Part 3: No Child Left Behind.

The games are divided into what are more or less 'chapters' of the story, and usually after completing a dungeon it'll be time to head home and get to bed. This saves the game for you, even though you can save at any time from the pause screen.



You usually get a "what the villains are up to" scene, or sometimes a "meanwhile, in this other place" shot. Either way, heavy-handed foreshadowing is the name of the game.



Our next villain, his face obscured by shadow, makes his appearance.



Lan is, as usual, late to rise, so he's subsequently late to class as well. This is to familiarize the player with the layout of ACDC school, which we'll be exploring a lot soon.



We get two emails upon arriving, the first being that Yai called Lan's name and he owes her a favor now. Figures.



Surely this will have nothing to do with what's coming up!



Making our way to Lan's classroom's back door with no further issues, Lan sneaks into his chair.



Which is at the front of the room. Don't ask me how he did it.



Mr. Higsby doesn't look familiar at all!



Higsby is a chip-collecting nerd, to the point where his own description of "hobby" doesn't nearly cover it.




The peanut gallery as a whole comes to the consensus that Higsby is kind of "wierd".



Class gets a brief break after homeroom, and talking to Yai gets you a special hint.




What Yai is describing is called a Program Advance, or P.A. for short. By selecting the proper chips in the correct sequence, you will activate a much more powerful attack. For example, Cannon A, Cannon B, and Cannon C in that order will create the Zeta-Cannon P.A., which turns MegaMan invincible for 5 seconds and grants him unlimited uses of the Cannon chip.



This has no permanent effect on the chips in your folder, they're just used up for the fight as if you'd used them all normally. P.A.s come in two types, "code advances" and "sequence advances".

Code P.A.s rely on different chips of the same code, such as Sword S, WideSword S, and LongSword S. Sequence P.A.s rely on the same type of chip in alphabetical order. P.A.s are the strongest weapons in your arsenal, so including some in your folder design is a key strategy.



Talking to the rest of the class yields this gem. Er. I imagine that this was much less idiotic sounding in the original Japanese version of the game, as chip codes are just the 26 letters of the English alphabet.



Oh come on, what could possibly happen today?



Here's another thing Capcom predicted correctly.



"Smart" classrooms, albeit with projectors and computers rather than a giant computer screen blackboard.



After talking to everyone, who mostly remark on how weird Higsby is, the bell rings and its back to classes.



Higsby returns. Mayl immediately asks where Ms. Mari went.



Sounds entirely plausible to me.



Higsby assigns math drills during study hall, to the collective groan of the class.



Higsby proceeds to jack into the blackboard. Being a Japanese game, everyone who jacks into anything will always strike a pose before doing so. Lan always jumps into the air and holds his PET up, for example. What's weird about this is that the PETs aren't wireless until later in the series, it's even a plot point in the second game.



For the record, Higsby is the gooniest character in the whole series. Hands down.



All proceeds as normal, until...



A giant flashing green error message, of course. Or rather, "Erro", due to screenshot timing.



WWW has an odd way of recruiting people. Remember that email about student crime rising?



This strange, shrouded old man with a haircut reminiscent of Einstein is the leader of WWW, and tends to use a lot of very literal terms for his plans.




As is typical of an evil organization, WWW wants to destroy the world and rebuild it to their liking.



Don't expect to find out until about 50 seconds before the final boss.



And the target demographic is...schoolchildren. Well, get 'em young, I guess.



You'd have to wonder how this cockamamie scheme could possibly work.



The answer is "because NPCs in this series are just that stupid", that's why. You'll see proof, this "re-education" thing actually starts working on younger students later.



Well, at least they thought that bit out.



Everything is online in MMBN, so the doors naturally are all controlled by electronic computer locks.



This should be worth a laugh.



Yai, don't ruin the impending comedic failure, let Dex wallow in uselessness in front of everybody.



And there went GutsMan.



Here's what I mentioned earlier, that other people can have backup copies of their Navis. This can't be applied to MegaMan because he's special.



At least Dex tried, I'll give him that, most of the time NPCs are completely helpless.



Gladly, time to begin dungeon 2.



This really does illustrate how Lan develops over the course of the series. He's not quite used to being the protagonist, you see.