Toggle Background Color
Jack in!! MegaMan, execute!
Greetings, goons and archive readers! This is Blueberry Pancakes, setting out to take my first crack at a Let's Play.
My introduction to the MegaMan Battle Network series happened when I was in elementary school. I happened to be visiting a Circuit City with my father and saw a copy of MegaMan Battle Network 2 on the rack, decided to buy it, and was hooked on the rest of the series. While it has its ups and downs, it's a rather enjoyable series. And given that this series is so near and dear to me, it seemed like the perfect thing to share with others.
There's just the not-so-small fact that every mainline game in the series has been covered already. 
Still, I figure I'll give it a shot anyway. The Legacy Collection is on the way, so what better time to revisit the series? Maybe I'll even be able to bring something new to the table for my readers to enjoy. I'd like to hope so, anyway!
In the interest of making sure we're all on the same page, here's a brief rundown!
What is MegaMan Battle Network?
In the century of 20XX, two brilliant scientists - Dr. Thomas Light and Dr. Albert Wily - revolutionized the field of robotics. However, after a schism formed between the pair, Dr. Wily broke off and began using his robotics skills to conquer the world. In response, Dr. Light's robot assistant Rock volunteered to be converted into a combat robot to stop him. Rock became MegaMan, setting off in many side-scrolling adventures to protect the world from Dr. Wily's plans.
This is not that timeline.
While still taking place in the same century, Battle Network is an alternate universe counterpart to the Classic timeline, where Light and Wily instead focused on the advancement of the internet rather than robotics. Otherwise, the basic lore there is still mostly accurate.
Despite being an offshoot, it's proven to be a rather popular series, boasting an anime that lasted for five seasons, a 13 volume manga, a feature-length movie that crossed over with Duel Masters (no, that's not a joke), and even a cameo appearances by the titular character in other games, such as Onimusha Blade Warriors.
Even recent years have been kind to MegaMan.EXE, the character appearing in Smash Bros. as part of Classic MegaMan's Final Smash, MegaMan X DiVE in a plethora of forms, and the aforementioned Legacy Collection which drops in April 2023.
How many games does the series have?
MegaMan Battle Network has six mainline games, though from Battle Network 3 onward, each game has alternate versions, technically raising the count to ten. In the interest of showing off as much content as possible, I intend to play both versions of each game to an extent, though I'll be favoring a specific version for each.
I'll also make some mention of some of the side games, including the Japanese exclusive games.
What games will you be playing?
If all goes well, I intend to primarily cover
- MegaMan Battle Network (Operate Star Force)
- MegaMan Battle Network 2 (Hard Mode)
- MegaMan Battle Network 3 (Blue)
- MegaMan Battle Network 4 (Red Sun)
- MegaMan Battle Network 4.5
- MegaMan Battle Network 5 (Double Team DS: Team Colonel)
- MegaMan Battle Network 6 (Gregar)
as well as mention of the alternate versions.
That's a lot of content.
Yes. Yes it is. 
In light of that, I'll likely be using a max Zenny code here and there to alleviate the amount of grinding I need to do. That should, ideally, prevent me from getting burned out!
What's the policy on spoilers?
Seeing as this whole series is already on LPArchive, there's probably not much reason for me to play coy with pretending most people around don't know any plot twists. And the series, unlike its sequel Star Force, doesn't really try to have much more of a plot than "Beat the bad guy in-between wacky elementary schooler hijinks", so go nuts.
For my part, I'll attempt to avoid talking about the events of future entries until they become relevant unless it's something relatively minor. This is because I have a lot of 
to say about certain plot beats, how certain characters are written, and so on which I would like to address as they come up.
With all that out of the way, let's get started!
MegaMan Battle Network (Operate Star Force)
- Episode 1: 22XX
- Episode 2: 20XX
- Episode 3:
MegaMan Battle Network 2
- Episode 1: Network Transmission
MegaMan Battle Network 3
- PENDING
MegaMan Battle Network 4
- PENDING
MegaMan Battle Network 5 (Double Team DS)
- PENDING
MegaMan Battle Network 6
- PENDING