Part 4: 01110101 01101000

Update #4: 01101000 01110101 01101000

Today we're gonna cram in NumberMan's entire scenario. Bring your notes and pay attention.



I sure am beat after all that virus busting...not.

Man, what a difficult dungeon that Oven was.




Ah Christ. Not a clopper.

Every villain in the game is actually secretly a centaur.




It's weird seeing Higsby be evil given future game context.

I feel like this game's villains are just 'What would be a kid's worst fear?'. A problem at home, an evil teacher, suffocating in a blackout...



Lan is running to school, meaning no FireMan V2 for us to fight yet. I forgot about that little detail.

We're thrust straight into this scenario after going to bed. There's not even the usual 'run around for a bit and head to the next Plot Zone when it's convenient' break.






No. You are an email reader and virus buster. NOW READ THEM.

Reading is important.




This is so non-specific, it indicates the original translation was strained to convey the same idea. Either it could mean students are causing NetCrime, or that there is increased NetCrime against students. This game actually means both, lucky for it.




Oh no, now we owe Yai. No, Yai! Take Yeti!

I'm torn. On one hand, the horrible forehead gremlin. On the other, I wouldn't have to put up with you.



Lan Hikari in later games would be more grateful. Wonder if they didn't really have a traditional friendship in this game.

They're still feeling out the personalities. Lan was kind of a little shit in the early writing, huh.



SCORE.

Recov50 (BN1): A C E G L
Recov50 (OSS): C L M S *

In the original game it was Recov50 G.



This Repair is unfortunately the same.

Repair(BN1): A G H K S
Repair(OSS): A G H S *

What, you guys didn't rename it to PanelReturn?



No, I want to beat them up.



Grab this. You'll need it for a trade.

Giver doesn't mention it, but this is all stuff on the first floor of the school.




You know, this really could have been an asterisk code, game. In fact, PanelOut1 * exists in the game, but doesn't appear to drop anywhere. That's...stupid.

Correction: It's available in the Star Coliseum for 20 points. Sure, why not.



Alright, whatever. On with the plot.




Lan uses his amazing Solid Snake skills to sneak to the front of the class without being noticed. Fuckup Tally: Nope, I changed my mind.

...How do you sneak to the front of the class without getting caught? And how would Yai calling his name mean that Miss Mari would think he's in class? I get the feeling this teacher isn't very good at her job.




Substitute teachers are usually awesome. Quick, everyone be lazy!

Student teacher over substitute, I think. In other words, Mari will still be around, but drinking beer getting caught up on paperwork or grading.






?

About as socially competent, too



Goons.png

About as socially competent, too




Leaving this in so you can see MegaMan blinking. Why not.



: Man, fuck THIS shit. We don't get our hot teacher no mo'.

So after a round of "talk to everyone"... Nothing particularly interesting.



Higsby now resumes the class.




Odd that Higsby had to only knock out Ms.Mari. Not other teachers, nurses, security guards...you know, the entire school staff?

I'm assuming the security guard wouldn't interfere with the teacher heading out to the A/V room, and other teachers are probably busy teaching their own class of. 9. students.




Hisby + Math = Shit Class,huh




Holy crap, I forgot he had his own jack-in animation.

I wonder if he just poses like that for fun, or if jacking in actually requires a weird stance to work. Maybe it's the lack of reception.



What's going on, huh.



Yeti, what's wrong, huh.




Oh no, it's Ajit Pai.

Lemme just grab an oversized novelty mug, huh.

Welp, Yeti's doing the ticks, too.



And they're brainwashing kids. Ajit Pai has become a politician. Save yourselves!




...and all other Nets. Damn, BN1 you really were rough.

But specifically the military Net. The others are nice bonuses.


To reach our goals, the WWW is hiring new staff members! We will begin a new instruction program, starting today!

Hmmm....

"Wily is good. Everyone else, bad." Excellent program.

Oh, the WWW is short for Wah-Wah-Wario. Greed is good.




Damn. What's in that broadcast? ...huh

It's actually just the trigger to the Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History.



Of course.

You'd think you'd want to use a key program, but I guess locking up the electronic lock unlocks the door. Huh.



Yeah, seeing ERROR all the time would do anyone in.



I would have appreciated better flavor text explaining this. We don't even get Capcom Science for this one.

I like the implication that it's not forcing them to watch or anything, it's just playing and the kids watch because why wouldn't you watch a TV. That shit was the best when the teacher wheeled in a TV cart at the start of class.




: Dex is in da house about to wreck shit.




: Sit yo' midget ass down and watch how a straight-up gangsta does this.

Yeah, GangstaDex, you save the day. You be the hero of this story.



: I saw this shit in a Kung-Fu flick. Slot dat shit in at a 55 degree angle and watch dem bitches be DE-LE-TED.



: Motherfuckin' cheatin' ass viruses.

Clearly this is Lan sabotaging Dex out of cruel jealousy, since nothing else could stop the true hero of this story.




: Maaaaaaaan.




And at this point, Dex being humbled lets him be better friends with Lan, though they really weren't before this.

So the thing that's mentioned and isn't really addressed aside from a few things: other NetNavis can have backups for when they're deleted. It's a Game Over when Megaman is deleted (aside from anything taking place in the real world, like fights against NPC Navis) because he can't be backed up.






Do note how relucant Lan is. He even lets Dex do the work without helping. There is something resembling Lan's development throughout the series, even if it isn't much.



Free Roll chip.

I mean I'm not going to say no... But how do Navi chips even work. Do we just summon a copy of them? Actually call for help?



And they finally play the Title Theme here. This is our call-to-action, folks.

It's neat that the structure of this area resembles the school itself. The later games kinda gave up on that sort of thing.



Too bad I farmed you guys way earlier. There are also Mettaurs, Spookys, Canodumb1s and a new virus. But that new one's farther in the dungeon.

You shouldn't have an issue with the enemies here, though the Beetanks might be a little annoying if you're bad at timing Quake throws.



Only way to get this code.



Go around and head back to Area 1. Luckily it's pretty easy to follow if you just observe the maps.

The other thing is, this is really dungeon number one. The Oven didn't really count, since it was two screens. As such, this place is mostly linear without too many forks in the road.



Answer is amount of chairs in the current classroom: 09

I'm still concerned about why there are only 9 kids per class. Maybe ACDC isn't very big and we're seeing the entire town instead of just the relevant cross-section on the overworld.



Before leaving, I pick up this and round up the area.



Higsby, a goon, is making everyone else like him. Man, this is truly something awful.

Just go for the low-hanging fruit, why don't you.



Noobs.

An NPC tried to be useful, don't insult them.



Class 5-A and 5-B lead to the same comp. You know, Battle Network 1 really does try to use its setting. Something the other games don't.



If you bothered to grind a little, you could now stick in a few Invis I, 4x Spreader I and now this. Honestly, Spreader is great for NumberMan this early.




MissEchelon. Draw me Progs.

I actually saw someone in a Discord channel with an avatar based on one of her Progs.



30. I suppose it's fair they would lock the Library. Gotta preserve knowledge and all that.



This one is easy. We just guess. Less a puzzle and more trial-and-error.



Easiest method is to just choose the middle number, watch the prompt to see how close/far away you are, then half that again. Since our first digit is too high, pick a number about midway between 0-5, so 30. Check the prompt, rinse and repeat.

For those of you in the audience that know sorts and searches, this is basically just the binary search. There's a reason it's one of the most efficient sorts. If you halve the number of options available each time, you only need 7 chances to guarantee success.



I don't think they gave you any more chances in OSS. It's still roughly 6 attempts.


by going up and to the right...

Meaning that gap you see is still unnatural.



Boo.

Scenario 2: Still awful rewards, huh.





Unrelated, but my answer to this door when playing along in the original was 69.



Don't take the path up there. Instead, go down.



Yoink.

School Comp 3 relates to the first floor, so we can jack in there.



Yes, the main entrance door counts as one.




See those tiny squares? That's a warp point. Stark contrast to later games.

They did get better about signposting where jacking in will make you wind up. Though most of the time you went through a separate comp first before entering the Net proper.



It's like the game is telling you what's effective against the boss.



No, leave me alone.

Don't be mean to the Progs.



I'M SORRY MR.PROG. I DIDN'T LISTEN.

THIS IS WHAT YOU GET.




MegaMan says to check the AV room. There's a lot of real-world interaction this scenario. I kinda like it.

It's a good way to get the player to explore the school, since before this we've only ever been in class 5-B.



The implication is that NumberMan laid these traps...which you can see in his advanced moveset later. More bosses need to mess with the player as they go through a dungeon, honestly.




Pictured: Forshadowing for the LP curse, forcing me to redo progress from hours back.

Just gotta reboot the PC since something was eating up all of the memory. I hate when that happens.



Early game A code superiority!



Handis can first appear in Area 4, so farm up. If you're a bit experienced, you should be able to envision a way to get an S-rank with the hand I currently have. Don't move down until you see it.

It's not that hard, honestly. You have 5 chips to choose from, and Giver's already told you how the ranking system works.

Got it?





Unfortunately, the viruses take forever to move into position. Dammit.

Be honest, did you figure it out or just roll your eyes at Giver's dickwaving?

Yeti, no one wants to be like you.



Eat shit. Tossing a LilBomb(80) to kill the Handi.



And there's my Double Delete.



It does 70 damage to the whole field, but only applies damage one row at a time, so it's not as useful for S-ranks as you might think.

In this game, 'whole field' attacks are weird in that they attack in waves, one row at a time. Precise dodging means you can avoid a theoretically unavoidable attack. They fixed that oversight in the next game.



Your first Program Advance (if you didn't grind)!



Teacher's Lounge needs a Teacher ID. Where's Ms. Mari?



Hm, you know, something seems amiss... I just can't put my finger on it.



THERE we go. That's what it was. Yep.

Oh. I thought it was the fact that they have their gym equipment in a random closet in the school.



Alright, back to grinding. We can clearly see that TimeBombs aren't as useful as their later-series counterparts. I wonder why the development team didn't update th- OH FINE.

As much as I'm grateful for some of the little changes the dev team made, a lot of this is just a lazy re-release of the first game on newer hardware. It's a shame.




Do I auto-pass this grade? Well, DO I!?

Too late, you forgot to get her to promise before untying her. Now that she's free, you have no more leverage. Also why would she just give Lan her ID card?



Alright, time to enter the final door.




I think all kids should aspire to be WWW slaves. Why not? Think of the benefits!

Free maniacal laughter classes, for one. Also a sweet paycheck.



Um, Higsby. With a war being caused, and civilizations being destroyed, there will be less BattleChips in the long-term.



NumberMan is actually more evil than Higsby. Higsby expresses remorse and NumberMan kinda course-corrects him in between this shot and the next.

Numbers are made up and evil.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UyTdPcSbuk

Now is where you see my grinded chips come into play. S-ranks baby.



Rare chip collecter vs. 11 year old boy. Get fucked, huh.





No, fuck him. Gloat like Giver. Hahahahaha, YOU SUCK HIGSBY. All those rare chips and you couldn't touch me. Quit life. Die in a hole. Idiot.

Please stop bullying the idiot who will sell us valuable chips in the future.



Damn right.

Well you're not wrong.




I, for one, support good grinding habits.

They really toned down his weird speech tics in the later games, which I'm glad. The snorting is kinda weird.



Replace "Trade chips sometime?" with "Go out with me?" and it's as creepy as it reads.




Uhhh, he should get years in jail for all the schools he's affected. Hell, all the kids going out and kicking puppies are on him!

"No really, he's chill, he gave me this super-rare Mega chip."




That statue in the corner is the Battle Network 3 one.




: Shut up! I said, SHUT UP!

Where did they come from? Did they do anything, or are they just here to make witty banter?




Had to leave this line in. You don't see them compliment each other much.



Wait, what!? We don't get the rest of the day off to cope with the stress that just happened? This is BULLSHIT.

Let's be real though, there was pretty much no stress involved in dealing with this idiot.



Restart the announcement program.

"Good job, you freed the school and saved all of us from a life of brainwashed crime. Here's your homework, due Wednesday."