Mega Man Battle Network/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Annetta was a completely different character in the anime. Not to mention, there's evidence to suggest that Annetta (in the games) is a Well-Intentioned Extremist. (It's also easy to assume Plantman acts as an evil conscience to her)
  • Americans Hate Tingle: BubbleMan.exe
  • Non Sequitur Scene: The series is generally filled with these, especially the job requests, but the airplane rap-off is the most infamous moment of all.
    • In Network Transmission when the Professor reveals himself after Zero's defeat, the whole Cyberworld MegaMan, ProtoMan and Zero are standing in inexplicably starts shaking. This shaking is never mentioned again.
      • This could be due to the Life Virus though.
    • Battle Network 4 is filled with these. Although you could blame how the scenario system works as to why nobody ever seems to comment on most of the stuff, it doesn't change the fact that there was some seriously weird stuff going on.
    • If you look at the series as the continuous story it is supposed to be, the entirety of Battle Network 4 is a massive BLAM. The game ends with a meteor about to destroy the planet, and it's resolved by everyone on the planet cheering for Lan and MegaMan. In BN5, none of this is ever mentioned.
  • Broken Base: The fanbase is decidedly split between those who think the second and third games are crown jewels, and those who think of the fourth game as such. The fourth game is notable for being considered completely abominable by critics and just about everybody else (despite being the highest selling in the series).
  • Complete Monster: Dr. Regal is a complete and utter scumbag who's proud of being as evil as he is. It should be noted that unlike other antagonists who repented Wily and Sean or were humiliated and mocked (The Professor), Regal had to be brainwashed by his own father in order to stop his reign of terror.
  • Awesome Music: The music in general stays fairly high-quality throughout the series. Some examples of particularly awesome music, however:
  • Demonic Spiders: Battle Network 3 has the Scuttlest viruses in the Secret Area. They start combat with a Battle Aura that requires a single hit dealing 100 (or 200, for the stronger ones) damage or more to take down, come in groups of three, and have homing attacks that deal 200 damage apiece. To make things worse, you will encounter one that can hit the elemental weakness of the style you are currently using, and they come in groups of 2-3.
    • Cloudies. When combined with Swordys, they are the stuff of nightmares.
    • Swordies get kicked a fair bit down the totem pole in later games. Also, in 4, the UnderNet is infested with actual spiders that invade your area, not only forcing you to dance around (you have a Slasher, right?) and put you in the line of fire of everything else, but also covering your section with sticky webs that will catch and hold you for a few seconds, which can generally spell death in the deadliest sections.
    • Higher levels of most viruses generally qualify for this, given significant boosts in speed and power.
  • Die for Our Ship: Poor, poor Mayl...
    • Dex only has the fault of not being a Bishonen and having a crush on Mayl...
    • Do not mention Annetta's name to Chaud/Yai shippers. It won't end well.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: There's a very good reason Mr. Match has been in five out of six games. And why HeatMan is the only Navi he uses is more than one of them.
    • Higsby HAS appeared more often than the majority of the supporting cast...
    • Princess Pride.
    • Bass. Holy freakin' crap Bass. He might very well be the most popular Navi in the entire series.
    • Punk.exe isn't especially popular among the fanbase, but his existence is an expression of Keiji Inafune's love of the classic Mega Man Killer (who actually was a darkhorse from the original series).
      • Other Navis, such as ProtoMan, Colonel, SearchMan, and TomahawkMan, are straighter examples.
  • Fan Hater: If you like the fourth game, be very careful about which EXE fan you mention that to. Hell, if you like EXE in general, be very careful about mentioning that around fans of the Classic, X, Zero, or ZX series. Very careful.
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Generally one minute before the end of the ending of 3.
    • Some like to pretend that 4, in its entirety, never happened.
    • The 4-only bit is generally more common. Admittedly, a good few people have a problem with the whole Disney Death thing, but that doesn't mean that 5 and 6 are cut off so wholeheartedly.
  • Faux Symbolism: Serenade is supposed to be a perfect being, incorporating aspects of both genders (hence the androgynous appearance), and has attacks named things like "Saint's Light".
    • Forte, by comparison, is darkness-based like you wouldn't believe. Wants to kill humanity, wields Dark Power from the instant of its discovery, etc.
  • Franchise Killer: Battle Network 4 had extremely high sales thanks to Battle Network 3, but its poor reception by critics and fans effectively ended things. MMBN 5 saw a 33% cut in sales, and they were forced to end the series with 6.
  • Game Breaker: A lot of the folders you can find on GameFAQs, Gater folders/GateMagic get special mention.
    • There is also Gospel duping, a bug that allows some gamebreaking folders in 2 to be made.
    • Don't forget 3's FolderBack chip, easily the most broken chip ever made. Its one and only downside is it recycles opponent's chip in netbattle. God help you if they recycled a Navi recycle and recycles their buffed up chip.
    • 3's is an evil nest of Game Breaker. The big three Navi chip is crazy. One is a field nuke stun, second is a long duration stun and the last hit so many time that a buffed one does sick amount of damage. It is nearly the same reason why Navi Recycle is so damn broken.
    • The first Giga Chip you are likely to get are this in 3 (the aforementioned Folderback and Navi Recycle).
    • Hub.BAT.
    • Undershirt, Wood Type, and Grass Stage.
      • Maybe in single-player, but if you're playing a human opponent, you're just asking for a Heat Spread. A successful hit will usually wipe out most (if not all) of your Grass Stage, and deal Quad Damage to boot. Failing that, any time-stopping multi-hit attack will bypass Undershirt anyhow.
      • Notably, a Hopeless Boss Fight against Bass in the third game allows him to disregard this Nigh Invulnerability and kill you anyway.
    • BN3 has a special mention—the Mons mechanic, the Virus Chip, mentioned below has a little fun fact that, due to them presenting themselves as a roulette, most people don't notice—if left alone, the roulette will stop... but on the first-tier virus. Always. While this SEEMS to be a bad thing, you can upgrade the Viruses using BugFrags, putting the first-tier virus either pretty close or equal to the highest tier in power. This also adds some utility to the otherwise ungainly KillerEye chip, which depending on which tier you get aims a different way -- the first tier is always straight ahead, just like the highest tier, which makes it easy to aim. So not only can you make a nice little Infinity Plus One Chip, but you can make one that'll hit things. And in the one case hit through things.
    • In the first game, any chip that deals ≥100 damage. The most HP you'll experience is a thousand - that's right, with one chip, you can take out a tenth of the boss's health. And you don't even need those to use on the Final Boss considering the Eleventh-Hour Superpower that you get.
    • If you customize your health high enough in BN 3, Muramasa (deals as much damage as the health you've lost) becomes incredibly powerful with little consequence, because of the fact that the limit of the amount of damage it could go up to was 999, which is enough to nearly kill most high level bosses in one hit (Especially, Bubbleman, whose V3 Random Encounter form only appears if your health is at critical).
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: The aforementioned whiskey rap, from MMBN2. In that same game, Gauss shouts "Damn it to hell!" after his plans are foiled.
  • Goddamned Bats: Quite a few.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: In 3, all BBS posts made by Undernetters are anonymous.
  • In Name Only: When you think about it.
    • Extremely debatable. The Battle Network series is the result of a For Want of a Nail with Light researching internet technology rather than researching robotics like he did in Classic. In Name Only implies that the only thing that ties Battle Network to the rest of the series is the title (and possibly characters). This would probably better fit Mega Man Star Force, but again that might be debatable.
      • The names make much more sense in Japanese where they were Battle Network: Rockman.EXE and Shooting Star Rockman, since it used the actual MegaMan's names in the title like every other series (except Legends), since the Battle Network MegaMan is Rockman.EXE, and Star Force MegaMan is called Shooting Star Rockman.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Mr. Match crosses this big time in the third game where he takes advantage of Lan's good nature by pretending to have turned good, only to trick him into installing dangerous programs around his dad's workplace, which results in the place almost burning down. He only escapes being a Complete Monster thanks for developing redeeming traits and repenting for good in the post-3 games.
  • Nightmare Fuel: CircusMan in Battle Network 6. He has an attack that the fanbase infamously nicknames as the "Tent Rape Attack". If that isn't bad enough, the first time you see him, you witness him opening his chest to reveal a vacuum, which he uses to absorb and capture one of the two Cybeasts. If that still isn't enough for you, he also successfully uses it on MegaMan later! He's basically Kirby, without the power transformation part and hundreds of times creepier.
    • Nebula Grey from 5.
  • The Scrappy: BubbleMan.EXE, due to EVERYTHING about him being absolutely irritating: his personality, his verbal tic, his fighting style... everything.
    • Chaud got this earlier in the series thanks to being an absolute asshole towards Lan and MegaMan. His attitude did improve later, though, and he ultimately escaped this status.
  • Seinfeld Is Unfunny: Try just viewing videos on YouTube of the fifth and six Mega Man Battle Network games; then try viewing ones of the first and second, especially the first. The first one appears so laggy and bare-bones. (No style changes, no navi merges...) It's pretty obvious that they were still experimenting. Not to mention, with the amount of Fake Longevity it was hard to get into the first Battle Network game because of all the tedious backtracking, artificially-lengthened stages, and game breaker chips.
  • Sequelitis: The fourth, fifth, and sixth games. The third game rather coherently ended the Dr. Wily plotline, the Bass plotline, and ended with MegaMan's Heroic Sacrifice. Following that the series had a major graphical shift, Style Changes were replaced with Soul Unisons (among numerous other gameplay changes), and Dr. Wily and Bass are somehow still alive. The plots also got quite weird, with the fifth game arguably taking the cake—the Big Bad's plan is to link the literal souls of everyone on earth via the Internet.
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Compare Battle Network 1 with the later games, especially 2 and 3, before Capcom Sequel Stagnation set in. It's fairly clear they were still getting the hang of things.
    • The sixth game to the fourth and fifth.
  • Tainted by the Preview: Go ahead. Say you're glad they're keeping the old graphics and Internet in the BN1 remake around fans. I dare you. Although this is because the original internet was very difficult to navigate, which may be mitigated by the map function also revealed in the preview.
  • That One Boss: ProtoMan.EXE is usually one of the most aggravating bosses to fight in most games, if only because he tends to block anything thrown at him with his shield until he comes out to attack, which he does very quickly, leaving only a small window of opportunity to strike back.
    • DrillMan.EXE in 3.
    • BubbleMan.EXE in 3. The continuous spew of damaging bubbles not only blocks your attacks, but also severely hampers your movement and a new one is made the instant you blow one up. Coupled with all the other obstacles thrown on field and the fact his third version can only be encountered at critical health...
  • That One Level: It's not particularly hard, to be honest, but you'd have to search hard to find five or more people who enjoyed the carnival levels in BN4. Brrr... that music.
    • Actually, what about the waterworks level in the first BN? You have a (somewhat) long stage full of slippery ice. It seems like you deleted what was causing the water to get held up but guess what? Now the water is purple and everyone's poisoned so you have to go through the stage all over again.
    • For that matter, the Power Plant, also in the first game. While veterans to the series won't mind the lack of post-battle healing (the later games had it as a facet of the system as opposed to a one-time gimmick) there's the fact that you're on a limited battery life, have to solve frustratingly vague logic puzzles, and the random battle rate is through the roof. Oh, and did we mention that a large part of the level is an invisible maze?
  • They Just Didn't Care: The most common theory held by fans as to Operate Shooting Star's lack of new content.
  • Transforming Mecha: GYROMAN.EXE
  • Unfortunate Implications: Mega Man Battle Network 2's "If you don't rescue me, you'll miss the chance to see Miss Yai naked!", anyone?
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: Serenade. Any debate about his/her gender has a very high chance of turning into a Flame War. After several years, Word of God finally stated that Serenade is some kind of perfect being that transcends our concept of gender.
    • Tieria Erde?
    • This Troper always assumed that Navi were like Warforged, and their gender identities were purely visual, anyways. So it's not so much that Serenade "transcended" gender as just didn't consider it worth its time to bother about something so "human".
    • Also, despite it being completely unambiguous in-universe, this troper still can't believe that Raika is male. Please tell me I'm not the only one.
  • Villain Sue: Slur. When you can take THREE P.A.s and a sword swipe to the chest and not even flinch, you know you've gone too far.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The leader of Gospel. Seriously, when a kid says "My computers are more honest than people", you know he's broken.
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