Thanks to the Mega Man community two long missing games have now resurfaced! Come along as I struggle desperately to play two entire Battle Network games where I CAN'T READ ANY OF THE DAMN TEXT!
PLEASE do not take my translation and interpretations as gospel! I pieced together events from raw translations, context, Battle Network knowledge, and looking up individual phrases and terms and I am not even approaching being an expert on the topic. If anyone with any kind of actual experience mentions something to be different than what I said THEY ARE VERY LIKELY CORRECT! This was just a fun experiment for a highly requested topic, not an exhaustive and professional work of archival/translation. Thank you!
I think most language software are pretty good at translating things into English so that you can get the fundamentals of what is written/said. For some reason, Google Translate had difficulty translating things properly from Latin or is missing Latin terminology and even entire words from its personal lexicon on Latin. How did Google fix this? They didn't. They actually seemed to be seeking to drop Latin from Google Translate from what I gathered over a year ago. It's not like scientists tend to use a lot of Latin words or Latin-derived words....Wait a minute....
Damn thing is just hearing you describe the first game, amazing job by the way loved it, if this was a actual gba title or made on the ds I’m pretty sure the game could have more attacks given to the navis and make them even tougher hell cache v2 probably could’ve given you more trouble if someone was good at coding and can change the game slightly to add those attacks and translate it putting it all together as either a gba file or ds file im pretty sure this’ll probably be the best game in the series maybe even equal to battle network 3 despite being a spin off game it has a lot of charm and the story sounded good and premise behind it all and the bosses sounded interesting too sad this is difficult to try to play tho because of translation and limited hardware capabilities at the time
The funniest thing will always be Phantom and Legend of Network releasing during the production of the other videos and single-handedly dragging John back into the Battle Network Dungeon for another two months
Cache talking about being forgotten and left behind data/technology is kinda funny since people are making efforts to restore functionality to these lost games.
That's not that high bar to surpass. SF2 has some very good story moments surrounded by an ocean of dumb story moments. Rouge/Solo is probably the best thing to come out of SF2. SF3 seems to agree with this sentiment.
The best part about nobody and the Trojan horse Navi being a main villain is that nobody was the alias used by Odysseus ( creator of the horse) when he blinded a Cyclopes it yelled for help that nobody blinded him and was escaping, needless to say all his friends were confused and laughed it off!
Whoever wrote the game, was clearly passionate about telling a story and did his research. The golden apple is another great example of it linking to greek myths
@@floricel_112 Being fair, Odysseus screwed himself by declaring his real name to the blinded cyclops mid-escape. Which let the cyclops know who to have Poseidon run a hit on after sobering up and licking his wounds to literally say his prayers. And he was already on Poseidon’s bad side on principle, why take that risk at all?
Damn it! I just finished the video and was checking the comments to make sure no one had said that so I could say it! But yeah you took the words right out of my mouth.
What are you talking about, John? There was always a shrine next to SciLab. Don't you remember that one time? With the viruses? And the villain that did a television broadcast? A good time was had by all.
To be honest as weird as it sounds, the whole "Huge Cyberworld Cache" thing where Navi data gets backed up to does make a certain kind of fucked up sense, and WOULD be a good explanation to the whole Navi Ghost phenomena of the GBA titles. "Lan explains to Sherice that they've been to the Undernet half a dozen times already." - WAIT....IS THAT...HOLY SHIT IS THAT *CONTINUITY* ??? IN BATTLE NETWORK???? So...the thing about Nobody's stupid plan about "merging all the cyberworld together to create a perfect safe network" if you really think about it is this : If this game takes place before Battle Network 6, AND EVEN IF he skips the "kills everyone" part for it...uh....uniting all cyberspace together into one giant network would IMMEDIATELY release both Falzar and Gregar along with the myriad of Darkloids, Bass' idiotic form of the week (What are we on, XX or BX at this point?) and other shit in the depths of the undernet and whatnot...yeah sounds like a real fuckin' safe Net there!
BN4's BBS posts says Navi Ghosts are supposed to be based on the Navi's fears somehow but combining that into a mix of cache data and the Navi's personal experiences could be a neat blend of those facts.
At the end, when John says Nobody's corpse wasn't found, I found myself just imagining a conversation like the one from Odysseus. "We found no body." "Is he okay?" "We're not sure. There was no body." "Well, is he alive?"
You know. I enjoy a lot of the visual gags you put into your videos. But Ride Man just...whipping out the Nine Iron to end Reverse and turning him into meatballs is probably one my favorites.
@@NEETKitten As I understand it Loa are animistic spirits, and possess many of the abilities spirits do including possession and different relationship with time, space, and information. And they often don't ask for much, but it's in your best interest to be in their good graces. And can be summoned to bargain with, which also tends to go about as well as bargaining with spirits does. But this is just a rough piecing together from seeing different derivations of Loa in various media franchises, so I'm probably missing crucial details and might be flat out wrong about stuff.
John will never escape being "The Battle Network Guy" will he? We'll always drag him back until the viruses completely hijack his brain. Great stuff John! The wait for these videos is always woth it.
I really love the plot twist on the second game here. Starts out super obvious where we are giggling at how obvious it is and when it's time and she reveals herself to be the baddie we are like "duh I knew it was you, are you kidding" Then she goes "oh? Who am I then?" And scilab chimes in like "oopsies we forgot to do a background check on her and uhh.... No records of her as a person exist" Very solid Uno reverse that you can't exactly see coming unlike how it led itself
40:18 I wonder if the devs really liked this design and decided to use it as a model for when they made *Luna Platz* in the Starforce series. The two have incredibly similar designs and attitudes
I cannot believe that two exclusive phones games had actual compelling stories. You can tell the developers really cared about what they were making despite the limited hardware.
Limitation breeds creativity, and I feel like usually the BN devs focused on balancing the game first then doing the story after, so when they had very limited storage for the gameplay aspect, they actually had time to focus on the story more. I'm not saying that they usually don't care, I'm trying to say that their priorities were on other parts.
Phantom of network is legitimately bizarre to me specifically because of the animes take on it in it's last season. For whatever reason they decided to make both this and Network transmission the basis of the plot but they are just completely isolated from each other. It's the only reason myself and I believe others even knew this game existed.
My theory is they were working on the star force anime but didn't want any kind of gap, so Beast+ was made so that the very next week after its last episode, star force would air. The filler season didn't have much else to go off of material wise though so they brought the spin offs in
As someone who was obsessed with Battle Network in my teenage years, I vaguely knew of these games existing at one point, but knew they were just niche Japanese phone games. The fact that I can see them in their full glory in 2024 is kinda surreal 😅
I'll forever be mad how many cool NetNavis and Operators they designs they wasted/trapped in spin-offs/side games that never make an appearance in the main BN stuff. Anyway hell yeah actually seeing Phantom & Legend of the Network be talked about.
Shoot, definitely salty that the anime ended with Phantom of Network in Beast+... Legend of Network would've been so rad to watch And also a shame neither got incorporated into the manga either. Cache making a Fake Bass would've been incentive enough for Takamisaki do his "Number 1 Bass Fan" shtick
Legend of Network seemss incredibly good. The theming, the old references being brought up, the story and the double bit on L.o.N.... I'm genuinely surprised that last bit manages to work in Japanese as well as it does when translated to English
In a perfect world, Capcom would remake this games to a proper battle network and add ot to the legacy collection, but we don't live in a world like that and I'm pretty sure even in that perfect world they wouldn't go through so much
I doubt it'd be that simple since it wasn't made in an engine for the GBA, Java isn't exactly 1 to 1 and translating 2 games would be a helluva undertaking for little profit. What sucks is back in 2021 there was a fan remake of PoN but the team got hit with a C&D, so it's likely we will never see anything modern from these two games come out by fans beyond music, maybe sprites.
@knijohn3581 You blew my mind when you made me realize that Chaud was named after the french word "chaud" for hot. Here's one for you! Dr. Froid, the owner of IceMan in MMBN1, is named after the french word for cold which is "froid" (silent d)! So like Dr. "Frwah".
funny how you mention the plane bit comparison to BN2. All of the henchmen's that work for Gospel, did not know who their boss looked like at all. So Mr. Gauss, the operator of Magnetman, who hijacked the plane, didn't realize or know that someone important was also riding on the plane.
The whole mind controlling horse thing makes total sense, it's related to the idea of Loa and Voodoo with Cherise also being a stereotypical French Louisianan name.
Hey so I think... this is one of very few times where the boys put together who the villain probably is (Hatman) more or less on the spot instead of getting taken off guard at like... "Who could be behind these ice based shenanigans" and being shocked its Iceman
He says right away you don’t need to watch part one. That is a lie as you need to watch it because it’s good lol. Been re-watching your videos and am so excited for this new one!!! Hype!!
I had far too many moments during the video where I heared "Nobody wants to recreat the disaster and destroy the net" and went Oh well good, if nobody wants that than we are safe...
@@halberdierv2 And that's why English as a language looks down on using a single improper noun in a sentence when talking about 2 different people that it could apply to. Being a commenter doesn't exempt you from being called out for playing the pronoun game. /j
Kinda hard to re introduce serenade casually into the series when they are an ally, a bass level beast, with the ability to cast giga freeze, a program that will one shot anyone no immune to it. Which i understand why they barely make an appearance. They are desined to be a post game character sadly.
GigaFreeze can be stopped by those worthy as seen with Bass in 3. KNIJohn made a mistake, and the one who cast the GigaFreeze fragment in LoN was ProtoMan. So there's likely plenty of Navis who are the best of the best that can stop it.
@@MidniteWv4 Was just a fragment. So not really a point to your argument, completely at least. The full one can instantly freeze the entire cyberworld. It wad meant to be used against Alpha, thats how strong the real deal is.
@@MidniteWv4 Also, plenty is wrong? If anything, protoman is a top 5 navi in the verse, alongside Colonel, Serenade, Megaman and Bass. Protoman using it doesnt mean there are plenty who could use it (a fragment). Just means protoman is on par with those very few navis.
Gotta be honest, if CAPCOM ever decodes to dust off these old tomes & remake them, or cannibalize them into a potential Battle Network 7, I’d be down to see it. Hell, seeing fully animated versions of the mobile-exclusive characters alone would be cool. Imagine seeing Reverse and the Trojan Horse’s stomping animation in full force.
I'm... actually kinda amazed. This "Cyber Cache" explains something that I've been trying to figure the answer for for ages. Why, in universe, are most navi "mass-produced" (Like mr. progs and generic navis) while the lead cast get unique navis with MUCH more impressive skills, despite the only people who make sense if it was money being Yai, and Lan Who are; rich, and the son of a world renowned programmer, respectively. The Cycache would mean there's actually a DOWNSIDE to navis like Megaman, Knightman, or Gutsman. See, they have a lot of specialized code, in fact, it's repeatedly brought up that any attempts to duplicate Megaman.exe ultimately create an inferior copy, because megaman has SO MUCH data (namely the Souldata) that just... can't be copied. Similarly, specialized navi always have one of two things in common, either; the operator either is, or wants to be a Netbattler, see Dex and Eugene, or the navi is designed for hyper specialized purposes. See all the "dungeon navis" designed for helping with magic shows, or running nature preserves, or running security systems etc. The cycache means these hyper specialized navi's flat out have a weakness compared to generic navi; they take longer to transmit from one location to another, like data in the real world, this explains why, a lot of the time, unless cornered, generic navi just have an easier time running away or getting ahead of the unique navi. Holy, and Hub's hero speech at the end was a legit tearjerker, like, Hub was being super somber it was kinda sad... Wow... this mobile game had some CHOPS. Why do all we get is glorified gacha games when games like THIS existed even WITH the limited hardware at the time. Edit; Legend of Network; Dear god, as a Greek mythology nerd, this game is just FREAKING AMAZING sounding to me. Like, freaking... His name is Nohbdy? TROJAN virus!? I'm so geeking out here. Why were these phone games made for me, and me specifically.
Man, at this point I really wish you could get access to the physical PETs, especially the Progress one. While they don't have a story, they do have some gameplay (again, especially the Progress) and it would be fun to hear you talk about them. Regardless, it's always a joy to hear you talk about this series. Looking forward to the next post-game videos for my BN fix :P
I'm sorry, THEY FOUND THE PHONE GAME?! THEY GOT THE MOBILE GAME WORKING?! The madlads! THE FUCKING DID IT HOLY SHIT THEY ALSO FOUND THE ARCADE GAME?!?!?!
Fantastic Video John! Though you had to use machine translation with your PET and take some guesses (or consult people on TREZ or Discord), I believe you've done an excellent job presenting these two largely unknown Battle Network games. It's a shame their stories and unique Navi's were trapped on Japanese cell phones until the preservation effort. All anyone's ever seen of them is their pictures from the Artbook and the final villain of the RockMan.EXE Beast+ anime....which also wasn't released outside Japan. Also I can't believe this game did the OOPart plot and angsty rival better than Star Force 2.
Wait a second... Could “Nobody” be a reference to “No Man,” the alias Odysseus uses against the cyclops in the Odyssey? It would fit with the Greek theming, AND Odysseus took part in the Trojan War.
Haya! I don't usually leave a comment on videos but I feel the need to do so! This entire video I spent giggling like an idiot. Every joke. Every sarcastic comment. Everything landed on me which while isn't too impressive because I laugh at everything but still it made me very happy! Thank you for covering games that I in all honesty would never have played! (Not before English translations are made anyway) And thank you for making me laugh while doing so! I love your channel and you!
The game baked in Greek mythology references, things that are crack to nerdy western kids, and with a main character with a COWBOY NAVI, was locked on cell phones exclusive to Japan. Capcom really was turning their feet into Swiss cheese with a full-automatic in the mid-2000s, huh? Definitely going to want to play LON when the translation gets completed.
Smh I kept having to remind my self that the villains name IS nobody… “Nobody intends to repeat that history. Killing millions and using what’s left to rebuild” okay? Then what’s the problem oooooooo
Misinterpretation by KNIJohn. The Atlampian codes are scattered and used in the modern world, that's the plot of the game. Lan just calls him stupid because he thinks what makes the Net society are the people who use it. The society of Atlampia and the current one by his grandfather are different in his eyes.
If Capcom would just release these games as DLC for the Battle Network Legacy Collection, since there is concept artwork from these games already, we would not need to "pirating" to reverse engine the game to make it playable. Side Note: Is it really pirating if it is 100% impossible to get them legitimately even in Japan and left installed on an old phone that no one probably uses or supported anymore?
Now reading Rockman wikia, there are version of the games with scrolling background images like in GBA, shame Capcom never gonna rescue this games, but is not imposible because, games like the SMT Last Bible mobile phone games that now can be played on steam.
Okay! So Translations were finished. Legend of Network’s library and mechanics are currently being ported to bn6 as a romhack featuring tons of asm It’s gonna be great
Great audio/visual presentation as always! Thanks as always for drudging through this neglected series (barring the recent collection release) so many of us have nostalgia for!
I’m pretty sure Phantom of Network is post-Battle Network 4. While Double Soul isn’t a thing in that game, Dark Soul and Dark Power actually are. Some Japan-only resources for the game list DS bosses for the post-game and there’s actually a boatload of boss footage from a Japanese RU-vidr who I’m pretty sure is still active. I think have a playlist of his stuff lying around in my Google Docs.
Maybe someday those spin off mobile games could become full fan remakes/reimaginings with all the features that you would expect from a mainline Battle Network title, with QoLs added. Think the same treatment fans have given to some of Sonic's game gear titles. That would be pretty cool. Also, Reverse looks like a .EXE version of an X series Maverick
Thank you so much for that video !❤ I didn’t even dream about playing those games,due to my lack of Japanese hahah Keep up the great work ! You are the best !
Thank you for making and sharing this video! I am genuinely shocked and pleased with Phantom of the Network! The music you showed in particular sounded great. This was awesome!
I'm so happy you made this, really love seeing the obscure phone stuff get covered. From what's found of Legend of Network, it kinda makes me wish, in some way, that its plot and characters would have been fitting as the last BN game. Gregar and Falzar are fine, but to end the series fighting beasts instead of something fitting like THE trojan horse virus just never sat well with me. You did good covering them!
Awesome video John. Side note, what the hell is up with the ancient civilizations in the BNSF timeline where apparnetly we had at least TWO technologically advanced nations that utilized a form of the net that apparently suffered a major collapse and became legend? Just how many times has Duo visted Earth?
You mean to tell me that there’s a lost media game where the lesson learnt is…that lost media is a tragedy? Cache is supposed to be the tragedy of lost media in a MOBILE PHONE ONLY GAME?!? Fuck, man.
Trans Arm Megaman looks cool enough for a main game, and thanks is after MMBN6, is no more Dr. Wily as the main villian, what a hidden and almost lost gem.
Might this be the best game on retro phones? Of course, snake is an elegantly designed classic far surpassing this in status, its like the tetris of phones
31:40 That is really intresting question, because even with Starforce, we do not really know what happened. They are hints that everything just was discarded, like the all those PET's in the JunkYard.But I just refuse to believe that all the data was discarded. There had to be some compatibility with the cyber world to be able to save some of it. Heck even if the Cyber World and Wave World are fundamentaly different. Considering that in the Manga the Cyber World is actually its own freaking universe (check Death Battle's video for that one) and the Wave World is just a basic Overlay over the real world just on a different frequency. The comp spaces you can visit are not really that different. Heck, it could explain why you can have the MBBN crossover in Starforce 1.
if lans dad had a nickel for each time he was in extreme heat while in scilab, he would have 2 nickels which isnt alot but wierd that it happened twice
Id like to point out that much like many person and place names in Capcom games since the BN series, Sink Island seems to also be a wordplay, referencing a DNS Sinkhole, the tech methods used by things like the Pi-Hole to make your browser "lose" advertising and other URLs... much like Atlampia was "lost" leaving behing an archipelago