Part 10: Capcom Automobile Mechanics!

Wily mutters a little, wondering something about Lan.



Cut to Lan receiving a message from Mayl. Delivered by Roll for some reason, but whatever. Oh boy, Yai's birthday, I can only imagine the joys that this scenario will bring.



She asks to come with her to DenTown. And yes, you do actually get a choice, but it's a But Thou Must situation.



We'll be off to a new area, DenTown, in just a bit. It's so bizarre that Navis deliver messages by hand instead of using email, which is what everyone else in the setting uses. It's a direct contradiction, and later games correct it.



Speaking of email, Froid sends a message about the Official Netbattlers. As part of his thanks for "resolving" the Waterworks situation, he talked a friend into getting Lan on the Official mailing list, so for the rest of the game we'll be getting updates, tips, and occasional exposition from it.



Before heading to the station to meet Mayl, I head over to Higsby's to buy a newly available FastGauge A chip. FastGauge speeds up how fast the CustomGauge fills for the rest of the battle, making fights go much faster.



Despite that detour, Mayl is the one late for a change. Given that she always harps on Lan about it, he isn't very forgiving.



It turns out that Mayl has a delivery to her grandmother, so she'll be a bit behind. She tells Lan to go ahead to DenTown anyway.



Once we take the Metroline to DenTown, Mayl sends an email that she's taking the bus for some reason. Also, Lan should look for an antique store because Yai likes those and one would make a good present.



DenTown has an electronic system of traffic lights, and all cars obey an Autodrive system that handles getting from point A to point B. There's no way that can go wrong in MMBN-land!



As Lan travels through DenTown, the Official Mailing List features Chaud mentioning how some elementary school student's Navi was on the scene of the Waterworks incident at the same time he was.



Convenient enough that DenTown happened to have one of these.



And wouldn't you know it, the owner is a unique sprite NPC. And you know that that means she's someone we can fight!




She's either a hippy or she's declaring she senses a soul of sort inside MegaMan.



This piques her interest enough to offer the chance to battle SkullMan.EXE. I go easy on him to show him off.



This nets us the /Miyu item, which effectively opens up the rest of the internet to exploration. Not that there's any point in doing so after already showing off the important stuff, but hey.



You don't have to beat Miyu for the story to continue, but you do need to talk to her. That sets the event flag that we've found the antique store.



Heading to the meeting point, it seems as though Mayl is late once again.



Every light in DenTown abruptly turns green!



Car crashes that explode and destroy all vehicles involved ensue. Also resulting in the deaths of dozens of people at least across the city in those few seconds, but the writers don't want you to think about that. The death toll will mount in silence in the background.

And yes, screenshotting cars smashing together was hard, as the state save indicates.



WWW email appears in Lan's inbox.



"And we totally have nothing to do with it!"




Who would be stupid enough to believe this? First of all, the problem is with the traffic lights, not the cars! And yes, since the accidents happened, one can assume that there's no emergency override in cars. Or brakes. Get used to this level of idiocy from this scenario, the whole situation is steeped in stupidity.



You can trust WWW, after all!



Honestly, when you accept that the world of Battle Network consists mostly of slobbering idiots, the games and writing makes a lot more sense. Of course things are designed stupidly, a team of morons designed them. Why would the cars not have overrides? Because the designers were stupid. Why would ovens have the ability to shoot fire that a virus could make use of? Some dumbass thought it was a good idea.




Case in fucking point. Wait, what does he mean "this time", has this happened already at some point in the past!?



Guess what we have to do!




Let the dungeon begin. The gimmick here is that there are balls of light you can step through to change the setting of the area from blue to red and back. Certain paths are color-coded to only be passable when the setting is blue or red. The entire point is to get back to the start of the dungeon in a giant loop while the setting is red and press that button. That will change the light to red.



Here's one of those light balls. They flicker to simulate flashing, which includes frames where they aren't visible at all. This makes taking screenshots very annoying.



Anyway, you just walk through them to change the state from blue to red or vice versa.



This first area of the dungeon is basically a straight line, so there's no point in covering it.



We have to keep people from forking over gigantic sums of cash to WWW, for their own sakes.



Just talk to all the people surrounding Madd and they'll leave. But the dialogue involved is too rich to leave out.











And that's a hat trick!



Madd even calls Lan a meddling kid, but this update left me with 161 screenshots to sift through, so expect a lot of content filtering. She and Lan meet in person for a change, but don't expect her to threaten Lan physically.



She does, however, have a different way of threatening Lan.




She then proceeds to walk away, presumably cackling like a Halloween witch to herself.



No shit, MegaMan.



Three steps later, Mayl calls up, alarmed that her bus is speeding up faster and faster. Credit where due, Madd is a fast worker.



Time to jack into another traffic light and continue the dungeon.



Jelly: These jellyfish viruses aren't much of a threat now, but they will be later on when viruses have more HP. Or they would be at that point if I didn't have so many godlike chips. They're stationary for most of the time, only moving up and down their column occasionally. They slowly charge up energy, going from blue to pink to red charge level similar to MegaMan's charged buster. Once they finish charging up, which takes a very long time, they'll unleash a wave down all three rows, which is effectively impossible to dodge unless you have an obstacle or hole to hide behind. Later versions charge faster and have more HP.



Things are a bit trickier in the second traffic light, as you can see.



The trick is to go through a nearby loop to change the pathway to blue.



This lets you approach the pathway and change it to back to red. Yes, that light ball was there before, I apologize for not taking a proper screenshot of it.



If this looks complicated, it really isn't. The solution to every puzzle here is to just go through a nearby circle to set up the colors properly, and then continue down the path.




Unfortunately, the bus passes by just before the lights turn red. Nothing to do but try again at the next intersection!



Madd calls back up to taunt Lan on the way there.



What. Wow, I totally forgot about this bit of insanity.



The icing on the crazy cake is that she made it so the virus would be inert for a while for whatever reason. I'm speechless. I mean, people from the megathread will be familiar with my angry rants, but it's situations like these where words fail me that really shine.



I've said it before and I'll say it again: every puzzle in this dungeon has the same solution. You can see that by going straight MegaMan will trigger the path to change and won't be able to continue. But if you just go up the loop to the right, you pass through two light balls and can progress.



Missed the bus again!



However, the traffic light barrier thing caused the bus to slow down a little, so we'll have a better shot next time.



Next verse, same as the first. Going straight leads to a dead end.



Going in a circle yields progress.



The bus plows through, but is now moving much more slowly. MegaMan and Lan can catch it at the next light.



This cutscene, oddly, implies that everything MegaMan does in the Cyberworld takes place in a matter of moments, unlike the real-time navigation the player controls. While this makes sense, given that computers do tasks freakishly quickly, this begs the question of how Lan is able to communicate with or operate MegaMan. It's a minor plot hole.



Anyway, this last area of the dungeon has 4 lights to switch to red, to prevent the bus from escaping anywhere.



I'm not even going to bother showing the "puzzles" of the dungeon. I mean...

Step 1: Go in a circle.
Step 2: Win.

THERE.



It turns out that even though Lan stopped the bus, the virus program is going to activate now. Goodbye, Mayl, you were an annoying damsel in distress to the end.



Blink animation says it all.



Oh, Roll managed to stall ColorMan. Well, time to intervene and rescue her.



ColorMan has Roll flat on her backside. Or her plug thing, official art of Roll.EXE features an inexplicable assplug. Which, oddly enough, I couldn't locate, but I know I've seen it before. Forgive me for not looking too intensively for pictures of Roll's ass.



Anyway, ColorMan is torturing Roll for fun. Ho hum.



MegaMan says that he's the one ColorMan wants. After a tedious and dull dungeon, I'm in no mood to give ColorMan any mercy like I did SkullMan. I kind of regret doing this, because it doesn't show the boss off at all, but it's kind of funny to watch.