Part 61: Burning Rings of Fire

Mr. Buttchin/Mr. Mach is ready to show off a new addition to the series. They mostly only matter from a story point of view, but there will be a few times they show up in gameplay.



Of course we don't, so let's have a useful NPC tell us!



How is that possible? Clap your hands and believe, audience! Sure, you could handwave it as being due to nanomachines or something, but this is Capcom, not Konami! Just run with the fact that CopyBots can shapeshift into Navis when they get jacked into.

Why yes, if this feature had appeared in 4 or 5, I'd have been very hard on it about this. The reason I'm being lenient? This game is fun! And I'm going into it with a self-imposed "no profanity" vow for sheer contrast with the rest of the LP up until now.



Lan and MegaMan haven't been able to actually interact with each other on the same screen since the ending of MMBN3 with the Pulse Transmission System.



CopyBot technology, known for some reason as CopyRoid technology back in Japan, is exclusive to Cyber City. For the Expo, each area of Cyber City is developing its own subject matter and technology to present. What's Central Town looking into?



There you go. CopyBots are Central Town's contribution to the Expo. And just think of the applications of such a technology. Fully automated robot workers animated by Navis! The series comes full circle, don't you think? We started with programs being a huge diversion from the usual robotics fare for the franchise, and here we are back to robots.

Heck, combine Pulse Transmission technology with CopyBots and you get to stick people in robot bodies. Quadriplegics rejoice!



Just wait a few screenshots, Lan, geeze!



And yes, the developers of the CopyBots knew what they were getting into. In a series with cybercrime run amok, is letting any Navi have access to the human world a good idea?



There'd be problems there. Imagine what would happen if ShadeMan got into one of these things.

And I'll say right now he's gone for good, for the record!



So here's the "failsafe" for CopyBots. Isn't it just heart-warming what happens when good writers get hired? CopyBots are unable to use BattleChips or weaponry.



And you, yes you, the guy just ready to comment on this, there! CopyBots have the same physical strength as an adult human.



"Yes" is the proper response to this sort of question. Alternatively, "YES!"



Last time things went the other way around, and it didn't end so well. MegaMan jacks into the CopyBot, and...



You couldn't resist, could you, Lan?



And I refuse to believe this is anything but an explicit MMBN3 reference. Lan said almost exactly this when he used the Pulse Transmission System:



Mind you, he paused in horror as he realized how it was just like his recent nightmare. Apologies for the picture quality, I had to rip it directly off of the YouTube video I posted way back when.



"MegaMan, pinch me, I'm dreaming!"



That doesn't go so well because MegaMan isn't exactly used to moving around in the physical world. Actually, it's odd how the series uses the term "real world" to describe where Lan is as opposed to MegaMan. I've tried to remember to call it the "physical world" throughout the LP, though I'm sure I've made slips. Navis are real, not to mention sentient, after all.



And we all get to laugh at Lan's pain!



We're now given control of MegaMan to talk to people in the class. For the first time, MegaMan's in the physical world. He's a real boy now!



Another first is being able to talk to Lan. Nothing special about it besides that.



The class, interestingly enough, notices two things about MegaMan. First of all, just looking at him it's obvious he's a very unique sort of Navi with extremely precise customization.



And that he looks quite a bit like Lan does, funnily enough! Wonder why that might be.



MegaMan loves it, of course. Talking to the whole class, of course, triggers the next cutscene.



Sadly, this isn't possible for a very practical reason: Battery life. An extension cord would just be silly and be a temporary solution, the point is that CopyBots just can't hold enough power to supply use for more than a few minutes. Anyone who's ever owned a bad laptop will be familiar with this.



MegaMan returns to his PET, playtime over.



Mick decides that now's the time to get started. BlastMan begins his work!



With a crash, rather than, well, a blast.



Well, we all knew the SecurityBots would go rampant eventually. Goons in the thread guessed this would happen more or less immediately. This LP has taught you well.



Mr. Mach is ready to intervene, however. He knows immediately that something is wrong.



The school has an absurd amount of security, but it isn't THIS intrusive!



Fortunately, Mr. Mach is as much of a macho man as he looks. With a black belt in Making This Up-Fu, surely he can valiantly protect his students, chop down a tree using his pectoral muscles, and bust open a coconut with his testosterone-fueled chin alone.



"The Super-secret hundred hand punch! No one in ten thousand years has ever mastered that technique! It was thought to have been lost with the fall of the Shounen empire!"



"What speed! What grace! What impressive cliche use!"



Unfortunately for Mr. Mach, this is not an Anime, and so he winds up flat on his backside after receiving a beating.



We'll have to Jack-In, obviously!



Woops, no, that's not going to work this time around. Remember how a whole swarm of them greeted Lan at the beginning?



Lan, having been in at least 2 dozen emergency situations by this point, remains calm. You can't really jack into a SecurityBot if they're ready to pummel anyone who gets close. What do you think they are, Okuden's RoboBear?



Yes, Mick is smug enough to stand right next to Lan before revealing his orchestration of this.



What's worse than an oven that starts shooting fire because of something messing with the computer?



How about rabid SecurityBots that do the same?



Taunting Lan as being powerless to stop him, Mick notes that it's way too dangerous a situation to be stood up to.



Here's the thing, Mick doesn't want to actually hurt anybody. He didn't intend on Mr. Mach getting beaten to unconsciousness by the first SecurityBot. He's not Paulie!



The whole situation is just a really elaborate scare. We all know kids have no sense of morality and empathy.



While we could use the aquarium in the back of the class, that would endanger Mr. Fishy. Plus, they don't have anything to actually carry the water in and full fish tanks weigh like 50 pounds.



Solution: If humans can't handle the flames to escape the room, use the CopyBot!



That was probably obvious, considering how they were just introduced. Wanna guess how we get the water?

A: Water fountain
B: Pull the Fire Alarm
C: Go to the Bathroom
D: Get the Bucket
E: Obtain a Super Soaker
F: Cloud seeding

And the answer is...



D: Get the Bucket! Bet you'd forgotten about that. For the record, the water fountains are malfunctioning. And given this is still the MMBN series, I wouldn't be surprised one bit if the Fire Alarm was controlled by the same computer the SecurityBots are.



Yes! Got the screenshot! Unlike most of the other games, MMBN6 is packed full of situational sprites. No more "fade to black with sound effects" garbage. Mr. Mach's bludgeoning was arguably either for dramatic, ratings, or comedic purposes.



The CopyBot is out of power now because MegaMan's used it twice without letting it recharge. And before you have any ideas of horrible CopyBot battery puzzles ala the Power Plant from MMBN1, no, the game never does that. The batteries run out whenever convenient for the plot.



Mr. Mach is regaining consciousness, but is in no shape to do anything here. The SecurityBots are being controlled from the Teacher's Room, remember how Mr. Mach was standing in front of it when we first met him? Mick's there.



Score. Let's settle things with Mick now!



And this can only be a good sign. You know, high my list of priorities if I ever get control of a squadron of robots that have no qualms with beating someone into unconsciousness is "making sure I can control them".



Bit off more than he can chew? Big time. Mick really doesn't want to hurt anybody for real.



Considering that the walls are on fire, now I'm actually convinced that the sprinklers and Fire Alarm are controlled by computers that have been taken over by BlastMan. This would not be the silliest thing we've seen. By far!



First the "SecurityBots controlled by a wannabe punk 6th grader" situation got worse with the addition of gratuitous amounts of fire. Now the "Fire-breathing robots controlled by said 6th grader" situation is likewise going to get worse, evolving into "Fire-breathing robots controlled by BlastMan."



This is going to be effective, I'm sure.



Ah, the best way to make an idiot out of somebody. Give them what they say they want. Exactly what they say they want.



At least Mick didn't have a monkey's paw or something.



Fire-breathing robots never tend to stop at just scaring people.



Mick was, of course, never in control of this at all. BlastMan just needed a student's aid to get past the school security, I imagine. How he got into Mick's PET is currently a mystery.



Dungeon time. You know, in retrospect, I should have called them "systems" instead of "dungeons". It'd be weird to change now.



Got you this time!



Welcome to the first dungeon of MMBN6. MMBN6 breaks series tradition big time here, the areas aren't just "navigate a maze which may or may not have some form of keys and locks to handle as well". MMBN5 did that as well, with multiple gimmicks functioning as the lock-and-key format.



MMBN6 improves further on that, each dungeon being unique. The first one isn't much of a good example of this, however, it's more like something you'd see in MMBN5.



See that giant wall of fire right there? Throughout the area there are several programs that are set on fire. Yes, the fairly cute little NPC programs. Ablaze. To get rid of the firewall, so to speak, you need to rescue them all.



With this! The program we're speaking to is heat-resistant. Actually, this program might very well be in charge of the fire alarm normally!



And here's the real gimmick to the dungeon. BlastMan shoots fire all over the place from one direction at a time constantly while you navigate the place.



The direction will always be telegraphed a few seconds early by these cinders. The direction they fly in is the direction the fires will.



BlastMan means business. You know, it's fitting that the first and the last games of the series both open up with a fire Navi enemy. The only thing that stops the fireballs, as you can see, are the iron blocks placed throughout the dungeon.



I could swear they re-used the "MegaMan's on fire" sprite and animation from MMBN4, though. Oh well, it was funny enough to belong in a better game. MegaMan takes 10 damage or so if you get hit by the fireballs.



The burning programs are kind of hilarious, but that might just be me.



"Stop Drop And Roll" just isn't as effective in Cyberworld. So it becomes "Shoot them in the face with water".



There's an HPMemory in the area. Broken Loose showed all the pickups in his last update, so I'm not too worried about missing things, but at the same time, I get the feeling that it's highly annoying to have to cover all of those and stitch them into one image. Also, the paths in the area all end in boxing gloves or oven mitts.



As usual, I won't be showing the whole layout of the dungeon. Besides, it's not like these areas are actually hard to navigate, let alone the first in the game.



Rule of Three applies to the first area. That's all of them!



After all 3 of them have been extinguished, we can move on. BlastMan continues to mock. He's full of hot air. Wait until you actually see the fight with him, it's a gas.



Area 2 is the last area of this fairly short dungeon, but it's even more dangerous than Area 1.



Choose your own Let's Play! You can read three possible comments I couldn't decide between for this screenshot!

Option 1: "I'm on flames!"

Option 2: I fell into a burning ring of fire...

Option 3: Case in point. You know, almost exactly this happened in Lan's oven in MMBN1. It was resolved by Lan getting his Not-A-Super-Soaker and fixing the oven computer by inundating it with water. Yeah.



Just like in MMBN1, it's up to Lan to save MegaMan by spraying the computer with water!



Of course, we actually need a Navi to turn on the fire extinguisher, this is MMBN. The only option is Mick's Navi, but he ran away!



Lan berates Mick at first for not knowing his Navi well enough to have some idea of where he would be.



Mick states that his Navi is a big worrywart, so he's probably nearby, watching.



Your cue is the brightly glowing orange monitor.



You'd think Mick had cheated on his girlfriend or something by the way the Navi reacts!



They aren't in the mood to reconcile at all.



Fat chance at this point. They continue bickering.



Mick, stop being a little dork and focus on the problem at hand!



The building is on fire!



Mick is on fire!



Mick's Navi pulls through and activates the extinguisher to save Mick!



Yes, despite having his pants on fire, Mick is fine. The game more or less jokes that you shouldn't be thinking about that.



Lan didn't really do a whole lot there. A rare instance of Lan getting too much credit for his actions!



Basically, Mick and his Navi can both be summed up like this. "I-I don't really like you...idiot..."




Back to the hilarious flaming programs! The layout of the area is even more simple than the last one, all of the programs can be found by following the paths that extend out from the central platform.



This may actually be a Rapture joke that the translators slipped past the ratings board!



And this one's having a near-death experience.



4 for 4! That's the dungeon!



Before a boss fight, at the end of any dungeon, there's always a skull platform to denote "Hey! Save here! Boss battle ahead!" to the player.



Time to fight BlastMan. Since MMBN6 is the last game and such fun, I'm giving overviews of all the bosses attacks, much like I did with MMBN3. This time with pictures! But I'll be naming the attacks myself because looking the official names up on GameFAQs made this a pain in the ass every time in MMBN3.



Crotch Blower: As an intro boss, all of his attacks get a massive amount of telegraphing. BlastMan will pause for a second, catch on fire, and then shoot this down the row.

And "Blower" was the name of the fire-elemental Tornado chip from MMBN2. My terrible puns continue.



We Didn't Feel Like Making Yet Another Fire Sprite: BlastMan throws an explosion down the row. This attack is incredibly lazy and incredibly easy to avoid.

BlastMan has a third attack, which I was unable to get a screenshot of. The idiot just refused to use it! See those iron blocks on the field, just like the ones in the dungeon? He'll throw fireballs down all three rows or columns from a given direction telegraphed by the cinders. It's a nice bit of continuity, averting the usual "Well why can't they do that in battle!?" question.



BlastMan is arguably the easiest intro boss in the entire series. He has 400 HP, but the great chips the game hands over to you make it trivial. And all but one of his attacks just travel down a single row. Seriously, it is not hard to get an S-rank on this guy the first time you fight him.



BlastMan's true operator is unknown for now. Apparently, he's ferocious enough to intimidate BlastMan.



Oh, by the way, BlastMan is surviving. He's escaping. He's not exploding even though we beat him in battle. BlastMan can take a beating, I'll give him that.



Despite that, the SecurityBots shut down. The school is saved! Not a bad first day of school for Lan, don't you think?



BlastMan gets all the blame, having manipulated Mick, who made it clear he never wanted it to go this far. And really, Mick did help...well, Mick's NAVI helped resolve the situation in the end.



Survey says...



No.



And Mick does admit that he's been wrong to give Lan so much trouble just for being new.




Aaand I'll cut the update there.