We’re Always Connected: An ode to Mega Man Battle Network

If you paid attention to video game discourse in the ’00s, you may remember a common narrative about Mega Man. The early sidescrollers had been rightfully enshrined as all-time classics, but there was also this weird reboot they did on the Game Boy Advance called Mega Man Battle Network, designed to cash in on the popularity of series like Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Digimon among kids. Apparently it was popular in Japan for a while, so they flooded the market with sequels and spinoffs. But to the rest of the world that trash just couldn’t hold a candle to the original series, which lacked a new mainline entry in the 12-year gap between 1996's Mega Man 8 and 2008 retro throwback Mega Man 9. I mean, in Battle Network you have to play as some stupid kid who has to go to SCHOOL?! No thank you! Fast forward to 2023. The newly released Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection is the fastest selling Mega Man game in history, selling a million copies in its first two weeks. In a few more, it could be the best selling Mega Man game ever. Why? How? Well, the kids who grew up playing it are all like 30 years old now, so we’re able to explain it more eloquently: Mega Man Battle Network fucking whips ass. It’s whipped ass this whole time. We’ve been trying to tell you. <a href="https://ponett.medium.com/were-always-connected-an-ode-to-mega-man-battle-network-66a738b99d47">Learn More</a>