Mega Man: The Power Battle

"A Mega Man Fighting Game?"

Imagine walking into your arcade, and being stunned by seeing a game you would never think would be in an arcade. That's exactly how i felt when I saw Mega Man: The Power Battle.

The game itself is excellent, you can choose from 3 robots, Mega Man, Protoman, and Bass. From there you choose from 3 courses, Megaman 1-2 (Easy), Megaman 3-6 (Medium), Mega Man 7 (Hard), even though a change in difficulty is hard to find. The Game play is like the console games, you start with a normal weapon that can be charged, a slide attack that slightly varies for each robot, and you gain weapons by beating each boss. No Stages, Just you vs. the boss. The bosses have weaknesses to certain weapons, just like the real game. You continue until you beat all robot masters, go 2 Wily's Castle, fight a boss from the past (No Spoilers here.) and then of course, Dr. Wily.

The difficulty level on this game gets a 5. I went through the game on 3 quarters the first time, now I can get through it on 1, on the hardest setting

The first time you play the game, you will probably be in so much shock you are playing a arcade megaman game, you'll mess up, just so it doesn't end. After you go through the game once, you might as well call yourself a master, cause there really isn't anything more to the game. No secret bosses, no secret moves, no secret characters, NOTHING!!!!Also the endings you get for each character differ, but are nothing big really.

The game would be much better if they had a versus mode, then you could finally prove to your best friend who was better, Mega Man or Protoman. Also they need to kick up the difficulty about 150%, It is waaaaaayyyyy too easy. Also they should have added more variety in the bosses, like instead of fighting the same bosses every time, they should have picked 6 random choices from all 7 games. Also they should have gave the characters special moves, like the fighting mode in Mega Man 7, to add more replay to find all the moves. A sequel was made, but I have yet to find it, hopefully it is a lot more challenging, and more fun, who knows, maybe Rush is a playable character! Overall though, if I had the chance I would buy the cabinet.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/31/01, Updated 05/31/01