In the latest TEPPEN Headline video announcement, Capcom has revealed some new Battle Network content to be added to the game as part of its upcoming 5.5 year anniversary.
Firstly, Bass.EXE will be added as an EX Skin for Akuma. His Hero Arts are Gospel Cannon, EarthBreak and Vanishing Step, which are identical to base Akuma’s Raging Demon, Sekia Kuretsuha and Ashura Senku respectively. You’ll be able to get him randomly from the 5.5 Year Anniversary Pack 1, which is available from December 30th, 9:00 AM until February 3rd, 9:00 AM (JST).
In addition, two MMBN-inspired Battle Backgrounds will be added as part of BG Jewel Sets. The Cyberworld BG Jewel Set and The Undernet BG Jewel Set both net you 10,000 jewels, the respective Battle Background, and a Player Icon for MegaMan or Bass. Both will be priced at ¥9,800 and will be available from December 26th, 9:00 AM until March 3rd, 9:00 AM (JST).
A little-known Mega Man Star Force plug-and-play TV game, Ryūsei no Rockman: Denpa Henkan! On Air! has just been preserved! The news comes from David ‘mamehaze’ Haywood, an active MAME contributor who has managed to dump the data from his copy of the game and begun initial work for implementing the game in MAME.
While the game is not too hard to find and has been in the hands of reverse engineers for a while now, preserving it had proved difficult due to various reasons, such as the presence of epoxy blobs on the circuit board. Now that the game’s data has been dumped, it opens the door for potential emulation in the future. It may not be soon, but it’s something to look forward to.
Ryuusei no Rockman: Denpa Henkan! On Air! (the Rockman game on SuperXavix based hardware) was dumped. It needed an extra video feature emulating to show sprites. Still some glitches and not playable though. pic.twitter.com/ahw2A2yrbk
Ryūsei no Rockman: Denpa Henkan! On Air! (translates to Mega Man Star Force: Wave Change! On The Air!) was a 2007 plug-and-play TV game developed by SSD Company Limited and published by Takara Tomy in collaboration with Capcom. It features a number of minigames based on the first MMSF game, which are controlled via a combination of motion controls and button presses using the included Mega Buster-shaped controller.
For a TV game, there is a decent amount of content on offer here. Each minigame has several variations and difficulties that award Battle Chips on completion, which boost Mega Man’s stats. The game is also full of all-original sprite work, and has a surprisingly good soundtrack. Check out some gameplay footage below from akiTONE.
Thanks to GoodTofuFriday for contributing to this article!
Capcom has just launched a new line of official MMBN merchandise, Rockman EXE x American Comic Style, based on new artwork drawn by Keisuke Mizuno!
The merch on offer includes canvas art, clear files, card stickers, mugs, long sleeve shirts, laptop sleeves en smartphone holders. There are also blind box acrylic stands and pin badges available.
If you’ve been playing our Mega Man: Legend of the Network fan localization and have been wanting to play PvP with other battlers, you’re in luck. TREZ contributor Greiga Master has just released Mega Man Battle Network 6: Legend of NetBattles, a PvP-only mod for MMBN6 which transplants mechanics and chips from LoN into MMBN6, allowing players to battle online via Tango’s rollback netcode.
The current version of the mod includes the full chip library from LoN, except for Program Advances. The SkillEditor is also included, but TransArm is not yet implemented. Some other minor features are also still on the to-do list.
In order to play the mod, download Tango, setup MMBN6: Cybeast Gregar and select MMBN6: Legend of NetBattles from the patch list. To find other players to battle against, check out our friends at N1GP!
Promo artwork by MidniteW, logo design by MegaRockEXE
Intro
The Rockman EXE Zone is proud to present its English fan localization patches for Mega Man: Phantom of the Network and Mega Man: Legend of the Network!
Rockman EXE Phantom of Network (PoN) and Rockman EXE Legend of Network (LoN) were two Japan-exclusive Mega Man Battle Network games originally released in the mid-2000s. These MMBN spin-off titles were notable for not only fully replicating the battle system from the GBA games, but also containing full-length stories complete with new characters and settings.
PoN and LoN were only ever playable on specific models of Japanese mobile phones, and were considered lost media for a long time. Towards the end of 2023, preservation group SciLab Secrets managed to free the games’ data from their pocket-size confinement; for the first time, this allowed fans outside of Japan a chance to play these hidden gems for themselves.
In addition to localizing all text in the game to English, the patches also includes the following changes and updates:
Added Buster MAX Mode, similar to Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection.
Restored the online ranked virus battle mode in Phantom of the Network.
Restored the animated backgrounds from the EZweb version of Legend of the Network.
Added in-game methods to obtain BattleChips required to 100% the game, which were previously Chip Trader-exclusive.
Mega Man: Phantom of the Network (2004)
Set after the events of MMBN3. During what should be a routine virus removal, Lan and MegaMan come face-to-face with a resurrected version of a previously-deleted WWW Navi. The danger quickly escalates with more cloned Navis sparking incidents all over the world, seemingly orchestrated by some mysterious entity. It’s up to our heroes to pull back the curtain on this phantom and save the Cyberworld from the looming threat…
Mega Man: Legend of the Network (2006)
Set before the events of MMBN6. Lan and MegaMan are recognized as ACDC Town’s first official NetPatrollers, but their inaugural mission is suddenly cut short by a mysterious Navi with the power to control other Navis. With new partners at their side, our duo quickly find themselves at the center of an international crisis that threatens to destroy global Net society, as foretold by the legend of a highly advanced ancient empire…
Grab the complete English patch and all bonus content from the link below! Be sure to read the included README.html first before playing!
You will need to obtain the original Japanese i-αppli game files for Rockman EXE Phantom of Network & Rockman EXE Legend of Network in order to apply the patches. These files are not included in this download. Please refer to SciLab Secrets on how to obtain these game files.
If you’re looking to EM Wave Change into a fresh new outfit, The Yetee has got you covered. The Mega Man collection on The YeteeMart has just been updated with two new Mega Man Star Force t-shirts. These are officially licensed by Capcom.
Both tees will run you $32 and are expected to ship in late May. While you’re at it, the MegaMan vs Bass acrylic standee is also still available in the collection. Unfortunately, these and other items on the YeteeMart ship to North America only.
No, this is no April Fools joke! Following the preservation of arcade games Rockman EXE Battle Chip Stadium and Rockman EXE: The Medal Operation a few months ago, preservation group SciLab Secrets has now managed to get a hold of the final arcade game: Medal Network Rockman EXE.
Medal Network Rockman EXE was the first arcade Mega Man Battle Network game, having been released exclusively in Japan in 2002. Like The Medal Operation, you play the game by inserting arcade medals, which lets you roll dice and advance MegaMan on a game board, possibly netting you more medals.
Compared to The Medal Operation, the gameplay in Medal Network is fairly simplistic, though almost no information or footage about the game exists today. The team at SciLab Secrets is currently working on getting the game to a playable state; they are already able to boot into the game on MAME, though many of the graphics are corrupted. You can see some screenshots below.
At long last, the mobile Rockman EXE games have been freed from their mobile prisons! As of today, Rockman EXE: Phantom of Network and Rockman EXE: Legend of Network are now playable for the first time on PC via emulator.
Announced via Rockman Corner, Mega Man preservation group SciLab Secrets has managed to dump a whole batch of long-lost mobile Mega Man games from a Japanese phone and put together an emulator package to allow international fans to play the games for the first time. This includes the first three chapters of Phantom of Network, and the first chapter of Legend of Network. The group does possess a phone containing the full versions of the games, so we may see an update in the future. However, the phone in question has not yet been cracked.
Update: As several community members have found, the Phantom of Network & Legend of Network “demos” simply… don’t end at chapter 3! The dumped games are, in fact, the complete versions of the game, and they are playable from start to finish.
Rockman EXE: Phantom of Network was first released in 2004 for Japanese i-mode phones in an episodic format. This was later followed by Rockman EXE: Legend of Network in 2006. Legend of Network is especially notable for having been released after Mega Man Battle Network 6, making it the last new Mega Man Battle Network game! The games follow the same format as the GBA games, albeit simplified for the phone’s button layout, with the same real-time battle system.
It’s been a long wait, but two Japan-exclusive Mega Man Battle Network arcade games are finally on the cusp of being playable by international fans. Hardware preservationist and friend of the site GoodTofuFriday has managed to obtain what many considered lost media: ROM dumps of Rockman EXE Battle Chip Stadium and Rockman EXE: The Medal Operation.
In order to dump the ROMs, Tofu and DemiDyourMC flew all the way out to France to meet with a private collector who had acquired the two arcade cabinets, and was willing to let the team dump them. The whole process has also been documented by Demi, who plans to release the video on his YouTube channel later.
As for playability, there’s good news and bad news. The games do appear to boot on the arcade emulator MAME, but since both games rely on various unique physical hardware features, they’re currently not in a playable state. The preservation team plans to release the ROM dumps once new plugins for MAME have been developed emulating these hardware features. While playing the games in MAME won’t fully replicate the experience of playing on the real arcade cabinet, it should at least give fans the opportunity to see the games’ contents.
For more pictures and details, check out the full breakdown over on Rockman Corner!
As many have speculated would happen, Denuvo Anti-Tamper DRM seems to have now been completely removed from the Steam version of Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection; six months on the dot after its initial release.
Capcom has not made any official announcements regarding the removal of Denuvo from MMBNLC, but in the past has removed it from their other games after their initial release window. The Steam store page for the games no longer makes any mention of third-party DRM, and the size of the games’ executables has dropped by more than 300 MB.
We can also confirm that Capcom did not add Enigma Protector, a different type of DRM recently added to Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection, which is also used in some other Capcom games. UPDATE: In a later Steam update for Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection, Capcom has now integrated Enigma Protector into the game after all.
If you’ve been meaning to grab Legacy Collection for PC, but Denuvo was a deal-breaker to you, now might be a good time to check it out!
