Anode/Cathode Tamer

Release Date: December 16, 1999
Price: 2800 yen
Genre/System: Collection RPG, Wonderswan

The Story

On New Year's Eve, 1999, a fifth-grade boy named Akiyama Ryo was sitting at a computer in his father's study and typing away on a chatroom. During a discussion in the chatroom about the Odaiba incident in August, the power fluxuates and Agumon appears on Ryo's screen and begs him to help them. A digivice appears and, at Agumon's insistence, Ryo takes it and is transported to the Digital World.

Agumon tells Ryo of the situation he will have to deal with, but it isn't until Kuwagamon (Shellmon in Cathode Tamer) comes along to beat sense into Ryo that the boy realizes that the Digital World is very real and not just a bad dream brought about by too many games. Agumon then takes him to a village, where Gennai explains what happened. After the battles of Season 1 with Taichi and co, Mugendramon and Chimeramon were so weakened that they had to fuse together to survive. The result of this fusion is Millenniumon. Millenniumon then became strong enough to take over the Digital World and cause a time slip that ressurected the season 1 villians. He also abducted all the Chosen Children and their digimon. Only Agumon escaped to seek out Ryo. To defeat Millenniumon, Ryo has to chip away at his power by defeating his lackeys first and rescuing a few of the Chosen Children at a time.

And so we proceed with the basic "defeat the dungeon boss, save the *insert title of important person here*, proceed to next dungeon" RPG element. Along the way, Ryo gets more death threats from various bosses than a kid his age should deal with. Etemon wants to rip him to shreds, Vandemon wants his head on a platter for Millenniumon, so on. Finally, there's Millenniumon's temple/castle.

When Millenniumon is defeated, Taichi and Agumon reunite and leave Ryo with a sense of loss. Agumon never was his real digimon partner, after all, and neither were any of the others. The other digmon thank him for helping them, and he's sent back home aft a touching goodbye between Ryo and Agumon. When he wakes up, he finds his mother leaning over him with a candlestick. Once Ryo reorients himself, he and Mrs. Akiyama go out to meet with his father, who notes that he's changed over the short time they were apart.