Mega Man: The Power Battle

"It was a rather intresting little quite rare novelty, but its a awfully short one."

Mega Man: The Power Battle, a rather intresting little novelty item from Capcom which is supposedly the first appearance of Mega Man in the arcades. (Aside from the fact that Mega Man 3 was one of the games in Nintendo's ''Playchoice'' that they did for the Arcades way back in the early 1990's. But it was quite the obscurity to put it EXTREMELY mildly so lets just say its understandable why no one remembers.) This minimally released novelty treat is a mixed bag of good style but awfully short substance.

You can play as either Mega Man, Proto Man or Bass in either 1-P or 2-Players. And you get to fight a bunch of Dr. Wily's prominent robots from Mega Man 1-7. And the you face off against the Yellow Cyclops (A.K.A Yellow Devil), a tri-layered evil metallic missile bomb shooting pumpkin and then Dr. Wily himself in a ''Skull-Bubble'' jet. The problem is that this is ALL you do, its not utterly terrible itself. But one of the biggest problems is that it makes the game feel awfully short, heck it'll probably make you wonder if Capcom's hidden intention was trying to sell this as a demo for a bigger Mega Man. The game goes into three settings and the only difference in them? The ''Robot Masters'' you fight as.

The gameplay ITSELF isn't awful, the control is perfectly responsive however the attack style of our 3 robotic playable characters is really not all that different. (Sure their attack style was never all that highly different, but seriously the character design is mainly the only way to tell them apart.) Its easy to get into but fortunately the game is not WAY too easy. The graphics are in genuinely good SNES-like quality. The ''Robot Masters'' that appear here do come in a good variety which covers the majority of Mega Man 1-7. The music is also basically little instrumentals from the previous Mega Man titles which is good. Unfortunately their rather mediocre but not utterly terrible remixes which is... ah like you don't know already huh?

Though what is quite possibly the BEST thing in this is the Endings. Heck this game has possibly some of the best endings I ever seen in the Mega Man series in well... ever. Their surprisingly well done which tells the story of these three characters quite exceptionally well. I'm not going to spoil anything but it does give these 3 known characters some surprisingly good depth in their storylines. And even more surprisingly that doesn't change at all when you play the game with 2 players. All ending possibilites were well written and served their purposes quite nicely. So to make a long story short this is a good example on why Capcom CAN be good storytellers in Video Games, its not the best example but its pretty close.

Overall this was simply a rather...intresting little experiment from Capcom which wasn't a total success but it was hardly a failure either. It has its fair share of flaws but it does have a good amount of pluses to back it up. So this nifty little novelty is simply a very good little time-waster. Not much more, not much less...

+ Very good graphics all-around
+ Its easy to get into with perfectly competent control
+ Having Mega Man, Proto Man and Bass as fully playable characters.
+ The variety of ''Robot Masters'' you'll be fighting is good
+ The endings are surprisingly well made (Even in 2-P mode)
- All the gameplay is beating a good amount of the main ''Robot Masters'' and a few of Wily's bigger machines,
- The game itself is awfully short
- The music is basically some rather unremarkable remixes of previous MM instrumentals of the series' past.
- The only difference in each of the three stages are the ''Robot Masters'' in each stage.
- The playable character's attack methods are identical to eachover

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/28/04, Updated 02/03/04