Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters (Arcade)

I have no idea how successful the Power Battles was, but I do know it was a decent waste of time for an arcade game.  With Mega Man's faced slapped on it, it wouldn't surprise me if it did well enough.  The Power Fighters is the most natural of progressions from Power Battles.  The overall game has improved, without changing much of the core elements of it, and it feels a lot more polished.  There is a big reveal in this game related to the Mega Man time line, as well as marketing for Mega Man 8.

New Features

• A new character has been added named Duo sigh... don't get me started on Duo.
• Boss fights scale in health as you progress in the game.  When they get to about 50% health in the fight, they power up and become more dangerous.
• Weapon Weaknesses are a lot more noticeable in this game.  The boss will get stunned from their weakness.
• During the fights, Eddie will show up and give you a power-up of some kind, and another helper will assist you some how.  Mega Man gets Rush, Bass gets Treble and Proto Man and Duo get Beat.

Story
Some time after Mega Man 8, Wily attacks Dr. Light's lab and steals some machine parts.  He kidnaps Roll as well, and Proto Man, Mega Man and Duo go off to make the rescue.  Bass is just pissed off that Wily is wasting his time on other Robots again, so he sets out to destroy them.

You are given the choice of which goal you want to choose, finding Wily, rescuing Roll, or recovering the missing parts.  All three stories end in conjunction after defeating Wily, so all this really does is choose which robots you want to fight.

In Mega Man's ending, Dr. Wily gives a speech about how Mega Man and Dr. Wily are "very alike you and I."  Mega Man looks at his hands like he just shot some one, and questions his actions.  Everyone tells him don't worry about it, so he doesn't and Wily escapes while everyone is being dumb.

Proto Man is revealed to have a defect and in need of repairs, but he refuses to let Dr. Light take a look at him.   He takes off to be mysterious some more.

Dr. Light thanks Duo and asks if he'll ever see him again (god willing no), Duo says maybe, then notes that he found some alien energy source thing on Earth.  He then says it's too dangerous for Earth to have and takes it back to his own planet.  The game then blatantly advertises Mega Man 8 which would come out later that year.

Despite these terrible endings, Bass actually has a kick ass one.  Bass tells Wily how great he is, and how Wily sucks at building robots, and made Bass as a fluke.  Wily tells him that he created Bass from a rare energy he found called "Bassium," and that he's learned how to make an even more powerful robot.  We see a silhouette of a rather familiar looking character, and Bass comments that such a girlie looking robot will never amount to anything.

The silhouette is undoubtedly Zero.  This ties in to the X series, and now we know what Sigma meant when he said Zero was destined to join him, and how he is "the last of the doctor's creations."  Perhaps now the prophecy of X3 is starting to make more sense, and we see where Dr. Wily fits into the whole thing.  Pretty cool, but this game never saw a US release until much, much after X4 and X5, where those elements came to fruition.  I imagine to the Japanese fans however, this would have been really awesome.

Aesthetics
On the whole, lots of improvements over the last game.  There's a few wire-frame 3D elements here and there, and in general the artwork is nice... except for Roll.  What the hell is wrong with her?  She looks deformed, and they don't have any different expressions for her face.  She is the worst looking thing in this game.  The backgrounds aren't as interesting as they were in Power Battles though, and the arena's are all pretty much exactly the same, which is a shame.

There's a new mix of bosses from the previous game, although some are reused.  Mecha Dragon makes an appearance in this game though, and that just kicks ass.  Centaur Man shows up too... well they can't all be winners.

Sound
Everything is remixed from previous games like Power Battles, but the tracks are chosen much better.  We've got all the classic themes and they sound great.  Mega Man 2's intro, Wily 1-2, Proto Man's theme, Bass' theme, it's all fantastic.  Also we've got some voice acting.  Nothing more than a few clips of the bosses yelling their attacks in ridiculous anime fashion, including Mega Man yelling when ever he has a charge shot.

If you've never heard Mega Man's voice prior to this game, prepare for a bit of culture shock.   He sounds like a little girl.  It's not nearly as bad as it will get in Mega Man 8, and it's even worse in Mega Man X4.  I've gotten used to it as the years have gone by, and it doesn't bother me as much anymore, but at first it was really put me off.

Design
Pick your character, pick your bosses, then pick your stage.  There's no roulette stage select this time, so you can make use of boss weaknesses this time.

Each character has slightly different play schemes and bonus helpers,  Mega Man can slide and is helped by Rush, Proto Man Dashes and gets a frontal shield from Beat, Bass hops across the screen with jet boosters in his boots and has Treble help him out in the artillery department, and Duo is mostly a melee fighter and has a Dash that actually damages the enemy.  Beat gives him a full shield, making Duo the game breaking easy character.

They all share the variable weapons system, so really the deciding factor on which character you choose is which ending you want to see more than anything else.  A few changes to the game is that when you die, you lose all your weapons until the next fight.  A minor inconvenience as long as you don't die.  The bosses also drop health and weapon refills during, and after the battle, so you shouldn't have much problems.  The formula is solid for an arcade game, and has been improved enough to separate it from it's predecessor.

Playability
Insert quarter, pick up and play. The principal of arcade games.

Extras

• Boss order: I don't remember it so well, but some bosses aren't weak to the weapons they used to be.  For instance, Rolling Cutter won't mess up Elec Man this time, so try something else.
• This game is getting a few releases here and there from Capcom in more promotional ways than an actual game.  It was free on Gametap for a while, and it came bundled with the anniversary collection.  The game was once lost on an American audience, but you can get a hold of it now without plunking down quarters at the arcade.  Getting an actual machine of this thing though is extremely rare.

A decent waste of time with some cool X tie ins, but nothing that'll hold your interest more than 15 minutes or so.  Really this is a promotional tool more than a game for Mega Man 8 and Mega Man X4, but it's a pretty good promotional tool.

Playthroughs
Speedrun by various players