Versions

🌑 Liberation Missions

One way has gone dark

From the second act, two forks in three at home hold a dark way: behind one of their two pads or links, a layer of the next act has gone dark. Its portal swirls in BN5's dark panels' shades, MegaMan says so when he reads the way ("And Lan... Part of it's gone dark. Dark panels,like Nebula's!"), and the act's card says "A layer here has gone dark". It is a risk you choose: the dark layer gives up the act's second Net Dealer and its Mr.Prog. The short net meets dark layers in acts 2 and 3, the endless net in acts 2 to 4.

The layer becomes a board

The dark layer is a Liberation Mission of BN5 Team Colonel's, made afresh from the layer's own floor, so no two boards are the same: dark panels, DarkHoles in their rings with a guardian on each (BigBrute, TinHawk, Bladia), item panels and BonusPanels, and a Darkloid, a Navi of BN6's, on his ring at the far end. As you arrive the camera goes to him and back, and Lan and MegaMan name the board: its DarkHoles and its par, the phases a planner took to clear it.

A battle for every panel

Each PLAYER PHASE MegaMan walks the clean panels as BN6 walks him and faces a dark one. A opens BN5's command window:

• Liberation is a battle with BN5's three turns: TURN 1 START!, TURN 2 START!, FINAL TURN!. A win frees the panel, and a win in the first turn (1 TURN LIBERATE!) frees the dark around it too. When the final turn's gauge fills, TIME UP! and LIBERATE FAILED!: the panel stays dark.
• LongSwrd spends an Order Point to free two panels in a line.
• Pass rests.

Item panels give Order Points, hearts, chips or zenny; a BonusPanel spins BN5's roulette. A guardian fights in its own battle, and a DarkHole sends its deleted guardian back until the hole itself is liberated.

Then the dark strikes back

DARKLOID PHASE plays as BN5 plays it: the Darkloid first, his reach lit red, his line, his blow; then each guardian warps toward MegaMan and strikes, the camera going to each as it acts, and the harm in BN5's yellow digits. The board's harm never takes MegaMan's last HP.

Beat the par

Close every DarkHole and the Darkloid's ring can be liberated, and the Darkloid fought from it. Delete him and the exit opens where he stood, and the board pays for how fast you were: the fewer the phases against its par, the better the chip it leaves for the rest of the run. Each act adds one of BN5's rules: in act 3 a barrier and its key, with a sealed route behind it; in act 4 a roaming TinHawk and a barrier across the way. A planner plays every board as it is made, sets its par from its plays, and turns away boards with too many dead phases or nothing to decide.

In BN5's own look and sound

Everything on the board is BN5's, read from its ROM while the game runs (none of it is in the download): the board and its backdrop, the PLAYER PHASE and DARKLOID PHASE banners, the command window, the L view and its camera, the units animated, and BN5's board music; a battle won in its first turn ends on BN5's one-turn jingle. A CONTINUE goes on with the same board, phase and freed panels.

Liberation Missions need BN5 Team Colonel's ROM beside BN6's. MegaMan liberates alone for now; his teammates, the Navis whose Souls a run has won, come later. How the missions were taken apart and how the generator makes them: docs/LIBERATION.md.

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🎛️ Smaller things, asked for by players

The music off, to play your own

Options' Audio has Music and Effects, each On or Off. Music off keeps BN6's sound effects while your own music plays; both off silences the game. It applies at once and is kept.

A guardian's draft knows what MegaMan holds

A player took UnderSht from Guardian Data while already holding it, more than once: BN6 sets UnderSht once, so a second does nothing. The draft now offers no program a copy would add nothing to (UnderSht, SuperArmor, the Shields, the shoes, the MAXes and the rest whose effect BN6 sets), and another of the build takes its place. A program that adds, like Custom1 or HP+50, shows how many you hold: "HP+50 (white) Held 1".

A compression code stays entered

A compression code was kept once entered, but its ten buttons had to be pressed again in every run, and a player said they ended up not using them. Now every program whose code you have entered in any run comes compressed as a run begins. Compressing never costs a fit, and the code entered again undoes it for that run, as in BN6. Dad's Compression mail still lists each code, and a code you have never entered is never applied.

BN5's songs, named

The Jukebox's BN5 songs had numbers in place of names, or names borrowed from BN6. Every song Team Colonel starts is now named for its own place, read from BN5's scripts: SciLab, Beach Day, A Stranger, Hope, Challenge, Area Liberated and One-Turn Win among them. In runs, BN5's own Before the Boss plays as a guardian logs in on BN5's areas, and a dark layer won plays BN5's song for a won mission.

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🌐 The Net Square, a hub and its parts

Friends who visited together lost each other: the Square was one wide plaza with its wings out of sight. Now everyone arrives in a compact welcome plaza, its landmark in the middle, the pad home, the greeter, the keeper and the Board by the arrival. Three warps off its sides, BN6's own gem pads, go to Trade Central, the Arena (the ring and its stands) and the stage, each a small place of its own, the warp back right where MegaMan lands. Over each warp its name in gold and who is there now ("ARENA: Mira"); L's Look around says which way each warp lies and who is where. A part is a few seconds from the arrival and back.

A server and its players need 0.15.0 alike: a 0.14 game meeting the new Square is told a newer version is out.

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🖥️ Closer to BN6's own screens

The JACK-IN SETUP

The setup after NEW GAME now sits in the PET window as Options does: BN6's orange arrows on each value, the row under the cursor explained in KeyItem's INFORMATION box, JACK IN! as the NaviCust's green RUN! at the foot of the list, and NEW in E-Mail's mark. The helpers have a page of their own: A on Help opens it, B goes back.

A run ends on BN6's RESULT

The summary after a run is two PET screens now, as BN6's battle RESULT gives its record and then what it got: RESULT (how the run ended and by whom, the layer reached, viruses and Navis deleted, and MegaMan's word in the NAVIGATOR box), then A to RECORDS (the Library and what the run added, the best, what the run opened marked NEW, and the closest goal), and A again for the title.

The PET's screens say as little as BN6's

BN6's own screens never show what A and B do, turn pages under small green arrows, and ask Yes or No behind a green triangle. The game's own screens now do the same: the key lines under the Jukebox, Options, the statistics question, Trade Central and the emote strip are gone, and Options' Display and Audio take the band's name as the folder editor takes CHIP FOLDER's. Only lists sit in the cyan window, as in BN6; a chip shows on the Library's grey card, buttons are STATUS's pills, and explanations sit in SubChip's flat panel. Each screen fades up from black as it opens, START on Trade Central's list opens a SORT pop-up as the folder editor's does, and in a chip trade MegaMan asks in BN6's NAVIGATOR box. The rules, measured from BN6's screens: docs/UI.md.

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Free and unofficial, not affiliated with Capcom. It runs from your own Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA) ROM; Liberation Missions, BN5's areas, and online trades and NetBattles also need Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team Colonel (USA) beside it.

🎵 The Jukebox

A new key item: KeyItem in the PET, then A on Jukebox. It plays every song of the game, BN6's 37, and with BN5's ROM beside it BN5's 35, as the cartridges play them: on BN6's own sound engine, which BN5 shares byte for byte. The game holds still while it is open and its music picks up where it was when you close it.

• Sections by game and by where a song plays: Towns, The Net, Battles, Story and Screens. L and R (or Left and Right) turn them, A plays, B closes, and on a phone a tap on a song plays it.
• Three modes on START: Repeat plays the song over and over, In order plays the section from the song on, and Shuffle plays the section in any order. A song that loops goes round twice before the next.
• Its lights are the song's eight tracks as they sound. The last song and mode are kept for next time.

The names are ours, for where each song plays, checked against where the ROM plays it. Twelve of BN5's songs whose place we haven't found yet are in More by their number. If you know where they play, tell us.

🔊 The sound as the cartridge plays it

• The title's music, note for note. The title, the run's setup, Options, SAVES and the PET's screens played BN6's songs on an approximation of the engine's own, duller than the game. They now play on BN6's own sound engine's rules, read from its code: its sequencer, its four channels and their priorities, its envelopes, the songs' reverb and its 8-bit mix, then the GBA's PSG and output as mGBA plays them. Laid beside the game frame by frame, it is the same, byte for byte, for every song and sound checked.
• The music holds its pitch. The game's sound is nudged a hair faster or slower to stay in step with the speakers, and that nudge moved the pitch 10 to 18 cents from one frame to the next: a slight warble on every held note. It follows the average now, under a cent a frame.
• The Legacy Collection's balance, if you like it. A player told us the sound felt off next to the Legacy Collection's. That collection plays CD recordings rather than the game's own sound, mixed softer. Options' Audio now has Sound: Soft, fitted to a recording of the Legacy Collection on the same songs: highs from 5 kHz up taken down (-10 dB at 10 kHz) and the deepest bass a little. GBA, the default, stays as the cartridge plays it. It changes at once so you can hear it, and the browser player's menu has a Sound button too.

⚙️ Options, a press away

• OPTIONS on the title's menu, under NEW GAME and CONTINUE, in the title's own letters, and Options in the PET's menu during a run, in the place of BN6's Comm, which a run always greyed out. The game waits under it, and B brings you back to the PET where you were. SELECT on the title still opens it, and so does OPTIONS in a phone's touch menu.
• A Display section: Fullscreen on a PC (borderless, as F11 and Alt+Enter, which now keep your choice too), Scale and Smooth motion. Scale is Auto (as before), Integer (whole pixels everywhere), Fill (as big as the screen holds, its shape kept: on a 1920x1080 screen no border above and below) or Stretch (the whole screen, the picture pulled to its shape). The 3DS has Fill, Integer and Stretch for its top screen. Thanks to Mooshymush for asking about the borders.

🖼️ The game's own screens look like BN6's PET

The screens the game adds to BN6 had a look of their own: a flat green band, thin teal panels on a dotted ground, bold letters everywhere. They are drawn to the measure of BN6's own PET screens now: the dark band with the screen's name and its stripes, the metal rails, windows framed in light and dark cyan round a navy field, the orange arrow for the cursor, key hints as E-Mail's START:SORT, notes in an information box like KeyItem's, and lists in BN6's own thin letters, read from your ROM. That covers the Jukebox, the NetPass, Trade Central, the NetBattle's cards, the wait for a dropped link, Options and the controls screen, the second screen, the ROMs screen and SAVES.

👋 Say it with MegaMan

Emotes, performed

An emote is no longer a caption over a head: it is MegaMan's own BN6 pose and a sound of BN6's, the same on every screen. A hand raised for Wave, both arms up for Cheer, down on one knee for Bow, the item-get pose and jingle for Got it!, the buster held out, a collapse, a turn on the spot, sparks. A caption shows in BN6's chat box only where a pose can't say it ("Haha!", "Hmm..."). Twelve emotes, six of them new, and none of them ever moves MegaMan.

• One press: hold L and press a direction for one of four favourites: up Wave, right Cheer, down Bow, left Laugh.
• Wave and wave back: a Wave, Cheer or Bow sent while facing another MegaMan is aimed at him. A hand blinks over your name on his screen, and his next one answers you, whichever way he faces: within five seconds, BN6's "!!" and sparkle play between you two on everyone's screen. Past two unanswered at one player, the rest show on your screen alone, so nobody can be flooded with waves.
• In step: every emote starts on the server's beat, so a group's emotes play together on every screen. The Square cheers back, and the more of you there are, the bigger: from three together the walking Navis cheer too, from four the greeter calls out as well.
• A burst of three, then one a second (it was two, then one every two seconds). Quiet please in L's chat hides everyone else's.

(#176)

The emote strip, and a palette on the second screen

Emotes and phrases used to be pages of L's chat boxes away: 5 to 16 presses for an emote, 4 to 11 for a phrase. SELECT in the Net Square now opens the emote strip, a PET screen laid out as the Custom screen lays out its chips: the twelve emotes as MegaMan's own poses in two rows, the one under the cursor played by MegaMan in a window with its name and whom it goes to ("AT MIRA"), A to send, L and R to the eight phrases and back. An emote now takes 2 to 6 presses (4 on average), a phrase 3 to 6, and the last one again two, with no chat box typed out on the way.

• Your own favourites: hold SELECT and press a direction on the strip to put the emote or phrase under the cursor on L and that direction. Phrases can be favourites too.
• On a phone, SELECT's touch button opens the strip, and a tap sends.
• On a second screen (the New 3DS's bottom screen, an Android handheld's lower one) every emote and phrase is a button, one tap each, with the NetPass on a tab beside them.

L's chat keeps Look around and Quiet please, and the first time it opens MegaMan points you to SELECT. (#178)

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⚔️ NetBattles, from the ask to the result

Asking, and being asked

Before anyone commits, the Square now tells the truth about a challenge:

• A challenge you sent shows at the top of your screen: his PET ringing, then his time to answer running down once he reads it, the link's bars beside it. Call off on his card takes it back, and Battle on anyone else meanwhile gets MegaMan's "we already asked".
• The player you challenge hears his PET ring and sees a "!" over you. MegaMan reads him your MegaMan's card before "Take it,Lan?", and his 30 seconds start only once the question is up.
• The link between two players shows as bars, never a number, beside a player's card and the question.
• Busy marks: a small mark over a player says he is in a NetBattle (pulsing while the bout runs, as the referee calls it out), watching one, or at a trade.
• A refused challenge (busy, gone, no stamp) is MegaMan's word in the chat box, no longer a notice in the corner.

(#167)

The way in and the result card

The way in is a PET Network panel instead of a black screen: both players, each MegaMan's HP, Crosses and Souls as carried, your set's score with this player, and whose PET is still on its way. On the Custom screen the other player's name sits on a small plate, and a link badge (bars only) shows the link steady, correcting a guess, or waiting. A wait past a second names whose PET it waits for, offers B to leave after ten seconds and ends by itself at twenty.

The battle ends on a result card instead of two lines on black: win or lose, the time, the HP each of you has left, the chips each used, the set's score, and the rematch asked right there, the other player's answer shown as it comes ("Kei wants another!"). A stop is the PET's word on the card, and a bout that broke off counts neither won nor lost: the referee calls it "BROKE OFF! NO CALL!". Short fades and BN6's own sounds take you in and out. (#167)

A rematch in about a second

Two Yeses on the result card go straight back into the battle. Each game keeps the two linked GBAs as the bout began and goes in from there: a few hundred frames instead of the whole way in. Each bout still deals its own hands and rolls, the same on both games and for every spectator, and the set's score keeps counting on the panel and the card. (#167)

Snappier NetBattles

Where both games can rewind as far as the trip takes, a NetBattle's input delay is now 1 frame instead of 2: every press, step and chip of your own lands a frame sooner. The other player's sounds stay whole when a guess of his keys is corrected, instead of going silent. And the games share their waits evenly, so the player on the worse link no longer sees the deeper corrections, and they are held where nobody sees them: on the Custom screen, or while your keys rest. (#167)

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🤝 Team NetBattles

Team up

Where both players hold the Arena stamp, Team up on a player's card asks him to team up, his MegaMan asks Lan, and Split up on your partner's card ends it. The one who asked is the team's captain. Battle on a player of another team challenges his team, and MegaMan asks how to fight: One by one or Side by side. The other team hears which before it answers. (#167)

One by one: the relay

Each captain picks who goes first without seeing the other team's pick, then both orders are shown. The leads fight a NetBattle as ever; the winner stays on with the HP he has left, the loser's partner comes in, and a team is out when both its MegaMen are deleted. Whoever waits, and whoever is out, is taken to the stands to watch the bout, unasked. Between bouts the result card shows the MegaMen standing and who is next; at the end, the team's result. A leave or a dropped link mid-match breaks it off for both teams, with no result: nothing is won or lost. The referee calls a team's bouts.

Side by side: two MegaMen a side

Side by side, all four MegaMen fight on one field, two a side. Each team's captain leads and his partner stands beside him, and every one of the four games runs the same battle in BN6's own engine from the four players' buttons, rolling back as a NetBattle of two does.

• His own Custom screen: each partner picks his chips on BN6's own Custom screen of his own game, from his own folder dealt into his own deck. The leads' screen waits for him by BN6's own link wait (the other side sees "Cstmzing..." over the side that waits), and a quiet sign tells a lead his partner is still picking, and a partner that his lead is ready. Once anyone has pressed OK, whoever is still picking has 30 seconds, then his picks so far are taken; only he sees a quiet sign in his last ten.
• His whole MegaMan: a partner brings his NaviCust's programs (his HP, buster, abilities and the chips his screen deals), his Cross from his own CROSSSELECT, his Beast Out from his own emblem, a Program Advance made on his own screen, and UNITE with his own Souls. Under full rules BN5's Souls, mood and DarkChips answer for each MegaMan: a partner's charged B is his own while his lead is in a Chaos Unison, and a partner's mood, dark and DarkChip after-effects are his own.
• Four players of different runs build the same battle, and a partner's choice his own Custom screen could not have made (a chip outside his hand, a Cross he lacks, a Soul he does not hold) is refused on every game alike.

The way in shows all four MegaMen, a partner's seat has its own HP box, and the result card shows each one's HP left and the team's WIN or LOSE. A stall says whose PET it waits for, and anyone else in the channel can watch from the stands. (#181)

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🔧 Fixed

• DarkInvs on the challenged player's side of a NetBattle. Under full rules, the second player's DarkInvs (or ShadowSoul's Chaos Unison, which uses it) moved his MegaMan's AI data into the block the first player's MegaMan already held: both MegaMen read one AI data, the first turned grey under the other's DarkInvs and the battle stood still. Each MegaMan now has a room of his own, so either player's DarkInvs takes his own MegaMan alone, both at once too, and a NetBattle without it is the battle it was. (#182)

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Under the hood

Side by side, a partner's buttons and choices travel inside his lead's GBA's own link packets, BN6's own, so both linked GBAs read them in the same frame as the lead's: a partner who never picks, or all four in Beast Out, can no longer make the two GBAs see different battles. Each partner's NaviCust is worked out by BN6's own code over the battle's own starting state, never a player's save. A rematch's bout seed is its battle's ID, which both players and every spectator already know, so no new message carries it.

The network thread no longer rests between looks: it wakes when a key is put to go out or one comes in, and uses less CPU. Every client socket asks for no Nagle where the system lets it.

A 0.14.0 game speaks protocol v15 (0.13.0 spoke v10): a server and its games update together, and the gate says which side is behind. For hosts: the Arena's delay still comes from delay_for, now 1 at least, and the server pairs teams, their relays and the four seats of a side-by-side battle as it pairs two players, keeping them in memory only (server/README.md).

🌐 The Net Square

Through the gate in Lan's HP

The way there is the great white gate at the front of Lan's HP, where every run begins and comes home between acts. The first time, the Mr.Prog who keeps it asks for the name other players will see, says what the server learns (your PET's address, that name, and MegaMan as he is) and asks before you go, the cursor on No. After that MegaMan asks each time, and Yes saves the run right there. R, or the pad you arrived by, takes you home, MegaMan back on the gate as he left it; if the game was closed in the Square, the next CONTINUE puts him there.

Your run waits at the gate. The Square has no battles of the net, no heal, no shop and no saves, and nothing there makes a run stronger: the one thing that comes home is a chip you traded. (#120)

A dropped connection waits for you

When the Square stops answering (a hiccup in your Wi-Fi, a server restarting), the game no longer sends you home. MegaMan holds still where he stands, Reconnecting... shows over the Square, and the game tries again for up to 30 seconds while the server keeps your spot, so the others see your MegaMan stay put; you play on as soon as the link is back, and B goes home at once. A NetBattle under way ends with no result and a trade not yet done is off, as on any leave; a trade you both agreed to still comes home. The gate also tells you when a newer version is out, when the Square's server is the older one, and when it is down for maintenance, with the host's own line. (#153)

The Square: phrases, a greeter, a parade and its own music

A plaza in one of BN6's daylight nets (Central, Sky or Green Area, by the server), with a landmark in its middle (a statue, a monument or a giant cybertree), a stage up a stair, the log-in plaza with its board and the pad home, Trade Central, and the Arena's ring with room to watch from. Up to eight players a channel; the gate's keeper moves you to the next or the last.

• L has MegaMan say a phrase or do an emote over his head, for the whole channel to see. Phrases come from a fixed list: there is no free text, and no one can type at you. Say something together round the landmark or on the stage, and the Square cheers.
• A facing another player's MegaMan shows his card (HP, act and layer, Crosses and Souls), and lets you ask him for a NetBattle, wave, mute or block him.
• A greeter Mr.Prog calls out who logs in, each arrival in BN6's own log-in beam. Two Navis stroll about and talk about who's here and what just happened, and every three minutes they parade round the landmark: walk with them.
• The board lists who's here, the last trade and NetBattle, the trade offers up and this week's DeepNet. A on a tree, the landmark or the sign says what it is.
• Its own music: whatever area it stands in, the Square plays BN6's Navi Customizer theme. (#155)

The NetPass

One rule says what is open to you online, and a NetPass in Lan's PET shows it as four stamps:

The full set is every game this version supports online: BN6 Cybeast Gregar (USA) and BN5 Team Colonel (USA). With BN5's ROM beside BN6's, all four stamps are yours, and the greeter stamps them on your next visit. With BN6's alone you hold the Square stamp: the whole Square but NetBattles, trades and the dive. If a later version supports another game online, the stamps that need it open again until you add that game, and the release notes and the site will say so ahead of time.

KeyItem in the PET, then A on NetPass, opens it; in the Square, where the PET stays shut, START does. It also shows across the top of the screen while MegaMan asks about going, and on a second screen (the New 3DS's bottom screen, an Android handheld's second display) while you are in the Square. (#131)

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🤝 Trade Central

Trade Central, a desk in a wing off the plaza, trades one of your spare chips (copies beyond those in your folders) for another player's, one for one. It has two screens of its own, modelled on the Legacy Collection's:

• The spares list, where every chip for a trade is picked: your spares with their codes and counts, beside a card of the chip under the cursor (its picture, code, element, damage and description, read from your ROM, BN5's chips too). START sorts them by ID, ABCDE or Code.
• The chip trade: both chips, You and Them, No deal and Deal!, the cursor on No deal. Once you both say Deal!, the cards swap places to BN6's jingle, and the chips change hands as you come home.

One trade a visit. The trade board, at the same desk, puts one spare up with what you want for it (anything, a chip of an element, a Sword, Wind, Break or Cursor chip, or a Mega), and everyone in your channel reads it, there and on the log-in plaza's board, until you take it down, leave or trade. To answer an offer, pick it at the desk: the spares list shows only your chips that fit its want. (#145)

⚔️ NetBattles, with rollback

Battle on another player's card, where you both hold the Arena stamp, asks him for a Practice NetBattle, BN6's own over an emulated link cable. You fight with your MegaMen as your runs built them: HP, NaviCust, buster, Crosses, the folder with BN5's chips in it, and your Souls (UNITE on the Custom screen as in a run, and the other player sees your Soul too). Where more than one of your folders holds chips, MegaMan asks which goes. Win or lose, you are back in the Square where you stood, and nothing is won or lost. MegaMan then asks whether to go again with the same player, the cursor on No.

The battle answers your presses with rollback: each game runs it at once, guessing the other player's buttons as the last ones he held, and when his real presses come in otherwise, it rewinds the frames that guessed wrong and plays them again. On a good connection that is 2 frames of input delay. Each system measures how far it can rewind and asks the server for the delay its connection still needs; the longer of the two players' needs is the battle's. Running both players' GBAs got three times cheaper on the way, so even the Retroid Nova rewinds up to 7 frames within a frame's time. (#128)

The stands

The referee Mr.Prog by the Arena's ring calls each NetBattle in your channel: who fights whom, their HP, the last chips they used, how many watch, the winner. With the Arena stamp he asks whether to watch, and the screen turns to the battle itself, a moment behind the players and from its first frame however late you came. R shows the other side, L cheers, B takes you back. The players hear the cheers from him after their battle. (#128)

🏆 The week's DeepNet

Every Monday (00:00 UTC) each server opens a net of its own for the week, and everyone on that server who dives it dives the same net, from the same start: the short net, the Standard folder, threat 0, no helpers and no Cross, nothing your other runs unlocked. The greeter in the log-in plaza offers it to a pass with the DeepNet stamp; the dive begins in Lan's room, as a new game does.

Your run in progress waits in a save of its own, untouched, and the title's CONTINUE stays with it. Talk to the greeter again to go on with an unfinished dive or start it over. How deep you got goes up on the board at your next visit: the week's eight deepest dives as reported, your own best and its place, and last week's three. Dive as often as you like; your best counts. A dive unlocks nothing, and nothing is won for one. (#127)

📱 Every system online

The Square, Trade Central and the DeepNet are on every system: computers, phones and tablets, PortMaster handhelds, the Steam Deck, the New 3DS and the browser.

• NetBattles in the browser. The browser build battles in the Square as the other systems do, rollback and watching from the stands included, against another browser or a game on a computer.
• The New 3DS has no NetBattles. Running a NetBattle's two GBAs takes it about 26 ms a frame, half again the 16.7 a frame has, so it offers no Battle and no watching, and its pass says so: "Every game in! No NetBattles on this PET." The referee still calls the channel's battles to it, and with BN5's ROM it trades and dives. Running the two GBAs on two of its cores is what is left to try (#147).

🖥️ The official server, and your own

The gate offers the official Net Square first: Saschb2b's, at cyberworld.saschb2b.com, a hobby server with no guarantees. It asks for no account and no e-mail. There is no free text, so there is nothing to report: block a name from his card, and that MegaMan is gone from your Square. It keeps its trades for 14 days and the week's board for 2 weeks, by a key your game makes for that server alone and the name you chose, its daily totals with no names for a year, and no log of who came and went. Its rules, who moderates it, what it keeps and for how long, and how to have your data removed are in its policy. (#132)

Anyone can run a Net Square of their own: the server is a small ROM-free program in Python, with ready builds for Linux, Windows and macOS beside this release (or the zipapp, for any system with Python 3.11) and a recipe for a container, and it never needs a ROM or sees a save (server/README.md). Each server has its own channels, moderators and week's DeepNet; give its address to the gate's keeper to go there. For hosts: a server prunes what it keeps by itself, at its start and every hour (trade_days, board_weeks, log_days in server.ini), --admin forget takes a player out of every record but a ban or a mute, --admin hide takes an entry off the week's board, and --backup DIR archives the server's key, moderation and board once a day, --restore putting one back. A dropped player's place is held for 40 seconds (hold and resume in the log), and maintenance = until 14:00 UTC in server.ini turns games away with that line. A 0.13.0 game speaks protocol v10: a game and a server of other versions refuse each other.

Online statistics

Where you said yes to the anonymous statistics, the same answer now covers online play, so that the Square's servers and the NetBattles' rollback are tuned on real networks: how a visit to a Net Square ended and its minutes, your NetPass and whether the server was the official one (never its address); a NetBattle's network numbers (input delay, rollback window, rollbacks and the deepest, the longest tick, the stalls) and how it ended; and that a trade was done, a battle watched or a dive posted. Never your name or another's, your identity on a server, the chips, the phrases or anything typed. Said no, nothing is sent.

For hosts: a server counts each UTC day's joins, how many different players (a number only: the day's identities are held in memory and dropped at its end), the most online at once, trades, NetBattles, battles watched, dives posted, and joins by version and by NetPass, with no names, in stats.jsonl for stats_days (365) and at GET /stats, today and the last 30 days. (#156)

---

💰 A leaner first act that opens up as you go deeper

The first act used to hand out about twelve chips, many in your folder's codes, and more zenny than its dealer's answer chip and HPMemory cost together, so there was little left to want or to trade. Now:

• the first act lays half the green Mystery Data, and a green data holds a chip less often, zenny in its place;
• the plain finds (green and blue data, a dealer's shelf, a request) hold fewer 3-star, Mega and Giga chips;
• finds hold half the zenny;
• no find leans to your folder's codes.

Each of these opens act by act, back to what it was by the sixth act (the short net's third), never past it. A blue data at a detour's end stays the layer's prize, and BN6's own battle rewards are untouched, so a high busting level pays as it did. Measured over 300 runs of the endless net:

At the act's dealer you now buy the answer's two copies or the HPMemory, not both. The Chip and BugFrag Traders pick a prize's code as BN6's own Chip Trader does, three times in four one you hold none of, rather than your folder's: your codes are your run's own, and worth a trade at Trade Central. A layer saved before this update starts afresh at a CONTINUE. Where you said yes to the anonymous statistics, a run's end also counts its chips, good chips, Mystery Data opened and zenny earned. The numbers act by act are in docs/ECONOMY.md. (#154)

🛒 The Order Service sorts

AsterLand's clerk listed every chip of the Library by ID alone, five a page, while the folder editor and the Chip Trader beside him sort by seven keys. START on his list now goes on to the next of the same seven (ID, ABCDE, Code, Attack, Element, No., MB), each the way BN6 first sorts by it, and SELECT turns it around; his box names the sort over the buttons ("By Attack,high first!"). No. is how many of the chip, in its code, you hold. The list opens in your last sort again. Thanks to whitt-e for the request. (#124)

🔧 Fixed

• A request pays once. An asker at home paid a settled request again after Lan jacked in at his PC and back out: the lab's man gave his 1000 zenny twice. BN6's jack-in rerolled its own maps' Mystery Data and cleared their flags, some of which are the run's (a request settled, the visit's order at AsterLand). Each layer now leaves BN6's own Mystery Data out of the roll. Thanks to Baine53 for the report. (#122)
• Pads warp wherever MegaMan stands on them. BN6's own trigger behind a pad stops short of its art, so a player could stand on the pink pad in Lan's HP, or on the left of a layer's exit pad, and nothing happened. Every pad now warps from its art as drawn: the pink pad and the links in Lan's HP, a layer's exit pad, and the pad home in the Square. MegaMan still walks as BN6 walks him. (#161, #165)
• The Recovery Mr.Prog keeps his patch for when you need it. At full HP he tells MegaMan to come back when he's hurt, where he used to spend the layer's one patch on him unasked; when MegaMan is hurt, he asks first. (#165)
• A Trader on the map. Chip and BugFrag Traders have their own entry on a layer's map, apart from the shops. (#165)

---

Under the hood

A NetBattle is BN6's own Practice NetBattle on an emulated link cable: each game runs both players' GBAs from both players' keys, the MegaMan each run built written into his side, BN5's installs in both, and the two games compare a hash of the battle as it goes. The server only pairs the players and relays their keys; it is ROM-free and never runs a game. A rollback puts both GBAs back to a snapshot and runs the frames again with the keys that came. The New 3DS, which cannot keep up, was measured on the device before its pass was made to say so.

⚔️ One Battle Network

BN5's net, fought in BN6's engine

In 0.11, a battle in one of BN5's areas handed the screen to a second emulator running BN5 itself, with its own rules, its own HUD and no Crosses. Now every battle is BN6's. BN5's 25 virus families that BN6 lacks are moved from your BN5 ROM into BN6's battle engine by their own code, and each was checked frame by frame against BN5's own battles before it shipped. They fight beside BN6's HUD and Custom screen, and everything MegaMan carries works against them.

Where BN5's ROM sits beside BN6's, each of its areas takes the place of a BN6 area in about half the runs: ACDC for Central, Oran for Green, SciLab for Sky, End Area for Seaside, its Undernet for the Undernet, and Nebula for the Graveyard. (#82)

BN5's guardians

ToadMan, KnightMan, ShadowMan, NumberMan, TomahawkMan and Colonel guard acts in BN5's areas, fought in BN6's engine at BN6's guardians' strength, no longer three quarters of it. So does the Dark Soul.

Souls, in every battle

A BN5 guardian deleted gives his Soul for the run. UNITE on the Custom screen, giving up a chip of the Soul's kind, makes MegaMan that Soul for three turns, in any battle, BN6's areas too: its look, its charged shot and its passive, as BN5 has them. One form at a time: UNITE and Beast Out share the emblem's slot. Chaos Unison goes as BN5's does: a DarkChip comes while MegaMan worries, and UNITE stays dark while he does, so keep it, calm him with a chip that lands, and give it up on the next Custom screen. A DarkChip given up for Chaos Unison costs no max HP.

DarkChips from the flames

BN5's flames of darkness stand on its areas' layers, and their DarkChips come by BN5's rule: dealt while MegaMan is worried, at a quarter of his HP or hit again and again. Every battle a DarkChip runs in costs 20 max HP for the rest of the dive, and MegaMan says so before you take one. DarkInvs hands MegaMan to the game for ten seconds, grey and untouchable, as BN5's does. DarkPlus adds 50 to the next chip.

Lava and sea

BN5's lava and sea panels work in BN6's battles as they do in BN5: lava burns what stands on it unless it is Fire, and the sea holds back whatever is not Aqua.

Where the nets meet

From act 2, a battle in four may bring a visitor from the other net: BN5's viruses in BN6's areas, BN6's in BN5's. The deep acts draw from both nets, and BN5's chips are chips of the run, one chip per name, in shops, traders, rewards and Mystery Data.

On the New 3DS too

The New 3DS reads BN5's ROM where its heap has room for it. Put Team Colonel beside BN6's ROM and BN5's net joins your runs there as everywhere else. A 3DS without BN5 gets 16 MB of its heap back.

---

💾 Saves move between systems

SAVES on the title (L, or Q on a keyboard) writes your profile and the run's checkpoint to one file, cyberworld-endless.cwsave, and reads one in on any other system: a PC, a phone, a handheld, a New 3DS or the browser. It shows both saves side by side, keeps yours unless you choose the file's, and UNDO IMPORT brings them back. Controls, screen and volumes stay on each device. A newer build's file, a damaged one, or a BN5 run without BN5 is refused before anything changes. On phones the automatic copy in your ROM folder never writes over another device's file: the game asks once which saves to keep. (#114)

🔁 A soft reset that stays in the game

A+B+Select+Start reset BN6 to its own title while the run went on underneath, and going back in could put MegaMan elsewhere on the map. Now it returns to this game's title, in a battle too, and CONTINUE takes the run up at its last checkpoint. Thanks to Mattwj for the report. (#113)

🎮 A smoother New 3DS

• No freeze at a save. A checkpoint wrote its ten files on the frame that saved, and on the 3DS's SD card that held the game still for up to a second at every layer. A thread of its own writes them now. In a six-minute run on a New 3DS, the stalls of 0.6 to 1.5 seconds went from 20 to none.
• The act's card at full speed. Its text went through the software renderer one letter at a time, and the card dropped the game to about 40 frames a second as it showed. A line of text is drawn once and blended whole now: the seconds with the card on screen ran at 56.6 frames a second, up from 40.8.

🌐 The site in Japanese

The home page, the downloads, the FAQ and the browser player have Japanese pages, written for Japan's players, who know the game as ロックマンエグゼ6, with BN6's names as Capcom's Japanese releases write them.

---

Under the hood

BN5's battles in BN6's engine are held to BN5's own by a differential: each of 366 specs fights the same battle in BN5's engine and in BN6's and compares them frame by frame. 363 pass, and the three others stop where they are recorded to. Each of 167 deliberate breaks in the moved code fails its spec. The repository holds numbers only (addresses, ids, checksums); everything BN5's comes from your ROM as the game starts.

🎮 Controllers

• Pads without a layout work (#112). An 8BitDo Micro, and any pad SDL has no layout for, went unread: the game opened only the pads SDL calls controllers. They are read as they are now, their hat and first stick moving MegaMan and their buttons named by number on the controls screen. In the browser, a pad the browser does not know had its D-pad nowhere; it is read the same way, Chrome's hat on one axis too. Thanks to Mattwj for the report.

🕹️ The controls screen

SELECT on the title opens it, everywhere but on the 3DS.

• A tab per device, CONTROLLER and KEYBOARD, with L and R between them.
• A row per GBA button, with a MAIN and an ALSO slot, and a dot that lights when you press it, so you can try a map before you keep it.
• The D-pad is one row. Its four directions are asked in turn, each a button, a stick, a hat or a key, so a pad in keyboard mode can set its directions too.
• A clash is swapped and said: "Swapped: A now on B". X clears a slot.
• Set all asks for every button in turn, for a pad laid out its own way.
• Nothing is kept unasked: Done, and Back after a change, ask you to press the new A first.

🌐 The project page

The project page draws one run as one picture below the trailer, from Lan's room to the Nest. The README is one page of pictures too, and everything it held is in the new player's guide.

📥 Get it

On the download page the best download for your device comes first, with every other system below.

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified, and for the older net Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team Colonel (USA) beside it. The game finds them by their contents. Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the player's guide.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROMs you own and none of it is distributed here. The start's chime is "UI Success Chime" by SoundShelfStudio, from Pixabay.}

🛠️ Fixed

• Cubes, obstacles and Rush's gaps hold MegaMan until they open (#111). Some stood the wrong way round: MegaMan could walk past a security cube or a Link Navi obstacle without its P-Code or Cross, or across a gap without RushFood, and then could not walk back. Each now faces the side you come from, and both sides of a gap stay shut until Rush lies in it. Thanks to whitt-e for the report and the photo.

🌐 The browser's player

• The game alone on its screen, at the largest whole scale your window holds, framed in the PET's green. The site's bar steps away while you play.
• The ROMs go in on the screen itself, and a return visit is one gold Play.
• One PET menu holds everything else: Menu above the screen, or F1, pauses the game and its sound. Fullscreen, Smooth motion, the controls, Save backup, Load backup and Forget all are all there.

A run saved on a layer starts that layer again, from where MegaMan arrived; everything else carries on. A MegaMan stuck behind a cube or on a gap's far side is free.

📥 Get it

On the download page the best download for your device comes first, with every other system below.

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified, and for the older net Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team Colonel (USA) beside it. The game finds them by their contents. Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the player's guide.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROMs you own and none of it is distributed here. The start's chime is "UI Success Chime" by SoundShelfStudio, from Pixabay.}

⚔️ After a guardian

• He logs out as BN6's Navis do. BN6's beam rises where he stands and his sprite plays its own log-out, a frame in his lighter colours, with BN6's sound. He used to fade away after a white flash, which BN6 never does. He logs in the same way at the start of the fight.
• His Guardian Data turns, BN6's Mystery Data crystal spinning where it had stood still.
• His data says half as much. BN6's own "MegaMan got:" boxes, MegaMan's word on a Cross, the heal, and the program choice in one box and its menu, each program's colour beside its name; nothing on what BN6's players already know. Act 2's guardian went from about eighteen boxes to ten. A BN5 guardian's Soul takes three boxes, not eight.
• Dad's mail waits until the data is taken, in one box, where it stopped MegaMan short of the data.
• Home's welcome after an act is three boxes, not five.

🏠 Around home

• The title's CONTINUE says Home for a run saved between acts, where it said "Layer 7".
• The arrow in Lan's house leads round the furniture, straight up past the sofa's end, then to the stairs.
• The courier's "!!" goes once he is heard, and he leaves out the requests L already named in the town.
• L in the town says less, and names AsterLand's door only when Lan isn't standing at it. The Net Dealer's talk before his list went from seven boxes to four.
• The second screen lists every way: the ways back share one line, so a fourth way is no longer cut off.
• The statistics' question names the buttons on a phone: "D-pad and A, or tap Yes or No".

A run saved by 0.11.0 or 0.11.1 carries on where it was.

📥 Get it

On the download page the best download for your device comes first, with every other system below.

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified, and for the older net Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team Colonel (USA) beside it. The game finds them by their contents. Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the README.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROMs you own and none of it is distributed here. The start's chime is "UI Success Chime" by SoundShelfStudio, from Pixabay.}

🛠️ Fixed

• The on-screen buttons answer the statistics' question. On a phone or tablet, the browser's player too, the question at the first start took only a tap on its Yes or No: the D-pad, A and B round the picture did nothing, and pressing them left you stuck there. They answer it now as keys do: the D-pad moves the cursor, A or START chooses, B says no. A tap on Yes or No still answers.

Nothing else changed: a run saved by 0.11.0 carries on where it was.

📥 Get it

On the download page the best download for your device comes first, with every other system below.

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified, and for the older net Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team Colonel (USA) beside it. The game finds them by their contents. Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the README.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROMs you own and none of it is distributed here. The start's chime is "UI Success Chime" by SoundShelfStudio, from Pixabay.}

🏠 Home between dives

Lan's HP is the warp zone

Every jack-in now arrives in Lan's HP, MegaMan's own homepage from BN6. Delete an act's guardian and his exit takes MegaMan home: the act's AREA CLEAR card, "Phew! We're home,Lan!", and the run saved. The pink pad leads into the act's own area, the link squares the other way, and into the Undernet once you have cleared the Secret Area. MegaMan arrives facing the way on, a portal tells you what MegaMan senses through it when you check it with A, and a link asks before it takes him anywhere, so a stray step never picks your act. R jacks out to Lan's room. (#85, #86, #93, #94, #110)

Going back, priced by the Net's clock

Two more portals lead back to the last two areas you have won, shown as BN6's link marker without its emblem: an orange pad with a red ring. A trip back is one layer at its act's tier, with a Net Dealer, a Recovery Mr.Prog, battles and Mystery Data, and its exit leads home again. But while MegaMan goes back, the Net keeps copying: every trip moves the Net's clock a notch, and every guardian after it has a tenth more HP. So a way back asks first, the cursor on No. (#95)

A Mr.Prog who knows what the town holds

When the town holds something for your visit, a Mr.Prog waits in Lan's HP with a "!!" over him: a reward to collect, new requests and where they are posted, or the keys AsterLand stocked for the act ahead. Nothing waiting, no courier, and nobody talks you into the town. (#108)

Central Town, at the run's hour

A run begins in Lan's room, and R at his PC jacks MegaMan in. Down the stairs is Central Town, the same every run, and the day goes on as the run does: morning as it begins, then afternoon, evening and night before the Nest. (#90)

AsterLand: the Order Service and SubChips

AsterLand's clerk runs BN6's own Order Service: any chip in your Library, in your folder's codes where it comes in them, at twice a Net Dealer's price, one order a visit. The SubChip seller beside him stocks the keys the act ahead needs (Unlockers, RushFood, a WWW-ID) and MiniEnrg, FullEnrg, SneakRun and Untrap. (#89)

Requests

At each visit three people post a request for the act ahead: the NetBattler at AsterLand's board, the NetBattle club in Lan's class 6-1, and the man from the lab in town. Bring a chip of an element, win without a scratch, open every Mystery Data on a layer, or vow no Mr.Prog patch-ups until the guardian falls. Take one or none, as BN6's Request BBS has it; the one who asked pays at your next visit. (#88)

The Cyber Academy

AsterLand and Lan's school open as places, BN6's own maps: the Academy's halls lead to class 6-1, where the NetBattle club meets on a day without class. (#96)

A town that remembers

The plaza's Mr.Prog calls the Net's news: how your last run ended, and after each act the guardian you just deleted. Lan's friends and neighbours talk about this run and the runs before, and a different crowd is out at each visit. (#87)

The second screen at home

On a New 3DS or a second display, the PET's home panel names the hour, the request you hold and how far along it is, and each way in Lan's HP, on or back. (#91)

🗺️ Layers to remember

A player told us the net didn't feel random enough, and they were right: after a few layers, every layer felt the same. Each layer is now built around one room you remember it by, its signature, taken from its area's own landmarks in BN6: Central's crater, Seaside's great field, Sky's ring road around a pad, Green's grove under the giant cybertree, the Graveyard's great slab, the Undernet's statue court. It's the layer's biggest room, the way on runs through it, and an act's three layers are three different places. (#98)

Arriving from any side

MegaMan always arrived at the top of the screen and walked down. BN6's own maps put their arrivals on every side, so the layers do now too, MegaMan facing into the layer, and an act's three layers arrive from three different sides. (#106)

👑 Super bosses

Bass and the Cybeast don't turn up at random. Each waits at its own place in the run, with an entrance bigger than any guardian's.

• The Cybeast waits at the bottom of the endless net: Gregar itself in BN6's own final battle, and Gregar SP on every Net after the first.
• Bass waits in the Secret Area once you have cleared it in any run, sealed in BN6's dormant stone: Bass, then Bass SP, then Bass BX.

The run hints at them long before you meet them, and never names them before you do. They pay BN6's GigaChips. (#100)

Beat the beast, then gain its power

BeastOut now comes from beating the Cybeast, not from the Graveyard's guardian before it: his data only stirs the beast in MegaMan. Beat the Cybeast at the endless net's Nest and Dad's call unlocks the PET's CybeastButton, BeastOut yours for the rest of the run. (#109)

Once that Nest has fallen in any run, the JACK-IN SETUP shows a fifth helper: BeastOut from the run's first battle, in the short net too. (#99)

Face to face with a guardian

Before a guardian's talk, MegaMan steps up beside him and turns to face him, so the chat box covers neither of them, and the last words after the battle come in silence.

🎮 A ROMs screen, and saves that outlast a reinstall

On a PC, a Mac, Android, an iPhone or an iPad, the game first opens on its ROMs screen: two cartridge slots, BN6 Cybeast Gregar and BN5 Team Colonel, each opening your system's own file chooser, or drop a file on the window. A wrong file is named with its reason ("BN6 Cybeast Falzar, not Gregar"). R on the title brings it back to add BN5 later. On phones and tablets the app keeps a copy of your saves in the ROM folder, so a reinstall can bring them back. (#97)

📊 Anonymous statistics, asked for once

At its first start the game asks once whether it may send anonymous play statistics: the system it runs on, the setups runs take, how far they get and which guardians win. No names, no IDs, nothing that says who you are, and nothing before you say yes. The cursor starts on No, and the controls screen changes your answer any time. The README lists exactly what is sent. (#104)

📟 The second screen, deeper in the PET

In the Library, the second screen shows the chip under the cursor as a card with the codes it comes in and your run's copies; in E-Mail, a mail's sender by face and name; and while the PET's menu is open, the PET's home dims under ACCESSING. (#83)

🔧 Fixes from your reports

• The PET's Library draws every chip again. Chips from earlier runs came into each run's Library without the mark BN6 gives a chip it hands out, and wherever one stood on the page, BN6 drew no names and counted 0. Saved runs draw whole too.
• JudgeMan stands as himself at his arena. He stood as a white ball: his sprite is the only guardian's BN6 keeps compressed, and the layer never loaded it. The same fix brings back the link markers in Lan's HP.
• CONTINUE no longer comes back with MegaMan stuck. Saves now wait until BN6 lets MegaMan go, and a CONTINUE that finds him held lets go the way BN6's own routines do. (#23)
• ProtoMan can be hit after his cross. A hit landing as his cross ended (a Silence pulse, or MegaMan where a stroke ends) left him untouchable for the rest of the battle. It is BN6's own bug, and closed now. Thanks @CybeastID for the report and the video. (#55)
• BN5's battles roll as the run does, where every run's first battle in BN5's engine used to be the same one. (#102)
• A BN5 battle's BugFrags and green Mystery Data reach your run.
• On the 3DS, the PET says BN5's older net is for PC and phones, instead of "BN5 not found". (#107)
• Townsfolk who walk stay drawn as they walk, where Seaside's and Green Town's walker vanished the moment he set off.
• MegaMan trusts you to know BN6: no more lessons on the Pack, a battlefield's Mystery Data, the exit pad, the NaviCust's rules or the PET's menus. What the run adds is still said, a little clearer: why Rush needs a RushFood for each panel of a gap, and the older Net's chips that sit out named once a run, not twice.

🌐 On the site

After a download, the site now says thanks, with a link to buy me a coffee, the repository to star and follow, and the issues for bugs and ideas. (#103)

📥 Get it

On the download page the best download for your device comes first, with every other system below.

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified, and for the older net Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team Colonel (USA) beside it. The game finds them by their contents. Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the README.

🧪 A beta, honestly

• A run saved by 0.10.0 continues, but its current layer starts afresh, because layers are made differently now. Your profile, best depth and records stay.
• Home comes after an act's guardian: a run saved mid-act reaches Lan's HP when that act ends.
• Not yet tried on real hardware: the ROMs screen's pickers on a Mac, an iPhone and an iPad. CI builds both and starts them to the ROMs screen; Android's was tested in its emulator.
• The older 3DS and 2DS are too slow for it; the New 3DS family plays it, BN6 alone.
• Only Cybeast Gregar (USA) works for BN6, and Team Colonel (USA) for BN5.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed since 0.10.0 is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROMs you own and none of it is distributed here. The start's chime is "UI Success Chime" by SoundShelfStudio, from Pixabay.}

📟 A PET beside the game

The lower screen wears the PET's frame now, as Battle Network 5 DS's and Operate Shooting Star's did: the screen's name and where you are in its header, HP, Zenny and BugFrags under it. It knows which of BN6's screens you are on, read from the game as you play, and changes with it. On the net the layer's map stays open. (#73)

⚔️ Battles

• The Custom screen: the chip under the cursor is a large card, as the DS games drew their chips: its picture twice as large, its code, element and power, and its text from the Library. The chips you picked are listed under it, and on OK, in the order they will fire.
• CROSSSELECT: the Cross under the cursor says what hits MegaMan twice as hard in it and what it gives. On the Beast Out emblem: the turns the EmotionCounter leaves, or that MegaMan is tired, and the Cybeast's Attack+30.
• The fight: the turn's chips in order with their power as the HUD writes it, the used ones dim and the next lit; your Cross and its weakness, Beast Out's turns left and Full Synchro; every enemy by name with its HP. Against a guardian MegaMan has met before: his element, and what MegaMan said of him at the arena.

(#74)

📁 The folder editor

Your whole folder at once, as BN5 DS's PET showed it: thirty chips as BN6's own icons, each framed by its rank (grey standard, blue Mega, red Giga, purple Dark) and marked where it is your Regular chip or a TagChip, the cursor's chip lit in gold. Under them, the folder's makeup: its chips by code (the Custom screen deals by code), by element, and its Megas and Gigas against the folder's limits. Then the Pack, scrolled to the cursor's chip on its side. The top screen keeps BN6's own card of the chip. (#75)

🧩 The NaviCustomizer

The program under the cursor, in the list, on the board or held over it, is a card: its shape in BN6's own colour, what kind of part it is and where it goes, the copies left or where it stands, whether it fits the board's free cells as they are, whether L and R can turn it, and what it does in MegaMan's words. Under it, what RUN would bring with the board as it stands: no bug, or its cause, the same truth BN6 tells you a step later. (#76)

🏠 The PET at home

• In the town the lower screen is no longer dark: MegaMan's face from the game, twice as large, where R jacks him in, and your run's setup.
• The PET's menu and its KeyItem, SubChip, E-Mail, Comm and Save screens show the same home, with the layer's next step: its guardian, or the exit pad.
• MegaMan's status adds the run's record (the layer, the guardians beaten, the viruses deleted, his max HP and what the NaviCust adds to it, the Cross you brought) and the programs on his board.
• The Library counts its classes against what a run can hold, and the chips this run added.
• On the title the PET rests with your profile's record (runs, best layer, guardians beaten, viruses deleted, short nets won) and says whether BN5's ROM was found beside BN6's.

(#79, #77)

🛒 Shops and traders

At the Net Dealer and the NaviCust vendor, the entry under the cursor is a card (a chip's picture, code, element, power and text; a program's shape, kind and what it does; an item and, for the run's own, what it does) with what you already hold of it: the copies in your folder and Pack, a program's held and on the board. A Chip, Special or BugFrag Trader says what it takes and that its prize is a chip new to your Library, and how many chips your Pack holds. (#78)

✨ Polish

• BN6's own colours on the NaviCust programs' blocks, measured from its preview of a program of each colour.
• Larger second displays: every panel lays out at an Android display's larger sizes too, from the AYN Thor's lower screen up.
• Light on the New 3DS: the lower screen is drawn only when what it shows changed, its frame kept as drawn while only the panel changes, and the map works out its way on only when its goal or its floor changed.

(#81)

🔧 Under the hood

For contributors, the code got tidier, with nothing you would see or hear changed:

• build.py lint counts the code's smells (files and functions past their size, wide includes, long parameter lists, deep nesting, repeated blocks, dialogue outside a words file), and none may join or grow.
• Every line a character says lives in a words file, so a voice pass reads them in one place: the director's 5095 lines are now fourteen files of one job each.
• The longest files are split by what they do: the layer generator, the tile picker, the map maker and the entry point.

📥 Get it

On the download page the best download for your device comes first, with every other system below.

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified, and for the older net Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team Colonel (USA) beside it. The game finds them by their contents. Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the README.

🧪 A beta, honestly

• A run saved by 0.9.0 carries on where it was: layers and saves are made as before.
• The second screen is the New 3DS's, and Android's where it has a second display; every other system plays as before, the layer's map a SELECT away.
• Not yet tried on real hardware: the AYN Thor's lower screen, which was tested in the Android emulator with a display of its size. The New 3DS's was played on one.
• The older 3DS and 2DS are too slow for it; the New 3DS family plays it.
• Only Cybeast Gregar (USA) works for BN6, and Team Colonel (USA) for BN5.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed since 0.9.0 is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROMs you own and none of it is distributed here. The start's chime is "UI Success Chime" by SoundShelfStudio, from Pixabay.}

💬 Everyone talks like BN6 now

A player told us our dialogue felt like "reading a summary of a regular sentence". They were right. So we read BN6's whole script, character by character, and rewrote every line in the game to match it: about six words a box, a feeling before a fact, and every character in their own voice.

• MegaMan worries, cheers and teases, and calls Lan by name. Lan answers back and decides.
• Mr.Prog speaks in capitals: "ONE PATCH A LAYER! MAKE IT COUNT!"
• The guardians each have their habit: ChargeMan's "Choo,choo!! Departure time!", SpoutMan's "D-Don't come closer,drip!", DiveMan's "Awooga!", EraseMan's "Hyahaha!".
• The bystanders gossip: "I heard a Cybeast roar down below... My operator says it's just data. R-Right?"
• Battle data is a warning a box: "His fire tower gives no yellow warning!" / "It turns into our row. Sidestep it late!"

The guide we wrote from BN6's script, docs/VOICE.md, is now the measure for every new line.

🌐 The older net

Put Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team Colonel (USA) beside your BN6 ROM and the older net joins your runs: some of BN6's areas come dressed as BN5's, in BN5's own tiles, music, backgrounds and bystanders. Until now they only looked the part. In 0.9.0 they play it.

⚔️ BN5's battles, in BN5's engine

A random battle in one of BN5's areas is BN5's own: its viruses and their AI, its Custom screen, its results, run by BN5's engine on a second core while BN6 waits. MegaMan goes in with your run's HP, folder and NaviCust buster and comes back with what the battle left him and its reward, a chip as BN6's chip of the same name. A loss there ends the run. The switch breaks BN6's map into blocks and flashes into BN5's battle, which opens in half a second, and BN5's battles keep to the act's difficulty, from the act's band like BN6's.

• Your whole folder fights. A chip BN5 never had sits out, and MegaMan names those chips before the first battle ("Our CrakShot and Atk+10 didn't exist back then either"). A chip whose code BN5's chip never had goes in with one it has, and Lan notices once: "Huh? In there our Thunder S was Thunder *!"
• About half of BN5's rewards come in your folder's codes, and the chip BN5's results screen shows is the chip you get. (#63)
• The old net had no Crosses. MegaMan says so before your first BN5 battle; your NaviCust's Attack, Speed and Charge do come along. (#62)
• Know where you are: an act's card reads "older net battles", L names the area "where battles run the older net's way", and the split says "the older net's Oran Area". (#65)

🗺️ Six of BN5's areas

Oran Area, SciLab and BN5's Undernet join ACDC Area, End Area and Nebula Area, each in about half the runs that reach its place. They move as they do in BN5 (ACDC Area's blinking diamonds, Nebula Area's static, their lights pulsing in BN5's colours), and bring BN5's own pieces: its orange Navi among the bystanders, its green Security Cube, its wall of dark flames, and the purple dark holes past Nebula Area's edges. BN5's battles stand in front of their own area's background.

🛡️ BN5's Navis guard its areas

In half the runs, BN5's own Navi waits in an act's arena where BN5 sets him roaming: KnightMan in ACDC Area, ShadowMan in Oran Area, TomahawkMan in SciLab, NumberMan or ToadMan in End Area, Colonel in its Undernet. He stands in his own sprite, speaks with his own face, and fights his battle in BN5's engine, at three quarters of a BN6 guardian's HP. His Guardian Data gives what BN6's do, with a chip of his kind in place of a Navi chip BN6 lacks: KnightMan's JustcOne, ToadMan's BblWrap. (#69)

💠 Souls

Beat a BN5 guardian and his Soul is yours for the run's BN5 battles: pick a chip of his Soul's kind and UNITE on the Custom screen, and MegaMan fights in his Soul for a few turns, once a battle and only while calm, as BN5 has it. His kind of DarkChip unites too, as Chaos Unison. Souls last to the end of the run, through CONTINUE, and never carry over. (#69)

🔥 DarkChips, at a price

On the middle layer of an act, a purple flame of darkness holds a DarkChip, and MegaMan names its price before you take it: every battle its dark power runs in costs 20 max HP, one HPMemory, for the rest of the run. In BN5's areas it comes by BN5's own rule, offered when MegaMan worries (hurt to a quarter of his HP, or hit again and again), and if he falls after using one, BN5's darkness may get him back up a while.

And BN6 has its own: as @CybeastID pointed out, BN6 still holds four of BN5's DarkChips with their working code, DrkSword, DarkThnd, DrkRecov and DarkInvs. In acts whose battles are BN6's, the flame holds one of those, on every build, the 3DS and runs without BN5's ROM included. Each use burns a BugFrag for its dark power and bugs MegaMan for the battle, as a NaviCust bug does; with no BugFrag it is only its base chip, and the Custom screen says so. Three DarkChips at most in a folder, as BN6's own rule has it. A DarkChip is one chip in both nets. (#64, #70)

⏳ No more freeze

BN5's first start froze the game for about five seconds on a handheld as your first BN5 area was made. It now runs in the background from the moment the game starts, on a thread of its own (in the browser, in each frame's spare time), and once done it is kept. In the rare case a BN5 battle comes before it has finished, the battle waits behind this screen, in BN6's own look, instead of a frozen picture.

📱 On phones and in the browser too

• Android and iPhone take BN5: the first start asks for the folder your ROMs are in and takes BN6 and BN5 from it, each checked; BN5 put there later comes in by itself. Android's Choose the files instead takes both at once, and the app icon's ROMs shortcut adds BN5 later. (#66)
• The browser takes BN5 too, with Add BN5 Team Colonel on the player's page; a wrong file is refused with its reason. (#68)

❤️ Healing that matters

A Recovery Mr. Prog healed MegaMan fully as often as you asked, so every detour's damage came back free and the Net Dealer's MiniEnrg had little use. He now patches MegaMan once per layer, half his max HP, and to full before the arena; asked again, he points you to the dealer. A won guardian still heals fully, and the Heals helper keeps unlimited full heals. From @ChaseThe3nd's balance proposal. (#71)

🎮 Your controller, your buttons

SELECT on the title screen opens the new controls screen (and CONTROLLER in the touch menu on a phone with a controller). Pick a preset for A and B (as labeled; B on X, left of A as on the GBA, for Xbox-style pads; or swapped), or press the button you want for each of A, B, L, R, START and SELECT. Done asks you to press your new A within ten seconds, or the old controls stay, so no choice can lock you out. Keys can be set the same way. The developer's sprite gallery moved to L+SELECT. (#37)

• Joy-Cons work on Android. A left Joy-Con's Minus asked to quit, its L did nothing and the wrong stick moved MegaMan. Both halves now map as one controller in a pair, or a small sideways one alone. Tested with emulated Joy-Cons; reports from real ones are welcome. (#37)
• A controller plugged in or paired while the game runs is picked up, and one taken away is let go.

✨ A new start

Each start now opens with the developer's boot screen, Saschb2b coming up in two pieces on a chime, then MegaMan asking for your bugs and ideas on the project's GitHub page, with a QR code for your phone's camera. About six seconds; any button skips each part. Every report helps, and so does a ⭐.

📱 Handhelds and phones

🗺️ The AYN Thor's second screen

On the AYN Thor, and any Android handheld with a second display, the lower screen now keeps the layer's map open, as the 3DS's bottom screen does: the floor you've seen, the way on, what MegaMan senses. Controls and focus stay with the game. Tried in the Android emulator with a display the size of the Thor's lower screen, not yet on a real Thor: reports are welcome.

📲 Phones held upright fill the width

Held upright, the picture was drawn at the largest whole scale, with black bars at its sides. It now fills the screen's width with sharp scaling, in the Android and iPhone apps and in the browser, the touch controls under it keeping their size. (screen = whole in settings.ini keeps whole pixels.)

• A turned Android phone keeps the game whole. Turning it could leave the game small in a corner, or black until the app was closed.
• The game opens again on Android after a quit with Back, where it closed at once.
• The browser plays its sound sooner when played with a keyboard.
• The 3DS's bottom screen goes black when a run ends.

🧭 Your run

✳️ A fourth helper: All *

For players who love the battles but not the hunt for codes: with All * in the JACK-IN SETUP's Help row, every chip of the run comes in *, the wildcard, and every Program Advance forms from its chips in order. Off by default, chosen per run, and named in the run's summary. (#18)

🧭 The map marks locks and Mystery Data

Security cubes, Link Navi obstacles and the Undernet's doors show on the map as violet marks, and every Mystery Data you've seen and not taken as a small crystal of its colour. Holding an Unlocker marks every purple Mystery Data on the layer. L says which way a lock is when he senses data behind it.

💾 The run saves at the arena's door

As MegaMan steps into a guardian's arena, the run is saved: quit during the fight and CONTINUE starts again from the door with the HP you walked in with, not from the layer's start. No random battle starts on the way in, either, and CONTINUE now says where the run goes on from.

🧍 Every guardian in his own shape

Seven of the seventeen guardians stood on the net as a HeelNavi. BlastMan and ElementMan now stand in Gregar's own sprites, and Falzar's Navis (SpoutMan, TomahawkMan, TenguMan, GroundMan, DustMan) in their battle sprites, each warping in and facing MegaMan; Falzar's Navis speak with a portrait made from their battle data.

🧩 The program pick says what fits

After a guardian, each program in the NaviCust's draft says "fits now" or "fits if we move one", from your board as it stands.

And more

• L's first words on a layer are the guardian, the heal and the way on; the rest comes at a second L, and L starts over after a CONTINUE.
• The arrow: along walkways and bands it points the way they run; at a walkway's mouth it shows the way that walks MegaMan in; once the Guardian Data is taken it leads straight to the exit pad.
• Purple Mystery Data holds a rare chip or better, a Mega chip, or deep in a run a Giga chip.
• A guardian's battle pays zenny, not a second copy of his chip that no folder can hold.
• A Server that holds a Navi says so before you choose, and holds the same battle after a CONTINUE.
• Where a new chip went: the first time a chip comes, MegaMan says it went to the Pack and how to swap it in.
• Green's ladders cross in one line, and services and navis keep off the way more often.
• Bystanders never wall off the way to an exit or an arena.
• A layer's Mystery Data hold the same after a CONTINUE, and so do ProtoMan's record and the flame of darkness.
• SlipRunr says what it does, CircusMan's battle data says how fast his tent falls, ProtoMan's no-hit duel forgives the fight's first second, and a NaviCust bug is named the moment you RUN.
• Rumors tell the folder's Program Advances only, in the folder's own codes. (#56)
• Every "Are you sure?" in a shop starts on Yes, as in BN6, and so does "Leaving already?".

🛠️ Fixes

• A layer no longer turns black as MegaMan arrives. A layer with a Link Navi obstacle could leave the next one on the same map pointing at stale data: a black screen at the exit pad that only a restart cleared.
• Central Area and Green Area draw their own tiles after a BN5 run, where a later run in the same sitting drew a jumble of BN5's.
• A run continued without BN5's ROM starts its layer again in BN6's area, where the screen stayed black.
• BN5's areas bring their battles as BN6's do: after the first, each came at the walk's top chance, eight battles in under two layers.
• A win in BN5's battles counts its viruses in the run summary, and L warns of BN6's viruses only where BN6's battles are.
• The run summary no longer shows "BN5 found" over its first lines.
• A program's reminder stays said across CONTINUE, and the Undernet's copy and the Undernet itself are told apart.
• Words fixed: "Pack" with its capital, one name for the net (the Endless Net), + chips said right, a guardian's Cross data no longer sounds like an offer, the Net Dealer says how many RushFood Rush needs.

🔬 For modders and researchers

What the project has mapped of BN6 and BN5 is now open for anyone to use: docs/symbols holds symbol files that mGBA's and no$gba's debuggers load, and the same symbols as JSON and CSV, every address the engine uses with what it is and how it was verified. tools/bn6f_match.py locates 98.1% of the bn6f disassembly's functions in Cybeast Gregar, and 31.7% in BN5 Team Colonel, which has no public disassembly. docs/SYMBOLS.md says how.

Thank you to @CybeastID for BN6's DarkChips and the B-on-X layout, @ChaseThe3nd for the healing proposal, and @Pink5G for the Joy-Con report!

📥 Get it

On the download page the best download for your device comes first, with every other system below.

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified, and for the older net Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team Colonel (USA) beside it. The game finds them by their contents. Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the README.

🧪 A beta, honestly

• A run saved by 0.8.0 continues, but its current layer starts afresh, because layers are made differently now. Your profile, best depth and records stay.
• The 3DS keeps BN6's battles: BN5's areas and battles aren't on it, but BN6's own DarkChips are.
• Not yet tried on real hardware: the AYN Thor's second screen and real Joy-Cons on Android were tested in the Android emulator only.
• The older 3DS and 2DS are too slow for it; the New 3DS family plays it.
• Only Cybeast Gregar (USA) works for BN6, and Team Colonel (USA) for BN5.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed since 0.8.0 is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROMs you own and none of it is distributed here. The start's chime is "UI Success Chime" by SoundShelfStudio, from Pixabay.}

🧩 BN6's set pieces, placed as Capcom placed them

Every set piece is BN6's own, drawn from the game, and stands off the way as Capcom's do: a lock, its key somewhere in the run, and something good behind it. Press L on a layer and MegaMan names the ones he senses; the first time you meet each kind, he says what it is and what opens it.

🦴 Rush's bone gaps

A gap of one to three panels with bones over it, a walkway aimed across it at a pad with a blue Mystery Data. Hold as many RushFood as the gap has panels and press A at the edge: Rush eats one and lies in the gap for good, BN6's own cutscene and all. The Net Dealer sells RushFood where the act holds a gap, and says where it is. (#14)

💎 Teleport pads

In Green, Sky and Central, a pair of BN6's gem pads: step on one and MegaMan beams to the other, the camera following. A quick way back from a long detour, or the only way out to an island in the void with a blue Mystery Data on it, a few steps down from where you land. (#44)

🌳 Link Navi obstacles

Cybertrees, flames, cyclones, clouds and geysers of cyberwater stand in the mouths of pockets, each area its own kind. Your run's Cross clears them as Gregar's Link Navis do: carrying HeatMan's Cross, press A at a cybertree and HeatMan burns it away. Without the right Cross, MegaMan says whose would, a hint for your next run's setup. (#42)

🔒 Security cubes

Comps, homepages and Central lock a pocket with BN6's security cube. It wants a P-Code, and one navi on the layer knows it: ask around. Seaside's cubes take a toll instead. (#45)

➡️ Arrow lanes

BN6's arrow panels carry MegaMan from the end of a long detour back toward the way: walk the long way in, ride out. Each area draws its own, and walked from the far end they push you back. (#43)

👻 Invisible paths

From the second act on, Seaside, Sky, the Undernet and the Nest can hide floor drawn as void, as BN6 does: straight out from a walkway's tip to a lonely pad with a good Mystery Data. A navi nearby saw someone walk out there over nothing. (#46)

💀 The Undernet's doors

Skull doors let only WWW members through: the act's Net Dealer sells the WWW-ID, and one opens every skull door of the run. Number doors ask how many flames of hatred burn on the layer, so count the braziers before you answer; a wrong answer seals the door. (#47)

🟣 Purple Mystery Data

Locked, as in BN6: an Unlocker opens it, and it holds a chip of the rarest kinds that no dealer sells. The Net Dealer stocks an Unlocker for each one ahead in the act, and tells you where it lies. Blue data now lie where the detours end and green ones lie loose, so a long walk is worth it. (#41, #40)

🗣️ MegaMan senses them

On a layer's first L, MegaMan names its set pieces along with its services, and explains each kind the first time you meet it. (#48)

🗺️ Finding your way

💠 Mystery Data counters

Hold SELECT and the map's header counts the Mystery Data you know of, by colour: taken, of those you've seen or MegaMan senses behind a set piece. Press L and the same counters show in the corner for a few seconds. They count what you've found, never where the rest is, so a secret stays a secret until you find it, and you know what's left before you step on the one-way exit.

📍 Services where they stand

On a partly explored layer, the shops, heals and others MegaMan senses sat as pips on the map's frame, read as standing at its edge. The map now zooms out to show them as rings where they stand, and anything still past the frame is an arrowhead pointing its way.

🛣️ Wider ways

MegaMan walks as BN6 walks him, so a one-panel walkway is entered only from its exact lane. The way across a layer now crosses no more of them than its area's own BN6 maps do: wider ways in Seaside, Green, the Secret Area, the Nest and Mr. Weather's comp. Central keeps its glass bridges.

• The arrow's way turns less. Across a lattice of walkways, the shortest way turned at nearly every crossing, a stop and a new direction each. Of the shortest ways it now takes the one that turns least.
• No long detour leads to nothing. A branch five panels or more off the way that held nothing now ends in a Mystery Data.

🧠 Your Navi and your run

📈 RegUps and TagChips

Every layer before a guardian hides a RegUp, behind a lock or at the end of a detour, so your Reg memory grows from 4 MB to about 20 by the third act. Set a Regular Chip in the folder's EDIT with SELECT and it starts every battle in your hand. Win your first duel against ProtoMan, and Chaud's clearance brings the TagChip system for good: two tagged chips, under 60 MB together, come to your hand as a pair. (#51)

🧩 Compression codes, kept

A NaviCust compression code you enter once is kept for every run after. Dad's Compression mail lists each code you've entered, and when a program won't fit, MegaMan names its code if compressing it would make room. You still press the ten buttons yourself. And MegaMan now reads a compressed program's shape as the PET has it, so a second compressed Custom1 fits where he said it wouldn't. (#50, #54)

🔀 Two guardians at every split

After a guardian, the second way on could name the same guardian as the act ahead. It now always offers another.

🎁 What a run you gave up opened is yours

A guardian deleted opens his Cross start, and the Blade folder, at once. But a first run given up through NEW GAME jacked straight in without the setup screen, so there was nothing to choose them from. The setup now opens whenever something is open, and marks what's new.

💬 A net that talks

🤫 The net's rumors

One navi on each layer whispers, the way a schoolyard did: a Program Advance from BN6's own table, picked for chips in your folder, or a hint at a secret you haven't found yet, never its answer. Every rumor is true.

🏫 Schoolyard talk in town

The townsfolk trade the old rumors: a Giga chip under Central Town's bus (the bus stop knows better), the Academy's hunt for Program Advances, Higsby's back room, Mr. Famous's boasts, Dr. Wily blamed for everything, and the NaviCust's secret buttons.

📰 The Endless Net BBS

A new mail in the PET collects the netizens' threads about the net, each post in its poster's face: tips, sightings and the odd myth, with more posts the deeper you've been.

🛠️ Fixes

• CircusMan's tent marker stays on the field (#52). The yellow mark on the panel his tent is about to drop on was drawn over the Custom screen's chips. It now hides while the window covers the field, and shows again when SELECT hides it.
• The battle controls, said right (discussion #53). Running from a battle is L on the Custom screen, not L and R. R on the Custom screen describes the chip or Cross under the cursor, and SELECT hides the window to show the field.
• TagChips, said right. A tagged pair has to come to less than 60 MB, whatever your Reg memory, as BN6's own mail says.
• Every navi on a layer shows. BN6 runs at most sixteen NPCs on a map; one layer in sixteen held more, and its last bystanders, or now and then an official gate or ProtoMan's duel, never appeared.
• Set pieces play fair: obstacles and cubes can't be walked round, a navi no longer stands where your A at a set piece reaches him instead, the navi who tells a cube's P-Code always finds a place to stand, and the Net Dealer's keys always make his list.
• No more pads that look like warps and aren't. In BN6 every pad with a gem, ring or cube is a warp, and now they're only drawn where they warp.
• iPhone and iPad: SideStore first. In the EU, AltStore PAL installs only apps Apple has notarized and refused the source. The download page, the README and the FAQ now lead with SideStore and name AltStore Classic beside it.

#50, #51, #52, #54 and discussion #53 came from @CybeastID. Thank you!

📥 Get it

On the download page the best download for your device comes first, with every other system below.

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified. On first start the game finds it by its contents (in Downloads, EmuDeck's or RetroDECK's folders, where 3DS players keep GBA games, in Files on an iPhone, or wherever you point it). Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the README.

🧪 A beta, honestly

• A run saved by 0.7.0 continues, but its current layer starts afresh, because layers are made differently now. Your profile, best depth and records stay.
• BN5's areas aren't on the 3DS, Android, iPhone or in the browser yet.
• The older 3DS and 2DS are too slow for it; the New 3DS family plays it.
• Only Cybeast Gregar (USA) works for BN6, and Team Colonel (USA) for BN5.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed since 0.7.0 is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROM you own and none of it is distributed here.}

📱 iPhone and iPad

Apple's App Store takes no app that runs on a ROM, so this one comes through AltStore Classic or SideStore, which install apps with your own Apple ID and keep them up to date.

1. Set up AltStore Classic or SideStore on your iPhone or iPad. Each needs a computer once; on iOS 16 and newer, turn on Developer Mode too.
2. On the download page, tap Add to AltStore or add to SideStore. Or in the app: Sources, +, and https://github.com/saschb2b/Mega-Man-Battle-Network-Cyberworld-Endless/releases/latest/download/altstore-source.json.
3. Install Cyberworld Endless from the source. With a free Apple ID, AltStore renews it every seven days, and offers each new version.
4. Start it and tap CHOOSE ROM: pick your ROM in Files. Or put it in Files, On My iPhone › Cyberworld, where the app keeps your saves too.

• Touch controls round the picture, as on Android: under it when you hold the phone upright, beside it when it lies on its side, clear of the notch and the home indicator, with a tick under your thumb. A controller works too (MFi, Xbox, PlayStation).
• Sent to the background, it keeps your run where MegaMan stands.
• iOS 14 and newer. cyberworld-endless.ipa is the app alone, for another installer.

⚡ A lighter core

• The GBA core rests while BN6 waits for the screen. The game waits for each frame by reading the screen's status over and over, half of the core's work on a layer and more in battle; the core now sleeps through that wait until the frame begins. A frame of the game takes about 30% less time on a PC, a quarter less on a Retroid Nova (3.98 ms became 3.09), and on a New 3DS, where it took nearly all of each frame, 15.9 ms became 11.0.
• The New 3DS shows its frames evenly: each waits for the screen's refresh, where frames had come early or late several times a second.
• The engine hears from the game as things happen, through breakpoints in the game's code, where it used to look over the game's memory every frame and patch code into it. How the game plays is unchanged.

🗡️ Every guardian's weakness

• The Net Dealers name the second wheel too (#39). BN6 has two: Fire, Aqua, Elec and Wood, and Sword, Wind, Cursor and Breaker, as its Cross lessons teach. SlashMan can't stand Breaker chips, EraseMan Wind, TenguMan Sword, GroundMan and DustMan Cursor, where the dealers had said they had no weak element. A Sword's 80 takes 160 of TenguMan's HP.
• His pick is of that kind: a sword for TenguMan, who hovers right in front between his dashes; otherwise never a chip that only strikes beside MegaMan.
• The way on names these guardians' elements too, such as TenguMan (Wind), and ElementMan is said to change his element as he fights. Every other guardian was right, checked against the ROM and the wiki.

📥 A clearer download page

• It leads with the best pick for your device, its file, its size and its steps open, and lists every system below in four groups: computer, phone and tablet, handheld and console, no install. Each has one main file, its other formats named for who they are for, and how to install it.
• Handhelds with PortMaster, all of them: the port is for every firmware that runs PortMaster (AmberELEC, ArkOS, Knulli, muOS, ROCKNIX and others), and its file is now cyberworld-endless-portmaster.zip.

🛠️ Fixes

• Pressing L no longer changes the battles to come. In acts 3 and 5, MegaMan's status drew one of the run's random numbers each time it opened.
• The viruses' weakness a Net Dealer names counts each virus as it is fought: Swordy2 is Fire, so a few areas' word changed.

#39 was found by @CybeastID. Thank you!

📥 Get it

On the download page the best download for your device comes first, with every other system below.

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified. On first start the game finds it by its contents (in Downloads, EmuDeck's or RetroDECK's folders, where 3DS players keep GBA games, in Files on an iPhone, or wherever you point it). Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the README.

🧪 A beta, honestly

• The iPhone and iPad app was built and started in Apple's iOS Simulator, not yet on a real device. If you try it, tell us how it runs: an issue with your model and iOS version helps a lot.
• A run saved by 0.6.0 continues, but its current layer starts afresh, because the Net Dealers' stock is made differently now. Your profile, best depth and records stay.
• BN5's areas aren't on the 3DS, Android, iPhone or in the browser yet.
• The older 3DS and 2DS are too slow for it; the New 3DS family plays it.
• Only Cybeast Gregar (USA) works for BN6, and Team Colonel (USA) for BN5.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed since 0.6.0 is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROM you own and none of it is distributed here.}

🌐 Battle Network 5 joins in

• Three of BN5's areas in a run. Put Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team Colonel (USA), unmodified, in the same folder as your BN6 ROM. ACDC Area then stands in for Central Area, End Area for Seaside Area and Nebula Area for the Graveyard, each in about half the runs that come there.
• In BN5's own tiles, music and faces: its net themes (Nebula Area plays its Undernet's), its virus battle and boss themes, its battle backgrounds behind the fights, and its purple HeelNavis as bystanders. The layouts, guardians and viruses stay the BN6 areas'.
• Optional, always: BN6 alone plays as before. When the game has found BN5, a note in the title's top right corner says "BN5 found" for a few seconds as it starts. It works on Linux, macOS, Windows, the Steam Deck and PortMaster handhelds, and the desktop builds keep BN5's ROM beside their copy of BN6's, so its areas stay after the first start.

🗺️ A net drawn like the original's

Each picture shows one spot of one layer twice: as 0.5.3 drew it on the left, as 0.6.0 draws it on the right.

Guardian arenas are paved in their area's floor: Robot Control's white slab, Mr. Weather Comp's solar panels, Central's green field, Green's grass and the Undernet's stone, where a jumble of walkway tiles had been.

Sky Area looks like Sky Area: its rooms are the original's fields of framed squares, and its cyan glass catwalks have thin edges and turn cleanly.

Edges run straight. The Graveyard's slabs and Mr. Weather Comp's fields are rimmed in their own edge tiles, without the sawtooth notches and the stepped blocks hanging under them.

No more stray pieces: Seaside's boardwalks lose their broken arrows, the Undernet's bridges their cut-off gems and its raised rooms their cut-off green crosses, and the Nest's void its floating grey cubes.

• The way across runs wide, as on Capcom's maps. On the way from the arrival to the guardian or the exit, MegaMan now crosses about as many one-panel walkways as the original maps have (one in most areas, three in the Graveyard); the others are two panels wide, so there is less lining up to step onto them.
• Stairs meet their floors cleanly and lead up onto their raised rooms. MegaMan no longer drops under a room at a stair's top and walks out of bounds (#22).
• Fields are laid as the originals lay them: by their repeating pattern, or a whole stretch of the original field repeated. Mr. Weather Comp's solar panels keep their lights and the Cybeast Nest's floors their cracks, with no fan belt or half dome cut off in a field.

🖥️ The whole screen at 640x480

• The picture fills a 640x480 screen, such as an RG35XX Pro's or Plus's: 640x427 where it had been 480x320, each pixel's edge a little soft. Screens a whole scale fits well, like the Nova's and the Flip 2's, look as before. screen = whole in settings.ini keeps whole pixels everywhere, and screen = fill fills every screen (#36).

⚔️ Fights you can read

• CircusMan's tent marks the panel it drops on, in warning yellow over MegaMan, for the half second when a step can still clear it.
• ProtoMan's netbattle can be won: he has half the act's guardian band (500 HP in the third act, where he had 1000), and MegaMan says how he fights as the netbattle is offered.
• The tells are said before the fight: Colonel's two moves, SpoutMan's whirl reaching the panels at his corners, EraseCross's drain on a Navi, StarFish bubbles that soak up shots, and that there's no running from a guardian.
• No random battle under a guardian's staging, fought between its black bars, nor on the step into the arena (#24, #38).

🧭 Clearer on the way

• The arrow leads a hurt MegaMan to the Recovery Mr. Prog first. It also points down the next walkway at a corner, turns as soon as he stops, and shows when the map closes.
• A one-time pick says what the chip does, in BN6's own words, and asks once more before it's yours. A Navi chip's EX and SP versions show their damage.
• The NaviCust explains itself: MegaMan names the program and the rule behind a bug, and says when a new program needs room made first. The Guardian Data names each program's colour.
• MegaMan says where the golden gate stands. The official gates name the clearance they take, and a Cross's weakness is said to break it.

🛠️ Fixes

• An act continued from a save keeps its virus count and its Net Dealer's greeting, and CONTINUE no longer greets a saved ScrtData as a new find.
• A held B no longer hurries a talk past unseen.
• Bystanders don't repeat themselves across an act, and the Net Dealer no longer denies the net's rumours.
• The way on names a never-met guardian as "??? (Aquarium)", not by his area alone.
• MegaMan no longer explains a NaviCust bug after every Chip Trader trade (#25): he speaks of bugs when the board itself changes.

#22 was found by @Model-0, #24 and #25 by @ChaseThe3nd, #36 by @Jimdoru and #38 by @CybeastID. Thank you!

📥 Get it

On the download page the downloads open on your system, with the best build first.

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified. On first start the game finds it by its contents (in Downloads, EmuDeck's or RetroDECK's folders, where 3DS players keep GBA games, or wherever you point it). For BN5's areas, put Team Colonel (USA) in the same folder. Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the README.

🧪 A beta, honestly

• A run saved by 0.5.3 continues, but its current layer starts afresh, because layers are made differently now. Your profile, best depth and records stay.
• BN5 is a first slice. SciLab sits out for now: its maps hold no platform bigger than a small pad, and the rooms drawn in its tiles still look rough. More of BN5 is planned for later versions.
• BN5's areas aren't on the 3DS (no memory for a second ROM), on Android or in the browser yet.
• The 640x480 picture is tested headless only. If you play on an RG35XX or another 640x480 handheld, tell us how it looks.
• The two pauses on a 3DS remain: a few seconds while a new area's tiles are learned at the start of each act, and about half a second while each new layer's checkpoint is saved.
• Only Cybeast Gregar (USA) works for BN6, and Team Colonel (USA) for BN5.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed since 0.5.3 is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROM you own and none of it is distributed here.}

🛠️ Fixed

• A duel with ProtoMan counts once. Quitting after a duel and continuing met ProtoMan again on that layer, and each win counted anew in your record. A CONTINUE now finds the duel fought: ProtoMan is gone, and the official gate beside him stays open if you won. (#20)
• The BugFrag Trader no longer trades for nothing. Pressing A through "Try again?" kept giving chips after your BugFrags ran out. Now the ten BugFrags are taken before the chip is given, and without them the talk ends at "Too bad, Lan." (#21)

Both were found and reported by @Model-0, with the steps to see them. Thank you!

📥 Get it

On the download page the downloads open on your system, with the best build first.

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified. On first start the game finds it by its contents (in Downloads, EmuDeck's or RetroDECK's folders, where 3DS players keep GBA games, or wherever you point it). Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the README.

🧪 Honestly

• A run saved by 0.5.2 continues where it stands.
• A record already raised by replayed duels stays as it is. Only new duels count once.
• The two pauses on a 3DS from 0.5.2's notes remain: a few seconds while a new area's tiles are learned at the start of each act, and about half a second while each new layer's checkpoint is saved.
• Only Cybeast Gregar (USA) works for now; Falzar, other regions and the Legacy Collection don't yet.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed since 0.5.2 is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROM you own and none of it is distributed here.}

🎮 New 3DS

• The net runs smoothly. The bottom screen's map, SELECT's map and ProtoMan's duel clock asked the game where MegaMan stood while the next frame was already running on the 3DS's other core, and each question waited for that frame: a frame lost six times a second. They now draw from what the last frame saw. A New 3DS's frame log shows 60 frames a second on the net.
• The next layer comes three times sooner: two seconds after you step onto the exit pad, where the game stood still for six and felt frozen. "Building the next layer..." shows over the picture while it is made.

⚡ Every platform

• Layers are made five times faster, 60 ms on a PC instead of 300. Each layer comes out exactly as before.

📥 Get it

On the download page the downloads open on your system, with the best build first.

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified. On first start the game finds it by its contents (in Downloads, EmuDeck's or RetroDECK's folders, where 3DS players keep GBA games, or wherever you point it). Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the README.

🧪 Honestly

• A run saved by 0.5.1 continues where it stands: the layers are the same, only made faster.
• Two pauses remain on a 3DS. At the start of each act, entering a new area takes a few seconds more while its tiles are learned. After every new layer, its checkpoint takes about half a second to save to the SD card. Both are next.
• The smooth net and the faster layers were measured on a New 3DS. The "Building the next layer..." line was checked on a PC, not yet seen on a 3DS.
• Only Cybeast Gregar (USA) works for now; Falzar, other regions and the Legacy Collection don't yet.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed since 0.5.1 is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROM you own and none of it is distributed here.}

🎮 New 3DS

• No more crash entering the Undernet or layer 10 (the Nest, in the short net), as a player reported. Learning those areas' big maps needed more memory than a New 3DS gives the game; they now need little more than half of it, and running short no longer crashes. Every platform saves the memory.
• The bottom screen's map is lighter to draw. 0.5.0 drew it through a slow path and lost a frame each time, six a second on the net. It is now drawn straight into the memory the GPU shows, and that screen is redrawn only when the map changes.

🧭 On the net

• The arrow leads to a walkway's mouth: along the floor to the panel the walkway starts from, then down the walkway once MegaMan is on its line. It used to point past the mouth, into the platform's corner.
• L says how far the walk to ProtoMan is, and when the way there winds.

⚔️ ProtoMan

• The official gate on the layer where ProtoMan names his netbattle opens to Chaud's clearance. It had stayed sealed as the prize of a duel that wasn't there.
• Chaud and ProtoMan say where he waits in the net's own words ("past the next two guardians"), and Chaud what beating him adds: his full clearance and the official vaults. Lan answers him.

🃏 Crosses and programs

• The setup says what each Cross gives, above what hits it twice as hard: HeatCross "Fire chips +50, buster +1", ElecCross "Elec chips +50", SlashCross "Sword chips +50", ChargeCross "One more chip each turn".
• EraseCross works by BN6's own rule, and now says so: a plain (elementless) chip erases a virus whose HP has a 4 in it, and bugs a Navi, whose HP then drains. The old line, "Counters erase viruses", was wrong.
• A Guardian Data's program says at its pick whether L and R turn it.

📥 Get it

On the download page the downloads open on your system, with the best build first.

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified. On first start the game finds it by its contents (in Downloads, EmuDeck's or RetroDECK's folders, where 3DS players keep GBA games, or wherever you point it). Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the README.

🧪 Honestly

• A run saved by 0.5.0 continues where it stands: nothing about how layers are made has changed.
• Both 3DS fixes were measured on a PC held to a New 3DS's memory, where 0.5.0 crashed entering the Undernet and 0.5.1 does not, and are not yet played through on a 3DS: if it still crashes or stutters, tell us.
• Only Cybeast Gregar (USA) works for now; Falzar, other regions and the Legacy Collection don't yet.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed since 0.5.0 is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROM you own and none of it is distributed here.}

🗺️ Two screens on a New 3DS

• The map stays open on the bottom screen: the floor MegaMan has seen, the way on to the exit or the guardian, the services and gates he has come near, and a mark on the frame's edge for those he senses. SELECT still opens it over the picture.

👆 Touch controls, remade

• Sized for a thumb on every phone: drawn at the screen's own resolution as glass plates in the PET's colours, the D-pad 3 cm across, A and B 1.4 cm. A pressed button glows, and ticks under the thumb on Android and in browsers that can.
• Diagonals where MegaMan walks, whose walkways run along them, and four directions in battles and menus.
• Your layout: MENU sets their size, opacity and haptics, and EDIT LAYOUT moves, pinches or resizes each button, or lays them out by a preset (left-handed, compact, large). Upright and sideways keep a layout each.

⚔️ ProtoMan and the gates

• His official gate is the duel's prize: it opens to whoever wins the duel beside it, and Chaud's call names what the win opens. An official Chip Order offers the Library's uncommon and rare chips first.
• Easy to find: the gate stands by him, the map marks him in pink with a white eye, and L says which way he waits.
• Races you can hurry: a squad with a Quaker, out of reach in the air, no longer turns up in a duel. Chaud's call comes once, and Lan answers him after a win too.

🎮 More handhelds, clearer downloads

• The PortMaster port asks for glibc 2.29 at most (it asked for ROCKNIX's 2.38), so ArkOS, AmberELEC, muOS and Knulli can run it, and its zip is laid out as PortMaster's own.
• The downloads have a page of their own, /download/, and every file says which system it is for.

🛠️ Fixes

• A guardian's reward is taken once: B at its program choice had left it there to take again (#16).
• HackJack's chips are gone: a leftover of the Japanese version, one made MegaMan vanish until he was deleted (#15).
• A bought-out shop says "Sold out!" instead of opening an empty list, and the NaviCust vendor brings his whole list (#17). CONTINUE keeps what you bought.
• A strong virus signal names its prize, and vaults and official gates show what each chip hits for.
• The Recovery Mr. Prog before a guardian's arena stands a short walk from its door.
• MegaMan says which NaviCust programs L and R turn (those of a colour whose Spin you hold), and that a RUN's "OK" can hide a bug.
• CircusMan's briefing names his tell. A town's port takes R from a step off its ring. MegaMan stands behind a Net Dealer's counter, as in BN6.

📥 Get it

On the download page the downloads open on your system, with the best build first.

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified. On first start the game finds it by its contents (in Downloads, EmuDeck's or RetroDECK's folders, where 3DS players keep GBA games, or wherever you point it). Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the README.

🧪 A beta, honestly

• A run saved by 0.4.0 continues, but its current layer starts afresh: layers are made differently now. Your profile, best depth and records stay.
• The 3DS's bottom screen is new and not yet played on a 3DS: if the net runs less smoothly there than in 0.4.0, tell us.
• The PortMaster port is built anew for older firmwares and not yet played on each of them: tell us how it runs on yours.
• Only Cybeast Gregar (USA) works for now; Falzar, other regions and the Legacy Collection don't yet.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed since 0.4.0 is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROM you own and none of it is distributed here.}

⚔️ A rival who keeps score

• Chaud calls on every act's second layer: ProtoMan is on the layer, and he has busted its viruses in a time he names. Take his duel and beat that time, by BN6's own DeleteTime. The clock runs under the Custom gauge and turns red past his time.
• The record carries over. Chaud and Dad's Records mail keep it across runs, ProtoMan gets faster as he loses, and from the second win the race is without taking a hit.
• The third rung is a netbattle with ProtoMan himself, from the third act, at the act's guardian strength. It is a real fight: if he deletes MegaMan, the run is over, and MegaMan says so before you choose.
• Official gates: a sealed gate stands beside every duel, and Chaud's clearance opens it. A first win opens an official Chip Order; the netbattle won, the official vault's Mega chips.

🎮 On a New 3DS

• A HOME Menu title: open FBI on your 3DS, then Remote Install, then Scan QR Code, and scan the code in the 3DS tab of the project page. FBI installs Cyberworld Endless with its icon, and a banner that plays the trailer's opening hits.
• Full speed: the GBA core runs on the New 3DS's third core at 60 frames a second. The picture fills the top screen's height, or shows sharp at 1x.
• Your ROM goes in sdmc:/3ds/cyberworld-endless/rom/, or stays in sdmc:/roms/gba/: any file name works. A .3dsx for the Homebrew Launcher comes too.

🛠️ Smoother runs

• Smooth motion for 90, 144 and 165 Hz screens, a Steam Deck OLED's too: each refresh mixes the two latest frames, so motion is even.
• Less input lag on Windows (Direct3D 11), and sound a frame and a half sooner on desktops.
• Windows keeps your saves. Every save after a file's first stayed beside it as a .tmp; checkpoints, unlocks and records now stick.
• MegaMan walks as in BN6: the walking assist that could step him backward is gone.
• Words on time: a new area's card and MegaMan's words about it play as one moment, with MegaMan held, and A ends the card early. A NaviCust bug is named as the PET closes.
• Safer shopping: the first "Are you sure?" after the Net Dealer's words starts on No.
• The BugFrag Trader trades instead of hanging, and a kept R no longer opens a chip's description on the Custom screen.
• Faster layers: they are made in about a quarter less time, and a slower machine or a 50 Hz display keeps the game's pace.

📥 Get it

On the project page the downloads open on your system, with the best build first.

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified. On first start the game finds it by its contents (in Downloads, EmuDeck's or RetroDECK's folders, where 3DS players keep GBA games, or wherever you point it). Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the README.

🧪 An alpha, honestly

• A run saved by 0.3.0 continues, but its current layer starts afresh: layers are made differently now, with duels and gates on them. Your profile, best depth and records stay.
• The 3DS build is new: played on one New 3DS so far. The first NEW GAME boots BN6 once (about 15 seconds of black screen), and a new layer takes up to 20 seconds to make there. The older 3DS and 2DS are too slow for it.
• ProtoMan's times are still being tuned: a squad that spends its time in the air can make a race harder than it looks.
• Only Cybeast Gregar (USA) works for now; Falzar, other regions and the Legacy Collection don't yet.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed since 0.3.0 is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROM you own and none of it is distributed here.}

📱 On your phone

• An Android app for phones, tablets and Android handhelds (Android 5 and newer). Its first start asks for your ROM with Android's own file picker, checks it and keeps a copy beside your saves.
• Touch controls: on a touch screen the game draws a D-pad, A, B, L, R, Start and Select round the picture, in its own pixel art. A controller or a keyboard puts them away.
• The browser on a phone: the player fills the screen, turns with the phone, keeps it awake and installs to the home screen as an app.

🧬 Every run leaves more behind

MegaMan still starts every run as strong as the first time. What carries over is options:

• Cross starts: once HeatMan, ElecMan, SlashMan, EraseMan or ChargeMan has fallen as a guardian, a run can bring his Cross from the first battle. It is the run's only Cross.
• The Library carries over: every chip MegaMan holds joins BN6's own Library, which every run's PET shows whole. A Chip Trader's prize is new to it first, and STD, MEGA and GIGA COMP go on the title for a class complete.
• Programs and Spins: the NaviCust programs MegaMan has run with come back at later runs' program vendors. And each run hides one of BN6's Spins, a colour you don't have yet, in a blue Mystery Data deeper in: found, that colour's programs turn with L and R in every run after.
• Threat 6 to 10: five more rungs, the last with a second guardian below the Nest, each opened by a win on the one below.
• Four towns: a run begins in Central, ACDC, Seaside or Green Town, each with its own jack-in spot and words.

🗺️ A net that opens with you

• Routes: after each guardian, his Guardian Data asks which way on: two areas for the next act.
• Navi gates: from the third act a gate may stand sealed with a guardian's code. Delete that Navi twice as a guardian, in any runs, and it opens for good, to a fight with his SP.
• Collector's vaults: a vault that counts your Library opens on three rare chips to pick from.
• The dark way: once the Secret Area has been cleared, the short net's third act can go down into the Undernet.
• Battlefields as BN6 set them: rocks, rock and ice cubes and metal cubes are back, and now and then a green Mystery Data sits on the enemies' side. Still there when you win, it pays a second reward.
• Rewards that fit your folder: dealers, the gift, traders, Mystery Data and battles lean to the codes your folder holds most, and a Net Dealer never picks a chip your folder is already full of.

🔎 MegaMan knows what he has seen

• A first meeting is a discovery. A guardian MegaMan has never battled is "???" until his arena: MegaMan senses a strong Navi's signal and doesn't recognize it. The Navis on the net know more: a bystander may pass on a rumor, and from an act's second layer the Net Dealer passes on the net's word.
• Battle data from then on. Once battled, in any run, a guardian is named, briefed from battle data, and MegaMan reminds Lan when to strike just before the fight.
• The PET is Lan's own. Save saves the run where you stand. E-Mail holds Dad's mails: the dive's report, your records against every guardian, and the battle data on each one you've met. KeyItem shows the codes you hold, the Library's card and your Spins; PLACE names the area and the layer.

🛠️ Smoother runs

• A won run ends properly: words on the map as the last exit opens, and BN6's staff roll theme over the summary.
• Saved when it matters: as a guardian's Guardian Data appears and whenever you choose Save; "Run saved" shows in the corner, and the quit prompt says where.
• Easier to find your way: L's arrow holds steady, exit pads take you from anywhere on their ring, and before a guardian's arena MegaMan names the dealer and the heal on the way.
• Safer choices: a strong virus signal, a Navi gate or a warp into the Undernet starts on No.
• The Custom screen: an L or R pressed before the gauge fills is kept through a dodge.

📥 Get it

On the project page the downloads open on your system, with the best build first.

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified. On first start the game finds it by its contents (in Downloads, EmuDeck's or RetroDECK's folders, or wherever you point it). Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the README.

🧪 An alpha, honestly

• A run saved by 0.2.0 continues, but its current layer starts afresh: layers are made differently now. Your profile, best depth and your guardians' memory of you stay.
• The Spins start from none: 0.2.0 gave every run all six. Now each run can find one.
• Android is new: installed and played in Android's emulator by our checks, not yet on many real phones. Tell us how it runs on yours.
• Windows and macOS are built and started by our checks but still played by few; balance is still moving session by session.
• Only Cybeast Gregar (USA) works for now; Falzar, other regions and the Legacy Collection don't yet.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed since 0.2.0 is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROM you own and none of it is distributed here.}

🏁 A run you can finish

A run is now the short net: three acts, then the Cybeast Nest on layer 10. Delete its guardian and the run is won, about an hour from the jack-in. Win once and the endless net opens, the old run that goes on, harder, as deep as MegaMan can get.

🧬 Every run leaves you something

Options, never power: MegaMan starts every run as strong as the first time. From your second run, NEW GAME opens a jack-in setup:

• Net: the short net, or the endless net once you have won.
• Folder: BN6's own, or one you opened: Blade (swords in S for LifeSword) once any guardian falls, Storm (Elec chips, double on Aqua) once an Aqua guardian does. The setup lists what is still closed and how it opens.
• Threat: five rungs, each one new rule (viruses a version stronger, heals only mid-act, dearer dealers, EX guardians, SP navis in Servers), each opened by a win on the one below.
• Help: two more HPMemory, a heal on every layer, gentler battles. Switch them on as you like; helped runs count for everything.

The run's summary names what it opened and the closest goal. And milestones put BN6's own title marks on the title screen: Gregar's head for a won short net, Bass for the endless net's Nest, the S for the Secret Area, the green disc for a win on the top threat rung. A mark you just earned blinks in after the summary.

💻 Windows, macOS and Steam

• Windows 10 and 11: an installer (for you alone, no administrator; Start menu, uninstall in Settings) or a zip to unpack anywhere. One .exe.
• macOS 11 and newer: one app for Apple silicon and Intel Macs, in a .dmg.
• Steam: the game adds itself to Steam with its own library art: a capsule, a banner, a logo and the icon. On a Steam Deck it is one command in Konsole for the Flatpak; the AppImage offers it on its first start.

🛠️ Smoother runs

• Returning players hear less: one-page arrival words and gift greeting, and a Net Dealer met again in the same act greets in a line.
• Programs you forgot: a NaviCust program you have but never placed on the board is named in L's briefing until it is.
• No more wrong talks: navis you talk to keep apart, so an A for the heal Prog never opens the dealer beside him.
• Fairer starts: the first battle is no lone ice Piranha, act 1's guardian is BlastMan, DiveMan or SpoutMan alike, and a Server says how strong it is before it asks.
• The Custom screen: an L or R pressed up to a second and a half early is kept, and a d-pad press drops it.

📥 Get it

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified. On first start the game finds it by its contents (in Downloads, EmuDeck's or RetroDECK's folders, or wherever you point it). Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the README.

🧪 An alpha, honestly

• A run saved by 0.1.0 starts afresh: the run's save changed with the setup. Your best depth and your guardians' memory of you stay.
• Windows and macOS are new: built and started by our checks (the Windows build under Wine, the Mac app on a Mac in CI), but not yet played through on real machines. Tell us how they run.
• Balance is still moving session by session, the threat rungs most of all.
• Only Cybeast Gregar (USA) works for now; Falzar, other regions and the Legacy Collection don't yet.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed since 0.1.0 is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROM you own and none of it is distributed here.}

🎮 What it is

It's BN6 itself: its battles, chips, Custom screen, PET, shops and music. Cyberworld Endless builds a fresh net around it every time you jack in, and keeps the run going as deep as MegaMan can get.

A run starts in Central Town and goes act by act. Each act is an area with its own viruses and a guardian navi waiting at the end of its third layer. Then come the Undernet, the Graveyard and the Cybeast's nest, and the net starts over, harder. When MegaMan is deleted the run is over, and the next one is a new net.

⚡ Why one more run

• A new net every run. Layers are generated in BN6's own map formats: platforms, walkways, raised rooms and stairs, lit by each area's own tiles and music.
• Read the act card, prepare, win. The act card names the area's guardian. The Net Dealer knows what it can't stand, and sells the chip that answers it ("Word is, SpoutMan can't stand Elec chips"). MegaMan warns you what the guardian does before you walk in.
• Build your MegaMan. Every guardian's Guardian Data offers three NaviCust programs, one from each of three builds (a buster that matters, seven chips a turn, a shield on B+Left), or BugFrags if you take none. The NaviCust's board grows from 4x4 to 5x5 over the run. Force a program in past the edge and it runs bugged; MegaMan tells you what that costs.
• Real BN6 fights. Viruses are the areas' own battles, tuned to each act. Beat HeatMan, ElecMan, SlashMan, EraseMan or ChargeMan and their Cross is yours for the rest of the run. The Cybeast's BeastOut waits deeper down.
• Risk you choose. A Server's strong virus signal is a harder fight for a better chip. A dark flame opens the Undernet, with tougher viruses and better Mystery Data. Carry three ScrtData to the golden gate and the Secret Area opens.
• Never lost. Press L and MegaMan tells you where you are, what guards the layer and which way to go, and an arrow shows the way along the floor. Hold Select for the map of where you've been.

📥 Get it

You need your own ROM: Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar (USA), unmodified. On first start the game finds it by its contents (in Downloads, EmuDeck's or RetroDECK's folders, or wherever you point it). Nothing in these downloads contains game data. Step-by-step guides are in the README.

🧪 An alpha, honestly

• It's tuned session by session through a long series of playtests; balance, battle variety and the new NaviCust builds are still moving.
• A save from a later build keeps your run, but may start the layer you were on again from its start.
• Only Cybeast Gregar (USA) works for now; Falzar, other regions and the Legacy Collection don't yet.
• It's been played most on Linux and in the browser. Tell us how it runs on your handheld or Deck.

Found a bug, a dead end or a fight that felt unfair? Open an issue. Everything that changed on the way here is in the changelog.

_{A fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. Mega Man and Battle Network are Capcom's; the game runs from the ROM you own and none of it is distributed here.}