Stupidity Hole

Here’s a rough draft of what will eventually be an essay/review on From Somewhere out the Back. I figured it’d be good to share the work now and then have the final version on the new writing space, because that’s where I’m wanting to put all my essay-type stuff.

The final version of this might end up being pretty different. This was written over the last forty minutes and I want to expand the focus on the fascination with The Internet, and how that ties into the game. I also want to flesh out some other things, so we’ll see what happens.

I hope you enjoy.

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Way back when, if you were a kid or teenager when the Gameboy Advance came out, There was a good chance you at least heard of Mega Man Battle Network. For a number of people who played any, or enough of the Mega Man games in the nineties, this was more Mega Man but it was different. It was new, and more modern and sleek, and as futuristic as the early aughts themselves. Or at least, that’s how they felt.

A couple of years ago the two volumes of Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection were released. As the name suggests, they are two volumes of the mainline Battle Network games, collecting all six across… two volumes. Anyway, for a lot of people this was a moment to tap into nostalgia. It was a moment to go back and reminisce about things. I played the first three games as a kid, but I don’t have nostalgia for them. Occasionally I’d remember them and I’d think about playing them again, but mostly I was fine to let them be in the past.

Well, I ended up buying both volumes of the collection because I don’t know why. I had a vague memory of enjoying the first three and I guess at one particular moment I wanted to play them enough to buy them. They were probably also on special at the time.

I started with Mega Man Battle Network, as in the first of the series, and that’s the one I want to talk about in this space.

So Mega Man Battle Network (henceforth MMBN) came out on the Gameboy Advance. It was an RPG, and sort of a mix between action and strategy when it came to some of its RPG elements. It also contained elements of what is now referred to as deck-building elements, though it may have been referred to as having those in particular back then. I don’t know. What I do know, however, is it was a game that could only work because of when it came out.

One day Lan Hikari wakes up, running late for school, or soon to be late for school. Woken up by MegaMan.EXE, his Net Navigator (NetNavi for short) as always, Lan gets ready and rushes out to wherever the plot leads him.

Early on the game reveals the WWW, or World Three, a shadowy criminal organisation. I think they’re established before you take control, and I’m not too sure how to feel about it. MMBN does not feel like a finished game and announcing the main antagonistic force so early seems like a poor move. At the same time, it’s nice that it happens, because you’re not spending time guessing and then getting a potentially hackneyed development later on. WWW are the driving force of the game and its their machinations that you deal with throughout.

It probably helps that MMBN is not a subtle game. It doesn’t do much to try and make you guess about what is going on. There are builds, but there are few (if any) surprises. In a sense, the way the plot unfolds feels like a series of self-contained episodes in a cartoon, which is in part helped by the vibrant, kind of charming and catoony visuals, ripe for expressiveness yet unable to capitalise on them, and how they’re used to depict the world the game takes place in. It’s also helped by the music, which, whilst quite limited, still is highly expressive in terms of capturing mood, action, and the wonder of the new.

I’ll touch on that in a moment, but before I do I also wanted to mention that the plot goes by really fast, and feels like it drags in places at times too. The world of MMBN is fascinated with The Internet and what it offers, and the way that you interact with it is by connecting to ports to access it. This also is how you access dungeons. You control Lan in the world; you control MegaMan.EXE in dungeons and on The Internet. Because of how the plot plays out, and the limited design of a few areas, this can lead to numerous interrupts and a feeling of things dragging due to the repeated use of things. It’s…. fine, but it’s also not pleasant to deal with at the best of times.

As a side note, there are a lot of exclamation marks throughout the game. This is one excited game, to say the least.

MMBN‘s combat is interesting. It’s somewhere between action and strategy. Combat takes place on a three by six square grid, and usually you and the enemies have half each. You can move freely around the area you control, which can be increased and decreased depending on certain chips. Chips are where the deck-building comes into play, and help you deal with enemies. Various forms of damage dealing, area control and strategy come into play with them, though you can still attack enemies easily enough with your buster, though it will take longer than strategising. Every exty seconds you can open your folder and you’re given a random selection of chips (which will include ones you didn’t use last time you opened your folder). You go from there.

This is a really basic explanation, but it should get the idea across. You need to think about positioning, action, how attacks move, area control… there’s a number of things you need to think about. It’s complex stuff, but it’s easy to get into and understand how the stuff works. At the same time, what the game presents here feels much like a foundation to tweak and build upon, and subsequent games certainly did. Whilst there’s stuff going on, at the same time there’s not much, and battling can get tedious. Not helped is the inability to avoid battles entirely. You can escape from them from what I remember, so long as you make use of certain chips in your deck, but that’s not too helpful if the right chip doesn’t come up when you want it.

It compounds with the issues of how the game progresses, and whilst MMBN is actually brief, it feels like a slog. That also affects the depiction of The Internet, which is arguable needlessly complex in appearance, and also a slog to get through, but it’s part of why I like the game, as an idea.

When MMBN came out, The Internet was gaining large-scale traction. It wasn’t fast or “large”. A lot of us were there, in part due to places like GameFAQS and games like Diablo II. The traction provided by World of Warcraft and the promised convenience of smart phones was yet to happen. The Internet was a place that had some severe issues (though it still does), but it was new and amazing. It was this wonderful thing and it was full of potential and possibility. It was wide open, and that meant not understanding things and certainly wandering into the wrong space at times, followed by quickly getting out. It hadn’t narrowed in the way The Internet seems to have over time.

MMBN is fascinated with The Internet. There’s a good chance that the game revolving around it had to do with trying to maximise sales, but the team at Capcom that worked on this game believed in its potential, and they explored it. Whilst the depiction is needlessly complex in appearance and quite linear in execution, there’s a clear desire to make the most of it and explore it, even if the result, gameplay-wise, shows a lot of potential but doesn’t quite pay off. It doesn’t quite depict The Internet well, but the game certainly captures the experience, and how it felt to be using it in 2001. The future was in our hands, and we were experiencing it in the present time, and now we got to play a game that engaged with what proved to be more than a passing fad.

Sure, how it’s depicted here is limited in scope, and there are reasons for that. Capcom would go on to get a bit more fanciful (and fancifully bland) with how it depicted The Internet in the series, but here it’s at it’s most pure, potential-ready, and despite it not being as good as it could be, there’s something really earnest and genuine about it that I really respect. It’s not something that can easily be repeated. If somehow done with the same wonder today as it was then, MMBN would feel more like a throwback, or intentionally nostalgic game. Even if given all the improvements needed, it wouldn’t stand up as much as it does because it came out at just the right time for all the enthusiasm it has to shine.

Mega Man Battle Network is a flawed game in some glaring ways, but it gets a number of things right. Despite the drag and the sheer lack of polish, it’s highly charming. Characterisation is fairly simple, but it works because it’s over fast. The music is basic, but still carries complexity and fits use-wise incredibly well, especially for The Internet theme, which has that sort of futuristic, early aughts feel that seems organically digital. The other themes carry a good deal of emotional sway in them, though some do get grating. It’s a pretty game to look at, and it controls well too.

The game is simple, but it has big ideas. Flawed, but charming. Rough, but full of potential for something better, just like its fascination with The Internet.