The rarest Servbot of all.
In Tron ni Kobun (that’s The Misadventures of Tron Bonne to English speakers) a 41st kobun could be unlocked with the use of special promotional campaign data that was sent out to Dengeki magazine subscribers in Japan. It didn’t help them boost game sales like they hoped, but it did become a legend in its own right.
It seems fairly well known nowadays that there are 41 servbots. It was not around 5 years ago, when I threw up some screen captures of #41 from the Japanese version and many disbelieving fans thought I had faked, hacked or photoshopped them as a joke. Back then, the only known way to get 41 in the game was to get your hands on the memory card save data. I got it by importing the book & CD packet called the 10th Anniversary PlayStation & PlayStation 2 All Soft Catalogue Special SaveData Collection.
That save data is now available for download at my affiliate Rockman Perfect Memories, but it is incompatible with the English version of the game, so only those with the Japanese version and the right tools could even make use of it.
More recently, some intrepid code foragers out there have come up with a simple yet elegant cheat device code that will unlock that data (which turns out to have been fully translated) within the English game. I found this code over at the Mega Man Knowledge Base. Many thanks to whoever wrote it!
The code is:
8009AF0C 0001
Tested it out just yesterday, works like a charm.
Welcome to the team, #41. It’s been a long time.
If it was already translated in-game, I wonder how we were meant to unlock it. :/
We were probably never meant to, it’s just that the translators were given the majority of the in-game text to translate, without regard for whether it was actually going to be used. I believe they translated the Pocketstation menu as well, even though there’s no pocketstation outside Japan.
So there IS a #41 accessible directly in-game. I thought he might have appeared in a spin-off, manga or short story, but I didn’t think that he was directly included. Nice bit of trivia!