#tormodplayingexe1

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Mega Man Battle Network - End Roll (Credits)

Because this series actually has pretty good credits themes.

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Mega Man Battle Network was filmed before a live studio audience.

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Well that was an unintended consequence.

Time to get the hell out of here.

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Mega Man Battle Network - Vs. Life Virus (Final Boss)

In case you wanted to listen to it on its own, which I do suggest.  The battle theme for the Life Virus carries parts of its tracks very close to the boss' theme song, but still carries a much greater feeling of danger and finality compared to it - which is pretty fitting let's be fair.  Much like the boss theme itself, it's also not the best in the series - but is very easily recognisable and still fantastic in its own right.

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The final boss of Mega Man Battle Network 1 is the Life Virus (also known as Dream Virus in different languages/versions).

Completely different from other boss fights in the game, there's several things you have to keep in mind.  While the boss himself doesn't move, it's impossible to use 'Steal' to grab any of his area - so you have to ensure any attacks you're using are capable of hitting it (Short-range weapons, such as punches and most swords, are useless here)

In addition, the Life Virus has several lines of defense.  Small elemental viri, known as Scuttlers when they reappear in later games, pop up and harass you with attacks and can block your shots.  In addition, the Life Virus has the "Life Aura".

Auras aren't new at this point in the game - you've run into them on a breed of viruses before.  In order to destroy an aura, you either have to hit it with an attack stronger than the aura's health (In this case, any attack dealing 100+ damage) or its elemental weakness (which the Life Aura doesn't have).  Any smaller attack and it just bounces off.  To top it off, the attack that actually breaks the aura won't deal any damage by itself.

The Life Virus doesn't just have an aura strong enough to be hard to break, but it also has no weakness and regenerates after every attack, even if you dispelled it.  Fortunately for you, right after the Life Virus' attacks, it leaves itself wide open for a couple seconds without any barrier whatsoever.

So watch as I fight what should be a terribly difficult boss and instead I swear I have more trouble deciding what chips to use on each turn than actually fighting it.  Despite the fact that I've never actually fought the Life Virus before in my life (Yes, that's right; I'd never finished EXE1 before this).  Considering how challenging future final bosses of the series can be... well, yeah.

As an aside, I'm pretty sure the game actually raises your buster statistics for this battle (Y'know, Hub.bat active and all) - my buster does not normally do six damage a shot and I'm pretty sure my rapid should not be going that fast.

And as a final thing I'm pretty sure the way I land the final hit is the funniest thing I've ever done in the games.

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Dr. Hikari has already lost one son, and while the success of 'reviving' his son as Mega Man must have been wonderful, I think a part of him understands that the Hub he knew is still dead, and that Mega Man isn't the same being.

Not only that, but the consequence of reviving Mega Man, it would appear, is that it would put both of his children at a great risk.  After all, if Mega Man were to be deleted now... well, that'd be it for Lan as well.

Stopping WWW is important, but Dr. Hikari isn't willing to just let his sons sacrifice themselves blindly, and he wants Lan to make the choice knowing full well the consequences.

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This is an extremely difficult phenomenon to explain.  How in the hell could an electronic program end up having direct manifestation on the human body simply by being a DNA replication?  Well, actually, there are ways to explain it, but they're really out there and frankly involve looking at the series - and its sequel - in a holistic and somewhat meta way that I'll probably do at some point when I've covered more of it.  Please don't let me forget to do that theorizing someday, by the way.

For now though, anyone familiar with the manga or anime only will recognise the idea of Mega Man and Lan taking damage synchronously to each other - in universe this comes to be known as "Full Synchro".  It's a major thing in all three continuities that this is able to happen, but in the anime and manga, it's used by way more than just Lan and Mega Man.  As a result, the whole "Hub Hikari" thing is lost because essentially there's no need for it, which is unfortunate.

[tormodplaysgames]

If you remember right, there were a lot of hints about this in your dad's office, and the last of them was the photograph of a man with two children.  If you thought that was strange, since Lan is an only child, you were right.

And if you are familiar with the manga or anime, in which this is never brought up - you're also correct.  It is never mentioned in either the anime or the manga, and is most likely not canonical to them.  Despite that, this connection between Lan and Hub will be one of the major plot points throughout the game series and serves almost as a launching point to a lot of the central differences between it and the other continuities.