Topic: 2011/11: Mega Man: Battle Network (GBA) - Will Mallia

[JonLeung]

Mega Man: Battle Network

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Will Mallia's Mega Man: Battle Network (GBA) maps.

We're well into the 21st century, and still no sign of humanoid robots that fight each other with fancy projectile weapons.  Nope, in 20XX, we're playing with virtual avatars in online games, which is probably the closest we'll get in our lifetime to Mega Man...at least, this version of Mega Man, who's a virtual partner in cyberspace.

Among the many multiple-of-5-year anniversaries this year, one that really surprises me is Mega Man: Battle Network's 10th.  Has it really been that long ago since this cyberspace version of Mega Man made his debut on the then-new Game Boy Advance?

It's clearly overdue to honour Will Mallia, the undisputed king cartographer of this particular Mega Man series on the GBA.  And he's thorough.  He's mapped out the main six games in their entirety (and consider that there are two versions of each game from 3 onwards), plus any Japanese-exclusive areas, as well as the Japanese-only 4.5.  Plus, he's labelled the items, which is always awesome.  It's obvious that there are some series loved by particular mappers, and Mega Man: Battle Network is Will Mallia's baby.  He's even mapped a stage from an obscure game from the obscure WonderSwan Color, and is working on the Mega Man: Star Force series (Battle Network's sequel series) on the DS.  Now that's dedication!

So to recognize the mega-dedication in mapping the entire series, Will Mallia's Mega Man: Battle Network (GBA) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for November 2011.

[Will]

Now this truly is an awesome honour. Of course I did receive some assistance from Marioman who provided both walk through wall codes and useful information before each game began to be mapped, so of course he's to credit.

The battle network series have appealed to me by the style of role playing on a computer, but I can't help feeling the games are a bit too sugar coated and various characters are lame and wimps. Unlike the Mega Man X and Zero series, populations and ecosystems don't get destroyed, so matter of life and death doesn't truly shine in those series, it's like a regular Saturday cartoon. Even the music doesn't quite match with better tracks I've heard. Capcom could have made a lot better characters and plotline. Unique features I like the best are the tetris-styled program installer introduced in BN3 (compression codes are also fun to discover), the Liberation Missions in BN5, the navi forms you can transform into with the use of Double Soul in BN6 and the job opportunities and requests you can undertake in all games.

Personally I thought Battle Network 5 had a higher probability of an award than the first one, but only one game in the series is enough to explain the series in a nutshell. So I'm very happy that my months worth of work have paid off.