Dark Chip

Dark Chips are vastly powerful Battle Chips that increase a NetNavi's power beyond limits, but destroy its connection with its NetOp and turn the Navi into a Darkloid. Darkloids use these chips to survive. They start out using them to become more powerful, but soon become addicted and need them. After a while of addiction, it starts to corrupt their data, until eventually they become so corrupted that they are deleted. In the anime, Dr. Hikari says that the Dark Chips are a type of chip which trades a Navi's soul for power. They were created by Dr. Regal.

In the games, Dark Chips have several effects: First, when any number of Dark Chips have been used in battle, the user permanently loses 1 HP from their maximum HP count. Also, using a Dark Chip would result in a bug occurring on MegaMan, depending on the Dark Chip used (though most have the tendency to cause an HP bug). Finally, when MegaMan has used enough Dark Chips, he turns "dark" becoming the entity which is known as DarkMega or MegaMan DS, losing the ability to enter Full Synchro or to use Double Souls, and gains the ability to use chips exclusive only to "dark" MegaMan (like Snake or Muramasa), DS chips, and also will enter a "berserker" state on a lethal hit. To reverse the effects of "darkness", one must enter battles without usage of Dark Chips, and this process can be sped up by the "Soul Cleanser" NCP.

In MMBN4, Dark Chips can only be used when MegaMan enters an "anxious" state, after taking several hits in succession without fighting back. They take up the last 2 slots of the Custom Screen, and cannot be used with any other chip, aside from another Dark Chip. When one is "dark" enough, he can enter the battle with Dark Chips already displaying. In MMBN5, the Dark Chips are Battle Chips on their own, with their own code. Each folder can hold up to 3 Dark Chips at one time.

In both games, Dark Chips are the most powerful chips in the games, but the glitches they cause can discourage players from using some of them (Chaos Unison bypasses the glitch, but with a twist besides, so it is is also rather ineffective, unless the player needs to reuse a Soul Unison, as the same Chaos Unison and Soul Unison can be used in the same battle).

In the anime, the chips simply power up whatever NetNavi uses them (but it is later shown there are still dark versions of chips like Dark Sword and Dark Cannon), but they still turn them evil. Another side effect, likely created to coincide with the fact that permanently remove HP in the game, is that they over time delete the data of whatever NetNavi uses them. The Dark Chips were also exceedingly addictive. ProtoMan.EXE turned evil in episode 27 of Axess after Chaud slotted in an extra strong Dark Chip to fight ShadeMan.EXE, though later a cure was found for it.

Dark Chips can be strongly compared to drug addiction in both games and anime in many ways. Interestingly, MegaMan can control DarkChip influence if used, but an overload of dark energy like a Dark Chip implant or a direct infusion of dark energy will cause him to turn into MegaMan DS, who also cannot die of Dark Chips, due to the fact he was born of pure dark energy.

There are 4 ways to obtain Dark Chips: 1) Enter the "Worried" or "Dark" state. (MMBN4) 2) Buy them from people who say the have "a really rare/powerful/alternate-colored chip" (BN5) 3) Use the Number Lotto. (Certain types only in BN5) 4) Find them in Certain Mystery Data. (BN5)

Additional, there are chips that can be only used while "dark". These chips are normally tagged with "Evil Chip!" in the description, and are normally powered up versions of their predecessors. Most are Mega Chips, preventing a player from completely building a folder around these chips.

List of Dark Chips (excluding DS chips)
MMBN4


 * Dark Minibomb: Tossed three squares ahead, damages that square and all 8 squares around it
 * Dark Sword: Range equal to life sword and does damage equal to the enemy with most health. Max is 500 damage
 * Dark Stage: Changes panels on user's side to dark holes, changes panels on enemy's side to swamp.
 * Dark Cannon: Damage equal to the difference between your current HP and your max HP Limited to 999 damage.
 * Dark Heal: Heals 1000 HP.
 * Dark Lance: Hits the back row. Does damage equal to 1/2 of the HP of the opponent with the most hitpoints, up to 999 damage.
 * Dark Vulcan: Fires 24 consecutive powerful shots
 * Dark Spread: Fires a spreader chip with 400 damage.

MMBN5 Some Dark Chips were removed to compensate for others. Evey single chip here can be used for a Chaos Unison.
 * Dark Sword: Practically uses a Life sword type attack dealing 400 damage.
 * Dark Heal: Recovers 1000 HP.
 * Dark Tornado: A tornado hits the opponent multiple times, if it lands, four more tornadoes spawn on the adjacent panels to the victim
 * Dark Thunder: A large purple thunder ball with high damage slowly weaves its way around the field to the target. Deals 200 damage and stuns on contact with an enemy.
 * Dark Sonic: A black virus appears, and when it plays its song, the opponent(s) become paralyzed and flinch at the same time.
 * Dark Invisibility: The user immediately hits Dark Soul Mode and attacks rapidly without any control from the player, drawing from chips the player has in his library, excluding Dark ones.
 * Dark Drill: A powerful drill slams the opponent 1-2 squares ahead. Deals 100 damage a hit for 9 hits maximum.
 * Dark Wide: A large water pulse flies across the stage. If the user is in the back middle row of their arena, this chip hits the entire arena. Deals 300 damage and pierces enemies (but not shields).
 * Dark Plus: Powers up the next chip for +50 damage, but gives you a teleport bug making said chip hard to aim.
 * Dark Lance: Deals 400 wood damage to the back enemy row, also launching the enemy forward.
 * Dark Meteor: A Large number of meteors fall rapidly onto the enemy(s) current panels, also breaks panel if enemy or cracks panel on a hit.
 * Dark Circle: A cursor circles the outer panels of the enemy area, and upon presses the A button deals 300 damage to the current and 6 more panels on the outside, effectively missing the one panel before pressing the button on an even sided stage.

List of Evil Chips
Under construction


 * EleDark/Element Dark: Like the other Ele-chips, when standing on the right type of panel (in this case a poison/swamp panel), the chip will be powered up, dealing more damage. Deals 240 base damage.


 * DrkLine/Dark Line: On the current row you are on, this turns the whole line of 6 panels into darkholes.


 * Muramasa: Like it's predecessors from previous games this, chip attacks with a longsword chip which deals damage equal to the HP that you have lost.


 * Static: Like the Tornado chips, this creates a purple tornado 2 panels ahead for 8 hits of 20 damage. It appears to power-up to attack the two panels in front of you if you have a bug.


 * Anubis: Drops an Anubis statue onto the panel in front of you which poisons enemy's HP.


 * Hole: Creates a darkhole panel in front of you.


 * BugCharg/Bug Charge: MegaMan takes out the Gospel cannon then fires bolts down the row causing 200 damage times the number of bugs you currently have affecting you. Also removes bugs from you, acting also as a Bug Fix battle chip.


 * Blackwing: Pauses the screen then causes Batcaves to open up on the top outside of the enemies area which spew out a number of bats onto the enemies area. Using Area steals effectively increases the number of hits each column will take. Deals 20 damage per bat. (Note: This chip is a direct copy of the attack which the Darkman chips on MMBN3 uses)


 * Any DS-level Navi chip.

Trivia

 * Intense hacking in Battle Network 6 will reveal that Dark Chips were planned to be used (and this time, didn't remove HP or cause a Dark State, but inflicting an extremely fast HP bug), but the ideas seemed to have been scrapped, seeing as there are no descriptions for some chips and no icons for any Dark Chip in that game. However, the chips work fluidly and don't freeze the game. Also, Dark Sword and Dark Thunder made a return as BugRSword (Bug Rise Sword) and BugThunder (Bug Death Thunder), which when used, replace MegaMan's Charge Shot at the cost of sacrificing bugs (both are Giga Chips). However, in Japan, one can use toy Dark Chips with the BN6 Beast Link Gate to download Dark Chips, inflicting the above bugs. This does not apply to MMBN5 normal Battle Chips, but you can slot in chips from the opposite version of BN6.
 * In the anime, after Chaud gave ProtoMan a Dark Chip, he mentions Lan Hikari should have used it on MegaMan. This makes sense (in a way anybody would have never imagined), as MegaMan would have only turned into MegaMan DS and remained loyal to Lan, instead of Chaud losing ProtoMan. Additionally, Chaud even knocked the chip out of Lan's hand.
 * Chaud, in both the Anime and Battle Network 4, has resorted to using a Dark Chip on ProtoMan when backed into a corner; both instances led ProtoMan to be consumed by a powerful Dark Soul, though he curiously shows no physical detriment after being freed.