Rockman: Battle & Fighters – Hardcore Gaming 101

This entry is part 31 of 38 in the series Mega Man

Years after being released in the arcades, both Power Battle and its sequel were finally bundled together for home and portable consoles. The first release appeared on the Neo Geo Pocket Color with the title Rockman Battle & Fighters, shrinking each game down almost to 8-bit form in visuals and audio. The aesthetic downgrades don’t hinder the game too much, keeping everything in scale and not losing any gameplay aspect. The bigger sprites for menus and endings have been redrawn, taking more design elements from illustrator Hideki Ishikawa, especially for Mega Man himself.

The PlayStation 2 port was released years later at a budget price. The games are spot-on conversions from the arcade, with the usual options for controls and difficulty. A Versus mode was added, letting players face off against each other with all the weapons available. Beating each game once also unlocks an Extreme mode, pitting the player against every boss in one mega game. Completing that unlocks more options for game speed, infinite weapon energy, and the ability to play the English versions of the game.

None of these collections were released outside of Japan. For those looking to play the arcade titles at home in the West, there are directly emulated copies hidden in the Anniversary Collection, but they lack any of the extra modes from the Japanese PlayStation 2 release.