Mega Man: The Power Battle is an Arcade Game released by Capcom in 1995. Based on the Mega Man (Classic) series, the player (or two, for the first time in the series) is once again tasked with defeating six Robot Masters (gaining their weapons in the process) before proceeding to take on Dr. Wily himself.
Unlike most games in the series, however, there are no stages; instead, the gameplay resembles a Fighting Game (as the player(s) and boss face each other one-on-one in a small arena), albeit retaining the usual Mega Man controls. It's also notable for being the first game in the franchise where the player could choose a character (Mega Man, Proto Man, and Bass — though they all play roughly the same). Also, instead of the traditional stage select, you instead choose a boss through a roulette (that obfuscates exactly who you've chosen). The player is also able to select which set of bosses they want to face (1-2, 3-6, and 7), which roughly represents the difficulty level.
While the cabinets are hard to find in America, it was included as an unlockable in the Anniversary Collection and Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium (alongside its sequel), and as a playable game in the Battle Hub of Street Fighter 6. It was also bundled with its sequel for the Japan-only PlayStation 2 game Rockman Power Battle Fighters, and both were ported to the Neo Geo Pocket Color as Rockman Battle & Fighters.
Tropes:
- A.I. Breaker: Weapons that have a high chance to flinch, most particularly Super Arm and Slash Claw, can force robot masters into a predictable pattern.
- And the Rest: The 1, 2 and 7 Robot Masters get their own roulette. Games 3 through 6 have to share a roulette, resulting in games 4 and 6 getting one representative each. To highlight it, Dust Man from 4 does not return in the sequel, emphasizing how arbitrary his choice was, and Plant Man reuses Crash Man's theme.
- Boss Game: No stages here!
- Call-Forward: Subtly — in Bass's ending, Wily alludes to building a new robot that will trump both him and Mega Man. He's talking about Zero.
- Co-Op Multiplayer: A first in the series.
- Excuse Plot: As is the norm — Wily's wreaking havoc, go stop him.
- Friendly Fireproof: In multiplayer, neither player is affected by the other's shots.
- Graphics-Induced Super-Deformed: The Rockman Battle & Fighters, by virtue of its platform, features far smaller sprites (based on the NES games).
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: They're represented by sets of bosses from each of the original games (1-2 is easy, 3-6 is medium, and 7 is hard). For some it could be Non-Indicative Difficulty, since the "stronger" robots from 7 have more predictable patterns.
- Immune to Flinching: Most of the 7 bosses, in contrast to how they were originally fought, no longer can flinch.
- Interesting Situation Duel: You fight Crash Man while being able to use Trash Chutes to warp to the top of the stage. While Dust and Junk Man use the same arena, the chutes are absent in Dust Man's battle and the entire wall itself is gone in Junk Man's.
- Multiple Endings: The three main characters each get their own individual endings. In two player, the endings for the two selected characters used by each player play one after the other.
- New Work, Recycled Graphics: It's clear that this game is made with 7 in mind. In an odd twist, all sprites from those games are stretched 125% to fit the Capcom CPS1 expected screen. 7 is the only game who gets a difficulty setting all to itself, while the other games, 1-6, have to share difficulty levels with at least one other game, presumably because new graphics had to be made for them. Humorously, Slash Man now directly takes Vega's sound clips from Street Fighter II
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Nintendo Hard: Good luck trying to get through the game on a single credit. You can restore health between matches depending on how well you do, and you can credit feed to pick up where you die, but the actual boss battles and the fact that they get harder the further you go can really try you in something of an endurance run. - Not Completely Useless: Bass's dash is frequently unreliable, since it can't be cancelled mid-dash and does not get him low to the ground like Mega Man's slide or Proto Man's dash. However, it can be used to dodge past attacks that crawl across the ground.
- Rearrange the Song: Virtually every song in the game is a remix of one from the series proper. (Some of these would be included in the Complete Works versions.)
- Rolling Attack: Wood Man's new ability, invoking the absent Blizzard Man.
- Scissors Cuts Rock: Cut Man, a lumber robot, has Leaf Shield as a weakness.
- Timed Mission: The battle against Wily's final form has only about 15 seconds before he flees. It doesn't quite matter, though, since if he does escape his pod explodes and the player wins anyway.
- Took a Level in Badass: The Yellow Devil is significantly more versatile here — he has the ability to form smaller versions of himself and toss rocks aroundnote .
- Unexpected Character: VAN Pookin, an otherwise unremarkable miniboss from Shade Man's stage, gets upgraded to fortress boss here.
- Updated Re-release: In the arcades at least, the original game was on their first lineup of CP System (or CPS-1 for short) hardware, so the overall hardware was on par with things like the original Street Fighter II. Little known is that the game got a re-release on the same CPS-2 hardware its sequel was released on, which bumped up the sound and music quality (with some tracks ported back from said sequel) as well as including more voice samples at a clearer rate. The CPS-1 version is the only one released in the west, making the CPS-2 port exclusive to Japanese arcades and the Rockman Power Battle Fighters compilation.
- Wall Jump: A series first for Classic.
