Part 17: Anticlimax Greasy Bag Fuck

Hey, saved me the effort of typing that out. Anyway, let's finish this mediocre game and get into more enjoyable territory, MMBN2 is a huuuuuge improvement over MMBN1.



Now that we've obtained the unspeakable power of Hub.bat, it's time to head through the door and take on the ultimate virus.



Wily is all alone, who knows where Yahoot went, but either way he's having a fantastic time anyway. Wily enjoys what he does.



He's just such an enthusiastic villain, probably the most upbeat of the MMBN villains.



In case you haven't noticed, Wily really hates the Hikari family.



Even Lan has caught onto that. Admittedly, I cut out several screenshots of Wily angrily ranting about how he'll have revenge, but you get the idea.



The MMBN games have a very bad habit of telling their stories the same way each game:

1: Lan and MegaMan solve loosely connected problems with little explanation.
2: The end of the game approaches.
3: HOLY FUCKSHIT PLOT DUMP THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING EVER.

As opposed to spacing the exposition out.



You can guess where this is going, given the nature of the series.



In order to win an international competition, Electopia had to choose which of them to provide funding for.



And this is what made the MMBN series what it is. The official explanation is that the MMBN world is an alternate universe where Dr. Hikari (note that Hikari means light in Japanese) had his research funded as opposed to Dr. Wily's robotics research like the original series. This, whne you think about it, means that Dr. Wily was responsible for the robotics revolution of the original series, and thus also the creation of MegaMan by extension once Dr. Light got working on robotics as well.



What Wily was up to all those years ago forms the basis for the plots of several other games in the series.



As opposed to the original series, Wily isn't out for world domination for the hell of it, he's out for good old fashioned vengeance.



Wily comes off as a bit petty though, as a result.



As pictured.



Either way, all Wily has to do is press that button, and the hacking rocket will launch.



Not if we can help it!



There it is, the little, vaguely atomic glowball that is to be the final boss.



And as promised, buster only. Just to illustrate how pathetic this poor final boss is, I'm not using any chips at all.



Execute!

Really, I pity the LifeVirus. It has a cool design, this battle will have repercussions for the rest of the series, and the final boss theme is one of my favorites, even though it's just a remix of the boss theme. This isn't a theme of an imposing enemy facing the player down in a battle to the death, this is a theme of you beating the shit out of the ultimate virus with the power of Hub.bat at your fingertips.



And so the LifeVirus explodes in Wily's face.



With that, we've systematically demolished everything Wily dreamed of.



But we just beat the damn thing! Did you notice in the fight how the LifeVirus could generate elemental viruses to support itself? Well, those little buggers can run rampant pretty quickly as it turns out. They've already escaped the lab, in fact, but we won't see them for a long while.



I take back what I said, NOW we've demolished everything Wily dreamed of. Kick him while he's down, Lan, break his brittle old man hip!



Time to beat a hasty retreat while Wily just sort of stands there, broken inside, not even motivated to try and escape.



"They were consumed in a fiery explosion that killed every last one of them except for Mr. Higsby!"



Aww.



No time to mourn the lives of our friends continuing, escape is necessary!



*Screen flashes white, explosion sound effect.*



Transitioning to some unspecified time later...



Everybody gathers outside the house for a celebration.



After a bit of back and forth, the happily married Hikaris devolve into lovestruck "Honey..." "Honey..." back and forth.



No parent-centric angst in Lan's teenage years, that's at least guaranteed.



"Mom! Dad! Not in front of everybody!"



Oh for crying out loud!



From anyone else, this would be a rejection, but nope, Lan is just that clueless.



Mayl takes offense anyway. It's an "I'm mean because you're stupid" situation.



You're being a dumbass protagonist, that's what!




Oh kids, always saying such hurtful things to each other.



The realization finally dawns.



Although Lan is only 10, so he's probably still in the girls are icky phase.



Seen by his reaction here. Still, that was the only time in the games that Lan recognizes that Mayl loves him.



I cut out a bit of back-and-forth dialogue between Dex and Yai, but that arguably makes Chaud's line even more snarky.



"You know, between losing the AquaProgram, trying to delete MegaMan..."




Chaud may be a jerk, but he's a self-aware jerk at least.



It becomes a tradition for this to happen at the end of every game.



There can't exactly be a break-in right now, so...



"Jack-In! MegaMan.Exe, Transmit!" Cue the credits!



S. Kurosawa was responsible for the scenario direction in the first three games of the series, then came back to consult for MMBN5 and 6. The game he was absent from...makes it quite obvious how important he was to the development team.



Those who complain about character redesigns can turn to these guys.



I'll always be baffled that the scrolling team is always multiple people. I don't know the first thing about programming a video game, but does screen-scrolling really require 3 people working on it due to sheer complexity?



Worth noting that even the credits depict MegaMan getting lost in the internet. An accurate depiction of gameplay, but really, when you're aware that your game is hard to navigate, you don't make fun of that fact, you FIX IT!



Bowne Global Solutions is responsible for the trainwreck translation that MMBN4 got, although in that LP I misblamed Capcom of America for it.



Produced by Sir Not Appearing In This Company!



People who noted how short this game was can use this time for a good comparison with the other games. The average time to complete an MMBN game's story is about 24 hours of gameplay time. MMBN1 doesn't even hit half that.



Having said that, we've got one final update before we're finished with this game!



Time to go address that "certain someone".