A good 20 years after its release, Mega Man Battle Network is enjoying a growing esports scene and professional tournaments. Find out how the hype began and where the community now stands here.
Mega Man Battle Network is for many one of the most nostalgic games on the Game Boy Advance. First released in 2001, the Japanese franchise captivated a huge community across six major titles worldwide. Developer Capcom originally planned the genre crossover as a single-player based experience, but ultimately added PvP multiplayer – the community didn’t take two guesses and joined forces for battle network tournaments for the first time in 2015. Things went steadily uphill from there, as YouTuber Akshon Esports also reports.
Genre hybrid evolves into esports.
Mega Man Battle Network has gone through numerous different alignments in its development. Ultimately, Capcom’s Mega Man spin-off was intended as a role-playing game in which players explore a fully digitised world. The combat system, however, has elements of different game genres: The combat environment is reminiscent of Auto-Chess, the system of real-time strategy and the style of a fighting game.
It was precisely this unique hybrid existence that captivated numerous players. One of them saw the competitive potential of the title and took the initiative in 2016 – a good ten years after the release of Battle Network 6. On Reddit , user MegaMasterX publicised his idea of an official tournament and even offered BattleChips and a Mega Man figure as prizes for the winners.
Through further tournaments, some of whose VODs are also available on MegaMasterX’s YouTube channel, the North American community at least continued to grow steadily. Slowly, the best players came together – such as “Salad” and “mars”.
With growing participation, MegaMasterX finally took the next step and launched an official Discord server and Twitter account for the competitive scene. N1 Grand Prix has existed on both platforms ever since and provides information about upcoming events in the battle network scene. Most recently, the account shared an anniversary tournament at the end of March to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Battle Network franchise. Even the official Mega Man account on Twitter shared the post, bringing more traffic to the community.
Last week we experienced the first half of our 20th Anniversary Battle Network 6 Tournament. Today we're streaming the thrilling conclusion in which NetBattlers face off in a double elimination bracket! This is the Mega Man event you don't wanna miss! https://t.co/fmitC7OJcO pic.twitter.com/EpXbQTArGt
— N1 Grand Prix (@N1Grand) March 28, 2021
International Interest
While the current BN scene tends to be represented in the US, members from Canada, Brazil and Japan are slowly emerging. According to Salad, Japanese player “aqua” is playing a big role in the international growth of the esports scene.
He joined the second N1 Grand Prix Tournament. He must have discovered N1 Grand Prix on Twitch and was excited about the possibility of belonging to an international community and competing with other players. He certainly succeeded in the latter: in the first tournament he took part in, he won directly against the best players from the USA. Under the spell of the international community, he now represents a central link between North American and Japanese players.
Self is the community
Because Battle Network is such an aging game, the competitive version does not run without problems. Players have to use emulators to compete against their peers in online events. Tournament broadcasts and casts also suffer from this problem and there are frequent lags and errors in the programme. Sometimes the game is unplayable on a competitive level because of this – but the community also has an answer to this in the long term.
BBN3 Update: November 2020
Check out the new trailer for this update!https://t.co/wOd7V0tL5N
The 4th preview release contains bugfixes, polish, and a few new features for your convenience. pic.twitter.com/Xnmx177t3s— mars (@pnw_ssbmars) November 17, 2020
BN player mars is a key member of the scene and has made it his mission to create online-optimised versions of the Battle Network franchise. He has been releasing more patches, updates and bug fixes for the title. At the moment, his priority is to complete one for Battle Network III. From this, his methods will eventually be applied to the Esport-relevant BN 6, so that future events can benefit from the version.
After a good 20 years, a fresh start
For such an old title, Mega Man Battle Network is surprisingly popular. The fact that a new esport scene is still awakening around a game so long after release is a real novelty. As with modern titles, players speak of an existing meta in the game, which has, however, already been successfully broken several times. So game strategies show a variety that gives Battle Network an unimagined potential to become an esport. We are curious to see where the series might go in the next few years – the community’s willingness to take action is certainly not lacking.
