The Mega(man) Battle Network LP!

He’ll set a highly visible trap on the field. If you’re stupid enough (or forced) to step on it, various things will happen, from meteors raining down on field, to a snake landing on your side of the screen, to a Poison Anubis statue being placed.



Oh, right, the coffins can also fire lasers.



And a block will occasionally fall down.

Anyways, that’s pretty much it. Reset time.



Like other BN2 bosses, Aqua styles can rape Pharoahman. Heat styles can work too, but the lag on the flamethrower makes things annoying.






Pharoahman doesn’t blink. I wonder if that’s uncomfortable.



Pharoahman screams as the screen turns white.




Thanks for jinxing us Lan.



With that we can progress to WWW 2. First though…



The path to this guy is blocked by a Protectos battle.




This guy sells some REALLY expensive chips you may recognize as coming from BN1 (except for God Stone).

As a complete side note, as I spoilered much earlier all the Retro traders will randomly give one of these chips (except for God Stone).



One of the nifty things about the BN series is that if you ever get a chip that came from a virus from a previous game that is no longer around, the image on the chip will be darkened out.

I wasn’t kidding back then when I said you don’t get this PMD until postgame.



And now we can take the SS License Exam.



If you’re lucky enough to get a chip from a Scuttle virus, you’ll get a Life Aura.



WWW 2 is one way panel maze.



Yeah, Protectos have virus levels. Protectos 2 will always drop 4000 Z.



God Stone and Old Wood both only work if there’s a hole in front of you. God Stone just drops some stones on the enemy, while Old Wood… damn, I don’t actually remember.

I’m pretty sure Old Wood does more damage the more grass panels there are though.



Anywhere else this would be useless.



Ffffff-

Black my rear end.




Number 4 asks if we’re an Official. In return, Megaman asks where the other three are.

Number 3 will also ask for money, but more politely.




Number 3 asks if we’re the one who beat Number 4.






Our destination is all the way in Under 6.





lolno.



Phew.

I ended up taking a stop in Under Square to refill on Untraps and Full Energy, and I found some very interesting stuff on the Under Board.






Also, more Megaman bashing.



As a side note, the information on the two Under boards will give you hints on how to activate the Gater, Double Hero, Big Heart, and Bodyguard Program Advances.

Number 2 tells Megaman he’s not like 3 or 4.





Either Number 2 is a liar, or the translators screwed up again, because Number 1 isn’t in Koto Area.



He’s in Under Koto.




Number 1’s amazed all of his followers were deleted.





Obviously, Megaman refuses.

The final battle has a new virus from the Dragon family. It can only move in holes and doesn’t do much for a while. But when it attacks…










We don’t need anything else to take the SSS Exam.

*cue Yakety Sax*











*cease Yakety Sax*



Lan yells for the Navi Master to come out.

…Then why haven’t you been helping fight Gos- oh, right, you’re doing all the clean-up. Never mind.






After that, we face Gutsman V2, Toadman V2, Gateman V2, Thunderman V2, Snakeman V2, Heatman V2, and Protoman V2.

All took a LifeSword 3 to the face.







Yeah.






With this I have maxed out my MB at 50.

Note how I’m still not an Official Netbattler.

Anyways, to Under 7!



Being level 100 thankfully makes it a lot easier to run away.



Don’t need to run from this guy though.




Hate those blue clones so much.

As it turns out, you can run in Under 6. You just need to be a high level. Still can’t run in Under 7 though.



As I was heading for the PMD behind the cube, guess who showed up.



*sigh*



FU-



Yeah, the battle didn’t go well.



…Are you kidding me?





I guess that’s better.

As an absolute side note…



Turns out Knightman also has a special chip drop.

Also in Marine Harbor station is a trade I missed.

With this I can now do Double Hero. Unlike in BN1, though, the chip components are no longer awesome enough for me to bother putting them in my folder.

After that, I spent the next hour or so running around completing my Library as much as possible.




When I went back to Under 7 to farm Ball chips (the GMDs there pretty much only drop Ball chips, and there are two Program Advances based around them), I discovered I missed a cube.



Now that’s more like it.



So I checked a guide and discovered that on floor 24 of the Apartment, you can find as a rare encounter.




A Lavagon (fire version of that dragon thing from earlier).



So yeah, the stars basically aligned for me here because I actually managed to get its chip drop first try.



…Was this locked earlier? I can’t remember. Inside was a BMD with a Bug Frag and a PMD with a Guardian O.



Guardian chips are funny. It places a 10 HP obstacle in front of you. If anything hits it, everything on the attacker’s side is zapped for 200 super piercing damage (in other words, it cuts through mercy invulnerability. I think it also cuts through Shadow and pierces Stone Body. Barriers block it though).

This includes Megaman if he hits it.



So that’s pretty much all I can do outside of the WWW area.

Next time: The rest of WWW area!

Current Folder

Fire Blade R x3
Aqua Blade R x3
Elec Blade R x3
Cold Punch B x3
Heat Ball R
Recover 300 R
Area Grab * - REGULAR
Rock Cube * x3
Fast Gauge *
Full Custom * x2
Shadow R
Bubble Wrap R
Holy Panel R
Attack +20 * x3
Attack +30 *
Roll V3 R
Protoman V3 B

Total codes (not counting * code): 2

That WWW area sounds like a pain in the rear... especially those protecto2s... Good thing you should be prepared for them!
... Right!? heh...

It's not very hard as long as you have a Heat/Aqua/Elec ball chip, and something to power them up fast (Life Sword3 for example).

If you don't...

Well, you won't get very far in WWW area.

Alright, time to raid WWW Area.









I guess this one requires you to have a lot of Navi chips.






I’m not sure what the translators were doing here, but this guy isn’t Napalmman’s guard. He is Napalmman.




Lan tells Megaman to be careful of Napalmman.

Napalmman is really annoying.



His gimmick is throughout the fight, a turret will appear on his side of the field and quickly attack whatever is in their row.

These turrets can block attacks and even if you destroy them with breaking attacks they’ll come back. In his final form, he’ll summon two at once.



Napalmman’s main attack is quickly launching three fire bombs on your side of the field. Whatever panel they hit will be on fire for a bit.




And at low health he’ll send a cursor throughout your side of the field. If it hits anything, he’ll fire off his Napalm Bomb.

The real annoying thing about Napalmman is how fast all of his attacks are. Thankfully, like Pharoahman an Aqua style absolutely destroys him.










You know, that reminds me.




After you defeat them and jack out, the navi ghosts of the guard navis of WWW area can be found.

Meh.



WWW 3 is pink for some reason.



The GMD behind this only gave me 500 Z.



Whoops, pressed A too fast. This was another SSS cube. Past this cube is a ramp that goes down to the bottom part of WWW 3, which is blue like the other two areas.



Also to a Protecto2 battle.



This ramp led me back to the pink area and to a warp.

The warp led to a corridor with a SSS cube, a door, and a PMD.

I went to the PMD.



A quick Life Sword 3 +20 won the battle.





This thing is pretty useless in single player mode unless you hack a certain chip in.




Yay.




You need 200 chips in your library to open this door.



Once again, the screen goes blue.

Megaman doesn’t seem too bothered that a random voice out of nowhere is talking to him.






“The Chosen One” thing also shows up in BN3, but it gets dropped BN4 onwards.







I don’t see why Megaman is so surprised. The place is called WWW area, and there are big W’s in the background.




Like Pharoahman, Planetman does not blink. That’s got to be uncomfortable.

As you can see, there are holes everywhere.



The two planets around Planetman will constantly orbit him and shoot things at you.



See that little gray thing underneath the PAUSE? That thing will go up down a column and shoot every row one at a time. You’ll have to destroy it to get it to stop.



At low health Planetman will form a Black Hole and begin sucking you towards the front row. He will also pull debris in from behind your area.

Anyways, one of the things about Planetman is that he actually has four orbs.



However, he can only have two out at a time.

The blue orb shoots a homing Aqua tower at you, the red orb shoots a line of flame, and the yellow orb shoots a slow zap ring.



You can actually destroy an orb if you hit it with the element it’s weak to.



Oddly enough, Planetman is wood elemental.

But I do need to show his last attack. At really low health, if one of Planetman’s planets is destroyed




Planetman will summon his wood element planet. This one will steadily heal him as long as it’s on the field.

Okay, let’s destroy him.








Planetman’s dying screams are masked by a fade to white. Amusingly enough, his last words were “Ayee! Ayee! Ayee!”





Megaman agrees.




Megaman laughs that some things never change. He then asks if Lan is ready to jack out.

Well, let’s get moving.



WWW 3 also has the Mole2 enemy. It acts just like the normal Mole, only it doesn’t take 1 damage from everything, thankfully enough.



The weird thing about it is that it drops totally random chips. Incidentally, the myth that if you kill it and yourself with a Zeus Hammer you’ll move around the over world at 0 health is completely untrue.




Huh, I missed some stuff. Both of these had some Protecto2s guarding them.



See that white Scuttle? If you manage to get a chip drop from it you’ll get Life Aura 2 (as you can see in my chip select screen I already got one in R code).



Alright, just a few more steps and we’re out of here.



Megaman assumes battle position and looks around.






Lan wonders what it is.



Bass warps in.

Bass doesn’t blink either. Were the sprite artists just getting lazy?






The area begins to rumble.












The real Bass is the same as his BN1 incarnation, just weaker and slower.

He has one new move though.




At low health he’ll suddenly start rapidly moving, then appear on your side of the field and fire an Earthbreaker.

This is the only move he has that does more than 150 damage, so if you get Life Aura2 early in the battle you’re basically immune to damage.



If you run out of chips you basically lose the battle. Reset time.

After a bunch of retries all ending the same way (ran out of chips), I gave up and cheated.









Bass warps away.

Lan wonders just what Bass was.








With that, the screen fades to black.

Turns out the game kept a record of how well you did in your first battle against the bosses.

Wow, one more run away for an even 700.



With that, we return to WWW 1. But there’s something new.






Then I went to the 10 chip trader in Marine Harbor. And I got really, really lucky.



Guess who doesn’t have to go beat up Pharoahman V3 until he drops this!



And guess who just completed his Gater folder!

Speaking of my Gater folder…



I spent a while in WWW1 resetting (contents of GMDs change if you reset the game) to get all of the Blade chips in * code.



I got a lot of them. I ended up throwing together a third folder based around the S code.

In any case, now that I’ve defeated Real Bass…



I get a second star on my start screen. There are actually five in total, and the next one I can realistically get…



Requires me to fill out my Program Advance Memo. I’m pretty much done with this except for two.

Zeta Ratton 3 and Omega Ratton 3.

Why haven’t I done these?



I don’t have the right chip codes. I need three letters in alphabetical order to do Zeta, and all five chip codes to do Omega. As you can see, I’m missing M and N. And Ratty3s are only in WWW 2.

The other star requires me to collect every chip in the Library.





The ones I’m missing are Life Aura 3, the WWW navi chips, and Bass V2 and V3.

So yeah, time to go back to the WWW area.





Oh, right, forgot to mention this but remember how I said last update I spent an hour running around collecting stuff? Like before Shadowman V3 freaking stalked me, so I ended up getting a lot of Shadowman V3 chips. I decided to use them.




That could have gone better.



Let’s try that again with Gater.



Coffins got in the way.



One down.

An insane amount of resets later and the goddess of luck finally smiled on m-



*censored*

Okay, screw this.

GAH.

After even more resets…



This bastard finally dropped his V3 chip.



And look at how many Anubis chips I have.

I spent half an hour on this guy.






I did not get a single Elec Blade this entire fight.





On the plus side, I managed to get a Ratton 3 * from a GMD.



And after much trial and error I got a Ratton3 N. So at least I can complete my P.A. Memo now.






That was refreshingly easy.



Alright, I have three stars now. That means I can now get the special VS chips.

Kind of. I’m using an emulator so I can’t actually do it legally, but I can still explain the process.

Basically, if two players with three stars net battle each other over and over and over again, there’s a very slight change that as a prize (in a link battle the loser loses a chip) for a S rank the winner will get:




One of these ten chips.

All of these but Black Bomb, Meteors, and Poltergeist can only be used by a specific elemental style; Heat gets Big Red Wave, Aqua gets Freeze Bomb, Elec gets Sparker, Wood gets Gaia Sword, and Normal gets Fighter/Knight/Hero Sword. If any other element tries to use the chip, it will fail.

This is probably the most annoying part of 100%ing BN2, as whether or not you get these chips is completely random, and you’re not guaranteed to get a new one every time.

Aside from that, Capcom gave out 5 special chips in Japan only.



Gate SP (just Gateman’s Gate Cannon).



And the four elemental Gospels. These will summon Gospel to use its Gospel breath, hitting everything but the opponent’s back column.



Anyways, getting all 10 VS chips will get you another star.

Okay, only three things left to do.







With that done…




Now, on my next style change…

Presumably Megaman’s program can’t handle Hub’s power without Hub.BAT.





I’ll be blunt.



Hub Style is fucking awesome.



I start with all ten chips selectable,



I have a Fast Barrier and a Shield,

I don’t flinch when I’m hit and my normal shot does 10 damage.



And I can put eight Navi chips in my folder.

So yeah, this is every style in one. There are only three downsides. One is half HP.

The other is a programming error. Despite the fact that Hub Style is, like Normal style, Null Element, it can not use Fighter/Knight/Hero Sword.

The last one is more of a technicality: you can only get Hub Style once. If you delete it, or choose to not get it, say good bye.

Now there’s only one thing left.



Bass.

Now that I have 257/260 chips (though it can just be 247/250), as a random encounter in WWW 3 I can face:



Anyways, the funny thing about Bass…



Is the fact he powers up Ball chips really, really fast.




So yeah. Bass Deluxe drops Bass V2, Bass V3, and Life Aura 3.

*much later*



As you may note, Bass V3 is in X code, unlike Bass V2 and V1.

There is a very good reason for this.

Excuse me while I head to the final boss.



How does it feel to face someone with an aura Bass? HOW DOES IT FEEL?!









Gospel didn’t survive, but in case it did Bass would have slammed its column with an Earthbreaker for another 3000 damage.

This game has one more secret. After getting five stars, if I highlight new game and press left, left, right, left, right, left, right, and right…



New Game turns orange.



And I can start Hard Mode. As you can see, I can’t link battle in this mode.



I even get a separate save file!



The thing about Hard Mode is that everything has 1.5x HP and does more damage. That's it.

Annoyingly enough, we still need to go through the tutorial.

Now there’s one last quirk I want to show you guys.

As you may or may not have noticed, whenever I form a Program Advance Megaman has a new Program Advance chip above his head.



It is totally possible to hack your game to give you the PA chip from the get-go.

Maybe I’ll finish Hard Mode someday. Maybe.

If I did, I’d get the Sanctuary chip, which would turn my entire field into Holy Panels.

And if I were playing a Japanese version, I’d get this screen for beating the game:



Next time: Battle Network 3!

Folder 1

Fire Blade R x3
Aqua Blade R x3
Elec Blade R x3
Cold Punch B x3
Heat Ball R
Recover 300 R
Area Grab * - REGULAR
Rock Cube * x3
Fast Gauge *
Full Custom * x2
Shadow R
Life Aura 2 R
Holy Panel R
Attack +20 * x3
Attack +30 *
Roll V3 R
Protoman V3 B

Total codes (not counting * code): 2

Folder 2

Fire Blade * x3
Aqua Blade * x3
Elec Blade * x3
Wind G
Wind * x3
Fan G
Fan * x3
Fast Gauge *
Full Custom * x2
Invisible 3 *
Attack +10 *
Attack +20 * x3
Gateman V2 G - REGULAR
Gateman V3 G x4

Total codes (not counting * code): 1

Folder 3

Fire Blade * x4
Aqua Blade * x4
Elec Blade * x4
Cold Punch S x2
Mine S x3
Area Grab S
Area Grab *
Rock Cube * x2
Fast Gauge *
Full Custom *
Drop Down S
Anti Damage S
Shadowman V3 x5

Total codes (not counting * code): 1

Awesome job, and well played. 3 Megaman BN games down, 3 to go for this thread... Maybe someone will necro it sometime after we're done with this one to do the 4 versions you're not doing.
Aah, one can only dream... Well done!