Part 2: It's even worse than I remember.

Well, let's get chasing after ShadeMan. We're in TownArea now, at least, so new swag, etc.



Lark: They aren't birds. Why are they...nevermind. They move around slowly in a circular pattern and shoot WideShots occasionally, which are basically slow, aqua-element sonic booms in that they take up two rows as they fly across the field.



Guess what makes a comeback! Tiny pathways that you can't run across! Unlike 3, however, you don't need a NaviCust program, just a key item, so they're not nearly as annoying. Unfortunately, you need to go on an annoying scavenger hunt later on so you can assemble said item.



Anyway, we finally make our way to the area ShadeMan took Roll.



Capcom of America makes punctuation look like some kind of arcane, secret knowledge that only a select few have any understanding of. Seriously, a translator's entire fucking job is to know this kind of thing, and punctuation is the EASY part. A third grader wouldn't make this many mistakes.

Fuckup Tally: 18.5



It's been a bit of a gap since our last Fuckup, so hey, two for one deal!

Fuckup Tally: 19.5



We can't actually chase after ShadeMan because whatever idiot designed this area neglected to actually connect the platforms. We'll have to Jack-In from the real world directly into the area. Good old pointless gamelength padding. Even LAN thinks this is stupid.



We can't approach the tower base because there's an NPC in the way who warns Lan that the speaker is emitting painful sonic waves. NPCs all over ElecTown are mentioning headaches due to them.



So let's just enter the convenient gate that just so happens to be unlocked now!



At first, entering the area is just fine, MegaMan noticing a tingling sensation before Lan has any issues. That's because the speaker is powering up.



Fuckup Tally: 20.5

You know, when I started doing the tally, even I didn't think it'd be skyrocketing this quickly. For archival's sake, I'll note that after the first update, forum goon Zebrin started a contest to see who could guess the final amount of Fuckups by the end of this game, winner getting a free account upgrade of at max $10 of value, with me chipping in an avatar as well.

We aren't even at the first boss fight yet, and at the start, I figured I MIGHT have hit double-digits by now. My own initial estimate was off by 100%.



Anyway, let's go win ourselves a 'pair' of Earphone. Standard beat-me-and-you-win-it fare, but this introduces something oddly unique to this game.



You can actually fight generic Navis now, instead of Navis sending viruses at you and then strangely being defeated themselves. Why this never came back in 5 or 6 is a mystery to me. Generic Navis come in a few flavors, standard moves/attacks faster with higher HP and deals more damage fair. Although later versions have a few other tricks I think. HeelNavis get their own variants as well.



How Earphone data is supposed to protect MegaMan from the sonic waves (the fact that they shouldn't have any effect on him at all without frying the PET entirely aside) is a mystery to me.



At least the PET doesn't shit out a pair of them for Lan as well, he just gets a free set from the store.



Even with noise-cancelling earphones, this doesn't change the fact that the vibrations were making people's heads hurt. I omitted the screenshot, but that was what Lan complained about, not the actual volume of the sound. So earphones can block soundwaves that penetrate the entire body, sure.

Fuckup Tally: 21.5



Jacking into the tower, we're presented with an extremely annoying, tedious, stupid dungeon gimmick. Might as well start out with consistency.



We need to catch 3 "Cyber Bats". I only realized this now, but you could probably make a drinking game out of how many times these games prefix something with Cyber, Elec-, or Net-. The bats are invisible. The computer has a sonar system for some reason, however, and turning that on will make them visible. They move around fast, and I'm pretty sure that even if I stood in place in their paths and mashed the A button I still wouldn't be able to catch them.



You can bet this'll be a ton of fun, especially with viruses interrupting me every so often!



Melody: Despite their names and resembling music notes, they have nothing to do with music. They'll bounce around for a while, and then jump at the panel MegaMan is currently standing in, before hopping back to their side of the field to start over. Later versions jump in MegaMan's field multiple times.



Did I mention that the goddamned bats have horrible hit-detection? Even if I'm slamming MegaMan's face into them from behind, it's unlikely to register that I'm pressing A to catch them. Gee, fucking wonderful job, Crapcom. Normally I cut the programmers themselves some slack, but in this game, even THEY are going to be a source of fuckups.



Why yes, the text is horribly spaced in this game. Anyway, there's thankfully only 2 areas of this idiocy to put up with.



And the timer goes down even as you pick up BMDs. Thanks, Crapcom. At least I can start pulling out LifeSword P.A.s, though using P.A.s is a hell of a lot harder now without the Add function.



Since someone mentioned that at least ShadeMan didn't sparkle, I was tempted to add glitter effects to him for the rest of the game in GIMP, but then I realized that I was too lazy for that and don't want to devote a second of more effort to this game than is necessary.



MegaMan shows up just in the nick of time, like everyone does for everything.



Fuckup Tally: 22.5

ShadeMan's sonic beam proceeds to paralyze MegaMan despite the Earphone data he got. Mind you, there's no reason why an Internet soundwave should be blocked by a program to block physical-world soundwaves. There's also no reason why a program to block physical-world soundwaves should do fucking anything at all.



And there's also also no reason why Lan going and turning the volume of the real-world speaker down should affect the online ones at all!

Fuckup Tally: 23

Giving it another .5 because that's really par for the course in this series, to the point where that might just be how things actually do work in MMBN.



Rest assured that even with any reluctance on my part, the game will rise to the challenge of cranking the tally as high as possible. Seriously, I'd probably have to use a fucking Long value if I wanted to store it as data.

Fuckup Tally: 24

Archival Note: After the first update, most guesses for the final tally were in the mid-hundreds.



Why the hell is ShadeMan's name abbreviated that way? "ShadeMan" is 8 characters. Actually, wait, there IS a reason for that. Previous games used alpha, beta, omega, etc. to denote Navi versions, which only takes up 1 character space. 4 and 5 use a system that includes "SP" and  "DS"  Navi ranks.



Even though this is technically a boss fight, it's unwinnable. ShadeMan can't be damaged, hitting him at all just makes him turn black and teleport to another panel. A few hits ends the battle.



MegaMan, an opponent you can't damage at all is not a good thing.



Chauder-wait no, I promised to stop calling him that because he's less of an asshole now after 3's character development. Chaud and ProtoMan show up to put an end to this.



ShadeMan is naturally worried by the presence of the, in his own words, "legendary" duo of ProtoMan and Chaud. ProtoMan, despite being an expert fighter with keen attention to detail, omits the glowing chip that ShadeMan dropped accidentally.



Oh, right, Roll could have Jacked-Out at any time. There was no magic CyberIce wad interfering with her signal this time.

Fuckup Tally: 25



Well, Higsby's the chip expert after all, so of course he'd know what this thing ShadeMan dropped is.



And yes, Higsby's chip shop is already open, though the man himself won't be selling anything until a bit later.

By the way, see that Serenade poster? This game actively hates me and is mocking me with reminders of that horrible Serenade Omega challenge. Jokes aside, my theory for why this game is just so horrible on the development side (why the hell the translation is so fucking awful is anyone's guess) is that the scenario writers, Masakazu Eguchi and Hiroshi Yamashita, wanted to make a game as good as MMBN3.

So they decided that the N1 was a good starting point, because everyone liked that in 3! More is always better, so let's have THREE tournaments dominating the game! And so on, the game contains a ton of casual throwbacks to MMBN3. I wasn't able to find any information on whether or not this game was rushed similarly to Sonic 2006 or something, but I wouldn't be surprised if that had a hand in it as well.

Although Wikipedia does note that this game was basically the one that killed the series via justified popularity drop, of course accompanied by a string of [citation needed] tags.



Higsby does noooot like what Lan has when showed the chip.



REMEMBER THIS.



Introducing the poorly-implemented gimmick of MMBN4 and 5: Darkchips. They're eeeeevil! Oooo-oooowooo! Booga booga! EEEEEVIL!



Where 'Murkland' is is a mystery. 4 and 5 both have areas that claim to be Murkland, at mutual exclusion naturally.



Higsby warns Lan that it already may be having an effect on MegaMan.



Mamoru being the Undernet Admin was proper foreshadowing. His hospital name-plate identified him as Mr. Ura, so he had a connection to the Ura Inn.

This, however, is a giant neon sign: "YOU'LL BE FORCED TO USE IT LATER!"



And yes, despite what Higsby told us, we aren't doing the thing that anyone with a single functioning brain cell would have done and detroying the damn thing. We're just going to hang on to it even though Higsby said that it might already be having an effect.

Fuckup Tally: 26

Hell, I'm adding another because that's TWO reasons to destroy it!

Fuckup Tally: 27



Look at me, I'm Oprah! You get a Fuckup! And YOU get a Fuckup! Fuckups for everyone!

Fuckup Tally: 28



This thing is the Free Space battle board. If you link up to Red Sun version, you not only get access to the version-exclusive Navi scenarios in the tournaments, you get access to a special tournament composed of every version-exclusive Navi from the other game. They behave as a mix between their own AIs as well as having access to some of the other player's chips, and their HP is determined by the other player's. Beating the tournament will grant you a 'secret chip' based on the final Navi fought in the tournament, and these chips aren't required for 100% completion, but can be quite useful themselves.

HOWEVER!

Linking the games before you fight all 6 version-specific Navis in your game will break the game entirely. It fucks up the game's pre-scripted order for matching you up with the game's version-specific Navis, and will cause the game to not only crash, but to become a useless piece of plastic. A friend of mine did this before the 1st Tournament in the game (so about where this LP is right now), and once the game crashed, he couldn't load the game at all. It would freeze at the title screen, so not even starting a new game would fix the problem.

That's right. One of the game's selling points is SO broken that it renders the game unplayable permanently. Not even Metroixer's Let's Break Pokemon Blue had any glitches achievable without Gamesharking that would do that.

Fuckup Tally: 38

Yes, +10, for sheer SCALE of this massive, unbelievable Fuckup. I won't do this very often, but a mistake of game-breaking proportions is just not on the same level of Fuckup as a mere typo.



Guess who's savestate-scumming? Bwahahaha! Unlike MMBN2 and MMBN3, do NOT expect me to pull any punches with this shit carnival.



After heading to bed, we get a cutscene of what's going on at NAXA with Yuuichiro. I already mentioned why it's stupid that he's even there at all.



Oh, right, it gets better! That asteroid near Pluto? It's only a few months away.

Fuckup Tally: 39





I actually burst out laughing at the sight of this one.



A man with a custom sprite/mugshot appears, so you know he's important!



Meet Dr. Regal, another blatantly obvious villain. He even has a glass eye like Dr. Wily. Not to mention Jewish sideburns for some reason. The rest of it is slicked back, but is indeed straight, as a later, alternate mugshot and official art reveal.



Some deliberation later, and the group comes up with a shockingly scientifically sound plan.



Yes, nothing involving nukes (japanese media seldom features those for very obvious reasons) or even using the laser to incinerate the asteroid. Just nudging it off course and maybe burning a bit of mass off of it so cumulative changes to the trajectory are made.



I guess Dr. Hikari is also an expert on gigantic laser weaponry for some reason.



The day of the Preliminaries and City Battle Tournament arrives, and Lan naturally oversleeps.



Told you the game stuffs MMBN3 references in everywhere. I didn't notice that Tadashi Hikari poster until now.



For some reason, we have to register with somebody else to actually enter. And they're in Town Area3 no less!



Well, alright, having a shortcut to Town Area 1 makes that slightly less of a hassle.



VolGear: Another virus returning from MMBN1, like the Billy viruses! They stick to a single column, and move up and down it randomly, though never onto the row MegaMan is standing on. Every few seconds, they'll shoot a slow FireTower at us like the Scutz did.



By the way, BugFrags are a whole lot harder to nab in this game than in 3. You can only find them in mystery data like in 2, or from battle mystery data, so there's no easy GutsMan V3 farming this time.



The name I select here will stay with me for the rest of this playthrough.



That'll do. If only it was 4 letters.



So here's the preliminaries. Do 3 random-ass tasks. Sound familiar? A-License exam and the N1 preliminaries!



The first one is just a follow-the-NPCs standard bit. I actually remembered where Mettaur Village is, but no, no sequence-breaking. EVER!



This pathway leads to areas much later in the game, but for no reason whatsoever, this guy blocks it. There isn't even a broken link or anything, it's just "No, we're not letting you go there because you aren't supposed to yet." I hate rail-roading, but it's an RPG, what should I expect?



Mettaur Village is in the Jomon Electric signboard, but this HeelNavi here is beating up the Mettaurs out of annoyance that the 'treasure' is just the data the guy who asked us to do this lost. He makes the valid point that Navis are SUPPOSED to delete viruses, but we know that some benevolent viruses exist after 3's Virus Breeder. So begone!



Yes, they mistranslate it as HEAL Navi.

Fuckup Tally: 40



Right, right, more throwbacks, this time to MMBN2. The guy even mentions the Bug Society, remember that oddly unnamed unique sprite/mugshot NPC?



They're not hard to find.



I forgot to screenshot it, but Lan remarks how this one is huge. Add Entomology to the list of scientific failures, female insects are usually the larger ones. I forget how universally true that statement is, but it's a decent rule of thumb.

Fuckup Tally: 41 (Because I know damned well by now that there's no way in hell they probably could SPELL "Arthropod sexual dimorphism")



The last of the 3 preliminary missions is the usual 3 rounds of battle routine. Also, this introduces EX viruses. EX Viruses are sort of like a V1.5 of a virus, in that they're tougher, but actual V2/V3 viruses don't show up until subsequent playthroughs.



I didn't take the screenshot because I didn't think it would be relevant, but the announcer NPC mentioned how since we arrived, the preliminaries "are now open!", and yet we're somehow the last ones to clear them.

Fuckup Tally: 42



Like I mentioned before, the version-specific Navis have a pre-set order, AquaMan will ALWAYS be the first in Blue Moon. (Which means that yes, somehow, he's going to beat SparkMan, and I won't have to do that annoying scenario this time at leat.)



My actual opponent, strangely, has a generic HeelNavi but a unique sprite/mugshot.

Meet Tetsu. Capcom tries to make him look like a badass, and I hate him for it.