Part 18: Playthrough after playthrough, there is one constant: Going to ParkArea3 over and over.

Just showing off NumberSoul, move along! Any opportunity to have 10 chips to select from in the series usually marks the point where I start cackling and plowing over anything in my way gleefully.



More retarded crap later...



DarkSword has the effect of doing damage equal to enemy HP, for a max of 500. Now that we're on the second playthrough, one DarkSword isn't enough to delete ShadeMan in one hit, so the scripted battle gets even more ridiculous as the dramatic "oh no, I used a DarkChip!" plot point gets drawn out.

Also note how I could actually pull off a Soul Unison with the DarkSword. Doing this in 4 has no special effects, and you can only really even have the opportunity to try it during this cutscene, because Soul Unisons are off-limits to Dark MegaMan, and when you get into the anxious state to actually make the DarkChips appear, you can't use Soul Unisons either.

This may, however, have been the inspiration for something special and amazingly game-breaking in 5...



Interestingly, I've kept that No-Encounters cheat on, and found a few HPMemory items since the bug. I grabbed them without thinking, sorry guys.

Archival Note: After the previous update, people in the thread wondered if my HP, now brought down to 0, could be sent into negative numbers or even wrap around 65535, depending on whether or not the integer that tracks my max HP in the game is signed or unsigned. For those who (understandably) don't know what this means, a signed integer is capable of going from 0 to -1, -2, etc., while an unsigned integer will wrap around to the maximum value. This is the basis behind a massive amount of glitches in older games.

All things considered though, there's no reason why the anti-cheat code won't kick in a second time. Once it does, it's time for SCIENCE!



Oh fucking no. I'm fairly sure that the game won't let me get MetalSoul this run, because only 2 souls are allowed on the second playthrough, so the order of this tournament will be Crusher, VideoMan, then Flave again.



Riki is a blunt sort of tough guy with an allegedly terrifying face.



Fuckup Tally: 223

Holy shit, that proves it. Capcom of America literally used a bulk Find->Replace on the game. Every instance of Heel was deliberately translated to Heal. So the HealNavi thing was intentional! Why!? That doesn't even make sense!



Anyway, Riki has a bit of trouble in his life, much like all of the opponents who don't directly fuck with us.



That scary face of his makes him perfect to lead gangs.



Specifically, the Mafia. Gospel already claimed itself to be the NetMafia, but I guess that wasn't just a name so much as it was a distinction. The RealMafia is here, and that old lady is the...er...Don? Donessa? Donatello? What do they call a female Mafia boss?



Riki's an okay guy though. He wants to win the tournament and use the winnings to quit the Mafia and open a bakery, rather than take over the Mafia in the boss' footsteps.

An episode of The Sopranos this ain't.



Riki's PET is infiltrated, and thug Navis abduct Crusher, to prevent Riki from winning.

Fuckup Tally: 224

There is no monetary prize from this tournament, though.



Riki's not so tough without his Navi backing him up, wussifying immediately.



Fuckup Tally: 225

No, no you won't, Lan. Then again, there have been more absurd candidates for syndicate leaders for sure.



As far as I would think, you can't exactly just hand in a letter of resignation to the Mafia. Hell, it's the MAFIA. Quitting to run a bakery, while amusingly similar to Kung-Fu Hustle in premise, is suicidal.



Even MegaMan is aware that getting directly involved with the Mafia is a horrible idea. Then again, it's not like the WWW, Gospel, the WWW again, and Nebula ever really did a damned thing. It's like some kind of Venn diagram of stupid, the point where the Capcom Evil Syndicate bubble overlaps with the Capcom Mafia bubble is a mystery.



MegaMan and Lan, naturally, decide to get involved anyway and look around for the old lady to see if they can't at least talk to her. Yeah, way to go guys, alert the Mafia that you know who the leader is and could identify her face if you had to. Fortunately for them, they simply eavesdrop on the old lady and a thug.

This is the Hawk Tournament, so naturally, Crusher is locked up in the back of ParkArea3.



And there's a coup subplot as well.



Fuckup Tally: 226

I've always thought that Capcom just stored all the proper nouns, item names, etc. in contraction form and just concatenated them into the text of the game to save space with any word that would be used multiple times.

This kind of shoots a hole in that, because that would prevent inconsistencies in how names are spelled. Another one of those "No idea what the hell went wrong" Fuckups.



Time for the usual "Run to the Back of ParkArea3 with Some Stupid Obstacle Course" fun. This scenario's spin on the template?



Metal Gear Solid time.



Yup. We have to sneak through the whole route to ParkArea3's back square. Being interrupted by random encounters the whole time, naturally, but of course I still have that code on. A normal playthrough of this segment would be far more annoying due to the random encounters both blowing your focus as well as requiring a second to re-orient yourself, especially if you in the middle of slipping past one of the Mafia Navis.



It's easier than it might seem, I even get through ParkArea1 without being caught at all. The worst part of all this is that there's no way to tell what the Mafia Navis can see. I'm being seen here...



But not here. It's a very fine line that naturally we don't have any indication of.



Proximity has no effect. Doo-doo-doo.



What the cone-of-sight that these guys have can and can't see is just so vague. The ones on patrol are more of a hassle than the ones just standing in place rotating, of course. Saving often is the key to success here, and avoid moving platforms like the plague, because most of them dump you right in the patrol route of a Mafia Navi you can't see yet.



This and the DarkChip are, I think, the only things in the game that the MegaBuster actually can destroy.



Crusher assures us he'll be fine, so MegaMan opens fire. The cage breaks open, Crusher thanks us, and Jacks Out.



.......Hooooly fuck. Wow. Just think of all the times I've pointed out how goddamned stupid it was that nobody ever seemed to do this.

It doesn't do anything to improve it all, of course, it just highlights how idiotic all the other instances were. Lan, I'd be almost proud of you if you could think of this with any sort of regularity!



Fuckup Tally: 227

I didn't know that.



Violence! Child unfriendly violence! Wasn't this what you were trying to avoid, Lan?



The old lady is back, having found out about the coup plot.



There's the usual fade to black, accompanied by either the sounds of rapid fire beatdown, or a semiautomatic weapon. Daaaamn. I think that's the first time in the series someone has actually solved a problem with physical force. She didn't NetBattle them, she either pulverized them, as a wrinkly old lady, or shot them.



Granny Gunfire decides that she doesn't give a crap anymore, and allows Riki to head to his match.



One set of crushed dreams later, Riki is damned to return to the Mafia, whom I'm sure will welcome him with open arms.



I want to draw attention to how much of a Fuck You this is. I've mentioned that Mystery Data gets changed between playthroughs. The game operates on a 3-cycle basis for this, the 4th playthrough will have the same stuff 1 did, 5 will have 2's loot, etc.

Miss a chip or upgrade that's exclusive to a BMD/PMD in one playthrough? Have fun playing through the game an additional 3 times to get the cycle back where it should be, and library completion is required to access the last bonus bosses. It should surprise absolutely nobody that this is a game almost everyone I knew who owned it broke out or even bought a GameShark for.



FUUUUUUUUCK!