Part 32: Maybe they're obsessed with darkness because they're blind as fucking cave-adapted albino fish.

What's even better is that Hub.bat is compatible with Geo. Something that fucking relies on 100% genetic compatibility is compatible with the random prick from the future.

The mind boggles at why the hell they handled OSS the way they did, I was looking forward to a revamped LifeVirus or something but noooo. They didn't even arrange the soundtrack like they did for DTDS, and the music in this game is nothing short of fantastic.



Anyway. Time to begin MegaMan Battle Network 5: Double Team DS. A game with way too long of a name, so I just shorten to DTDS. Capcom released MMBN5 in Team Colonel(I'm playing this one) and Team ProtoMan versions, DTDS packages the two games together and adds some new stuff. Including a pretty kickass animated intro cutscene, which includes that shot of Bass pictured above as well as a few spoilers. The game also features:

A (quite excellent) arrangement of the MMBN5 OST.

Several new chips and abilities that will be explained as relevant.

Multiple bonuses that can be unlocked by sticking the GBA games into the DS' GBA slot. 4.5 even includes a small sidequest, which is oddly left intact in the game despite 4.5 never being released stateside. The normal battle theme even changes to arranged versions of the battle themes from the game you've plugged in. There's more, but I'll reveal them later.

You knuckleheads in the thread keep your yaps shut about the  special form  stuff, got it?



With good comes bad, however. MMBN5 is a large improvement over MMBN4, thankfully, and I like to think that the people I yelled at in the credits (especially the apparently vegetative debug supervisor) got sacked. However, it still suffers from a few clingy bits of crap stuck to it. Such as MegaMan here!

This is what stares at me whenever MegaMan isn't online. Am I the only one who thinks that every time developers tried to make the DS render a 3D model it looked like shit?



CanGuard:CanoDumb enemies finally get an upgrade. They're functionally the same at this point, but later versions will protect themselves with a shield when you aren't in their same row.

Nobody cares about the tutorial or opening anyway. Due to an image processing issue, the first six or so images of the game were left in a rather pathetic state, but nothing really lost anyhow. Lan and MegaMan get sent by their mom online to deliver a stew recipe her friend asked for.

Oh, by the way. DTDS has voice acting, done by the same VAs for the dub of the cartoon. It's atrocious and eats away at my sanity far faster than anything MMBN4 had to offer. No, seriously, it's fucking mindrending. The worst part is that MegaMan has a variety of voice clips he'll shout out when in battle.

Allow me to demonstrate what this is like. With more MS Paint-based atrocities.

No, you can't turn it fucking off.



Fuckup TalNo, let's not even start that again. MMBN5 is an improvement, but it still has plenty of issues like MMBN4 did. DTDS, weirdly, seems to have been 're-translated' and had several new typos and other text-based screwups introduced. While we were out performing the obligatory pointless crap that an NPC ally forced on us (why the hell couldn't she just email the recipe?), Lan and MegaMan got an email from Yuuichiro. Gather everyone up and come to SciLab, something cool is afoot!



And, to my great sorrow, I've lost a dear, dear friend that's accompanied me since the very beginning of the thread in MMBN2. I'll be all alone for DTDS, and it'll be a lonesome, slow time.

DeSmuME doesn't have a fast forward button!



This is an entirely valid question. The Idiot Trio aren't good for anything, it's never explained why Yuuichiro wants them to come along as well. I guess he's just excited and wants to show off whatever he's found.



We arrive at SciLab, which in finest MMBN tradition is nothing at all like what it was previously. Entering, a black car arrives. Ooh, how ominous.

As mentioned, this game has a lot of great music. Here's SciLab's.



Considerably less so is...this guy...girl...thing. Fat NPC, let's call 'em? It's a weird little thing, as both MMBN5 and MMBN6 have this one recurring nameless fat NPC who crops up from time to time.



Yes, Yuuichiro, everybody's here. He's very insistent about everyone being present. What's the big deal?



Dex, Mayl, and Yai form as local flies aggregate into rough human shapes and assume their true appearances. It's a program! And it's old. And it does something. Woo.



SciLab's computers are fond of red tape and bureaucratic confirmation checks everywhere, being so important and all, so Yuuichiro has Lan retrieve his ID.



An alarm abruptly goes off. A group of Navis have taken over the Cyberworld! Yes, the entire goddamned internet. Only a few specific areas, but those areas in turn control the surrounding ones. It's still stupid. MMBN5 has really, really stupid as hell writing, the gameplay is marginally better, and there aren't Fuckups and programming errors around every corner, but the plots and situations are just as idiotic as MMBN4.



Wasn't it like, one time in 4 where the exposition wasn't delivered in Solid Snake Mode in the entire series so far? That aside, DTDS is the only game in the series to include a variety of mugshots for each character. It's very well done, actually, and it finally eliminates the 'Smug Lan' problem.

For those reading the LP Archives in the future, Lan being in the middle of the blink animation in MMBN3 after the FlameMan scenario, talking about how it was all his fault, was found amusing by the thread. So much so that W.T. Fits bought me my original avatar of Smug Lan. Shaezerus replaced it later with Anger Impact after the credits rant in MMBN4.



Cue gas bomb. It's kind of an interesting bit of consistency, dangerous gas is always depicted as pink in MMBN, excepting in-battle effects which go for purple instead.



Everybody proceeds to pass out.



Mooks arrive and confirm the effectiveness of the gas. It quickly dissipates enough for their leader to enter without a gas mask...



YOU. It's Dr. Regal, as promised. Of course he survived the Disney Plunge from the end of MMBN4. I see you're still a poorly-motivated generic villain, now with a goatee and ridiculous Trenchcoat of Darkness to nail the point home even further. And jew-locks, for some unfortunate reason. Why yes, Dr. Regal, it is Dr. Hikari, just like your minion said!

I see you still have your monocle in the wrong eye, despite being given a new mugshot.



He orders a minion to take Yuuichiro away. He's been kidnapped. Dull surprise.

...Wait, wait it's actually animated and not just a fade to black? Pardon me while I pick my jaw up off the floor. Still, let's not forget the Conservation of Quality. For every unit of quality, there must exist an equal and opposing unit of crap.



GutsMan, Roll, and Glide are taken away. No, seriously, they won't be seen until the very end of the game.

Yes. YES. YES! YESYESYESYESYES!

FUCK YES! OH FUCK YES! HAHAHAHAAAAA! THEY'RE GONE!



They'd be helpless with them anyway, and we all know it!

Let's celebrate with Nebula's theme music, which is also a great soundtrack.

I trash the writing (mostly by applying the hated logic), designs, scenarios, graphics, and even the programming occasionally, but Capcom's sound teams are always awesome. Even 4 had decent music. I'm convinced the ToyRobo theme was intentionally grating.



And like I said, Conservation of Quality. We just had a gigantic improvement, so now we hit a monster of a wallbanger. Yes, MegaMan is fine. They didn't see Lan. Despite several of the minions looking right at him. And scroll back up a bit to where Yuuichiro got taken away, one of them almost fucking stepped on Lan.

It's an incredibly flimsy way of justifying the rest of the game. Wait, maybe not, "Nebula is fucking stupid" is pretty well-established by this point.



Lan wakes up 3 days later, even getting a set of altered mugshots due to his pajamas. And look, emotions! Once again, equivalence. It's stated that Mayl, Dex, and Yai woke up days before Lan did.

Dex is somewhat plausible, as he's fat as hell and thus the same dose of gas would have a mitigated effect on him. Mayl has no such excuse, and Yai's the complete opposite, being so tiny. And they were all right in front of the gas bomb, while Lan was on the other end of the room.

Capcom Science is alive and well! Seriously, when this LP is over, we'll have gone over every possible academic discipline, I swear. We'll have become masters of science!



Well, time to head online and look for info. After all, we did hear something about the whole freaking internet being taken over. And what do you know, it is!

We also heard something about a special program Yuuichiro wanted to show us, just ignore it for now, it'll be relevant again way the hell later in the game.



Nice to see they recycled those doors from ProtoMan's scenario, eh? The fact that I can say that they just edited that sprite from MMBN4 to make that door, or rather, that I'm proud that they put in the effort speaks volumes.



We kick the HeelNavi's ass and he runs away. Or rather, we kick his pet virus' ass, the generic Navi fights from MMBN4, as I've said, will never show up again. And yes, the MegaBuster is useless as ever, the door has a crapload of DarkPowr running through it. With no leads, we as usual get an email to set the plot back on the tracks. SciLab's main computer systems are under attack! We just have to get past Haruka.



Yeah, yeah, I promise. Not like a burning kitchen, suffocating power plant, the WWW base at Skull Mountain, Yai's gas-filled mansion, an exploding dam, a trap-filled castle, a hijacked airplane, an apartment building packed with enough radiation to make the fabric of reality shit itself, a zoo full of enraged, escaped animals, the WWW Island, or Netopia in general were all that dangerous after all, right?



Arriving at SciLab, the main system controls are offline. It's the Mother Computer situation all over again!



There's nothing stopping us from getting in, of course. Gee, no wonder someone slipped in so easily, if a 6th grader can just waltz in!



Here's the dungeon gimmick. You switch around the tiles to form the correct sequence as dictated by easy hints, much like the Mother Computer, actually. In a break from the typical "Easy maze with obstacles and/or keys" format, a good number of MMBN5's dungeons are more linear paths with puzzles involved. Mind you, a good chunk of them still have the old format, and none of them are all that special save for one particular, incredibly annoying one later in the game.

And yes, thank fucking god, we actually have dungeons in this game. Mind you, a big part of the game takes place on the main internet, including the 'main' gimmick of the game, but more on those next update.



Champy: Boxers. With flaming fists. Pretty cool. They're the motionless sort of viruses, but if you move into their row, they'll teleport in front of MegaMan and punch him in the face. Later variants use a jab-cross combo.



The dungeon is easy, of course, though this particular code is a bit annoying. An animal that lives in tar? The answer is rat for some reason. I was utterly stumped by this when I played the game originally, so it stands out in my memory. Rats do not live in tar! Capcom Ecology!



Pokey: These cactus enemies will slowly move towards Mario. They have sharp heads, so you can't jump on them. Yoshi is perfectly fine with eating their segments, however.



It's traditional for every first dungeon to have Lan need to find something to assist MegaMan. In MMBN1 it was the water gun (yes...), in MMBN2 it was the fan, in MMBN3 it was the light switches, in MMBN4 it was the volume knob. In MMBN5, it's the code to the last of the switch puzzles.



Lan's usual idiotic bravado has perhaps been tempered by experience. The end of the main system features nobody at all, until they question us from nowhere before revealing themself:



It's Colonel! Yes, the guy the game is named after is the boss of the dungeon, Team ProtoMan has, well, ProtoMan. What are you doing here, Colonel? Is there something up with NaviForce?



This will be a recurring theme, annoyingly. YOU DARE QUESTION MY POWER!?

Due to the built in video capture on DeSmuME causing even worse slowdown than the BassBS fight, I attempted to use CamStudio to record. This eliminated the lag, but also wound up screwing up the audio.

Thankfully, the boss battle theme is awesome, so I just played it instead. Although there's a minor bit of silence before the fight and music begin.

Who's Colonel? WHAT IS HE FIGHTING FOOOOOOR?! And what's Regal got in mind for Yuuichiro? Not much of a cliffhanger, but I was concerned about the technical issues surrounding the updates for this game and stopped here. Thankfully, I figured out how to batch crop and resize with Irfanview (after much muddling trying to get the dimensions and offsets right), and future updates will have fixed audio.