The GHZ Forum

For those who follow the exploits of that OTHER famous blue videogame mascot, there's some bizzare news . . .

Well, most of you have problably heard about the EXE/Battle Network series. An ineresting take on Megaman and RPGs in general with an engrossing storyline and deep gameplay. Well, till the last edition - 4 came out - which nerfed many of the previous strategies and had a jumbled up storyline of miscelanious random events so they could package two different versions of the same game and still call them . .. well, the same game . . .

Er, anyways - the 5th installment of the series - which has the potential to pull it out of the swan dive it started to take with 4 - will apparently feature the first time you can have more than one character in your "party".

Well, damn Pokemon for their idea of trying to sell the same game with multiple versions - because your party totally changes depending on which version you play in.

Of course, when you see the party lineups - it shouldn't be that difficult to choose.

In Blues' Team, you've got:

* Megaman (Naturally)

*Protoman AKA Blues AKA the standard cool dude with a sword.

*Magnetman - Ex-villain, actually. Kind of stupid-looking. Unfortunately the robot characters in this series are data, and thus, not actually made of metal. Unfortunate, as it would be amusing to see the MM equivalent of Magneto take on a bunch of helpless robots.

*Napalman - A robot bulging with TONS and TONS of missles.

* Searchman - A bad-ass sniper who effortlessly takes aim and blasts people in the head.

* Gyroman - Megaman's version of a transformer. Can turn into a helicopter.

* Mayday - Your standard "Healing/Whitemange" female. Notable because she's only the 3rd confirmed female robot/Navi in the series. There might be another one, but that character is so androgynous no one's been able to tell for sure.

Sounds like a pretty capable team, correct?

Now let's take a look at the alternate team.

Colonel's Team:

* Megaman (Goddamnit. I hate these dual game releases)

* Numberman - A skinny, frail, cowardly character who's better at selling things and doing math than fighting . . . things already don't look so good.

* Colonel - Like Blues . . . but Brittisher. Oy.

* Tomahawkman - AKA "Offensive Racial Stereotypeman". He's an indian with an axe fighting an army of virtual robot machineguns. The trail of tears is close in his future.

* Knightman - An incredibly obese knight who can barely move. Yeah - this team ain't lookin so hot.

* Toadman - An robot in an adorable frog suit . . . wow. It's like Charmy from an alternate universe! We all know evil fears the mighty power of baby amphibians.

* Shadowman - A ninja. Nothing more, nothing less. Tossed into this team in a desperate attempt to pull this team out of the muck. But generic ninja guy isn't enough.


Even if you don't LIKE Megaman - the better group of robots should be readily apparent.

So, yeah - I gotta say the team of super-fast swordsman, Autobot, sniper, Mangeto, a White Mage, and "I'm full of missles" really sounds good, even in general principle.

Team of "Useless Geek", "British Dude", "Offensive Indian", "Amphibphiliac", "Sweaty Fat-Ass in Armor" and "Poor Ninja who Obiously wasn't paying attention during signups" would get their asses handed to them by Team Rose.

Well, maybe that's a little insulting - but it's TRUE!

Do you really believe 5 is going to be better than 4? Really?

I fucking hate the Game Boy Advance.

Well, all they have to do to make it better than 4 is to have a coherent storyline that doesn't randomize itself just to confuse you.

Of course, odds are, that they won't even be able to do THAT right.

Megaman franchises tend to start off great, but after the 3rd game - the quality starts to drop.

And considering that most of the franchises end up running to at least 8 - that's three great games at the beginning and then 5-7 years of pure crap.

Unfortuantely, there was never a Megaman Legends 3 - that series never even got the chance to hit it's peak.

Unfortunately, it seems that the last chance Mega Man ever had at getting any more good games was passed up years and years ago.

I still believe that, though it was the first MM game I played, Mega Man 8 was great fun.

At least the character designs continue to be interesting - so the series does still LOOK cool (check out Gyroman.EXE). It's just that the storyline and gameplay both suck and make no sense.