I played Rockman EXE Battle Chip Stadium!

SuperDanny

During my vacation in Japan I was able to play the arcade game Rockman EXE Battle Chip Stadium. The one I played called itself version 2, so I suppose it had extra bosses and chips then version 1. Anyways, the first time I found the game was in a huge arcade/amusement center called Sega Joypolis.

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It was in a section where a lot of other "arcade card games" are. Games where you use your cards of a certain series, and the arcade game actually reads them and uses them during gameplay. It cost 100 yen to play, so I put in my money and began playing (after going nuts watching the intro and gameplay footage). I had no idea what I was doing, I just kept pushing buttons through the menu, chose Rockman for my navi, and let the game choose my own battle chips at random (seeing how I had no Link Chips). I chose my chips, and let the battle carry out. There really isn't much you can do besides choose your chips and watch, so I was a little dissapointed at first. I wasn't able to play the game for long, cause I was with friends who wanted to see the rest of Sega Joypolis, so after one play I left the game. Later on, I came back to it for another try, and I wanted to record the game's music on my camcorder, cause the volume was too low in that loud arcade. To my surprise, while looking for the machine's speaker, I found a hole that actually vends battle chips. Everytime you insert money into the game, it actually vends a battle chip! Luckily the battle chip that vended during my first play was still in there, so for my second game I had 2 new battle chips to use for gameplay! I played the game many times after that, getting new chips and seeing what they do is a lot of fun, but eventually I had to leave the arcade. Later that night though I found it again in a Toys R Us.

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It was a weekday afternoon, no kids around, so I went all out on this machine. I explored every single detail of it and fell madly in love. This was also when I bought my Link PET EX and finally had my own Rockman Navi Data Chip to use. So ok, here's my explanation of how the game works. You put in your 100 yen, and then you choose the mode you want to play. There are 4 modes:

1 Player mode where you either select a random Navi to use, and fight as many CPU navis as you can before losing, or you insert your own Navi Data Chip, and take that Navi through adventure mode and gain experience for it.
2 Player mode where you and another player can battle each other.
Meijin's Tutorial Mode where Meijin-san walks you through the game as you play it, giving you gameplay explanations and whatnot.
And finally a mode with that Tab character. All this mode does is you get your vended chip, and it says Game Over. Sorta like, just buying a chip, the chips I got when playing this mode though were pretty rare. I managed to get Dark Sword, Saito Batch and Colonel EX this way.

During character select, if you insert a Navi Data Chip, you can have it save any EXP you gain while playing the game onto the chip, so when slotting it back into your Link PET, your navi keeps any EXP gained. Also, it saves every physical battle chip you use during gameplay, so eventually you can complete the full battle chip library and have it saved on your Navi Data Chip. Without a Navi Data Chip, you select either Rockman, or one of the 10 Link Navis in Rockman EXE 6, and play the game as that navi at Level 1.

Before the battle starts (after the adorable "Prugu In!" and "Shobuda!" voices), the game will vend a battle chip. It's wrapped up in little white paper with Takara's logo on it. One picture I have up there shows chip wrappings stuffed in the machine's display holder, silly kids. Anyways, after that, the battle starts. Your allowed to insert up to 3 physical chips, the other 2 used in gameplay are chosen for you at random. After you insert your chips, you can use up to 3 for each turn, and there are 3 turns for every battle. After selecting the chips you want to attack with, a spinning power wheel shows up, it spins faster depending on the attack power of your chips. Stopping the wheel at the right spot will add attack power to your chips, but mess up the timing and your attacks will be weak. Also whoever did better on the wheel attacks first. The chip attacks carry out normally, you simply watch as each navi uses the chips, some chips do surprising things. Then this repeats for 3 turns, or until a Navi is deleted. If you run out of chips, or do not select any for a turn, your Navi will use their default attack for the turn, like the Rock Buster and so on. The Navi with the most health after 3 turns wins, and if your playing 1 player mode, you move on to the next opponent upon victory.

The animations in the game are really neat. It's like, 3D... sprites. Hard to explain, everything is so shiny and every battle chip is fully animated. Also, whenever you trigger a Program Advance, your in for quite a show. It cuts off to a small cutscene of the navi powering up, then it goes into gameplay footage for a series of animations depending on which PA you used. The arcade machine comes with a small poster you can take with you that explains how to trigger many of the game's PAs. The game has a whole bunch of them, not just 30 or so like the EXE games, the poster I had listed around 50 different PAs, and I managed to get a few PAs that I didn't see on the poster, so I can only imagine how many are actually in the game total. After exploring the game (and blowing all my yen on it), I decided to call it a day, and hopefully return to it later on.

The very best time I had playing this game though, was Saturday night. I returned to the Toys R Us's "Card Central" around 7pm Saturday, and the place was FULL of kids. The one and only Rockman EXE Battle Chip Stadium game had a few kids at it playing/watching, so I joined the crowd, I even kneeled down so I wouldn't be so tall compared to them. One kid was playing for quite awhile, and made it to Dark Rockman! He lost though, too bad. Eventually, I got to play against a few kids, despite the language barrier, they were all so nice to me and seemed excited I wanted to play too, although, some where a little freaked out I think. One kid I played with 3 battles in a row, very very fun. I didn't understand a word these kids were saying, but everytime someone used a rare chip or a Program Advance, the kids would go nuts, and I'd only understand things like "Blues SP! Dream Sword!" and stuff like that, very very very fun. Here's some pictures of me scarying every parent in Toys R Us Saturday:

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And here's the Rockman EXE stuff I bought while in Japan, for the hell of it:

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Yeah, that's a CoroCoro in there... not exactly Rockman, but still, why else do we all love CoroCoro? Also what's hard to see in that pic is my EXE 6 keychain, any questions on what the other stuff is I'll be happy to answer them. And that's not even half of all the other stuff I bought in Japan, I really spent way too much money over there.

So yeah, ok... rant finished. Thanks for reading, if you want to know anymore about the Battle Chip Stadium game, please ask, I'll try and answer it as best as I can, I was never able to beat the game, if the game actually does have an end, but if I was able to stay long enough I'm sure I would have Razz

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Shadow.EXE · Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2006 9:05 pm Post subject:

I have a question: Do you know if there's any kind of plot or storyline in this game like there is in the Battle Network games?

SuperDanny · Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 1:51 am Post subject:

From what I could tell, there is no story at all. There is no character dialouge whatsoever (besides Meijin-san's tutorials and Game Over screen tips), and battle transitions are nothing more then an EXP gained screen, and a next match VS. screen. Kinda like the PET toy, you can use it to power up your navi and face other opponents, but it's storyless.
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Nigoli · Age: 38 Joined: 27 Oct 2005 Posts: 33

That's simply exciting. Was the BGM just a remixed EXE6 soundtrack?

Version 2 is pretty good. It has the entire Circusman, and Diveman Navi Chips as well as DarkThunder and DarkPlus. The Giga Chips were possibly ForteAnother and CrossDivide for Version 2. I'm wondering where Judgeman Navi Chips can be obtained from.

I'm despirately waiting for the last Survival Netbattle Events. They had DoubleBeast in Link Form for the last event which I've already obtained. I'm hoping for a Falzer Giga Class Chip in Link Form since they've already had Greiga in the Special Battle Chip Boosters.

Other than that, I'll just need Meijin's Perfect Customize Modification Card for an almost complete set of EXE6 Promotional Modification Cards besides Punk.
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SuperDanny · Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 12:46 pm Post subject:

The game actually had a nice handful of unique songs. The battle music and title screen songs were remixed from EXE 6, but the intro theme, the mode select screen, and the song played when using a Mega Chip or PA were all unique songs I never heard before. I got a bunch of them recorded on my friend's camcorder, I love EXE 6's battle song, it was cool hearing that remix for it, too bad the EXE 5DS and EXE 6 Music Encyclopedia didn't include Battle Chip Stadium's soundtrack.

I saw those pictures of your collection Nigoli, that is really cool. I managed to get a handful of Modification Cards while I was in Japan, but I don't have an E Reader + right now, maybe I can get one online. I really wish now I lived in Japan, I'd play this arcade game everyday and get new chips and see what they do XD
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Shakai · Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 3:09 pm Post subject:

You lucky dog, you! You got TWO PETs! XD So how much yen did you blow on all that stuff?
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NetOperator Wibby · Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 7:49 pm Post subject:

:grr: that...was just...AWESOME! i SO need to visit japan now! how much is a plane ticket? maybe i'll go next summer. you know how you can buy those DDR machines? can you do the same for the BattleChip Stadium? (of course, it would cost a lot) man, i envy you superdanny. im about 6'1'' so i definitely would have stood out from those kids. on top of that, im black, lol. how much money did you spend? im sure everyone's curious!
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Shonshiwo15 · Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 10:10 pm Post subject:

omg...SO not fair...T_T i wanna play it so bad. But yeah, I heard its expensive for a trip to japan. Plus im Black too...well, black and Latino...anyways. HOW MUCH did you spend in USD? I mean...to me it kinda sounds like u wasted a lot of money. >_> I do that a lot too. lol.
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Nigoli · Age: 38 Joined: 27 Oct 2005 Posts: 33

SuperDanny · Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:56 am Post subject:

I'm not going to say EXACTLY how much money I spent, mainly cause I'm actually not quite sure how much it all was entirely... but it was A LOT of money, and now I am totally bankrupt, but it was all easily worth it.

NetOperator Wibby · Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 5:57 pm Post subject:

Nigoli · Age: 38 Joined: 27 Oct 2005 Posts: 33

Not sure. I never tried Paypal with them before. I know that they have Secure SSL 2.0.

I'm sure you could ask them for an alternative payment method through E-Mail.
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Unknown Neo · Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 9:41 pm Post subject:

Wow that sounds cool. Playing as different navis interests me.
But if you could buy an actual copy of this would it come with battlechips?

Nigoli · Age: 38 Joined: 27 Oct 2005 Posts: 33

Nothing of a Console portover has been announced. I wouldn't be too surprised though. Capcom usually does bring Arcade games to Console for most of their fighting games. I could imagine a portover for the Gamecube and something to slot in chips with on the 2P Port, and then it probably would come with chips.

Emulation is very far off. As far as I know, this game runs on a CD inside the Arcade Cabinet on System 246 hardware. The hardware is supposably based on Playstation 2 hardware.
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zeromaster_14 · Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 4:22 pm Post subject:

one word........lucky! T_T no fair..........man i wish i could go to japan T_T
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Nigoli · Age: 38 Joined: 27 Oct 2005 Posts: 33

If the game were to come to Console, it would give me much more of a reason to level up the all my Link Navi Data Chips. I have Rockman, Blues, Heatman, Killerman, Aquaman, Tomahawkman, and Tenguman all leveled up to LV.99.

Elecman is half way done. Slashman, Chargeman, Groundman, Dustman, DarkRockman, Forte, and Colonel I've haven't even started yet. I get tired of the Link PET_EX since I've already achieved my Perfect Save for EXE6. I feel like there's no reason to level the rest up, especially when DarkRockman, Forte, and Colonel don't work with the Beast Link Gate.
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SuperDanny · Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 1:24 pm Post subject:

Ho hoo man, you'd crush everyone with your army of LVL 99 navis. That's so cool. Using Battle Chip Stadium, I got my Rockman up to LVL 20 in like, 10 plays, and I think the more you win in it, the more EXP you get, so it's probably a much more efficient way of leveling your navi then poking your Link PET EX all day Razz

Also, I have 2 Rockman Navi Data Chips, one where he is holding his Buster, and one where he... well isn't holding his Buster. I gave the non-Buster one to my friend, thinking it was a repeat... do you know if it was Nigoli?
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Nigoli · Age: 38 Joined: 27 Oct 2005 Posts: 33

That would be the perfect way to Level Up the Navi Data Chip then. Link PET_EX can take almost a day to level up. -_-

The one that's transparent seems to be the rarer one without him holding the buster. It's more of a different artwork really of the EXE4 Artwork and the EXE5 Artwork. It only comes with the Hikari Version of the Link PET_EX.

You could also load your Rockman Navi Data Chip and Load it to the Link PET_EX. Then take your friend's chip and slot it in. It'll ask if you want to save it, select yes then the Red Button. After that it should be an exact duplicate including EXP, Levels and ID Name.
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Fortex · Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2006 2:12 am Post subject:

Oh, it's sure is great. I wanna play that game, even it's storyless
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