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Screw-on caps are nice, but I've had this other kind of carton where the cap just pops on and off, and it seems the more times it's been pulled off, the harder it is to pull off the next time. What's up with that?
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Ah, thanks! I'll give it a try soon.
One more thing I remembered about this game is that it doesn't refill your master weapons after beating levels, even the first time beating a level, but it does refill them when you load your saved game. So I guess if you're really hurting for refills, you could save, reset, and load... But let's hope it doesn't come to that.
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Zurreco wrote:
I'm drawing a blank on what you mean by bookmarking pages, but I'm pretty sure I have to run by that merchant again at some point either way.
I'm talking about how when you visit a friend's PC, there's an item that's called @ followed by the friend's name. Then in the Internet, a certain Access point will take you into that PC if you have that item, and after you do that once, you can now jack into the friend's PC and take that new portal back into the Internet. Basically, it's a shortcut to wherever that Access pad is, if going through that PC doesn't take too long.
The reason I started thinking about this is someone in the SpeedDemosArchive topic mentioned that @Dex would make a good shortcut, as Dex's PC map isn't too large, and it'll put you right in front of internet area 2 as well as shop 1. @Miyu and @Dad might make for good shortcuts too.
By the way, you know what you need to do to get Dex to challenge you for his link to reach StoneMan, right? There are 3 steps to this you need to do in any order that aren't completely obvious:
1. Talk to the worker in the corner of the Metroline station and ask "What caused it?" This way, Lan and MegaMan will "know" they have to search the net for a certain virus.
2. Bump into the doorway to Internet-2 that /Dex accesses and get turned away. This lets MegaMan and Lan "know" that whatever virus they're searching for is in an area they can't reach.
3. Collect the Recovery50 L chip from Maylu's piano. Dex demands one of these before he'll Netbattle you. I noticed that if you lose, you have to go get another Recov50 L from the same place, and that's when I figured out that the chips in people's PCs respawn infinitely, but if you already have one of that kind, you can't take another one ("MegaMan couldn't decode the data").
One other thing to think about for this mission: If you haven't taken @Mayl by the time you get to the Government Complex, Mayl sends it to you in an e-mail instead. This is to avoid breaking a mission later, where you have to get into Mayl's piano, but her house is locked. Now, just taking @Mayl when it's right next to the Recov50L might be a little faster than checking another e-mail after Lan's dad's, but we should check to make sure.
Zurreco wrote:
What 60-chip quota? Gah, it feels like I've forgotten everything after the Ice area.
This is another thing I mentioned in an earlier post. Before you can receive one of the items to get into BombMan's lair, you have to have 60 kinds of battle chips in your library. Different chip codes of the same chip don't count extra, but chips that you've traded away do still count. (Think of it like the list of Pokemon you've owned in the Pokedex... but no "seen" list in this game.)
Zurreco wrote:
The plan all along was to eventually dump the majority of my chips in to the shop and trade for epic sword chips. That way, everything but the last boss will be boiled down to getting good sword and cannon groupings.
Okay, we'll see. Have you given any thought to forming GtsShoot to finish off most of the bosses after GutsMan? It does 500 damage, but there are some drawbacks:
If I remember correctly, it only hits the first enemy in the row, so bosses that hide behind things will have to be unblocked first.
Obviously, you need to be able to manipulate 3 certain chips onto the same turn.
And the other 2 chips besides GutsMan are Dash attack G and MetGuard G, so you'll need to spend a little time finding them, but hopefully the Program Advance will be fast enough to make up for it, and you'll fill in 2 more library entries this way. MetGuard you'll probably never use on its own, though. Dash might be useful, but...
For Dash G, I think you need to get S-rank, and if my research is correct, that means you would have to beat 2 of those birds simultaneously within the first 5 seconds without moving more than 2 spaces. Maybe GutsMan could help with this!
Generally a Program Advance strategy calls for having extra chips of the kinds you need, so you have a greater likelihood of getting the kinds you need sooner, and so you have something to use on the same turn as the Program Advance. Would it really be worth taking extra Dashes or GutsMen? Maybe GutsMan3 later on? There was also that KnightSword G you can get by trading all 5 Escape chips, but then again, 4 different chips on the same turn? Not likely.
You could also think about using elemental chips on bosses of the weak element, like ElecSword or a Thunder bolt on IceMan, or maybe WoodyTower or WoodMan on ElecMan, but unfortunately I don't think their chip codes will match much of your arsenal. And now that I'm thinking about it, you know how ElecMan's first battle works, right? You have to let him heal himself 3 times to give up, and you have to do at least 50 points of damage (that is, lower him to 550 HP) to make him heal. So you might want to save a few quick, average-strength chips for that so he doesn't take extra time to heal, but I dunno. Let me know if there's anything else you're not sure about.
(By the way, when I talked about beating multiple enemies simultaneously for a higher ranking, that doesn't mean just finishing them off with the same attack. It means they have to start exploding within a few frames of each other, even if they were beaten by different attacks. I'll have to check exactly how many frames sometime...)
Edit (again): Uh oh, I think a noticed a problem right at the beginning. Why didn't you skip the pointer arrows that pop up on the tutorials? I was able to get rid of them right away by tapping A, but you left them pointing the full duration.
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That was pretty good. You seem to understand this game very well. I only had a couple of ideas.
Now when you exchanged chips from your folder and sack, did you test swapping the chips with each other versus double-tapping A on each chip to send it directly to the folder/sack and leave a hole behind? That seems as if it would save on the screen sliding back and forth those extra times, but maybe double-tapping isn't as fast as I think. (Is it not worth equipping the Cannon C yet just for NumberMan?)
That last turn against NumberMan was a little unfortunate, but I understand that luck manipulation can only go so far. If you could get one more chip then, or have gotten that Attack power-up early, you might be able to shave off the final bit of rapid-firing. Now, I see you have far too little zenny to buy a PowerUp when you're helping Glyde, but maybe you can bookmark the @Dex page before the second day and get that PowerUp along the way. It looks like the earliest you can do that is right after the oven mission, and since you'll want to bookmark @Dex for a shortcut and examine the path to his /Dex link anyway, the only time wasted would be in running between houses. You have been luck-manipulating the contents of mystery data crystals before picking them up, right? And maybe their locations, too...
So have you given any thought to the 60 chip quota yet? It's annoying how it works against your general strategy of getting a lot of the same kind of battle chip so you can use them all in one turn, but at least you don't have to equip any of the useless extra chips you pick up. Maybe you can just pick up any chips in the item crystals that aren't too far out of the way this time, and when you get to the memo-collecting mission, see how many you still need to find and plan them into earlier segments of the next run. (I think you could add an EarthQuake chip in the same code as some of your Cannons, for one thing.) The other thing to think about is that Higsby's shop opens at the beginning of the water outage, I believe, so if you're really crazy about luck manipulation, you could try to give yourself some of those three-squares-long swords or any other really good battle chips like that early on.
(And I was sad we didn't hear the full loop of the song in the school network... Stupid cutting back to Lan all the time...)
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Ferret Warlord wrote:
The Youtube video sounded very, very different from the dump I have. Why is this? Did the movie use a dump of a newer, improved version that was released later, or is it a dump that was artificially enhanced?
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OmegaWatcher wrote:
The run was perfect until the end. Ending the movie before the final Wily mode end is strange, even with the game finishing anyway......
Yeah, people go overboard with the "Shortest time to no more input" goal. I want to see EVERY boss have one weapon rapidly spammed into it! Hmm, a single playthrough is pretty short; maybe there should be a run that goes through all three modes. And definitely two-player, for variety, even if the second player turns out to be mostly useless.
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Zurreco wrote:
I moved a few hundred frames past Numberman in MMBN1, but I'm still plagued with doubts as to whether or not I should skip the Cannon C I pick up right before the battle.
At first I thought you wanted to make a Zeta-Cannon1, but NumberMan flinches from such weak hits, it would probably waste the whole thing, right? But if an extra Cannon saved you from shooting NumberMan 40 more times, it was probably worth it.
I found you can make a Beta-Sword in time for NumberMan too, but I think you have to go out of your way for the LongSword. But...
Zurreco wrote:
For Numberman, swords won't help.
Unless you can find another AreaSteal this early in the game! ...Can you? (EDIT: KirkQQ says there's a Steal in the oven! Unfortunately it's code A, meaning you couldn't use both Steals and the swords in one turn. But then you can set up that Beta-Sword Program Advance! If you can get those 5 exact chips to come up in the first two rounds, that is...)
At least once you beat GutsMan, you can start powering through the bosses with GutsShoot like Boco said.
Zurreco wrote:
That being said, I do (1st round) 3x Minibomb + 8buster [158], (2nd round) 2x Cannon + 5buster [85], (3rd round) 2xShotgun + 13buster [73], (4th round) 2xShockWave + 10buster [130], (5th round) Spreader + 24buster [54]. Fight ends in 45:69.
This looks like a good fight to me. I wouldn't stress out so much about NumberMan. In fact, this seems like a game where you really want to do a sloppy proof-of-concept run first to make sure that none of your main strategies hits a snag.
Which buster power-ups did you use before this fight, anyway? Do some of those numbers include charged shots? I think a couple of Charge power-ups will quickly outweigh the benefits of any Rapid fire against an enemy in the back, but raising the Attack early on is very helpful too. We'll want to study when each buster stat reaches "diminishing returns" compared to one another to come up with the final PowerUp plan.
Anyway, you should post your WIP where we can all see it, Zurreco! I'm sure we can learn some new things that way.
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Wasn't the game released for the plain old Famicom before it was released on the Famicom Disk System though? (Not that it means the glitch levels were intentional; I'm just curious.)
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But why should the movie file include the time it takes for your system to reload the program? Shouldn't the timing pause then, so the reset can be considered instantaneous?
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Soulrivers wrote:
Also, how the heck are we supposed to get any good chips if we don't fight any random battles? With the crappy chips avaliable, you won't get any S ranks on bosses either. And you don't really find any good chips on the Net that is right in your path.
To add to your point, there's a point in the game where someone (Ms. Yuri) checks to see if you have enough chips in your data library before giving you a key item. This is where your bare minimialist run screeches to a halt. I've also read that someone checks to see if your MegaMan is at a high enough level at that point as well, but that's just a matter of collecting enough HPMemories, PowerUps, and Armors in some combination, so you would need to plan how much to spend on them and which ones to pick up along the route. But before I can figure that out, I have to confirm the minimum number of kinds of chips. Whatever it is, it means that you'll need to plan some random battles into each dungeon in order to get some of the unique chips from it.
EDIT: I've found the threshold! It's 60 kinds of chips, as in 60 data library entries. It doesn't matter how many chips you have in your possession; you just need to have owned 60 different kinds of chips in the past. Remember you can check the save screen to see how full the library is. So at least in the American ROM, 59 isn't quite enough, but 60 gets you the memo. And that's only 45 you need to find, because 10 kinds you start out with, and 5 kinds you're forced to collect by the story.
I had to really scrape every last dungeon for its unique viruses to get that many chips, though. I'm sure you can fill in some of the last few with the various shops or even a trade or two, although shopping may cut into the level-up budget. I'll find out about that soon.
EDIT: It turns out you need to be at level 30 in order to obtain Pa's Memo. Remember that you start out at level 1, and you get an HPMemory and a PowerUp automatically from an e-mail (but don't forget to equip your PowerUps when you need to), so that's just 25 more levels' worth of items you need to collect. Use this guide to help you decide which ones to grab: http://www.gamefaqs.com/portable/gbadvance/file/457634/14657
If you want to go cheap, it looks as though you should only buy HPMemories and PowerUps from the merchants in Areas 1 (ACDC) and 3 (Govt) to make up for whichever ones are too far off the main route to collect. You could also buy HPMemory at Area 5, where the shop isn't a detour, but it's a little more expensive, and who knows if you'll need that last few thousand Zenny to finish off your chip library? Armors are very expensive, and I think you can go without any, unless you can think of any situation where you would need to take some hits to speed up a battle.
If beating WoodMan isn't in the plan, remember that you can backtrack from the first WWW area into the area that Sal's link opens without needing the link (from Area 5 to 9 to 3), and you can bookmark the access to Lan's Dad's computer while there so you have a shortcut right back to the WWW server after grabbing the other memos. Just don't forget to grab the link while leaving the message on the office computer, if that's your plan. (A funny side effect of this is that Lan's dad is suddenly present in the office after Lan jacks out. Apparently he sneaked up on Lan while MegaMan was busy fighting BombMan. Nevertheless, since you need to talk to Dr. Hikari anyway after getting BombMan's reward, this shortcut puts you exactly where you need to be.)
EDIT: Okay, KirkQQ in IRC raised a good point that you could just throw all your unwanted chips into the chip trader machine and manipulate luck to get chips that aren't already in your library every time. That shouldn't be too hard when you have less than a third of the library completed. If you have spare cash, you could use it to buy lots of worthless cheap chips to use for that.
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Baxter wrote:
Also, I've never noticed before the Mega Man at the level select screen actually looks in a bad shape if you return from a tough battle.
Looks like a glitch to me.
I think the face graphics in the first two rows were placed a couple of pixels too low. The select lights are a little out of their sockets, too.
Now that I think about it, didn't RockMan end the HardMan fight lodged a couple of pixels into the ground? That could have something to do with it. It'll probably be back to normal once you select the next level, though.
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So you're saying the game rewards you for getting into easier fights, just like the "Busting Level" in RockMan.EXE. Well, phooey on that! I would rather have compensation matching how hard the player has struggled! Never mind if that discourages anyone from mastering the game.
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Let's change the topic to "The Legend of Zelda no Densetsu II: The Adventure of Link no Bouken" so that the title will literally mean, "The Legend of Zelda's Legend 2: The Adventure of Link's Adventure."
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I think the face graphics in the first two rows were placed a couple of pixels too low. The select lights are a little out of their sockets, too.
Now that I think about it, didn't RockMan end the HardMan fight lodged a couple of pixels into the ground? That could have something to do with it. It'll probably be back to normal once you select the next level, though.