Mega Man: The Power Battle (Arcade) Review
~by tankMage (July 2025)
Score: 7.6/10 (Decent)
This battle needs more power!
This may seem odd, but one of the first things I did when I decided to start reviewing arcade games was look for Mega Man titles. Of course there’s the famous Marvel VS. Capcom games where the Blue Bomber make an appearance, but everyone knows about those. I wanted something more obscure and I found it in Mega Man: The Power Battle. This title was only released in Japan, but it did see a sequel in North America.* I really didn’t know what to expect when I started it up, though I was kind of hoping for an arcade style platformer or an actual fighting game. Instead I got a game that is more of a mashup between a boss rush and a fighting game. It works, but it doesn’t take off.
It’s shame this game doesn’t quite hit, because it has a lot going for it. Great graphics, good remixes of classic songs, and 18 Robot Masters to fight are all ingredients to an awesome Mega Man game, but it didn’t translate all that well into an arcade format. This is partly due to Capcom playing it safe and sticking too closely to the console formula. Power Battle may have worked better if they went in a Street Fighter style fighting game direction where players could control Mega Man, Proto Man, Bass, some of the Robot Masters from previous games. Imagine Metal Man and Guts Man beating each other to scrap metal. Fun, right? Capcom should hire me.
*Correction: Mega Man: The Power Battle did see a limited release in the USA. It occurred to me that I’d be playing Rock Man: The Power Battle if it hadn’t been released in the US and a bit of research confirmed my suspicion. It was also released as part of the Mega Man Anniversary Collection.
Story
Power Battle uses the same story from just about every game in the series: Dr. Wily is trying to take over the world using robots as usual. This time he’s taking failed Robot Masters from previous games and setting them against the combined forces of Mega Man, Proto Man, and Bass. What could go wrong? And that’s about it for the premise.
Each of the three heroes has his own ending. The same ending plays regardless of which set of robots the player defeats, which was disappointing. The endings are kind of silly and don’t really add much to the lore of the franchise, but they’re better than the endings from a lot of the other games. Still, this game would have been better if the heroes had multiple ending based on how well they did in each story.
Gameplay
I’m not really sure what to say about the gameplay. It’s not bad, but it’s not very good either, which is a damn shame for a Mega Man game. Even my least favorite title from the series, Mega Man 5, felt like it had more substance than Power Battle. Well, I guess I better explain how it works…
Players can choose from Mega Man, Proto Man, and Bass at the start of the game. Every one of the heroes is the same in terms of abilities aside from their slide ability, which varies from Mega Man’s side to Bass’s dash jump. Next, the player has to choose a “story” which is basically the set of bosses they want to fight. You can fight bosses from Mega Man 1-2, 3-6, and 7. I gotta say it’s really weird how they split the games up. Why they gave so much attention to MM7 is beyond me aside from the fact that it was released around the same time. MM7 was a good game, but it’s no where near as iconic as MM2 or 3.
Once the player has selected his or her character and story, they are taken to the boss select screen which is basically a roulette wheel where you choose who to fight. None of the bosses are named on the stage select screen, so you basically have to guess or memorize where the bosses are located. There’s only six Robot Masters in each story, so it’s not difficult to memorize them. This is another problem: there’s only six Robot Masters instead of the usual eight and a lot of the best ones aren’t in this game. They left out some of my favorites like Quick Man, Metal Man, Pharaoh Man, and Elec Man, but included some of the dumbest bosses in the series like Wood Man. Seriously, they included Wood Man over Metal Man. At least Crash Man is in this game.
Anyway, defeat the boss and you get his weapon which is another boss’s weakness. You can’t rely on what you know from the old games, because the weaknesses have been changed, so you gotta experiment. The system is fine, but it bothered me that the special weapons are the same for all three heroes. It would have been cool if Proto Man got a different version of Ice Man’s power than the icecicle Mega Man shoots for example.
Once you beat the Robot Masters, you fight a Wily stage boss (which is usually the Yellow Devil) then you fight Wily himself. I have to say the Wily Machine they dreamt up for Power Battle is the lamest one I’ve seen in any of the games. It’s a big dumb pod with stupid hands that are easy to dodge. Destroy the first form of the Wily Machine and you’ll fight a second form whose moveset varies from story to story. Once the second form is history, Wily will float around in his flying saucer thing and switch places with a decoy for 9 seconds. You don’t have to defeat this last form, but you get to see Wily beg for mercy if you do. Oddly, defeating Wily’s final form doesn’t change the ending.
Fighting the bosses is kind of fun, but it’s not as climactic as it is in the platformers since you don’t have to navigate stages to get to them. One interesting thing is the bosses change attack patterns based on the order you fight them, which is something I actually would like to see in one of the Mega Man platformers.
They also revamped a lot of the bosses. Every Robot Master has new moves and a more varied moveset overall. This would have been an excellent aspect of the game had it been more challenging.
Unfortunately, I can’t really think of much else to say for the gameplay as it’s just very bland. I would like to try this game with another player someday, but I don’t think it will make a difference unless the difficulty amps up considerably in two player mode.
Challenge
If there’s one thing that hurts this game, it’s the difficulty or lack thereof. Most of the bosses are total pushovers, even the end game bosses. Anyone familiar with Mega Man or any action game will be able to beat this one with a few credits on their first try. Even MM7, which is the hardest of the stories, is a cakewalk.
As easy as this game may be, it is difficult to master. I have a suspicion that Capcom made Power Battle so easy to win, but difficult to truly master in hopes of getting players to spend tons of money trying to get high scores. Everything in this game is timed and you’ll have to play flawlessly to compete in the leaderboards. This is easier said than done when you have to learn all the boss weaknesses and fight with a roulette wheel to do the bosses in the correct order.
I played through each story several times just to see the endings and how the playable characters vary for this review. If I were pumping quarters into the game I probably spent five bucks in the hour I played. It’s not unreasonable to imagine someone who wanted to be Numero Uno on the scoreboard dropping $20 on this game just to learn the boss orders for each story let alone master it. In 1995 that $20 was big money and a selling point for the cabinet. At least they didn’t make the game overly difficult, which was a common issue with arcade titles, but I would have enjoyed it if its difficulty was more in line with the NES games.
Graphics
This game looks beautiful from the backgrounds to the animations. It’s easily the best looking title as far as games featuring classic Mega Man go aside from his more modern incarnations. My favorite feature was the backgrounds, which were very detailed and had all sorts of Easter Eggs that Mega Man fans will appreciate. I also liked Proto Man’s design, especially his power shot. That said, would you expect anything less from a Capcom arcade title?
Sound
Music and sound effects are both strong points for Power Battle. It was really cool hearing some of the classic Mega Man tunes reproduced on Capcom’s actual equipment rather than an NES or SNES, though I love the original versions too. The sound effects were also on point and it was interesting to hear Mega Man’s actual Japanese voice for the first time.
User Interface
Once again, this game is perfect in terms of controls. I had to get used to switching weapons using a cycle menu instead of a status screen, but the change made sense for arcades.
Final Thoughts
Well, I wasn’t impressed by this game and can’t give it an outstanding review, but I didn’t dislike it. Mega Man: The Power Battle is basically a novelty for fans of the series to enjoy. It’s something that may be fun to sit down with for an hour or two on rainy afternoon, but it’s not the sort of game I would keep coming back to. Give it a shot if you’re a Mega Man fan and would like to try something a bit different.
Thank you for reading my Mega Man: The Power Battle review!
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