Mega Man Legends (video game)

Mega Man Legends, known as Rockman DASH: Hagane no Boukenshin (ロックマン DASH 鋼の冒険心) in Japan and as Mega Man 64 in the American Nintendo 64 version, is the first game in the Mega Man Legends series and the first 3D main Mega Man game, released in 1997 for PlayStation, and later in 2000 for the Nintendo 64 with some of the voice acting removed to allow the game to fit onto an N64 cartridge. It was re-released in 2005 on the PSP in Japan. It was later added to the Playstation Network in North America on September 29, 2015.

Story
In the far future, much of the world is covered in water and people live on islands. The people here use ancient technology powered by refractors to survive. In order to survive, people called Diggers search for refractors and sell them for money as well as to power their flying machines for travel.

Legends tell of an enigmatic treasure called the Mother Lode. It is said that the Mother Lode has many powerful refractors and that, if discovered, it could power the world indefinitely.

Mega Man Volnutt is a digger searching for refractors and the Mother Lode when he, Roll Caskett, Data and Professor Barrell Caskett crash landed on Kattelox Island. There they battle against a family of air pirates known as the Bonnes and uncover the island's many mysteries.

After leaving an old tower, the Flutter crashed on Cardon Forest the police arrive to check on them. The Inspector welcomes them to Kattelox Island and asks one of them to go to the station for details, saying that it won't take long, with Barrell going to the station. While Barrell is busy, Roll asks Mega Man to look parts for their ship. Mega Man goes to Apple Market and sees Servbots outside, who are waiting for Tron Bonne near a Drache. He goes to the Junk Shop and the woman inside asks him to find her husband, who went to the Underground Ruins to find some parts. Mega Man finds him inside the ruins nearby being attacked by Reaverbot snakes and saves him. The Junk Shop owner thanks him and returns to the shop. In the shop, they lament that they don't have the parts he needs, but they give Mega Man a Mine Parts Kit and let him have the car outside the market.

Outside the market, Roll is seeing the car and asks if Mega Man found any parts. As the shop had none of the parts needed, he tells her that they have to digout for them. After using the car to make a Special Weapon with the kit Mega Man received from the Junk Shop owners, they are greeted by a police officer who was been looking for them and gives their Citizen's Card, telling them that some of the gates to other areas are locked due to Air Pirates planning to attack the city. Roll tells him that Barrell is inside the city and wonders if he will be all right, and the officer tells them that if he finds him he will bring him to a safe place. Still worried, Roll asks Mega Man to check Barrell. While on the way to City Hall, he notices Jim and his gang near the door to Downtown talking about a woman that might be a pirate. They leave when they notice Mega Man. In Downtown, Mega Man sees Tron Bonne finishing to talk at her Servbots about their plan that will soon start. Tron notices Mega Man watching and asks what he was looking at before leaves. Mega Man reaches the City Hall and finds Barrell talking to the mayor of the island, Amelia, who is an old friend of his.

Outside the City Hall, Tron is been chased by a dog name Paprika. Mega Man was confused, wondering what's that about. He finds Tron in Downtown, hanging in a street light and yelling at the dog to leave her alone. Mega Man makes Paprika go away and turns to Tron, who's still hanging at the street light, asking her if she's all right. Tron slowly drops down from the street light and begins to develop a crush on him. Blushing, she tells him to mind his own business and runs away. Mega Man returns to Roll as the Drache near the market leaves. Roll asked Mega Man if he saw the ship that just flew by, then notices several of them entering the city and hear booming noise. She realizes they are attacking the city and, worried with Barrell, hurries to the City Hall. As she enters Downtown, some police officers stop her due to the danger. Mega Man passes by them and checks the gate to the City Hall, which has been locked by the Servbots guarding it. They battle Mega Man with their Blumebears, one of them keeping the key that unlocks the gate. Mega Man defeats them and receives the key, and the Servbots sadly apologize to Tron for their failure. Tron angrily tells them that they are gonna be punished and wonders who is the blue boy she met, but angrily shouts that what happened is his fault and confronts him with her Ferdinand. Mega Man notices Tron and asked her if she was the girl who was chased by a dog, but Tron tells him to shut up as she does not want to hear it, then tells him to join her, or else she will tell what he did to her brother, but he refuses. Angry, Tron says that he is going down and taunts him before returning to the robot. Mega Man destroys the robot, leaving Tron covered in soot. He tries to apologize to her but she tells him the battle was not bad. A Drache lands behind Tron and a Servbot calls her to get in. Tron tells Mega Man that it's not over and leaves.

Mega Man enters the City Hall area, where the pirates are attacking the City Hall building, the Bank, the Police Station and some residences. After taking care of the Servbots, Bon Bonne appears, but he is defeated by Mega Man, leaving his head on the ground dazzedly. A Drache arrives and retrieve Bon. Meanwhile at the Gesellschaft, Teisel Bonne was in his room wondering where Tron and Bon are and notices that it's time for his favorite show, turning the TV on. News report that the pirate attack on the City Hall has been repelled by a blue boy. Enraged to see this, he asks who is that blue boy and decides to go into action.

Back at the City Hall, Roll arrives and tells Mega Man that he did stop the pirates and enters the City Hall building to find Barrell and Amelia fine. Barrell apologize to them for giving a scare. Amelia orders the Inspector to arrest the pirates and tells Mega Man about the disaster rumored to happen if the pirates find the treasure in the ruins. Mega Man follows the Inspector to the Clozer Woods, but he and his men are unable to stop the pirates. Mega Man fights through the Leopold tanks and finds Teisel Bonne in the Sub-Gate, digging around it with his Marlwolf robot. The defeated Servbots warns him that Mega Man is coming and Teisel orders everyone to stop digging and prepare to attack. Mega Man notices the robot and Teisel attacks him. Mega Man manages to hit the caterpiller threads, slowing the Marlwolf. He manages to find the robot's weakness, the hatch, and hops behind the Marlwolf to attack it when opened by a Servbot. Teisel yells to the Servbots close the hatch, but the Marlwolf takes enough hits to cause a malfunction, causing it to explode. Teisel is dazed with his defeat, standing while smoke comes out from his shoulders and the Servbots bring him back to the Gesellschaft. He mutters that he will get Mega Man even if it's the last thing he will ever do. Roll then contacts Mega Man that Amelia wants to talk to him and he returns to the City Hall.

At the Gesellschaft's meeting room, Teisel and his siblings are reunited and discussing what happened. Teisel plans to concetrate all their firepower on Mega Man to defeat him and with him out of their way it will be easier to take the island's treasures. Back at the City Hall, Barrell was very pleased that the pirates were stopped. Amelia gives Mega Man a Digger's License. Mega Man and Roll go to the south of Cardon Forest and fight through the Leopold tanks guarding the Sub-Gate where a Refractor is. Mega Man enters the Sub-Gate and finds a Yellow Refractor, but it's protected by an energy shield that needs three keys to be unlocked. After fighting through the Reaverbots and finding all the keys, he returns to the Refractor and unlocks the shield. Mega Man approaches the Yellow Refractor, slowly picks it up and looks around nervously, but unlike the blue refractor in the tower, nothing happened. He returns to Roll and they are happy with the Refractor found, but it's too small to fix the Flutter. They wonder where it could be used.

Mega Man goes to the boat house in Uptown. He meets the owner, Wily, and asks for a boat to the Lake Jyun Sub-Gate, but he tells him all the boats were stolen except for one boat that is broken. MegaMan talks with the workers near the broken boat and they inform him that only a big Refractor could make it work. He calls Roll and she checks the boat, looking inside and beginning to fix it with the Yellow Refractor. Wily then arrives and asked what are they doing. Roll calls MegaMan for a wrench. Later after fixing it Roll climbs out and surprise to see Wily who was watching and apologizes and she fix the boat for him. Wily tells her you like machines and asked what's in her face. MegaMan tells her your face is covered in grease. Wily then leaves and MegaMan and Roll hops on the boat ready to go to the Sub gate. However as they approach the gate they are attack by the Bonnes again. MegaMan manages to destroy the Such Gerats and Draches. Tron Teisel and Bon emerges from the cave nearby in their robot the Balkon Gerat and attacks them. Roll maneuvers the missiles while MegaMan Manages to destroy the robot's arms and turrets then the beam laser. Teisel Tron and Bon escapes from the Robot as it explode and retreats back to the Gesellschaft. MegaMan and Roll reachs the Sub Gate and he enters. He fights through the Reaverbots guarding the area and finds the Starter Keys. He finds a big Refractor and unlocks the shield. MegaMan slowly picks the Red Refractor and looks around nothing happened. However as he exits the room a big Reaverbot called Garudoriten activates and attacks. MegaMan destroys it by hitting it in the head and returns to Roll.

Meanwhile at The Gesellschaft the Bonnes are in the Meeting Room decided to let MegaMan keep whatever he finds in the ruins and wait him to open the Main Gates so they can take what is inside. MegaMan and Roll returns to the Flutter and repair it with the red Refractor they found and it start working again. Roll tells MegaMan to talk Barrell about the Main Gates. They go to The Clozer Woods Sub Gate where Teisel tries to dig it. MegaMan finds the control room to open the Main Gate but needs some id cards to activate it and the elevators are not working. He fights through the Reaverbots and finds the Generator and turns it on and the elevators are working and finds 2 id cards. He finds the last one after destroying 3 big Reaverbots called Karumuna Bash and returns to the control room and activates the controls and the Main Gate opens and returns to the Flutter.

Roll then pilots the Flutter back to the Cardon Forest. While on their way there they are attack by the Bonnes again with their Gesellschaft and they hide in the clouds. MegaMan destroys the remaining Draches and attacks the Gesellschaft. Teisel orders all turrets to destroy them. MegaMan finds the Gesellschaft's weakness and destroys them. The Gesellschaft explodes but the Bonnes escape on a robot called the Focke-Wulf and Teisel hurts his arm during the escape from the Gesellschaft. Tron takes over and attacks MegaMan, Roll and the Flutter. MegaMan manages to destroy the robot and the Bonnes sit down accepting their defeat and the Robot divebombs toward the ground to their apparent deaths, MegaMan and Roll watches them from the Flutter as the Focke-Wulf disappear behind the clouds. MegaMan gets saddened and looks down in remorse thinking they are not gonna make it from the crash and wishing he had taken it easier on them.

After fixing the Flutter MegaMan decides to talk to Roll to get to the Main Gate but as he enters her room she was changing and embarrassedly shouts and asked him what he was doing and yells him to get out of here as MegaMan shocked steps out of her room. Roll tells him next time to knock the door before entering and he apologizes. MegaMan talks to Barrell about the Main Gate then he and Roll goes to the Main Gate in the Old City. MegaMan enters the main Gate and fights through the Reaverbots and finds the controls and opens the Gates to the Sub City in the city and returns to the surface and finds a warehouse and enters it. Inside the Warehouse was a Robot called Theodore Bruno. MegaMan was amazed at the robot and notices the Bonne mark on its chest then hears Tron coming indicated she, Teisel and Bon survived the crash unharmed. Tron notices MegaMan who was watching and angrily shouts and asked him what happened telling him that she and her siblings could have died after the Focke-Wulf was destroyed then notices MegaMan smiling at her. He shakes her hands telling her she survived that's wonderful, but a Flustered Tron swings her hands off of him and tells him not to touch her. Then Teisel steps in who was eating and notices MegaMan and asked him what he was doing here and calls Tron to activate the robot and she leaves. They attack him but MegaMan defeats them. Tron, Teisel and Bon are sitting in the ground coughing. Teisel tells the Blue boy what's his name and he replies. Then he and his siblings leaves. Tron gets sad at this. MegaMan finds the Sub Citys in the city and destroys the Reaverbots and finds 3 special Keys.

MegaMan reenters the Main Gate and unlocks the three doors with the special keys and finds a chamber inside was a robot called MegaMan Juno and wakes up to see him and the meeting confuses Volnutt. Juno tells him about his past and traps him and leaves to plan to kill everyone on the island. At the corner Tron and Teisel overhear this and Tron becomes extremely worried and tells Teisel to do something or Juno kills everyone on the island. They find MegaMan trapped and frees him by turning the trap off. Tron checks MegaMan who was hurt by the trap and asked are you all right and MegaMan thanks her. Teisel tells him that Juno is getting away and he chases him leaving Tron and Teisel behind. MegaMan finds a giant Refractor called the Rainbow Refractor and fights through the remaining Reaverbots and finds Data who already went there where Juno was waiting for him. MegaMan comfronts him and Juno turns to his 2nd form after he defeats him and he defeats him and dies. MegaMan manages to stop the program and the island is safe. Roll and Barrell contact him that he stop Juno from destroying the island and he and Data returns to the surface.

Soon, it's time for them to leave. MegaMan goes to the city to say goodbye to everyone and they thank him for helping then returns to Roll, Barrell and Data. They say Goodbye to Amelia who was with them and boards the Flutter. While departing MegaMan notices the people on the island are cheering at them and say goodbye.

As the Flutter is far away, Teisel watches them from the window of their scraped ship and asks Tron if it can go faster, and she replies it can't and they build it with the spare parts from the remains of the Gesellschaft and other robots that MegaMan destroyed. Teisel tells them that with the Rainbow Refractor they got while MegaMan fought Juno, they can recover what they lost and be rich. Tron sighs, hopping the boat won't sink until they get to the next island. Unknown to MegaMan, Roll, Barrell, Data and everyone on the island that the Bonnes successfully got the treasure. The Rainbow Refractor was behind the scrapped boat and Bon was pulled in the water.

Gameplay
As the game (and the series itself) is in 3D, it plays differently than other Mega Man games. Features unique to Mega Man Legends include the lack of extra lives (should the player die against an enemy, they are taken to a "Game Over" screen), a shield that reduces damage taken (but will need to be repaired when broken), open-ended gameplay that allows the player to explore places in between missions, buster parts that can be equipped to increase the firepower of the Mega Buster gun, and a lock-on system that allows Mega Man to automatically aim his weapons to the locked-on target.

Ruins

 * Ocean Tower
 * Underground Ruins
 * Cardon Forest Sub-Gate
 * Lake Jyun Sub-Gate
 * Clozer Woods Sub-Gate
 * Main Gate

Bosses

 * Hanmuru Doll
 * Ferdinand
 * Bon Bonne
 * Marlwolf
 * Balkon Gerät
 * Garudoriten
 * Karumuna Bash
 * Focke-Wulf
 * Guynie Toren
 * Theodore Bruno
 * MegaMan Juno

Special Weapons

 * Active Buster
 * Blade Arm
 * Drill Arm
 * Grand Grenade
 * Grenade Arm
 * Machine Buster
 * Powered Buster
 * Shield Arm
 * Shining Laser
 * Splash Mine
 * Spread Buster
 * Vacuum Arm

Ports
Ports to other consoles were made such as for the Nintendo 64 (as Mega Man 64) and for Personal Computers (Windows). The game was also re-released for the PSP in 2005 for Japan. They also have some changes to vending machines and the YAG building in Uptown.

PC (Windows)
Released to the United States on July 14, 2001 and in Japan on June 18, 2004. It is available in English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese (simplified). Games saved in the PlayStation version of the game can be played in the PC version by extracting the entire contents using a Dexdrive and some editing to get the file itself. More changes on this port include the game running in 640x480 resolution (as well as being able to play in windowed or full-screen mode), the sound files as .wav files (in effect, the music stops and restarts as opposed to looping and the music starts from the beginning whenever the player enters another room) and dollars as currency (as opposed to zenny) are just some of the changes in this port. Additionally, the Chinese version of the game is known to be very buggy.

Nintendo 64
Like in the PC version it also had some changes like anti-aliasing on textures, the inability to listen to songs in the record shop (as the tracks have been removed to conserve space) and slowdown occurring when there are a lot of objects on screen.

Trivia

 * In the Japanese version of the game Biohazard: Director's Cut for PlayStation, a demo of Mega Man Legends is available on disc 2, which also has a trial version of Biohazard 2 and a movie of Breath of Fire III. In the demo, the game has the temporary title Rockman NEO, and ends after the defeat of Ferdinand. It has several differences compared to the final version, the most notable being that Mega Man and Roll are smaller and the Apple Market has a different appearance.


 * The game had some changes to it when localized due to censorship.
 * For example, Mega Man can harm animals like cats, dogs and birds in the Japanese version
 * The "Action Man comic with the holographic cover" that Mega Man Volnutt has to get for Jim's gang for their hideout in the Clozer Woods was actually a "Ero comic" in the Japanese version (they forgot to edit the comic's appearance for the N64, however).
 * Also, interestingly, one particularly dirty moment was left untouched in the localization process: After the  Gesellschaft is destroyed,  if Mega Man Volnutt tries to enter Roll's room, a cut-scene appears in the first person perspective that has Roll shouting in embarrassment and Mega Man Volnutt looking shocked (it's implied that he walked into her room while she was changing). Afterwards, she tells him to knock next time, and after apologizing, Mega Man Volnutt then thrusts his arm up as if victorious (the arm thrust is removed in the PS version).


 * In the Korean game "Cool Minigame Collection", the publisher SemiCon, used on load screens the same wallpaper of the pause menu screen of Mega Man Legends. The only difference is the gray-scale color scheme.
 * The Apple Market theme was remixed slightly and used in the first Dead Rising game.
 * Juno's battle theme (both phases) is a shortened version of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Little" Fugue in G minor (BWV 578).
 * The theme "Flutter vs. Gesellschaft" is used as Mega Man Volnutt's theme in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars and as Tron Bonne's theme in several of her appearances in other games.
 * Mega Man Legends is one of the few Mega Man games in which the player has complete control over the protagonist during the ending sequence. Other Mega Man games with lesser examples in which the player very briefly controls the protagonist during the ending sequence include Mega Man X4 and Mega Man ZX Advent.
 * The quotes "Mission Start" and "Mission Complete" were referenced in Street Fighter IV by Guile as both the quotes are his intro and victory quotes respectively.
 * Mega Man Legends was among the games that were originally intended for the PlayStation Classic, but was ultimately dropped from the final product for unknown reasons.