Part 19: Still better than MMBN4.

Important note: This game likely takes place chronologically after the 6th game in the series. When this gets archived, I strongly recommend reading the rest of the games first, this will not make any sense to someone only familiar with MMBN1, and several mechanics from the later games return. I will assume the reader will understand the references to the official games, so don't expect many explanations from me unless I run into genuinely new content.



I swore in the old MMBN megathread I would LP any fan-made games of this series. Wouldn't you know it, but BlitzBlast notified me of one in production. And they have a demo. And so, I'm obligated to LP the demo. This is apparently version 3.

Going into this, I had visions of a crappy fanfiction pasted together with content mostly yanked straight from the original games. And the name Chrono X didn't give me high expectations. I will, however, be lenient with the game because it's fan-made, and I want to actually encourage the people working on it to finish someday.



The load screen indicates that this game was made in Game Maker.



Mega Dudes? Really? You guys need to replace whoever was responsible for naming things.

Hmm, I just realized that the screenshots will be very small. You see, you have to resize the window manually, so it'd be hell for me to try and get a non-suck aspect ratio.



Had to pull out some batch conversion wizardry. The downside is that the logo looks like crap at double size. Fair of them to say that almost all graphics are copyright Capcom, at least they're honest. And holy crap, 2009? They've been at this project for quite a while.



After a brief introduction to the setting, in case for some freakish reason this is your first MMBN game, we cut to Lan being asleep in class. This is presumably the Jr. High School that was mentioned in the end of MMBN6.



Lan's teacher is an edited old man mugshot with a mustache added. History will show that I approve of adding facial hair to things. I can't tell about most of the mugshots, but they basically seem to be MMBN6-style with a few minor tweaks to show that Lan and co. have hit puberty.



Lan looks a bit derpy, but is completely passable. So far so good with the game, it's honestly exceeded my expectations already. I even debated bringing the Fuckup Tally out of retirement for fun, but I already see it won't be needed.



Oddly enough, the authors of the game chose to recycle much of the "checking a random object" text from the sixth game, this is word-for-word what the objects in Mr. Mach's classroom had to say. I'll be delighted if this game has throwbacks to previous games in it.



Not too far into things, we get an email from MaxRock the programmer, who hopes that the player has as much fun playing the game as he did helping to make it. Fair enough. Although, this briefly rekindled the fear of horrible self-insert characters.

To be honest, I'm kind of disappointed the game isn't utter crap, because that would have been hilarious to LP. This actually seems to be competently made so far.



Those with an astute memory will recall that Yai said she was going to a different school than everyone else for Jr. High. This means we'll be seeing a whole lot less of her in the game, and that's already an improvement over the originals.

As for Mayl's mugshot, I would recommend to the spriters that they try and tweak the overworld sprites for the cast a bit. The "teenage" mugshots and the idea they convey don't really gel with the old overworld sprites.

Yes, I'll actually be constructive with my criticism for something for once.



Let's peek at our folder. Looks like a fairly standard start-of-game folder to me, with about 5 or 6 codes in the thing. No idea why they renamed Sword chips Cybrswrds though.



We also start with a free Roll chip.



ACDC Jr. High School has evidently replaced Yai's house. I like to imagine her family was evicted by some obscure public service law.



Blink Animation decides to rear its head to show that its alive and well for this game, and will be participating in the commentary as normal. Anyway, apparently we'll be getting some sort of Professor character moving in here. We'll have to wait and see how that works out.



It remains to be seen if this is something temporary, or if we'll be getting another chip shop. Or if it'll be like MMBN2 and be without a chip shop entirely.



Arriving home, it looks like Lan is on his way to cleaning up his act, as the ending of MMBN6 showed.



Well, I can't fault them from straying from the source material. Fetch quest time.



And it looks like they're sticking with the traditionally squashed names for everything despite a complete lack of a character limit and being able to determine screen resolution themselves. More to them.



Worth noting that the controls are helpfully identical to emulator controls. Minus the beloved fastforward Spacebar. You would be amazed at how many times during this I've been mashing the SPacebar to try and get things to speed up.



The Jack-In sequence looks fancy, but it's recycled from the removed Jack-In sequence from MMBN3.



Why is Lan's homepage suddenly enormous? My best guess is that this space will be filled up as the game progresses.



Emerging from Lan's HP into MMBN5's internet, we come across...oh god, you have to be kidding. Skipping the tutorial, it's all the same as it was in MMBN6.



Fast-forward button, I miss you so much. Come back to me.



Well, hey, a mystery data appeared right after the tutorial, so-ha ha, guys, very funny.



The battle system seems to be a perfect recreation of the original, which is impressive considering the game's made in Game Maker. I noticed only two things functionally different. For one, "you've just been hit" flicker lasts longer and has more frames where MegaMan's sprite is invisible. For two, everything moves a hair bit faster, a difference of only a few frames.

Also, the developers might want to change the panels to look less icy or glassy, it's sort of an odd look for the games.



Strangely enough, this is MMBN3's inventory screen.



Arriving in ACDC 2, we snag the FridgPart. I have to say that the internet is a lot more linear in this game, but I won't actually complain about that because that means less getting lost.



My big complaint so far, aside from the lack of fast-forward, is that chips added to your pack will end up on the bottom of the list, not the top. This is going to mean that every time I get a new chip, I'll have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the list and fish it out.



Yuuichiro calls after Lan has a quick lunch.



He requests that we bring it to him. This means we'll be visiting a non-ACDC area sooner than usual.



Eh, the occasional grammatical issue is still nothing compared to MMBN4. So far, Mega Dudes is doing better than Capcom did.



Wow, MegaMan looks pissed in the blink animation now.

: "That worthless twatbagging douchewaffle is whining at us to fuck him up yet AGAIN, god!"



GutsMan surprises the hell out of me by pulling out tricks from his late-game MMBN3 self in the first boss fight of the game, and the switch really throws me off. This is actually quite promising, I like the idea of the fan-made game expecting the player to be capable of dealing with challenges like this.

I'll put things to an unofficial vote, who wants to see me LP this straight until completion, and who wants to see me alternate updates between it and MMBN1? It's only a demo.