Mega Man Battle & Fighters

Genre: Compilation / Action-Platformer / Fighting Game

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in the NEOGEO Pocket Color Selection Vol. 2 bundle, along with Baseball Stars Color, Big Bang Pro Wrestling, Biomotor Unitron, Ganbare Neo Poke-Kun, NEOGEO Cup ’98 Plus Color, Puzzle Link 2, Pocket Tennis Color, SNK Vs. Capcom Card Fighters’ Clash, and The King of Fighters Battle de Paradise.)

Mega Man Battle & Fighters is a downscaled port of two Fighting games with strong Action-Platformer elements: Mega Man: The Power Battle, and Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters, originally released in Arcades in 1995 and 1996, respectively. This particular port was first released on the NEOGEO Pocket Color in 2000 and was brought to Nintendo Switch in 2022. This release of the game includes display settings, a selection of borders, zoom controls, a rewind function, and a copy of the original game’s manual, but there are no significant enhancements to the game itself (unless you count the addition of same-screen multiplayer).

Okay, so I have good news and bad news here. The good news is that this pair of games was never really designed to play like a standard Street Fighter-style Fighting game, but is actually more like the Action-Platformers that the Mega Man games tend to be, playing out like a boss rush of the original games. The reason why this is good news is because this means that this pair of games fares much better than other Fighting games on the NEOGEO Pocket Color – it controls better than those games, and the limited number of playable characters isn’t quite so bad because this isn’t really aiming for the same type of gameplay. As a result, this pair of Fighting games is genuinely fun, if a bit simple and a tad easy.

The bad news is that these are compromised ports, and players on the Nintendo Switch already have access to the original Arcade games through Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium. In fact, you can get both games for the exact same price as this Compilation. And if you can get the original games at the same price… why would you bother with their downgraded ports, with less-impressive visuals and sound?

That’s not the only problem with these two games, however. This release ports over the Japanese-language game without localizing the game’s menus, instead merely including an English-language digital instruction book. To be fair, you can muddle through with just this, as the action-focused gameplay doesn’t really require any reading. However, it’s still an irritating issue that isn’t present in another release on the Nintendo Switch that was already a better game.

Because of this, it’s hard to see much reason that anyone should bother with Mega Man Battle & Fighters. It is by no means a bad game, and in fact I would say that it’s pretty good. But it’s a heavily-compromised version of a better game that you can also get on the same platform, at the same price. As a result, at $8 it’s hard to see this as anything but a rip-off.

tl;dr – Mega Man Battle & Fighters is a Compilation of two Fighting Games with strong Action-Platformer elements, Mega Man: The Power Battle, and Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters, both genuinely fun games that play like a boss rush of the Mega Man franchise. Unfortunately, these versions of the games were heavily cut back for their port to NEOGEO Pocket Color, and on top of that, the lack of a proper English localization is irritating. Even worse, players can already get Arcade-perfect versions of these games in Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium. With this being the case, why would anyone bother with these versions?

Grade: C

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