Working Title 09.04.08: Working Change - Megaman (Part 2)

Posted by Jordan Williams on 09.04.2008

Original, X, and Legends are all accounted for. But what happened to Megaman after that? Let's see how the 20 year old franchise fares after it heads to the Portable Systems.

Welcome back to the #1 Column to re-download Monkey Island 1 and 2 and still find them to be some of the best puzzle/action/adventure games in the history of the world, WORKING TITLE.

On a whim I decided to go on a hunt and I actually found the first four Monkey Island games in a collection and I've been running through them all weekend. Why LucasArts hasn't made a new Monkey Island or at least ported the old ones to DS or Wii is just completely and utterly beyond me. The amount of rabid fans out there as well as the recent influx of interest in Pirates would ensure that this game sold quicker than a Japanese schoolgirl at an Anime convention.

I mean, think of it...Insult Sword fighting with the Wii.

Anyway, I'm not here this week to discuss why LucasArts needs to give us another Monkey Island, I'm here because we still haven't finished discussing the changes (good and bad) that have come with the Megaman Series. As I stated last week there are very franchises that have managed to stay around as long as Megaman and still have an audience. But some really good and bad decisions have done a lot to shape up the correct Megaman we all know and love today.


Working Change: Megaman (Part 2)

Last week I had just wrapped up what many people refer to as "The Golden Age" of Megaman. The Original Series, the X Series, and the Legends Series. These were all great games in their own right, although with the X series they started to get a little stale but that was soon forgotten with the brand new Legends Series that was kicking all sorts of ass. But one misstep by Capcom and that all went away, they decided not to stand behind the Legends Series anymore and moved on to the greener pastures of the GameBoy Advance.

And for many, this is where 'The Dark Age' began.

The Dark Ages

Battle Network Series - The Clone Wars



Ooooh. Megaman Battle Network. The game that was made by Capcom as the answer to Legends and the next big step in the series. You see, after Capcom let Legends die off they decided that they were going to make a Megaman for a new era, a new Megaman that the little gamers of the 00's could rally behind. This is when Battle Network was born. At this point the Internet was the biggest driving force for EVERYTHING and they decided that the best way to tap into today's youth was to take Megaman online.

In the REAL Alternate Universe of Megaman, the internet had become a big thing. In fact everything from soda machines to cars run on the wonderful porn server we call the web. Because the internet is so advanced we've actually developed technology that allows us to create little programs that run out online-lives for us.

We made Digimon, pretty much.

So, when the day is done and our little digital slave has done its work...what do we make it do?

Fight to the death, of course.

The story behind Megaman Battle Network was pretty simple when you think of it; you basically had to rid the world of a virus that was threatening mankind that was launched by some evil organization (WWW. Yes. The dreaded World Three.). You played as Lan Hikari, a wonderful little lad who just happened to one day receive a NetNavi (Net Navigator) from his dad...a wonderful little tike by the name of Megaman.

And that's where it all begins.

Now, I'm not here to give you a play-by-play of the story of all SIX of the games, because the story was actually the strong point of the game, it was actually one of the better stories to come out of Megaman. The main thing MMBN brought to the franchise was also its biggest draw and its biggest flaw. But I'll talk about that in a second. Before I launch into why this game is considered to be part of the Dark Age I'll at least get the positives.

Reboot. This series gave Capcom a chance to effectively reboot the franchise. Almost everyone from previous Megaman games were re-imagined in .EXE glory. And a lot of the characters actually got a LOT cooler with their .EXE counterparts. Remember Bass? You know the 'evil' Megaman from Megaman 7 and beyond? He got all sorts of awesome in MMBN. This gave Capcom a much needed to chance to reinvent some of its longtime characters but at the same time make them all shiny and new.

Another Style Change. With a new franchise means a new style, and this was no different with Megaman Battle Network. They shifted from the drab and dead tones of Megaman X and the 3D world of Legends to move into their own style. From an isometric point of view for the over world and a 2D point of view for the battles they crafted a pretty nice futuristic world that only got better once you 'Jacked In' (stop snickering) to the internet world.

Drastic Change in Gameplay. Now this is where things get interesting. For almost all of Megaman's life up until this point he has always been about shooting shit and shooting it hard. MMBN was the first Megaman game to take the blaster out of his hand and replace it with something else. This game played like an RPG and was treated as such. You spent the entire game collecting "Battle Chips" which would come with various powers that Megaman.EXE could use to his advantage. This was a drastic new change for the series and at FIRST seemed like a winner...but then the comparisons become all but apparent and true.

After the first couple of hours of MMBN, you started to notice something. A bad something.

This was nothing but Pokemon with Megaman's name on it. Sure, you didn't necessarily have the depth of a Pokemon game, but it was yet another game that was cashing in on the "Gotta Catch 'Em All" craze. Once you got passed the story and really got into the meat of the game, you began to realize that it was nothing more than a Pokemon clone.

It might be a little harsh to call it that given that it DID have a lot of things going for it, but it all pretty much came down to countless grinding to find the perfect Battle Chips to use against the next boss. And even then it wasn't THAT big of a problem because it was only one game and surely this wasn't going to be Capcom's next franchise.

And then they made five more of them.

Silly us for thinking Capcom wouldn't make a lot of the same game. The games did expand on the story, but at the same time managed to stick to the wonderful credo that we discussed in Legends. They strung us along for six games with no real change or advancement in the series. The latter few games did try to expand upon the core gameplay by offering things like "Beast Modes" and special abilities, but these were then marred by the most obvious of Pokemon rip-offs, the dreaded "Multiple Version" game.

The latter games in the series began the habit of having 'split' versions of the game that would allow for a certain version to have differing viruses and items than the other. This was seen by MANY as a cheap attempt to drum up some sales for the now failing series and it didn't work. The man draw of the Split Version for Pokemon is that it really did offer up a bit of change from the norm. You were actually forced to trade if you wanted that certain pokemon that wasn't on your version and with Pokemon being so popular you were bound to find someone.

However with MMBN, it wasn't that popular near the end of its life cycle to warrant such a community. It even had an anime that did well in its own right, but couldn't manage to help out the series at all. At this point it seemed all hope was lost for the Blue Bomber we all knew and loved. He was now reduced to a mere clone of one of the most successful gaming franchises in history instead of striking out on his own and breaking new ground like the previous Megaman games did. Capcom knew this, and was almost ready to pull to plug on Megaman's life support. But they decided to give it one more chance, they decided to turn "The Dark Age" into a term that did not apply to the failing of the series, but instead the tone of the series.

Welcome to Megaman Zero.

Zero Series - Bloody Hard



Fans of the series were none too happy with how Megaman Battle Network dragged on. Not only did it start to get to them that there were no real changes outside of a few gimmicks every game but the fact that Capcom just kept releasing them for six years showed that somehow they were still getting paid because of them. Finally the fans had had enough of it with MMBN 6 and Capcom listened and formally ended the series (The first Megaman Franchise to have an ACTUAL ending, by the way). But of course we cannot have a world without Megaman so they went back to the drawing board and realized that fans actually liked the darker tone of the X series and figured it was time to return to those roots and in more way then one.

Megaman Zero was released to some pretty big praise. The game took place after the X Series and focused on Zero, as opposed to Megaman X. The plot of the game was pretty damn grim, it turns out that after all of that battling with Sigma it ended up being X himself that went batshit crazy and pretty much laid a beatdown on the world. Zero had been incapacitated and locked up during this time but when he finally awoken the world was ruled by X. X has damn near ruined everything for mankind including the human race which was on its last legs.


No reason this is here. I just really liked the commercials.

You played as Zero in an attempt to stop the now-evil X from causing even more havoc on the world we've all come to know and love. It doesn't sound like a necessarily dark story until you actually play the game. Within the first few seconds you watch a band of resistance fighters get killed in a bloody mess (well, Bloody if you have a Japanese copy of the game) and other atrocities occur before Zero is released. This game marked a return to its side scrolling roots and actually managed to improve on quite a few things in the eyes of the fans.

The REAL Dark Knight. Iron Panties notwithstanding, this was a significantly darker version of Megaman. As I mentioned the game was filled with bisections and beheadings and a dark storyline to match. To go with the change in story we had a similar change in scenery. The levels were all very dark and cold; they felt like they were right out of a sci-fi drama rather than the colorful world of Megaman.

Weapons. A big staple of Megaman was that he always had his trusty arm-cannon. This was changed in this series as Zero was actually not armed with the arm cannon; he had his own gun, shield, spear, and his trademark sword at his disposal. On top of that he was actually able to level up each weapon individually which would let him access stronger attacks and more moves. This was a very cool feature that really helped you shape the way you played the game. If you wanted to you were free to play the game using nothing but Zero's sword and before you know it you would become a whirling whirlwind of lightsaber justice.

I said 'Bloody Hard' for a reason. While I said last week that I wouldn't cover things like difficulty, I'm going to have to just bend that rule for this one. For the first time in a LONG time a Megaman game was HARD. Many call this one of the hardest Megaman games since the first Megaman. Mostly because they decided to due away with certain staple of Megaman (more on that in a moment) in favor of making the game more difficult. The learning curve was also HUGE. If you didn't know what you were doing the first boss in the game would bend you over and make you his long haired bitch.

Of course, with all of these bright spots there had some be some clouds looming. While the dark atmosphere, the new weapons system and the increased difficulty garnered praise. There were some things that the game didn't quite hit a homerun with.

No More Powers. A huge staple of the Megaman games was that once you defeated an enemy, you end up getting their signature power. This held true for OS and X and to an extent Legends and MMBN, but Zero did away with that completely. They also did away with the signature "Select" screen that would allow you to choose who you wanted to go after next. You were not sent on 'missions' to areas to do various things that might not even end up with you facing one of the games 'real' bosses. Some saw this as too much of a departure despite the fact that it was a new element of the game.

Cyber Elves/Elements. The new replacement for the lack of Robot Master Powers were the Cyber Elves. These little sprites gave Zero powers beyond his normal scope. While most of the elves were throwaways there were some very useful ones like a special elf that restored all of your power, or an elf that removed EVERY SINGLE SPIKE PIT from the game. However, these all came with a price. Once you used an elf, it was gone, and it also affects your rating for every level which in turn would mean that you might not get certain elves in the future. Also replacing the powers were elemental 'chips', these little doodads could be inserted into your weapons to give them an element. The elements were the standard pack of Fire, Ice, and Thunder and they did exactly what you thought they would do. As logic dictates, if you hit the opposing element with the right elements power you would do more damage...which was about all it amounted to. This feature was bashed a bit because it really simplified what used to be a complex guessing game to find out whose powers hurt who.

Weather. While this system wasn't added until the final game in the series, it really didn't make much of a difference. If you changed the weather you could open up new areas and cover some old ones (snow would cover spikes, fill gaps, etc) but all in all this was just a throwaway feature.

MMZ marked a homecoming for the series despite these faults. The critics loved it and it was putting Megaman back on the map. It seems just like with Castlevania that Megaman was beginning to find a home on handheld systems rather than the home console. This being his 7th game on the system and being one of the most successful ones to date. MMZ went onto spawn three sequels and it was ended there on a pretty sad note to go with the series (Spoiler: Zero dies.). Due to the success of the series, Capcom of course decided to end it before they could mess it up anymore, but during this series they realized that the fans responded well MMZ, so they decided to cash in on it's success with a clever spin off for the series...and then decided to try to remake the series that almost killed the entire franchise.


ZX and Starforce Series - The Good, The Bad, The Present.

And now ladies and gentlemen we have reached the current series of Megaman games. The reason why I grouped the two of these together is because for the first time in awhile both of these franchises were released at the same time, within months of each other. First I'll look at the series that follows continuity, that being the Megaman ZX series.



Note: Prepare for a dumbed down story, because honestly the storyline for Megaman ZX and Advent is fuck-all confusing.

After the success of the Megaman Zero series, Capcom definitely didn't want that ship to sail, so they decided to make a continuation to the series with Megaman ZX 200 years later. The sacrifices that Zero made are evident because Man and Reploid are living together in harmony...for a bit. Of course, with everything in Megaman it eventually turned into a massive war between robots and humans and of course it was up to Megaman to stop it.

Wait, scratch that...Megaman wasn't in this game.

This was the first game in -ALL- of the series to not include a literal "Megaman" or a similar character. This time around your protagonists were Vent and Aile (and two new characters named Grey and Ashe in the sequel). Two little preteen reploids that were taken in after Reploids royally fucked up their life. Through a series of unfortunate events (Seriously, go read the Wiki to make sense of it) they come across and eventually use "Biometals" which grant them Megaman-like powers. They can use these Biometals to effectively 'become' a Mega Man versus actually being one.

Without spoiling anything, I'll go ahead and tell you that the Biometals were a pretty big part of the game and some of the models they had were pretty fucking awesome. What's even more awesome are that between this and the MMZ series Capcom had not skipped a step and made sure they kept the same high level of performance up. Some of the changes they made THIS time were...

Biometals. As I mentioned, this time you were not Megaman in name you were a Mega Man (note the space) and could become one at any time to conquer your reploid foes. They come in tons of different flavors and they are all actually send backs to the MMZ series because each one effectively turns you into the characters from MMZ (X, Zero, Harpuia, Fefnir, etc). These provided some very interesting play experiences when used with the touch screen and added a new layer to the series as once again you didn't necessarily have to rely on using power A to defeat Enemy B.

DS. Obviously, with this game being on the DS this was the first side-scrolling Megaman game to really make use of the DS' power. The touch screen controls were a BIT tacked on, but they did provide a different way to play the game. They game also got to hardness the DS' power which one might not notice because it was still mostly a sprite-based game but if you really have a keen eye you can see the different between this and the MMZ series on the GBA.

Girl Power. For the longest time Megaman actually never had any playable female characters, hell, they barely had female characters in GENERAL that weren't side characters. This was the first time since Tronne Bonne that you were actually allowed to play with a female character in Aile or Ashe. Of course they were pretty much just avatars and there wasn't a true change between the two outside of minor story changes and small gameplay ticks, but it was the year 2006 and it was finally time to step into the new millennium.

This would be the part where I would go about the bad changes that ZX made...but outside of the terribly confusing storyline...there really weren't any. The whole Cyber Elf system had been dropped and the levels felt more alive and different. The game wasn't perfect, but as far as the franchise goes they didn't make any changes for the worse here. Megaman ZX (and Advent) were pretty damn solid and were keeping the good track record of the new Megaman side scroller games intact.

But leave it to Capcom to go and ruin a good thing. While they had success with MMZ and decided to continue it with MMZX they didn't really have much of a success with MMBN, the series before it. The logical step would be to not bother with MMBN anymore.

Logical + Capcom = Does not compute. This is why we were ‘blessed' with Megaman StarForce.



Megaman StarForce (it's typed so many damn ways that there's no 'true' spelling) is the second of the current Megaman series of games. It actually takes place 200 years after Megaman Battle Network and once again puts you in the feet of a child who has grown up in a world where computer technology flourished instead of robotics.

You know what? I'm not even going to sugarcoat this here. This game is Megaman Battle Network in 3D. Outside of a few changes like actually BECOMMING the Net Navi (which for some reason in this game are aliens who possess people) there's really nothing to this game. You play as the ever-loving emo Geo Stellar on a quest to...well...you actually don't find out what they hell you're fighting for until about halfway into the game. Most of the game is spent stopping these aliens from possessing your friends and doing battle on the interbutts.

In fact, I actually reviewed this game awhile back you can see it here.

You can tell by me writing this right now that I didn't care for this game too much, but I'll run down the changes anyway...by the way, none of them were necessarily good.

Return of the Split. As you can see by the picture up there, they brought back the split version with a whopping THREE this time. The changes between the versions once again were very small. The difference was that in each game you had a chance to turn into the namesake character during special segments. Outside of that everything was virtually the same.

Wi-Fi. Of course a game that centers around the Internet would eventually go online, which was the case here. You were able to take your Megaman character online to do battle or trade with other players. This was a good change to implement, but at the same time it didn't have the community to sustain it like Pokemon did (and still does). It was a good idea nonetheless.

Transformations. Arguably the biggest change this game had over Battle Network was something that...you could already do in Megaman Battle Network. If you aligned your battle chips correctly you were able to 'transform' into a different Megaman from time to time which would give you special abilities such as being able to use X chip for Y amount of time and so fourth. This feature was available in MMBN but it wasn't the main focus like it is in this game.

3-D. For those of you who played the god-awful Gamecube version of Megaman Battle Network, you thought that the game would never go 3D again but it did. In Starforce the over world of the game played still in MMBN exact. same. art-style, but the battles actually played out in 3-D...it's a shame it wasn't good QUALITY 3-D...even for the DS.

Another big change that MMSF has over MMBN is that while MMBN was well received by critics and it actually took them a while to hate it...MMSF has been panned out the gate. Like I said earlier (and in my review) this really is nothing but a continuation of MMBN and of all the franchises Capcom could go back to, this isn't the right one.

But we'll just have to see what they plan to do in the future because our look at Megaman sadly ends here. Right now we are currently in the middle of the ZX and StarForce saga with Megaman StarForce 3 (Black Ace/Red Joker) to be released next year and no word on another Megaman ZX game in the near future. Hopefully that changes soon because the ZX series is THE series to look at right now, because StarForce looks like it might just end up undoing all of the success Capcom has going for it with Megaman.

But one thing is for sure, no matter what happens Megaman will be here until the end. Like Mario and Sonic of yesteryear and the new heroes of today like Kratos, Master Chief and Pikachu. You can rest assured that Megaman will continue to crank out games and be a success no matter what it does. There IS reason why this franchise has been around for 20 years. Hopefully it can stay around for 20 more.

Working Feedback

I believe that somewhere in this column you inferred that Mega Man and Zero had some sort of "more than just" friends relationship. Thanks for ruining my childhood, Ogre :( ~ Drew Robbins

You're so welcome.

SD vs RAW is gonna blow chunks. Nothing will ever save this franchise game from going down the shitter~ Pussy Licker

Yeah, same thing with Madden. Man that series is SO dead. Nice name, btw.

Megaman Legends was awesome. It was different from other Megaman games but was amazing in so many ways. I actually enjoy more than OOT (they ARE somewhat similar games) and the major dungeons were creepy. It had the best story I had ever seen in a game with good voice acting, fun characters, awesome music, awesome bosses, lots of weapons, sidequests etc. I REALLY need to get Megaman Legends 2 someday.
~markhenrysquash

Honestly, I didn't even read the comment you made...but as 411mania.com's #1 Mark Henry mark, I am obligated to applaud you for that name.

Working Question

You know what? I'm feeling lazy this week. Which Megaman character of ALL of the Megaman characters is your favorite? For me it is Bass/Forte. I always have a soft spot for the evil characters and Bass was just one bad motherfucker in every game he was in, including the MMBN series.

How 'bout you?

Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams...and I have NO idea what the fuck I'm writing about next week.


In a world…where Don LaFontaine is dead.


…It's a sad world.