#first Mega Man Battle Network

[afternoonapocalypse]

I honestly figured this game was going to be forgotten and never leave the vague libraries of Wii or PS2. I still have my Wii copy even though I no longer own the console.

Then by some happenstance I find out that this game is re-releasing tomorrow? With online play functionality???

My dudes… If you like party games, silliness, and betraying your friends or forging loose alliances, please buy this game.

[dblsoul]

megastonks

[miserymet]

Battle Network 2 sucks, they sent my ass to France where I got robbed three times AND got my ass handed to me by a guy who called a ten year old a loser with no future

[foundfamilyhq]

[just-absolutely-super]

A conversation on discord had me wondering...

Since Megaman Battle Network (Rockman.EXE) and Starforce (Shooting Star Rockman) are in the same universe, how many fans have actually played both series? Thought it would be fun to find out for no other reason other than my personal amusement.

Vote in the poll now! Reblog for bigger sample size (because likes don't do shit!)

Note: This is NOT meant to be a poll asking which series you liked better or prefer. I just want to know percentages and ratios since it seems people who are fans of one series is familiar with the other. While you are allowed to comment that you couldn't get into a certain series for whatever reason, please refrain from bashing it and/or the people who do like the series. Thank you!

[silvertherogue715]

Shademan.exe!

His design is...pretty much the same in my AU as it is in the anime.

[mokeonn]

It's so funny when you get introduced to a franchise by it's weird spin-off series and then it becomes your basis for the franchise so then it becomes impossible to enjoy the mainline games because what the fuck do you mean Mega Man is a 2d platformer and not an isometric tactical role playing game

[bassforte]

One of the common things about me playing MMBN1 is i hardly know what the fuck im doing most of time.

[theearthmagicguy]

Wait, One Step From Eden got a pvp game like two weeks ago? Holy shit, I mean I wasn't really able to get in to the original game (the cards are ALL fun and effective, but it's a rougelike, so like Noita you're not gonna accomplish what you set out to do. And when you do get something that feels nice, it feels like a fluke), but being able to make a deck sounds like it'd get rid of most of the problems I had with the game.

[nesssy]

how does mmbn1 feel so dated yet have such a good cutscene skipping feature

[ponett]

Here it is! My new formal blog, the Ponett Gazette, is now live at the very good URL ponett.dog/blog. This is the new home for my longform writing, with a variety of things collected from Medium, Cohost (RIP), and here on Tumblr. It'll also have new original pieces starting very, very soon!

Here's some recommended reading:

My SLARPG postmortem, which I originally posted to Patreon around the game's first anniversary to reflect on how the game has done

My in-depth review of Final Fantasy XVI focusing primarily on why its story disappointed me, which is relevant again since that game just got its PC port

My retrospective on the Mega Man Battle Network series and why I love it so much

My lengthy, highly critical review of Hazbin Hotel, which unexpectedly blew up earlier this year when it was originally posted on Medium

My thoughts on the Alan Wake/Control series - originally a series of posts I made on Cohost, now collected in one place as sort of a journal of my time spent with those games I ended up loving

And of course my review of Ken Penders' The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings, originally seen on @thankskenpenders. (TKP isn't going anywhere, I'm just proud of a lot of things I've written for the blog and want to save those things in the same place as my other longform writing.)

There's a lot more than just those posts, though! Go check it out! Poke around! Bookmark it, save the RSS feed, leave a comment! It has comments!

[vgperson]

What Did I Do In 2023?

Whatever I wanted, mostly.

----

As I mentioned last year, my site now has an RSS feed with basically everything I've done back to 2020, so this will mainly be going over the same stuff from that, just with added context.

In January, I finally sat down and properly realized an idea for a short story I'd had sitting around for a while: From the Sidelines, about a fantasy RPG expedition going sideways. I remain very proud of it in both concept and execution, and hope people read it.

In February, Your Turn To Die was released on Steam Early Access, receiving character profiles and some bonus mini-episodes, adding two more later in the year.

After finishing From the Sidelines, I carried that momentum to revisit my Ut0p1a story series about funny computer animals. I'd always meant to continue it - and conclude it - but hadn't been satisfied with the ideas I had for it until totally rethinking them this year. In March, I posted the remaining stories one after another: Right to Code and Left to Code. I'm very proud of these as well. Also in March, Kenshi Yonezu released LADY. (Video, interview)

In April, Uri released the Data Book of the Strange Men Series, a big collection of the writing she's done on the games in the series, with a lot of new parts as well, all translated by me.

Then in May... uh, well, let's see. In April, Capcom released the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection. I always adored the Battle Network games, and was initially excited that they finally did the thing... but by the time it came out, I was pretty disappointed by how, while you certainly couldn't call them low-effort ports, the effort didn't extend everywhere I thought it should, with the biggest offenders being the total absence of any "convenience features" except Buster Max Mode, the bad font, and the almost entirely untouched translations.

So, I ended up deciding I might as well just replay the originals, and that was a fun time (aside from the parts that were bad). Doing this, I couldn't help but notice how... turbulent the translations were, even if I'd always known they were less than ideal. I mean, the first two games just used periods for ellipses despite the tight character limits, then in BN3 they had an ellipsis character... but it's center-aligned, Japanese-style? Aside from the intro, which has normal ones? Gosh, somebody should fix that - it's simple enough to find and edit in YY-CHR. "JapanMan" is silly, too - I wonder if anybody made a patch for that? Wait, what do you mean there's just a tool to extract and insert text in all the Battle Network games including the Legacy Collection???

Thus began a journey that sort of occupied the rest of my year. First I did the BN3 Translation Revision, trying not to worry too much about cross-referencing the Japanese text unless something seemed wrong, so that I didn't spend too long on the project. Then I began to consider BN2, with its unfortunate "foreigner" text that would need some more significant reworking. I established more convenient tools for comparing with the Japanese script, and thus did a much more thorough job with it, releasing the BN2 Translation Revision in June (AKA Princess Pride Month).

Finally, after giving myself time to recover and actually finish replaying the series, I knew what I had to do to close things out. With the BN4 Translation Revision, you can finally play Battle Network 4 with a translation that isn't such a mess. Whether you'd want to is for you to decide, though if you can get over the structure, I don't think it's the worst game in the series by any means. (Oh, and in December I also updated the BN3 Revision to 1.1, doing a thorough pass with the methods I'd honed. But I think I'm pretty much good on MMBN translations now.)

Anyway, backtracking to other things that happened during my Battle Network haze... June had Kenshi Yonezu's Moongazing (video, interview), and July had Globe (video, interview, interview).

Last but not least, released in November, I translated Refind Self: The Personality Test Game, a short game from Lizardry (creator of 7 Days to End with You) with a fun concept.

----

Obviously I was right to have said "no promises" last year. But really, Your Turn To Die should get its final part on Steam sometime next year, maybe even early-ish in it. That's certainly the goal.

I'm also hoping to buckle down and finish one of my own games, but as usual, who knows how that'll pan out. Letting my whims carry me this year let me finally finish From the Sidelines and Ut0p1a, which was great, and it also led me down a Battle Network rabbit hole, which was... fine, but definitely for a narrower audience. I'd always like to get back to more free game translations and the like, too, but it takes effort to find things I'd want to translate. For now, I think my increasing desire to be able to let loose some of these original games I've been planning, and the stories in them, might come out on top.

[snoruntpyro]

AWESOME COVER ART done by @scenegraph RAAHHHHHHH

Hello everyone. some of you may remember that i spent the past year writing a mega man battle network fanfiction. it was pretty funny and all but there was one hitch. the hitch is called "my neurodivergence has not slowed"; aka, "i had too many ideas, so i decided to write a another one."

this is Mega Man Battle Network: Cross Shadows, the sequel to my previous AU fic Cross Reflection. there's a very squishable AU lan, several more bastard girls, and a tournament (probably). you should maybe read the first one or the spoilery summary at the start of this one if you're interested but this shouldn't be too hard to follow even if you skip if you're feeling particularly brave.

i have now posted the first eight chapters, covering the first scenario and a little bit of the second. Have fun. Yay

[thankskenpenders]

Have you ever tried to make your own Sonic game? Would you? Any ideas??

I've never seriously tried to make a Sonic fangame, no. As a kid I was more drawn to the idea of making a Mega Man fangame, mainly due to the fact that I was already editing Mega Man sprites all the time and also because I loved the level editor in Powered Up. (I never put any real effort into making a Mega Man fangame either, though.)

The thought has definitely crossed my mind as an adult, although if I was to ever make a Sonic fangame it would probably be very different from the traditional Sonic gameplay. I'm not sure I could really wrap my brain around the twisty, interweaving paths of 2D Sonic level design, and also there are already plenty of fangames and indie spiritual successors that play like Genesis era Sonic out there.

Unsurprisingly, the two main ideas I have are both Archie-based. (For as big as the Sonic fangame community is, there really isn't much out there inspired by the Archie comics. Most of the fangames I've seen with the Freedom Fighters are based directly on SatAM. This seems like an obvious niche to fill.) The first and most obvious idea is to do a Metroidvania starring Bunnie, where she gets different upgrades for her robot parts along the way. The thought of doing something kinda like Battle Network with Sally and Nicole, with Sally exploring the physical world and Nicole exploring cyberspace, has also crossed my mind.

These would be fun things to work on, but I'm not sure how much effort I'd be able to put into them because, you know... I couldn't sell them. SLARPG's done well - better than I hoped, even - but from a financial standpoint I don't know if I could dedicate multiple years to a freeware fangame before moving on to my next commercial project, and from an energy standpoint I'm not sure I could juggle two games at once. But I've thought about the possibility of doing something very small as a fun experiment while I learn Godot. So who knows.

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Whirly

Debut: Mega Man Battle Network 5

I have never played a Mega Man Battle Network. There sure are a lot of them huh! Even without playing them, I can appreciate their extensive catalogue of funny creatures, and Whirly is one of my very favorites!

It is easy to see why I love Whirly so much! After all, you love it, too. It is a very cute crab. I like its swirly (this is foreshadowing. More on that later) eyes, and the way its carapace looks like it's wearing a helmet! Whirly is having so much fun, probably because it is constantly inside a dang whirlpool. That's so fun AND cool! It is weirdly rare, but always awesome for creature designs to feature vortexes as part of the creature!

Though, the whirlpool is not exactly part of Whirly- it rides in it, after all- and more importantly, a crab nestled in a spiral? We even have ourselves a Hermit Crab Reference here! If you know you know! About hermit crabs. This concept art shows that instead of a regular crabby body, Whirly's lower body is like that of a little cartoon fellow, and that is sooo silly and I love it!

I hope you have made yourself presentable, because you are now meeting Whirly's family, and you need to make a good first impression! (you can do this by being yourself)

From left to right we have: Whirly, WhirlyEX, Swirly, SwirlyEX, Spiraly, and SpiralyEX. They are a very happy family who all have the same exact hobbies and get along very well! Whirly is one lucky crustacean who doesn't have to dread having the EX counterparts over for holidays. Also, Swirly? Does that name remind you of anything from paragraph 2 of this post? Yes, I am a master storyteller!

Whirly and its variants can drop the Aqua Whirl Battle Chips, which allow you to attack with conical whirlpools just like Whirly's! But you don't get to actually play as or befriend Whirly, so what's the point? I don't know.

The enemies in this series are called Viruses. Wow! Viruses are awesome! Maybe if I were to be less careful on shady websites, I could meet Whirly myself! Whoopee!

[lonk-water]

NPCs (Real World)

NPCs (Net) (left: Doghouse Cmp, right: StereoComp)

(More Images under the cut)

I tried my best to take the images in comparable locations

Lan's room

Outside Lan's House

Squirrel Statue

Inside Higsby's

Lan's Homepage

ACDC Area 1

Battle (Doghouse Cmp)

Custom Screen (Battlechip Selection)

Mega Man Battle Network 3: Blue on the left,

Mega Man Battle Network 4: Red Sun on the right, both Screenshots taken from the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy collection Vol.1 & Vol.2 on Nintendo Switch

The NPCs from the first image are not in comparable locations.

These images are not fully representative of the visual style of the games but Tumblr has a 10 image limit and I already spent at least two hours taking the screenshots and editing them together