Games Gameboy Advance Megaman Battle Network
Megaman Battle Network
Game Info:
| Platform: | Gameboy Advance |
| Developer: | Capcom |
| Publisher: | Capcom |
| Players: | Up to 2 |
| Format: | 64MB Cart |
| Gallery: |
Editor review
Strange, but it works
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In 1987 a platformer appeared on the NES; Megaman made his entry into the world of platformers. Armed with his trusty arm cannon the blue robot fought battles against his arch rival, Dr. Wily. Wily built several robots who helt the world in an iron grip, and each of these had to be defeated before Megaman could capture the evil doctor. he only thing that made this game differ from all other platformers was its high difficulty and the gameplay. Every boss in the game could could be chosen from the start and you would then battle it after you had managed your way through its stage. If you then destroyed the boss, you would obtain its weapon, which could be used to defeat the other bosses. Some bosses had a weakness against some weapon, so you had to defeat the bosses in the right order if you wanted not to lose almost all of your lives. Many games followed this classic up, with strange spin-offs that put Megaman in the shoes of a soccer player or make him a character that walks the net, making the series now have about 60 games, on all platforms, and the series is still growing. In Megaman Battle Network for the GBA, the gameplay core hasn't much changed, but the difficulty has, as you'll will defeat the bosses without much effort, even one the hardest bosses in the game becomes a piece of cake when you know his moves. The game's storyline isn't much, but the gameplay can make up for that. The story goes that the world is in the middle of a 'cybernetwork-age', in the year of 20XX. People surf the net and send emails using nifty handheld computers called PErsonal Terminal, or short PET. These PETs have their own controllers, called net navi's. Navi's cross the net for you to deliver emails to another person, or to find you some information. Unfortunately, due to the growing net and the many uses its has, hackers and many viruses have infiltrated the net, threatening the existence of the Navi's. After deleting a virus in his oven, Lan Hikari stumbles seemingly by accident in every unfortunate event that happens in his town and its surroundings. As mentioned before, the storyline is a bit light-hearted and doesn't have any twists or whatsoever, just the fact that your main character is a fifth-grader(!), makes me think that Capcom could have tried just a bit more to create a more compelling story. This isn't a bad thing right away, but for an RPG you would expect a bit more of a story, since it is one of an RPG's biggest factor. The visuals are nice to look at, with bright colors and nice visual effects, like explosions and attack animations. The character models are nicely animated, except when some of the NPC's move; they move diagonally from left-up to right-up, instead of just moving up. This makes it seem like they zigzag all the time. Especially the bosses look great while in battle. Their animations and looks are very well done and some of them even look -dare I say it?- kinda cool. MBN lets you play as Lan, a fifth-grader who fights crime on the net and against WWW, short for World-3, an organization that uses Navi's to do their evil deeds via the net. The ability to jack-in from nearly every location in the real world to enter the cyber network, makes the world you are in a lot larger than it would seem at first glance, and every location offers another cyber world with different viruses, Navi's and a different style of puzzles. If you jack-in to the net, you'll automatically be put in the role of Megaman. With him you walk freely all over the net, if you have the proper access codes for each area, and solve puzzles. As Megaman you can go to net merchants to buy new attacks or to upgrade yourself. Upgrades vary from extra HP to extra firepower and faster charge of your arm cannon's special attack. To battle off the viruses on the net, your Navi uses attacks stored in chips. These chips can be bought at merchants, found all around the net, or at the shop in your own town. The attacks can get pretty expensive, and after a while you'll find yourself searching the net for money which you can spend on that one chip that you want. There is a pretty high pokemon-like collecting factor involved in this game, which extends the life of this game considerably for the ones that wish to have their chip library full with all the chips that can be found in the game. They will spend an easy 20+ hours on this game, as the chips get harder and harder to get while progressing through the game. You'll move Megaman through the battlefield at will, moving him on a 3 by 3 grid, while the enemy does the same. After a bar at the top of your screen is filled, you can press either the L or R button to bring up a screen where you are able choose the chips that you plan to use in the next turn. After having chosen your chips you can use them in the order you picked them. There is a lot of strategy involved in these battles as well. You can't just choose every chip that you want to use; every chip has a code that corresponds the letters of the alphabet. Only choosing two or more chips of the same code or the same type of attack is allowed, forcing you to think twice about how you organize your pack of chips. Program Advances are another feature that are involved in these battles. If you choose three chips whose codes follow each other up, for example: three chips called Canon2 with code A, one with code B and one with code C combine to create an attack called the Z-Canon2, a more powerful attack than all three individual chips combined. There are many of these special attacks, and to be honest, it gives a real satisfaction when you release such an all-powerful attack and you delete those viruses all in one hit. The dungeons are the only real flaw in this game. Capcom obviously didn't have much inspiration while making this game, since the puzzles in the dungeons are repeated until you can almost dream them. This really makes you want to stop playing later on in the game, because if you don't like the puzzle with which you start the dungeon, that prepares you for the next, and harder puzzles, right away, you know you have to work your way through about ten more of these puzzles, all similar to the one you just did. This sometimes takes the fun out of playing the game. Like most GBA games, the sound is of fairly consistent quality. The tunes are pretty pumped up and happy, capturing the feel of the game. The sound effects are what really make this game shine with regard to the sound. There are dozens of different sound effects, made by your gunfire, chips or by the enemies. Nothing too bad here. | |||||||||
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