Mega Man Battle & Fighters
SNK are back with another Neo Geo Pocket Color port for the Nintendo Switch. This time around we have Mega Man Battle & Fighters which consists of Mega Man: The Power Battle and Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters.
The first thing you are going to notice when you start the game is the lack of any translation, the game is fully Japanese, however, there is a localized manual you can access any time from the menu. This is by no means a deal breaker, after all, we’re not exactly here for the story.
I suspect the game is just the unadulterated rom file of the original game thrown into the same emulator that SNK has used for their past NGPC re-releases and that’s no bad thing, as the game runs great. The original Neo Geo Pocket Color version of Rock Man Battle & Fighters routinely sells for over ¥40,000+ ($275+) on the second-hand market so, it’s nice to have an alternative way to play this game regardless of language options.
Gameplay
Both titles play in a very similar manner, and they are both essentially boss rushes against robot masters from the first 7 Mega Man games. In both games, you get to choose one of three paths which will determine which enemies you will fight.
In the Power Battle, you choose between three characters, Mega Man (Rockman), Proto Man and Bass. After selecting your character, you’ll have the option to fight 3 different sets of robot masters split up into groups from Mega Man 1 & 2, 3 – 6 and 7. Each path you choose features a roulette-style feature as to what robot master you get to face off against, which personally, I found a little annoying but learning which enemy is in each location was a little more surprising I guess.
If you’ve ever played a Mega Man game before, then you’ll know the drill with the enemies, each robot master has its own signature weapon and move set from the games. Upon defeat, the player will be rewarded with the enemy’s special ability in the form of a power-up.
Like the traditional Mega Man / Rock Man games, the trick to victory is finding out which weapon that particular robot master is weak to and blasting it away.
Combat feels tight and responsive, and I was amazed by how good some of the animations are in both games.
After fighting through 6 adversaries, you’ll face a classic ‘Wily’ enemy such as the Yellow Devil or even Dr Wily himself which will bring a conclusion to that path, along with some story scenes, once again, in Japanese.
The second game, Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters is more of the same, but with a few flourishes. You can now select from 4 fighters, with the three originals and the addition of the giant robot Duo.
We still choose from three themed pathways, but this time around we get to choose which stage we would like to fight on rather than the roulette system of the first game.
The gameplay here in Fighters is more of the same, but this time each fight can perform a unique special move and the enemy will now drop an amount of health and energy pickups upon defeat.
My biggest gripe with the game is its difficulty, it feels perfectly balanced but has one major flaw, infinite continues. There’s no penalty for using continues in either of the titles, it doesn’t reset your score or even make you rematch with your opponent, you are literally just respawned with full health and energy right back where you were. Personally, I found this a little absurd and had to challenge myself to not use it, but it just feels wrong having it available at all and really could detract from the gameplay making for an incredibly short game if you are not disciplined enough.
SNK has really done a great job shrinking down the original arcade versions of each game, this is probably helped by the fact that a lot of the characters featured were originally NES characters and the sprite style translates to the Neo Geo Pocket Color well. Animations are great, and I especially have to mention how I enjoy Cut Man’s stage entrance and special move animation with him literally cutting his own doorway into the fight.
The audio in the game is great, with tracks lifted directly from the NES game originals but, with a unique Neo Geo Pocket spin on them, the thing is, there could have been more tracks, I want more! That said, this was probably a constraint due to the small size of the Pocket Color’s cartridges.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Mega Man Battle & Fighters is a great conversion of two great fighting games, although they both are slightly let down by the inclusion of unlimited continues which makes the difficulty a little lacklustre. The absence of English language options might be a turn-off for some, but it’s not essential for this type of game, but I do wish they at least tried. That said, I do think Mega Man Battle & Fighters is well worth picking up for any fighting game fan or even any diehard Mega Man fan and I am really glad these titles have finally been released outside of Japan.
7.5
Nintendo Switch review code kindly provided by SNK
Available via the Nintendo eShop