with X. If he goes first, Zero gets all his good moves, but if Zero goes first X has more weapons to work with. Zero is a pretty easy game even without his weapons so you might consider going with him first.
• Once again Sigma can only be fought on XTREME
• The Dragon Punch and Hadoken are in this game again on Reploid Research Center 3. Try and find them.
• You can pretty much break the game by using the parts. Equip Buster Plus 1, Buster Plus 2, Speed Shot and Ultimate Buster to make yourself more powerful than god.

Xtreme 1 was a great game, but most of it we had already seen before. Xtreme 2 is an entirely new game with familiar faces. Between the two, this is the better game. It is short but it has replay value, and it's about a million times better than the next 2 X games... oh god... get ready for these two...

Playthroughs
N/A