Mega Man Battle Network/Headscratchers


 * So... Hub died as an infant, right? But then Megaman.exe was made shortly after? Is megaman.exe's personality based off of Hub's (essentially what or who he could have been), or did Lan's dad get the personality data else where?
 * I think it's hinted in game that Megaman.exe Grew with Lan, but because he was in the cyberworld then he would be exposed to more information then stimuli, making him the more proper one while Lan is the more reckless one.
 * Question: Alpha is a prototype of the internet, right? Then why does it have a form/body? Wouldn't it be like the current net, and be...you know...a place?
 * Probably has something to do with the way its been restricted, sealed up, and possibly tinkered with over the decades between its attacks.
 * Alternatively, its a feature of the framework of the New Internet that stuff like Alpha appear as bodied individuals, to make deletion by netnavis much more possible.
 * Alternatively alternatively, it doesn't really, and it appearing to have a kaiju form is part of the same illusion of "the internet is just like the real world" farce that makes PETs perceive viruses as animals and A Is as robots- to make things more comprehensible to the layman navi-operator.
 * Alternatively cubed, the Alpha you actually fight is the core program of the old internet and the remaining "Internet" part is merely an extension of itself.
 * I thought Alpha was the consciousness of the old net, kinda like D-reaper. Actually exactly like the D-reaper, it was the presence that regulated the expansion and growth of the old frame work.
 * Well, it's most likely a difference in systems. It probably would not have mattered what one you used from a computer, because if alpha is goo like in the regular net then it probably means that they streamlined the current net, making it faster and thus alpha appears like goo in comparison because it's slower than the regular net. When it is an actual place, and not diving it's self up for the larger net, then it is a place, but because it's in a place both larger, faster, and more diverse then it appears as a large, utilitarian pile of goo.
 * Actually, isn't that whole computer you fight it in Alpha?...you know, the one the size of a freaking room...and the floor is all red goo textured, so I think the body shape you shoot at is Alpha just rising up part of itsself out of the floor soas to hit you better...(Why he doesnt just pop out of the floor like in the tanks and eat you is beyond me though...)
 * How is it that during the two year span in which the Battle Network series takes place, that Mr. Match has been arrested and let out of jail 3 times (Twice for being in the WWW, and once for an attempted terrorist attack), yet we find out in Battle Network 6 that Count Zap is still serving his scentence for being a WWW member?
 * 3? I'm guessing the 3rd is Transmission. Well given that 6 shows repeated zaping is a possible punisment in universe for crime, and Zap is (obviously) electricly themed, prehaps he is Too Kinky to Torture and has to serve his sentance the hard way? Meta wise, it is because he is the iconic first boss and has Joker Immunity, Zap is a random baddy.
 * Perhaps if shocking is a punishment Zap perhaps has a electroshock fetish, and thus they couldn't do this with him...but then again...its also possible Match has a burning fetish...wait, they wouldn't do it THAT intensely if its not an outright electrocution death sentence...
 * Match might've been doing something for the community at the Airport in Battle Network 2, as stated in 5, they hired Fyrefox/Dingo to netbattle, it may have been something similar. And in 3, he was helping SciLab.
 * Agreed about Zap, he gets far more love in the anime. Frankly, I think Match's just in a constant state of parole.
 * I think what he did was:
 * BN 1) Obvious
 * BN 3) Set Scilab on fire after tricking Lan into helping.
 * BN 4) Trying to blow up Den Dome, but having a change of heart.(Red Sun)
 * The last one might be wrong, though.
 * What Happened to the storyline after BN3? It's like they just forgot that there was an over arching plotline the second they started BN4.
 * Ugh, agreed! There was all that stuff with Serenade and Bass and character origins and backstory, and then 4 starts and...nothing. Poof. Serenade's gone, Bass is relegated to Bonus Boss status, the Undernet is a Wretched Hive instead of a safeguard for the last best hope of the network again, and that exceedingly interesting comment Bass made when he caught the Giga Freeze ("So you're a Chosen One too?" is never expounded upon. I like the last three games okay, but I wish they'd incorporated the overall storyline into them.
 * Everyone in the Bonus Dungeon in 2 makes that "Chosen One" comment too. So it was definitely not something that was just thrown in without much thought during 3.
 * On that note, the first three games had more plausible scenarios and were much darker (as in the characters were willing to talk about the concept of death, as there's practically no mention of it during the last three games). This troper believes that the series was originally meant to be a trilogy with the last three games being thrown together after Capcom realized how profitable the series had become. If I remember correctly, Gregar/Falzar's background in 6 pretty much conflicted with Alpha's background in 3 as well.
 * Perhaps after they sealed Alpha, the new internet was also quite buggy...but not so much it became sentient and tried to kill everyone...instead all the bugs sort of clustered and then the BUGS tried to kill everyone...really, bugs are errors though, I doubt they would make an effective fighting force anyway...
 * Either that, or the story writers left the development team after the third game and/or the series was meant to be split up into two trilogies - the first detailing the World Three's decline of influence/power and explanation of the existence of the Internet/Undernet, and the second being about what the rest of Wily's family was doing with the final confrontation between Wily and the Hikaris in 6.
 * Confirmed: "They were all a delight to work on, but personally I enjoyed 3 the most. In terms of the game’s scenario, we were originally planning this game to be the final installment in the series. Once we finished 3, I remember thinking “That’s all she wrote, this series is over,” but then it wasn’t long at all before the prospect of “Battle Network 4” arose. I remember really racking my brain trying to figure out how we would proceed with the story from there."
 * I don't get what they were thinking with BN 6's plot: it was the end of the series, but nothing of importance happened in it. Then the ending seemed like the writers had just learned that there weren't going to be any more of these games and made sure everyone knew it by declaring that this particular threat was the big one for all time every few minutes. It wasn't even a double boss (despite the huge potential they had for one), just one beast weaker than anything other than the Lifevirus. I'm not even getting into how lame all the new characters were. I get that they wanted to appeal to younger gamers here, but this was a pathetic way to end things.
 * I don't get Regal's plan in the fourth game. He wants to create a new world of pure evil, which is silly, but I'll accept it. But how is the asteroid involved? His plan seems to be something like this:
 * 1. Sabotage laser plan.
 * 2. Propose Navi plan.
 * 3. Delete Megaman.
 * 4. Gain control of asteroid.
 * 5. ???
 * 6. Profit!
 * Regal didn't really have a developed plan until the last third of the game. All Lan and Megaman did were bump into a few of his agents, not the organization at large. That's why they had to use so many pointless tournaments as substitute for an actual plot. As for what he wanted to do with Duo; got me.
 * Duo (and the asteroid) were unaccounted-for elements, I do believe.
 * Actually, it's a bit sparsely fleshed out, but it seems to go something like this: In BN4, Regal was already convinced Humans Are Bastards and Nebula was already entering mainstream by the time the game rolled around, and even though he was probably planning to enact the BN5 Soulnet plot, the big rock about to hit the planet showed up, and since he was convinced humanity sucked, he wanted to make sure the big rock hit the planet. He failed, so by BN5 he activated his backup plan (technically his first plan until the asteroid showed up). As for the Dark Chips, he wanted to prove Humans Are Bastards in both BN4 and BN5, and what better way to do it than by corrupting the Internet, which the whole world is pretty much literally connected to. In short, the thin plot can be justified (on Regal's ambition's end at least) by the fact proving Humans Are the Real Monsters was his baseline motivation for both games, on BN4 had him attempt Kill'Em All via Colony Drop due to his disgust, and BN5 had him instead try to enact massive More Than Mind Control to acheive the same result.
 * according to another wiki: "Regal's plan was to alert the program Duo of the evil that existed on earth and then stop the program with his Navi, Laser Man, to look like a hero." presumably after that the world would acknowledge him and follow his every whim... but we see how well that went for Lan and he wasn't even PLANNING on saving the world
 * You would think there would be some mention of porn in the Battle Network series, at the very least a Navi/Program that subtextually alludes to having some.
 * Given the amount of nannying Rockman can do, any porn still on the Net is likely to be very well hidden.
 * And its possible Lan isn't going on those kinds of sites...wait, porn often has viruses...perhaps they keep unintentionally deleting it all? and I do like the concept of him actively removing any he finds...
 * That would certainly explain all those MMBN hentai doujins I keep on occasionally seeing, online...
 * I'm pretty sure Rule 34 exists in the Battle Network continuity, but only the guys at World Three take advantage of it.
 * I'm sure that with the heavy presence of Web-Party Vans, none of the perverts want to get caught out for distributing rule 34 across the main public sector of the Net. THAT is what the Undernet is for.
 * Suddenly, Dr. Regal's SoulNet plan at the end of Battle Network 5 sounds a lot more diabolical. Limitless Power Perversion Potential in a system that can use the Internet to inspire and reinforce emotions in people, especially lust...
 * Just lust? Dude, you think WAY too small. Do you not remember Regal's testing phase? Happy, well-adjusted people were suffering from suicidal depression, upstanding citizens were suddenly attacking each other, your own teammates tried to MURDER you, and that was BEFORE Regal got around to installing Nebula Grey.
 * I'm willing to ignore a lot of the lack of physical force in the Battle Network series. I'm willing to accept that the adult bad guys don't just punch out the 5/6th grader's lights when they meet face to face, that a demonstration of Chaud's mortality involves killing Protoman in battle rather than shooting Chaud, I'm willing to accept that everything's online. But the tanks in the third game are just too much. I mean, first of all, why tanks? When dealing with the treat of super-hackers, why bring in tanks, tanks which can be controlled remotely through the internet no less, to protect civilian areas? Protect them against what? Other berserk tanks? And second, even more importantly, how could five tanks fail to shoot a 5th grade boy point blank? The first was especially ridiculous, as it riddled the ground at his feet with bullets twice before he ran up to it, plugged in his pet, and presumably stood right next to it helping Megaman until it was deactivated. The others were at least "distracted" by another character, but even if the first two volleys were preprogrammed to be warning shots why the hell did it not make mincemeat out of Lan? As a side note, why was Dex (not Gutsman, Dex) able to hurl a boulder at Bubbleman's robot?
 * Keep in mind that Dr. Wiley was the one who designed those tanks. In Megaman Classic, most of Wiley's mooks are really, really easy to take down, and these particular tanks were made right before Dr. Light decided to focus on Internet Technolegy rather than Robots, so Dr. Wiley didn't really have time to make any of the really deadly stuff. As for Dex and the boulder, that could be justified by sheer willpower on Dex's part, and Bubbleman being stupid enough to let that happen to him. But yeah, missing Lan at point blank range? Cuts off the suspension of disbelief.
 * Perhaps he just botched the programming for their aim...?
 * There is something that is more jarring in 3 than a kid dodging machine gun bullets. It's the plot itself. Evil organization out to unleash some cyber Eldritch Abomination that devastated the net years before. It got sealed away and the keys to break the seal were hidden throughout the world. Standard stuff.... Here's a question. This is a relatively advanced society. Why would they hide the keys to a monster that could blow the world to hell in a school computer, a zoo, and a hospital?
 * Well would you look there? Besides, in BN 1 the Fire Program was inside Lan's oven. That's even worse.
 * Also, we never actually see the facilities used to hide the TetraCodes themselves. It's possible there's military-grade security behind that one door in the school you can't open, that one building in the zoo with no windows, and one of the floors in the hospital you don't ever see.
 * The adults in this universe have proven themselves (on numerous occasions, I might add) to be complete idiots.


 * Battle Network question: Lan takes a couple hundred thousand rads of EM radiation during the final battle in BN2. How does he following BN6?
 * He was wearing a radiation suit the whole time. More importantly, how did the kid in charge of Gospel not get irradiated to death?
 * But Lan's suit was rated for 50k rads (Yai's custom-ordered radvests could only take 30k). Sean, on the other hand, was pretty much operating in The Last Dance mode, and couldn't have cared less about his survival (probably had 100k rads of protection to his name anyway). Following BN2, Sean would be treated at the Beach Street Hospital, where some of the excess radiation lodged a BugFrag in one of Mamoru's arteries.
 * Battle Network 2 fails radiation forever. All it does is make people walk funny, if the NPCs are any guide. So Lan should be fine. Besides, had he even hit puberty yet?
 * Truth be told, radiation induced sterility is temporary, and there are no records of heritable mutations being created by such exposure. However, 50,000 rads over the suit's shielding rating should be fatal. And by fatal, I mean rapid onset Central Nervous Syndrome: disoriented in minutes, comatose within the hour and dead in a day.
 * Depends on the kind of radiation. It was obviously the detrimental sort, but it's true nature is not revealed, so it may not have been the type that renders one sterile.
 * It was the kind of radiation that makes computers grow from the floor. Me? I pin it on the Bug Frags.
 * It was also the kind of radiation that starts ripping holes between the real and cyber worlds' architectures.
 * Why are there so many viruses on the Net? Seriously, if you're jacked-in, you're subject to Random Encounters, even if you're in your own home PC, the major "city" PCs, or the kitchen PC. Is there no decent virus-protection or firewall software Twenty Minutes Into the Future? (This Troper has only played the DS version of 5, but assumes that it's the same in other games of the series...)
 * On that note, all those viruses? Megaman.EXE? Hub.BAT? It sounds like Tadashi's Net runs solely on Windows.
 * They have a very, very, very good antivirus system. They call it "netnavis", and its working every time you fight a random encounter. YOU, the player, are the antivirus system, or at least the most successful part of it.
 * In the second game, early on, one of the appliances in your house says that "Your mom already ran a virus scan on it" if you try to jack in too soon...(which is really just to keep you from entering the area before they want you to...but, at least it makes some sense)
 * If the NetNavis are intended to be the antivirus, they're definitely not a very, very, very good antivirus system. Today, your antivirus - to select one at random, AVG - easily repairs or quarantines any infected files en masse, and the chances of said AVG being deleted or otherwise disabled by a virus is practically nil. However, NetNavis must "fight" viruses, one-to-three at a time, and can easily be removed by said viruses. Why didn't we keep AVG when we traveled forwards those twenty minutes, particularly when we've decided that Everything Is Online?
 * Tadashi was a genius programmer. Nobody ever said he was sane. See also, Awesome but Impractical.
 * Wait. Waitwaitwaitwaitwait. So, in the past the Internet was relatively devoid of viruses, and stuff worked. Then Tadashi, who is insane, created a new Internet protocol based around stupidly high levels of virus activity, thus requiring all users of the Internet to have their own, painfully ineffective, antivirus programs called NetNavis. Everyone on the entire planet immediately agreed to replace the previously functioning networking systems with a single, fairly rubbish protocol created by an insane computer scientist. Apparently it's not only Tadashi that's insane.
 * No, Tadashi didn't intend for the viruses, his idea was for the Netnavis to be used as antivirus programs (they haven't done as good a job as intended). Also, if you'll recall, the old internet had been more or less destroyed by Alpha, so he needed to recreate things from the ground up. People all agreed because it meant getting the internet back in some form.
 * No, I do not recall, for I have only played the fifth game's DS version. The following objections are therefore only based on my assumptions. Destruction of the "old Internet" we have in reality is pretty much impossible, anyway - you'd need to take down every single server in existence, after all (or at least every DNS server, disabling everyone who doesn't memorise IP addresses or have a private DNS server). Even after doing this, it wouldn't be too difficult to put the same Internet protocols back up again once the danger had passed - using a new concept, by an insane scientist is entirely unnecessary, and definitely would require more work than restoring the previously existing Internet. As another point, if Tadashi intended for the NetNavis to function as antivirus apps, why didn't he actually test their antivirus abilities in a local-network setup of his new Internet concept? Presumably because he's insane. This brings us to the real question: why do the entire population of the planet accept a flawed, dangerous protocol created by an insane man, when the existing protocols were far more effective and could easily be reinstated?
 * Because, while netnavis are crap at dealing with small inconvenient viruses due to sheer numbers (which the computers seem be able to cope with, by and large), they are quite good at dealing with giant viral kaiju. Considering that Tadashi's internet was kicked off after the attack of Alpha, which was almost immediately followed by the Cybeasts, it makes sense that people would want to stick with netnavis- the only form of antivirus strong enough to deal with such powerful singular threats, and which only work in Tadashi's system. Its a tradeoff- stronger, but only able to target one or two viruses at a time. The existing protocals didn't exactly work, because as far as I remember, the existing internet became sentient and started attacking people, calling itself Alpha. People tend to be kinda willing to try new things after that.
 * Hang on. The existing Internet gained sentience, started killing everyone, and was disabled. Then, Tadashi proposed a new set of protocols which had sentience to begin with, and could start killing everyone without waiting to gain sentience first. Why did nobody consider how utterly insane doing this would be? Additionally, the existing Internet, if reactivated, probably would not instantly regain sentience, although this depends on how whatever Applied Phlebotinum created Alpha did so. Regarding the "big viruses", regular antivirus can handle the vast majority of these. Rarely, a patch can be downloaded from your AV app's website for the occasional harder-to-delete virus, which basically fulfills the role of the NetNavi, without all the risks of AI.
 * Well, the Navis weren't designed to be insane...they have preprogrammed personalities...and...I guess the antivirus software doesn't tend to work on the entire internet...
 * The Net has, for all intents and purposes, become its own dimension. The sheer amount of data has become so ridiculously complex that humans can no longer comprehend enough of it to react to daily needs. Navis are ludicrously complex programs that react to this new environment as humans do the normal world. This allows them to show internet actions in a simple, comprehensible form to allow the average person to interact with the network for daily life. Viruses, in the series, aren't as we know them: I'm willing to bet that the average Mettaur has enough strength in it's pickaxe to permanently corrupt today's CIA firewalls. What we, and the human characters, see as virus busting is shorthand for a far more complicated programming process designed to make maintenance fun and easy for the public.
 * As for the AI research, Alpha came about by accident and was deadly because it was so stupid. The thing sprang up from the layering of global computer processes with no intellect to speak of. It was basically a giant cyber-amoeba: all it knew how to do is randomly absorb data and energy into itself. The processes it followed were so random that it took years to discover that there even was a single source for the incidents. If they re-made the old network or even a new one, the incident would only repeat, as no human organization could monitor and update the entire Internet constantly without bankrupting itself. Tadashi and Wily spent years studying all aspects of human intelligence and eventually hit on a way to create an AI smart enough to monitor the constantly changing environment of the growing internet and repair any faults that could lead to a second Alpha spawinging. Navis are bonded to individual humans to ensure that neither side decides to revolt against the other.
 * What I'd like to know is why, in the games AND the anime, SciLab gets hit by massive virus attacks roughly three times an episode. This is a group of scientists working on the forefront of network technology, yet their firewall is made of absolute FAIL. A security flaw which, more than once, has resulted in massive PHYSICAL damage to the facility.
 * And now you see just how valuable Bass was for trouble-shooting Sci-Lab's systems (okay, that doesn't explain the anime).
 * They really shouldn't have attacked him and drove him off...really, he would be one hell of a security system himself for that matter...
 * To be fair, the annual assaults on Sci Lab are usually made by extremely powerful Navis supplied with weapons or minions specifically designed to get around all security. There's still no excuse for why so many PHYSICAL threats are able to waltz in, but Sci Lab's questionable open-door policy is an issue for another day.
 * Justified. Sci Lab is basically a civilian run government organization that studies the Internet, and except in a few cases involving national security (see BN2, 3, AND 5), they throw open their doors because they are run by scientists who believe in an open exchange of ideas and have nothing to hide. True, it's naive, but is quite in tune with a scientific mindset, which tends to be liberal in regards to access of material and information.
 * Still, you'd think they'd have a security staff or some of those robot tanks standing guard in one of the most important research centers on Earth. Really two guys with batons would be an improvement.


 * How did we miss this one: Lan and Hub have 100% the same DNA, being twins. So how come Lan does not have Hub's heart condition? It it was bacterial or viral in nature, it would have been treatable. Mamoru is able to survive it using advanced tech, which hints at a problem in the mechanics of the heart. So why doesn't Lan have it, if it's congenital and he has Hub's DNA?~
 * What do you mean it would be treatable if it were viral? We're talking early nineties medicine here. Back then we didn't have treatments for influenza or even the common cold, let alone some deadly heart virus. The major threat of viruses comes from the fact that they don't respond well to medication- usually all you can do is treat the symptoms and hope the patient's immune system can fend off the infection. That's why the focus has always been on vaccination- you had to prevent the disease because there was no cure.
 * I probably missed something - I assumed that like most other fatal alleles, it's dual-recessive, whereas Lan was heterozygous and thus has a Ff alignment (According to basic genetics) whereas Hub had ff.
 * They can't have different genotypes if they're identical twins. However the disease may be something that isn't completely genetic. It may be that they both had the gene, but it was only triggered in Hub for some reason. Perhaps there was in unequal distribution of nutrients while there were in the womb, or the development of one was affected by the other.
 * In Battle Network 6 Gregar, Cyber Academy has surveillance cameras in every classroom and dispatches armed security robots if someone walks in without ID. Yet their teaching staff includes a on and off again terrorist, an actual terrorist (albeit a reluctant one) and an assassin. Go figure.
 * Well, all of them work as teachers here, and thus, they might have their own ID card. Mr. Match is already a good guy these days, nobody knows that is a terrorist until the endgame, and Dark Scythe is probably a good enough assassin to convince everyone to give him the teacher's ID card. The next question will be what Dark Scythe is supposed to be teaching, or who he's supposed to kill.
 * At the end of BN2 we have some kind of fruitcake radiation that grows computers and starts mixing the real and cyber worlds of Kotobuki. Alright, I can suspend disbelief on that, it looks really cool and eerie. What really bugs me about it though, is that there was no Adventures Of Cookie And Cream esque team up where Megaman and Lan break that barrier and jump back and forth between their worlds—Megaman shooting down doors, Lan whacking Metools with a mop, etc. Just seems like the perfect opportunity for Fish Out of Water is all.
 * My guess? Nobody wanted to come up with an explanation for how Lan would be able to fight endgame-grade Viruses, considering he's not exactly equipped to use your chips.
 * Iris being a netnavi. Just... why? Aside from the fact that it seems like a lazy way to cut Iris out of the Mayl x Lan x Iris love triangle, it honestly makes the scene where Baryl gets the crap beaten out of him to protect Iris totally nonsensical. Also, how does she count as Colonel's sister? If anything, she's his daughter.
 * Iris and Colonel were created from the same data, which split into two separate Navis, each one holding data vital to the other.
 * So she IS Colonel? or at least half of him...
 * According to Wily and Baryl, Colonel existed before Iris did; remember, he used to be able to kill everything, control machinery, and be kind. Moving aside from the sheer stupidity and subjectiveness of a kindness program, Wily explains that he created Iris from Colonel's weapon control and kindness data. So yeah, that would make Iris Colonel's daughter.
 * That EXE 4-6 was a Post Script Season at all. I think they should've just ended it there and if they truly wanted to continue the series, replace Lan. Make it so his son gets a "Mega Man X.exe" or something and continues his legacy and fighting Nebula as Lan did with WWW. I just really feel like the second half would've been better if it didn't focus on Lan and mirrored X instead of like how the first three mirrored Classic.
 * Well, if there's one thing EXE 4-6 (or at least 5-6) did it topped off Lan and Chaud's character development from BN 1-3. After Lan's little hero incident in BN 3, he's now perfectly fine with never receiving any credit for what he does, and Chaud has significantly mellowed out and realized that, yes, some people are just as good as he. Also, since the original Megaman.exe was a human sould digitalized, Mega Man X.exe would have to follow suit and somehow be even more advanced, which sounds conceptually impossible (would also mean that Lan would have to lose a son. So yeah). That, and there's Star Force.
 * Am I the only one who thought BN 4's plot could have worked, it just needed to have some more competent writing and be as dark as BN 5 in tone? Seriously, the anime actually succeeded at making Nebula seem like a credible threat (yes, the anime had its problems, but it did pull that off), and the whole tournament to find someone who could access Duo as a backup plan wasn't THAT idiotic, but the story writing was so crap it took technically plausible plot twists and jacked things up to be implausible. Below is a small list of things that would have saved the plot (or at least made it more credible):
 * 1. More of the tournament people you fight should have been Nebula agents, and it should be made apparent to both Lan and the world officials Nebula is actively trying to fuck up their plans to save the world to make the story darker and better able to take seriously. Also, it should have been made more clear that the world was being distracted with "bread and circuses" as a ploy to keep everyone ignorant to forestall panic, as the actual story writing made it seem like a happy coincidence, which is stupid. In fact, any competent body of world leaders trying to save the world with a plan like this would have definitely figured PR benefits into the idea from the start, not added in the benefit as they went along with it.
 * 2. Dr. Hikari was suspicious of Regal from the get go.....good idea. Unfortunately, he seems to forget this until the very end of the game....bad idea. Have him be constantly suspicious, especially when Regal makes small tweaks tot he plan that tend to eliminate failsafes or put Regal in an ideal position to sabotage things. The game had follow both father and son's side of the story, and Dr. Hikari's side was marginalized to the story's detriment. Also, expansion on this subplot would have made the threat more imminent and something of constant concern.
 * 3. Okay, some of the crazy stuff during the tournament arc was borderline insane, but I can forgive that. What I can't forgive is how they did very little with the good guy contestants. Hell, they should have made some of them be attacked by or actively investigating Nebula on a semiregular basis to keep their villain and his nefarious schemes appropriately centered on derailing the plot, and again, it keeps the lighthearted story trapped in an overtone of impending darkness.
 * 4. The endgame seemed to realize what it should have been doing all along, as it was pretty damn dark (Regal throws himself off a roof, for crying out loud), so the part where the world was cheering Lan on was idiotic, and should have been substituted with Lan and Hub going Full Synchro and reversing Duo's Colony Drop with Heroic Resolve. Also, this would eliminate the painful Big Lipped Alligator Moment aspect of how no one seems to remember the plot of the fourth game happened, as Lan's character had developed to the point he would be content with obscurity as long as he did the right thing and saved the world.
 * 5. Epilouge. Show that it's not over with a brief scene (even if you keep it all black like in Battle Network 2) that Regal survived and have him hint at the plot of Battle Network 5.
 * Personally, I don't think even those tweaks could save Battle Network 4's story. First off, the entire "main" story is that NAXA is trying to save the world from an asteroid in quite possibly the most incompetent way ever. The Earth is in danger? Instead of spreading the word to all the higher ups in charge, let's just contact three famous scientists, one of which known to specialize in a field that is most certainly not space. And the tournaments actually were just a "happy coincidence"; when Yuichiro's plan failed (which really shouldn't have happened had there actually have been security, but like I said, NAXA is incompetent) Regal asked for a strong Net Battler, so the Boss of NAXA just went and picked up the champion of the Version Tournament. The only other thing I should point out is how Lan bounced in and out of character and intelligence throughout the game. With the tournament scenarios, that's not odd, those are just fucked up in general. But in the actual story elements, Lan proves to be so idiotic it isn't even funny. He's flat out told by Higsby to eliminate the Dark Chip, and despite having a number of safe ways to remove it (like giving it to Sci Lab, or Mamoru if he doesn't want people to be suspicious), he just holds on to it because otherwise the "plot" wouldn't flow. And at the end of the game, Lan just listens to Regal's speech without commenting, despite the fact he literally just heard Duo say the same thing and had a counter-argument. Also, while Chaud certainly fell into the moral myopia Regal talked about, Lan and Yuichiro didn't. Yet they just listened to Regal because BN 4 Regal is a total Villain Sue and *explodes from BN 4 induced frustration*
 * Huh, that actually culd plausably add Serenade back into the mix as well if you mix in Mamoru.
 * I can accept Lan being a natural with a very good Navi and Chaud being a skilled customizer who trains constantly. But that doesn't explain how they can be the only competent Netbattlers in the whole world who are any good at it when there are people who have been doing it professionally for longer than those two have been alive.
 * Er wait, if the dark chips reduce your hp permanantly by one every time you use one...how the hell do the netnavis in the dark chip syndacate have so much hp?
 * They stock up on HP Memories, of course!
 * At the end of the first Battle Network Game, Hikari mentions that he had to change Hub's DNA because if it was 100% identical, that damage to the navi would damage Lan, too. How does that work, exactly?
 * This troper thinks that it has to do with the Full Synchro status effect. When Navi and Operator are acting completely in sync, they become linked in a way. If Navi and Operator also share DNA and mental state...This troper doesn't really know that this is an adequate explanation, but quantum physics posits that if two particles have identical quantum states, they are, in effect, the same particle. Maybe that applies here?
 * So I don't know if this was just the early art, but Lan is wearing rollerskates. It shows in his running animation because he is obviously roller-skating. Shouldn't he have gotten in trouble for wearing roller skates in school and in home because he'll leave "trails" on the floor? (Trust me, they don't just clutter up the floor)
 * In the anime, the wheels of his skates are either retractable into his shoes or attached on separately (been a while since I've watched it, can't remember which one exactly). That doesn't explain how he doesn't leave marks all over the place, but that's why he isn't in trouble for having them at school.
 * Why do so many battlechips have Mega Man on them? Is that the default appearance of the chips or does it change depending on the navi? Speaking of which does Mega Man have a navi chip of his own?
 * Mega Man has his own navi chip in Battle Chip Challenge, but there the navi chips allow the player to switch between available playable characters instead of summoning navis.
 * I haven't watched the anime, but as far as the game is concerned, I would say that either (1) the chip data takes on the portrait of the user, like Megaman, or (2) the portrait is just something like a generic Normal Navi (which is the case in some chips) and we the player just see it as Megaman instead.