[ロックマン・ザ・パワーバトル/Mega Man: The Power Battle] JP Megaman All Route No Continue [CC Commentary]

Описание: Let's comment a game other than a shmup once in a while, shall we? The convenient pick at the moment is Mega Man: The Power Battle.

I love MegaMan! And the arcade games are no exception! The first time I played these were actually on the PS2. Revisiting these games with much more experience than before including the capability to 1cc some arcade games, I still love them! But for different reasons today.

These games are hilariously easy!

This video isn't about serious super play, but my personal commentary on how easy the games are on its Normal difficulty. Which is not a bad thing. I'd love to recommend these to people that want to stick their hand into 1cc-ing games. Though it is still funny that these games are even easier than the console mainline games. Yes, the far shorter duration per run is one of the reasons.

Let's talk about the usual: Controls. As Megaman, Bass or Protoman, you can move left and right, it's essentially a platformer without platforms but with invisible walls left and right to wall jump, jump, shoot, charge shot, and slide. There are several techniques like high jump and wall jump. In this game Megaman's agility and mobility is insane! Before X, Megaman COULD WALL JUMP! Well, not X style but Chun Li style, but it counts. Sounds like great enough recipe to make the game ironically easier than the console games, huh? Even more impressive is that the game basically recycled the Megaman 7 assets, mainly the playable characters themselves and the Megaman 7 bosses.

The game is a boss rush game a la Street Fighter 1. Huh, there sure still is a place for boss rush games. Just like the original games the weapon weakness system applies here. That's bold for an arcade game! Fight 6, fight the mid-final boss, then fight Dr. Wily. Nice pacing for a boss rush game. There is incentive to carefully pick which boss to fight first, though. Have you ever heard of the complaint that the difficulty curve of Megaman games go downward as Megaman gains more weapons? Sure. Then let's add a rank system! RANK SYSTEM IN MY MEGAMAN GAME!? How it works is simple: The later bosses will be given higher HP. That's it. I think that's very fair considering you get more special weapons to abuse. Higher HP also means the bosses will survive long enough to torture you, so keep that in mind. Funnily enough, Capcom refused to revisit this idea for the mainline games except Megaman X5 and X6.

The way you take damage in this game is pretty odd, though. You have 16 HP in total and you'll only get 1 HP depleted per hit no matter what attack you got hit by. It does sound surprisingly lenient since that means you can't get hit more than 16 times, but the HP recovery is surprisingly stingy. The game will only recover 2 after each boss fight. But hey, this game is short and easy. It's more than enough!

Speaking of buffs, compared to their original appearances aside of the Megaman 7 bosses their looks got gorgeously improved. Their movesets also got expanded. This is one of the best examples to both pandering to nostalgia and improving upon what has existed. This sounds so similar to Monster Hunter, isn't it! Upon very close examination, this game has many formulas that Capcom would use later on not limited to the Megaman series itself! This game is far more important than many people think! Not only the bosses get buffed, yes, Megaman gets several buffs too. The one I haven't mentioned is the charge shot. Also considering the latter games, pretty hilarious:

A full charge shot will KNOCK THE BOSS BACK INCLUDING CANCELLING THEIR ATTACK!

Dang, that luxury in the mainline games is only reserved for the special weapons! Now you can just bully bosses with well-timed charge shots!? Awesome! Yes, Capcom didn't revisit this idea to an extent, not against the bosses at least, until Megaman X8 and Megaman 11. The full charge shot in those games will make shield enemies lift up their shield.

The music is also interesting. I don't think it was originally composed for this game? But the tracks are remixes for the Complete Works ports of the NES games on the PS1. Maybe aside of the Megaman 7 tracks? Yeah, this game's existence is in tandem with the latest ports of the old games. Talk about smart business strategy!

Fun and quick, this is a very fun short game to pick up and play. For those who want to taste their first delicious 1cc, I wholeheartedly recommend Mega Man: The Power Battle!

By the way, did you know that the arcade Megaman games were handled by the Eco Fighters team?

#stg #shmup #nintendoswitch