Rare Medal Network: Rockman EXE Arcade Game Dumped and Preserved

No April Fool's joke here. Another Rockman EXE arcade game has been successfully preserved! Medal Network: Rockman EXE has remained somewhat of a mystery to fans for several years, with only a couple of low-quality images and scarce information available. But that's history now—I'm happy to announce that the game has been extracted from its aging hardware and made available to download. 

You can download the game here. Before you boot it up and start playing, please be aware that it's not in a fully playable state. MAME needs to be run via CMD so that it ignores some error checks. As shown above, there are some graphic issues to contend with. However, our friend Tofu is actively working on it. Nevertheless, it does run, and, most importantly, it's been preserved for the ages.

Released in Japan around 2002, the game tasks players with guiding Rockman.EXE through the Cyber World to collect medals, previously redeemable for real-life prizes. The objective is to accumulate as many medals as possible within six dice rolls. Medals are earned by landing on a Mettool space, participating in events with Net Navis like Roll.EXE and GutsMan.EXE, or "cashing out" on star panels.

The story of how the machine was acquired was quite unexpected. While researching game centers that might have had Rockman EXE Battle Chip Stadium, Tofu stumbled upon the website for Asobi Douraka Shinaikawa, an arcade that didn't have what he was searching for but instead had a working Medal Network unit. Dongie1818, an acquaintance of Tofu, coincidentally happened to be visiting Japan at the time and decided to drop by to check it out.

Tofu immediately recognized the machine from my previous coverage of it years ago. What's more, the wear on the label at the base of the machine is identical to the one I discovered in 2019.

Tofu and Dongie1818 sat on Medal Network for a bit while work continued on preserving Battle Chip Stadium and The Medal Operation. During this period, Tofu got to know Bijimuto, an arcade collector and enthusiast in Japan. Bijimuto mentioned to Tofu that he had actually seen Medal Network at Asobi Douraka Shinaikawa before but was unaware of any other locations that had it. Fast forward to February 2023, Bijimuto informed Tofu that the arcade had posted a "broken" notice on the machine.

Concerned, Tofu and Bijimuto collaborated to acquire the machine before it was discarded. Despite Bijimuto's attempts to contact Asobi Douraka, he didn't receive a response.

Fortunately, Discord user LNRC knew someone in Japan who was willing to try and contact the location. Hiroshi managed to get in touch with the owner, who agreed to give Tofu the machine for free! Bijimuto stepped in and agreed to take the machine, adding it to his collection for safekeeping and to dump the ROM for us.

Bijimuto informed Tofu that Otakara Itadaki Luffy Kaizoku-Dan!, which is made on the same hardware, was a functional game in MAME. Tofu managed to coax MAME into attempting to run Medal Network, resulting in a mostly functional ROM. We'll keep you posted as updates become available!

And with that, every single Rockman EXE arcade game(that we know of) has been dumped and preserved!