Mega Man Battle Network - SharkMan V3 Buster Only S Rank
13Let it never be stated that MMBN isn’t an action game.
SharkMan is commonly regarded as one of the hardest bosses BN1 has to offer. His attacks are almost insultingly basic, comprising only AquaTower and a high-speed dash. However, the presence of multiple fins, which are capable of rushing toward MegaMan while providing defense and obfuscating SharkMan’s location, turns the battle into a strenuous task. Of course, you’ve myriad options to overcome the trial, with Chips like X-Panel3 and ElecMan serving as defense and offense, respectively. However, what if you decided to take only the Mega Buster into battle and not only attempt to win but also get an S Rank? Well, here’s the result of that.
First, this needs to be stated clearly. Barring some sort of lottery-surpassing fortune, you absolutely need to have a consistent starting RNG value to pull this off, which means creating a save state after confirming Masa’s prompt to start the battle. The pattern manipulation necessary to win in under 30 seconds is so specific and precise that using soft resets and mashing through text in hopes of starting the battle on the frame containing the RNG value you practiced with would be an astronomic waste of time—that can be viable with Chip combos, but not here.
So why all the emphasis on pattern manipulation anyway? The core principle of this fight is to force SharkMan to continuously spawn in the front column from the second cycle onward. SharkMan’s location after the fins shuffle is determined by his HP upon submerging. Knowing this, you can chart an admittedly far too complicated path to follow through the fight. Honestly, this battle is up there with some of the more arduous Shield Boomerang-only fights I’ve done in the Zero series; the number of details to commit to memory is borderline comical.
As an aside, I did complete an extemporaneous bout with the blisteringly quick shark, which took about 49 seconds to complete. I binned the recording once I realized how much more challenging and engrossing the S Rank fight is. Make no mistake, having foresight into SharkMan’s actions does nothing for your sanity. It took far longer to ace this sub 30-second dance than it did to simply win unscathed.
Going through my game plan step-by-step would be pointless since retracing these movements is only possible if you have the same RNG value I did, and I have no idea what that value was—I just picked a random point to start the fight and used good-old trial and error from there. Instead, I’ll expound on some of the general tactics I used, which are also applicable to fights that are fully improvised rather than choreographed.
Regarding attacking, for each of SharkMan’s cycles, I found it best to focus on landing two fully charged shots and one half-charged shot or to substitute a half charge for rapid mashing. Ideally, it’d be possible to get by using only charged shots, which are decidedly more consistent than mashing, but barrages of individual shots grant greater granularity for the purpose of luring SharkMan into exhibiting specific behaviors. Plus, point-blank rapid-fire is faster than charging if you have the latitude to commit to it without getting speared by a fin.
A fully powered-up MegaMan can charge Buster shots quite quickly. Even so, there are subtle ways to buy more time to land more shots per cycle. Since the assumption is that SharkMan is always in the front column, baiting him into dashing at MegaMan is a great way to accrue Buster charge. Furthermore, if you shoot said charge at SharkMan exactly when he returns from a dash, he won’t emerge before swimming upward one row, adding more time to charge your next shot.
Defensively, there are key pieces of knowledge that’ll ease your evasive hopping across the battlefield. The first tidbit is that when one fin is dashing at you, the others can’t jet forward. Desynchronizing SharkMan’s swimming from that of the false fins by goading him into dashing or luring one of the facsimiles into doing the same is just as important as timing your shots. Equally crucial is the ability to avoid triggering a dash at all. There’s a certain threshold that a fin can reach during its vertical movement where it’ll be unable to attack. Having MegaMan switch rows at this moment avoids any undue aggression, which can be pivotal to your strategy.
SharkMan’s AquaTower has a couple of neat little eccentricities. A large portion of each tower’s animation is merely smoke and mirrors; the hitbox doesn’t emerge for a surprisingly long while, so feel free to stand in place and dart away at the last moment. Directional manipulation of AquaTower is as easy as standing in an adjacent row as the first tower fades; make use of this when the other fins prove bothersome. A benefit of properly pirouetting around AquaTower and the fins is that SharkMan will remain exposed for longer than usual, giving precious extra frames to sneak more potshots in.
Thanks for watching!