underbutler
Reviews
Rockman: Battle & Fighters (Neo Geo Pocket Color)
If a boss rush of Megaman sounds appealing to you, you'll love it
The Good
I've always had an interesting relationship with Megaman. The compelling platforming and shooting, the variety of bosses that will beat the ghost out of you in every way imaginable. However, the stages didn't always gel with me. I'll be honest, they could irritate me greatly. Where in Ghouls 'n' Ghosts, the levels were my favourite part, with the constant panic and, secrets and variety, but the bosses put me off, Megaman is quite the opposite for me. The bosses are the meat for me in Megaman, the stages but a build up in the setting, in theming for the main act.
So when I found Rockman: Battle & Fighters, a combined port of both The Power Battle and The Power Fighters arcade games, I was quite excited. Each took bosses from the main series of games, and pitted you against them in arenas akin to a 1v1 fighter. With you health bar carrying over level to level, and the rest of the fantastic boss design lined up without any interruption, the challenge is rather excellent. The ability to wall kick off the arenas barriers and to charge a shot give excellent opportunities to vary your tactics, especially combined with the list of playable characters, all of which feel different.
Yellow devil and Dr Willy boss fights are intense, difficult, and in keeping with the main series, presenting a vicious challenge to get to the end credits, truly making it feel like a proper Megaman game.
Presentation is also excellent, using the classic 8 bit graphics from the NES Megamans to great effect in the foreground, with more detailed backgrounds similar to many other fighting games on the Neo Geo Pocket. It's a fantastic combination that in my opinion stands up very well against the more detailed graphics of the original arcade games.
The Bad
Unlike the classic Megamans, you can't manually choose the boss to start on: you must time it on a constantly moving dial to get the one you want. This makes getting optimum boss routes a pain sometimes, as if you miss time a selection you'll be thrown into a boss fight you may not want to be taking on at the time. This is most likely a carry over from the arcade versions, a ploy to get those few extra pennies from punters, but it feels somewhat unnecessary on the handheld.
The stage layouts for most bosses are also far flatter and less interesting than in the games, with only a couple of stages having much in the way of variety functionally. Though putting it more in line with other 1v1 fighters, it does lose some of that uniqueness of the boss battles, and can make some of the bosses far less interesting in some regards, having removed some of the unique trappings of their stages entirely.
On a much lesser note, and not one that should be held against the game, it's a bit of a pain to get a copy of if you want to play it legitimately. Between it's name and it's late release, it goes for fairly phenomenal (and rather inflated) prices in most areas, despite being one of the more common of the rare games. It is a real shame that it has not had a proper western release anywhere, and not even a digital re-release, as it's either emulation, flashmasta, paying an absurd amount, or getting extremely lucky, to be able to experience this on the original hardware. Maybe an unfortunate result of it's inherent desirability, but for most people this makes it an unreasonably difficult game to play as intended.
The Bottom Line
In a strange way, the game fits wonderfully on the Neo Geo Pocket, with it's wonderful micro-switch joystick controls, it's graphical limitations allowing it to evoke a slightly more detailed version of classical Megaman, and the short punchy sessions you can get with it from it's arcade origins. On a system of fighters, it stands out as a unique take that's both rewarding and challenging. As Capcom's sole representative on the system, I say it does them proud.
By underbutler on August 24, 2020