Part 22: A Game-Pulverizing Orgy of Codes!

Due to image hosting issues, Ephraim's Red Sun updates may be in trouble. For now, I'll discount the Fuckups in his updates that would have been posted here. And speaking of, Waffleimages is down as of this update, and I've had trouble getting batch uploading to LPix to work. Yes, I've followed all the instructions, Rightload plugin, C++ thingy, signed up, blah. So just for you guys, I uploaded these all individually.

What I do for you people!



Very astute of you, Lan. Kendo is basically a Japanese fencing martial art. Sort of like Epee fencing. And incidentally, my username isn't pronounced that way, it's phonetic, not French.



Yup, another NetFrica scenario. The land of savag-SAVANNAHS.



You saw Mr. Famous during the ending of playthrough one. Towards the very end of playthrough two, we finally actually meet him.



Fuckup Tally: 255

Lan's sprite doesn't turn around when it should, and so...



He turns around a bit late, making his realization of who he's standing in front of a bit weird.



I agree that that was the case with Punk. KendoMan? Not one bit. KendoMan is an extremely straightforward Navi, all of his attacks are some variant of "He hits you with his Kendo stick".



Mr. Famous, as I mentioned in 2, is the usual dumping ground for fan-made Create-a-Navi contest winners, though not in 3 oddly. From MMBN4 on out though, they start spreading out. Like LaserMan, for example. Probably because having more than one contest winner required more than one operator. Although Mr. Famous notes that he has many Navis and selects them depending on the situation, so...eh.



Hey, let's travel across the world casually! Remember that world map I posted? NetFrica is literally on the opposite corner of the map from Netopia.



Generic NPC dude spies on us.



And this asshat gives us another anti-continuity finger by stating how the village is an experiment in controlling nature with networks. Just imagine what could be done if nature could be managed!

Fuckup Tally: 256

God. Not only does this discount that stupid Environment System from 2, it manages to contradict the same fucking game.

Fuckup Tally: 257

Chillski, anyone? And because ColdMan and KendoMan aren't version-specific, both Red Sun and Blue Moon players can enjoy the aneurysm-inducing stupidity.



Jacking into the Net, we find KendoMan to greet him, only for him to interrupt MegaMan, mistaking him for a student of his. MegaMan attempts to protest, but, well...



Minigame time!



There are three kendo training dummies, one each in the Yumland, Netopia, and Sharo areas. Each of them requires a push-button kendo minigame.



Beat all 3, get the license items, bring them back to KendoMan. Easy enough, right?



Wrong. The minigame's equipped with another of the anti-cheat security measures.

To beat the minigames, you strike at the exposed body part by pressing A+Left/Right/Up. Occasionally, the dummy will tell you to block their own incoming attack, and you press A+Left to do so. Depleting the HP gauge of the dummy by hitting it enough times clears the minigame fairly easily.

Normally, they'll attack maybe 1 in 8 actions. The security code, however, makes them attack constantly, leaving me no opportunities to attack myself, rendering the minigame unwinnable. This is probably the worst Capcon's flung at us so far, because the game can't progress without me clearing these, as opposed to the HP/Zenny drains.

I gave Hog Butcher a call. I asked for an all key items code. Instead, he provided a Fuck Minigames code, and warned me that this could wreck my save file. I made a backup, and...

BEAT IT!

MMBN4 is now absolutely broken. The code forces the minigames to work, but has...side effects. One of them is that the game crashes upon entering battle. So in order to make things work, I had to switch back and forth between my cheats, turning random encounters off when I wasn't playing the minigames, and switching to the "Fuck MMBN4" code when I entered the minigames, which is what the occasional pauses are. This is because the codes I've used up until now are Gameshark codes, while Hog Butcher hacks in Codebreaker syntax, and I can't use them at the same time.

This combination does horrible, hilarious things to the game. Even when I disabled Hog Butcher's code, and the graphics returned to normal, the in-game audio permanently broke, yielding only that single, constant, ethereal tone. It's gloriously fucking surreal.



Here you go, KendoMan! I got them fair and square!



Explaining to KendoMan that we're actually his opponent, because now he'll finally listen, he's a bit embarrassed. Don't worry, KendoMan, I'm impatient too.



Yup! If a game punishes you for cheating, the solution is to completely violate it in every digital orifice!



What a nice, short scenario. So of course you know it isn't over yet!



For once, we get interrupted upon entering the colosseum, as opposed to being prevented from entering it period.



5 minutes, huh? Well, time to fly across the world back to NetFrica and go get him!

Fuckup Tally: 259



Mind you, Lan does ask her for a bit more time to find him, and she consents. However, considering that international flight takes a longass time, I'm skeptical that a 'bit more time' is a 10+ hour flight both ways. Remember the airplane in MMBN2? That flight from Netopia to Electopia took at least 10 hours, and Electopia and Netopia are practically next door to each other. NetFrica and Netopia are much farther. I don't think that supersonic commercial international flights were invented and popularized in the year or so in-game since then.

Capcom Geography! Capcom Aviation!



That NPC, who will never receive a name, has taken the NetFricans hostage with ferocious lions.



He's doing this to get revenge on Mr. Famous, who used to be his teacher. Mr. Famous 'sealed off his NetBattle moves'...somehow.

Fuckup Tally: 260

What.

Even if it was some sort of lock on his PET like what Terry pulled on us, he could just get a new one. And given the words used that refer to the NPC and not any Navi, it seems that Mr. Famous has somehow psychically disabled the NPC from being able to operate a Navi.



See? Even a single Mettaur is impossible. Somehow. I do not have any fucking clue, seriously. Even with my knowledge of the series, and my own tendency to try and rationalize, this makes no fucking sense whatsoever. I don't get it. What is this!?



And to top it off, he's pulling an Inukai and controlling the lions with some device within the lion statue. Sure, whatever...



Since he can order the hostages to die a horrible, bloody death any moment, he gets to take away Mr. Famous' fighting abilities! Ye gods, it's like Space Jam. Are we going to have to give him his talent back by coaxing him to touch a glowing PET?



Oh wait no, he just hits Mr. Famous in the balls apparently. With a fade-out-fade-in, of course.



Sneaking behind them and Jacking-In, the lion statue has 4 of these things. Virus battles accompany each, blah blah easy blah.

Fuckup Tally: 261

And I thought there were a few lions, huh, must be seeing things...



Each destroyed transmitter-thing loosens the NPC's control on the lions. Amazingly, he never thinks to turn around, because Lan is all of about 5 steps away from the guy.



Fuckup Tally: 262



Breaking them all apparently makes the lions sleepy for some reason. No, they aren't RoboLion machines or anything, they're actual lions.



They wander off, presumably to nap. Hey, male lions are lazy like that. The females do most of the hunting anyway.



The NPC gets a beating for his efforts.



Oh, we will.

KendoMan is even worse than ProtoMan.

How many Fuckups did I make ProtoMan worth, 3? Oh good lord, KendoMan is shattered. And like I said, the in-game music is permanently broken now. That single tone is going to haunt me for the rest of the game, I'll probably start replacing the audio tracks if it gets boring. Maybe not, it's kind of a cool tone.

I'll only give KendoMan 2 fuckups because it's entirely possible that his AI is like this due to the cheats. However, his behaviour is similar to ProtoMan, complete with me mucking with his side of the field and interrupting one of his attacks that way.

Fuckup Tally: 264



Against all odds, Epee Em continues to play this game, torturing it into cooperating! Shoe's on the other foot now, eh, MMBN4? BWAHAHAHA!



And hey, look who it is...see you in the next Blue Moon tournament, playthrough 2 has nothing left to offer, and playthrough 3 won't have anything new period until JunkMan. After that, we start the postgame, oh boy!