What a breath of fresh air!! It’s so uncommon to find something that feels really original, and I don’t know that Mega Man Battle Network REALLY is that, but I’ve certainly never played anything quite like it.
If not the most famous Mega Man spinoff then certainly the most successful with like a bazillion GBA games that I’m obligated to play and a full anime series that I think actually has a completely different vision of this world but whatever it’s fine lol, Battle Network envisions a world where instead of ROBOTS everybody got really into, like, early 90s-tier internet interfacing, lol. But this is not just the boring evil future that we live in today, no no, in the fun chill future of Battle Network, we operate on Flinstones rules, where essentially all electronics (even ones that don’t rally seem to need them) are operated by little cyber-guys that live inside each device’s personal webring. You want a soft drink from that vending machine? Well there’s a little guy in there making sure that vending machine operates properly. You want to cook something in your oven? Buncha little guys making that thing work. You want your city to have a water filter that takes all the water from the nearby river that the city built atop of and filter it so it’s not seemingly lethally poisonous to drink? A veritable ton of little guys live in that thing, sure would be a shame if...something were to happen to them…
And of course this is a game for nine year olds, so everybody has their own personal little guy as well who they carry around inside of a very marketable little wrist-mounted smartphone-esque PDA. These guys are called NetNavis, and that’s what Megaman is, and all the Megaman characters you expect to see; little guys who accompany their human pals and do stuff for them online. At first it kind of seems like they mostly exist to destroy viruses on The Net, but there’s a very funny bit in the middle of the game where Roll brings Megaman an email and when you respond to the email Megaman has to physically carry your email through the internet back to the other kid’s personal network and physically hand it to Roll like a messenger delivering a missive scroll in 1250 AD. Including the random encounters along the way it takes like fifteen minutes. To get an email! In the future! This girl lives next door Lan could literally walk to her house faster than it takes to deliver this thing.
It’s a very goofy and charming vision of the future, trapped in the exact wrong moment to be making a thing about The Internet, that crystalline moment where things are taking the shape of modernity but the entire system in this game’s idyllic future is modeled on this old style link-based personal web page era of the internet. What was surely cutting edge for exactly one year in 2001 does lend the whole proceeding a sense of the nostalgic idyll, this fantastical, upbeat, utopian version of a version of technology that existed in the mainstream for the briefest moment; combined with the kids who are free to do whatever the fuck they want for the most part, the bright colors, the peaceful town and the mostly low stakes to the conflicts, Battle Network has accidentally become one of those games about Being A Kid In Japan that everyone loves so much, if not to the extreme of something like a Boku No Natsyasumi. It’s one of those with a Saturday Morning coat of paint, a tone it strikes really well even as its villains make threats and commit acts of violence they could never have gotten away with on the Fox Box in 1999. There is a twist at the end of this game that made me LOSE my MIND it’s the funniest possible thing that could have happened but I’m into it if we’re breaking the glass and hitting the alarms in game one of six (plus two spinoffs) then bro strap me the fuck in I’m ready for the ride.
Gameplay-wise I think this one is pretty famous, with it’s combination of reflex-based twitch combat on a 9x9 grid with a deck building game, I think it feels fresh and great 20 years later. It’s not IMMEDIATELY perfect; elemental weaknesses are present but feel like an afterthought, the way your abilities load in between turns feels like it needs a more active element, attempts to force players to strategize their builds via card classifications are either not extreme enough or are too stringent, the encounter rate is HIGH and fleeing is an equippable ability only – there are just things that feel OFF here but despite all that the game is such a blast to play that the prospect of ironing out these kinks is exciting. There’s plenty of room for innovation. That goes double for level design, which is actually pretty bad uniformly but not to the game’s detriment with the exception of one late game dungeon which is possibly one of the worst single levels in any video game? But making all the internet stages just like bland corridors where the simple (OR IN ONE CASE NEEDLESSLY DIFFICULT) puzzles are made tedious by the encounter rate does seem needlessly hostile, I hope they’re a little smoother in the future.
I actually started playing this entire franchise chronologically from the beginning specifically so I would have full context going into Mega Man Battle Network which lol lmao do not do that what a huge mistake, BUT the game is very cool and now I’m a mega man fan so I guess it was worth it? It’s fine. This one’s good.
If not the most famous Mega Man spinoff then certainly the most successful with like a bazillion GBA games that I’m obligated to play and a full anime series that I think actually has a completely different vision of this world but whatever it’s fine lol, Battle Network envisions a world where instead of ROBOTS everybody got really into, like, early 90s-tier internet interfacing, lol. But this is not just the boring evil future that we live in today, no no, in the fun chill future of Battle Network, we operate on Flinstones rules, where essentially all electronics (even ones that don’t rally seem to need them) are operated by little cyber-guys that live inside each device’s personal webring. You want a soft drink from that vending machine? Well there’s a little guy in there making sure that vending machine operates properly. You want to cook something in your oven? Buncha little guys making that thing work. You want your city to have a water filter that takes all the water from the nearby river that the city built atop of and filter it so it’s not seemingly lethally poisonous to drink? A veritable ton of little guys live in that thing, sure would be a shame if...something were to happen to them…
And of course this is a game for nine year olds, so everybody has their own personal little guy as well who they carry around inside of a very marketable little wrist-mounted smartphone-esque PDA. These guys are called NetNavis, and that’s what Megaman is, and all the Megaman characters you expect to see; little guys who accompany their human pals and do stuff for them online. At first it kind of seems like they mostly exist to destroy viruses on The Net, but there’s a very funny bit in the middle of the game where Roll brings Megaman an email and when you respond to the email Megaman has to physically carry your email through the internet back to the other kid’s personal network and physically hand it to Roll like a messenger delivering a missive scroll in 1250 AD. Including the random encounters along the way it takes like fifteen minutes. To get an email! In the future! This girl lives next door Lan could literally walk to her house faster than it takes to deliver this thing.
It’s a very goofy and charming vision of the future, trapped in the exact wrong moment to be making a thing about The Internet, that crystalline moment where things are taking the shape of modernity but the entire system in this game’s idyllic future is modeled on this old style link-based personal web page era of the internet. What was surely cutting edge for exactly one year in 2001 does lend the whole proceeding a sense of the nostalgic idyll, this fantastical, upbeat, utopian version of a version of technology that existed in the mainstream for the briefest moment; combined with the kids who are free to do whatever the fuck they want for the most part, the bright colors, the peaceful town and the mostly low stakes to the conflicts, Battle Network has accidentally become one of those games about Being A Kid In Japan that everyone loves so much, if not to the extreme of something like a Boku No Natsyasumi. It’s one of those with a Saturday Morning coat of paint, a tone it strikes really well even as its villains make threats and commit acts of violence they could never have gotten away with on the Fox Box in 1999. There is a twist at the end of this game that made me LOSE my MIND it’s the funniest possible thing that could have happened but I’m into it if we’re breaking the glass and hitting the alarms in game one of six (plus two spinoffs) then bro strap me the fuck in I’m ready for the ride.
Gameplay-wise I think this one is pretty famous, with it’s combination of reflex-based twitch combat on a 9x9 grid with a deck building game, I think it feels fresh and great 20 years later. It’s not IMMEDIATELY perfect; elemental weaknesses are present but feel like an afterthought, the way your abilities load in between turns feels like it needs a more active element, attempts to force players to strategize their builds via card classifications are either not extreme enough or are too stringent, the encounter rate is HIGH and fleeing is an equippable ability only – there are just things that feel OFF here but despite all that the game is such a blast to play that the prospect of ironing out these kinks is exciting. There’s plenty of room for innovation. That goes double for level design, which is actually pretty bad uniformly but not to the game’s detriment with the exception of one late game dungeon which is possibly one of the worst single levels in any video game? But making all the internet stages just like bland corridors where the simple (OR IN ONE CASE NEEDLESSLY DIFFICULT) puzzles are made tedious by the encounter rate does seem needlessly hostile, I hope they’re a little smoother in the future.
I actually started playing this entire franchise chronologically from the beginning specifically so I would have full context going into Mega Man Battle Network which lol lmao do not do that what a huge mistake, BUT the game is very cool and now I’m a mega man fan so I guess it was worth it? It’s fine. This one’s good.