Mega Man Network Transmission
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 Mega Man Battle Network + NES Mega Man Games = A Mega Man game with somehow mixed reception.
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Mega Man Network Transmission, known as Rockman.EXE Transmission (ロックマン エグゼ トランスミッション) in Japan, is a platform role-playing video game developed by Arika and published by Capcom exclusively for GameCube. It was released in 2003 along with Mega Man X7 to celebrate Mega Man's 15th anniversary and is part of the Battle Network sub-series. This is the first and (so far) only game in the series to be released on a home console.
Bad Qualities
- Bare-bones plot. Due to how poorly translated this game tells it, you wouldn't be able to know what's going on unless you looked it up.
- The gameplay is more like a traditional Mega Man game with tacked-on and unnecessary RPG elements than a true Battle Network game.
- You have to be holding 20 Battle Chips at all times, but can only use up to five of them at once, and when it's time to select your weapons, you're not allowed to simply pick whichever ones you want from your list of 20. Instead, Lan (Mega Man EXE's trainer) randomly selects them for you.
- If you don't like what Lan gives, you can do one of two things: you can either wait for the Custom gauge to recharge (which takes a minute to do so), or use Mega Man EXE's default weapon, the Mega Buster, which is severely underpowered until you upgrade its attributes later in the game.
- Battle Chips have an ammo count, but they also have a recharge meter that depletes every time it's used.
- In order to get ammo for specific weapons, you have to grind a specific enemy.
- You can set a weapon so that it always shows when the Custom menu is brought up, but it can only be assigned to one weapon.
- Somewhat unfair difficulty spikes, there will be times in the level were the enemies can pop out of nowhere and get a cheap shot at you.
- Unbalanced difficulty; Fire Man is too difficult to be the first boss, but everything after that is incredibly easy due to the ease of which you can grind money to buy upgrades and Battle Chips such as the Invisible chip, you can even upgrade MegaMan.EXE's Mega Buster, which can easily drain down bosses' health in no time at all.
- Many stock sound effects; when you teleport to a new area, the sound of an airplane passing by can be heard, and in some cutscenes, the sound of the Back to the Future DeLorean hitting 88 miles per hour is used for certain actions.
Good Qualities
- Good controls.
- While not as good as the classic series and the X series, the soundtrack is great and perfectly well done. Especially the Hero theme which is a great throwback to "Kaze wo Tsukinukete", the Japanese opening theme from the anime, MegaMan NT Warrior.
- While not the best, the bosses (with the exception of Fire Man) are still fun.
- Lots of call backs to the original classics.
- The idea of making a Mega Man Battle Network game have a gameplay style similar that of the original classic Mega Man games with some RPG elements thrown in was a really cool idea and concept.
- Decent graphics for 2003 standards, even though they aren't stunning, but they are still better than Mega Man X7.
- There is a NetNavi version of Zero.
- Despite it's flaws, the game can still be enjoyable and fun to play.
Reception
Network Transmission received mixed reviews. The game holds scores of 67% on GameRankings and 65 out of 100 on Metacritic.
SomecallmeJohnny reviewed this game in an episode of Johnny vs., ultimately concluding that it was a poorly executed compromise of classic Mega Man gameplay and Battle Network RPG elements, and won't appeal to fans of either, but that won't stop him from taking a look at other titles, which he is willing to give them a try.
Jamie of Stuff We Play shared similar thoughts, and told people to play Rockman.EXE WS for the WonderSwan Color, a Japan-only title in the Battle Network series which had a similar gameplay to Network Transmission, but with better execution.