A playthrough of Capcom's 1995 arcade action game, Mega Man: The Power Battle.
This video shows me playing through each of the three courses:
1:10 Mega Man 1 & 2 with Mega Man
11:03 Mega Man 3-6 with Protoman
22:41 Mega Man 7 with Bass
I am playing the CPS1 version here. It also got a release on the more advanced CPS2 platform.
Mega Man: The Power Battle is one of the many spin-offs the blue bomber has starred in over the years, but unlike most, this one was designed specifically for arcades. Rather than entirely ditching the series' well-known set of mechanics, Capcom decided rather to adapt them to a new format that they were already intimately familiar with - the tournament-style versus fighter.
That's right, Mega Man gets thrown in the blender with Street Fighter II, and the result is something that was (somewhat unexpectedly) excellent through-and-through!
The game calls upon robot masters from Mega Man games of the past and gives them a complete 32-bit makeover with massive, hand-drawn sprites. They all still entirely recognizable (thanks largely to their unique designs and personalities), but anyone that loved this crowd on the NES is instantly going to fall in love all over again at just how much care was taken in updating the characters. The remixed music is also thoroughly excellent, taking good advantage of the CPS1 hardware's formidable FM capabilities.
The gameplay stays quite close to the original NES games, though. It's presented as a boss rush, and as you would expect, each win earns you the fallen enemy's weapon as a prize. Just like in the original games, each weapon won will be particularly strong against a different enemy, so it's a good idea to fight them in an order that exploits their weaknesses.
There are three major ladders to play through - the first is based on robot masters from Mega Man 1 and 2, the second from Mega Man 3 through 6, and the third from Mega Man 7. Furthermore, you get to choose playing as Mega Man, Protoman, or Bass. They do all play similarly to one another, but they do each have their own specific quirks that differentiate them enough to make them all worth trying out.
It did see accurate home conversions on the Mega Man Anniversary Collection (PS2/GC/Xbox) back in 2004, along with an absolutely stellar 8-bit style adaptation for the Neo Geo Pocket Color (named Rockman Battle & Fighters - you can find my translated playthrough of that one here: • Rockman Battle & Fight... ), but it seems to have otherwise been forgotten by Capcom.
I hope that they release again at some point. It's a fantastic homage to a classic series that deserves a shot at a new audience.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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