Mega Man: Battle and Chase

This is going to be a quick review.  Normally I go back and play the games before reviewing them, but eh...  I don't like this one so much to play it.  I don't hate this game like I do the PC games, but I'm really just not interested in playing this one again.

Basically, this is a kart racing game that every franchise thinks they've needed since Mario Kart.  Being 1997 at this point, it's even coming out around the same time as Mario Kart 64, so the comparisons are going to be natural.  What are the results? Mario Kart 64 is better, did you not see that coming?

This game was held back from release in the US because SCEA still had a stick up their ass about it at the time, and my guess as to why it didn't get released later was that it just wasn't very good.  It wasn't offensively bad, just pretty mediocre.

Story
There's a racing tournament called Battle and Chase, and Mega Man decides to enter it to fix Dr. Light's computer.  After he wins, Dr. Wily tries to steal the Zenny.  Mega Man faces him the only logical way, by racing him of course!

There's a few new characters here that showed up in the Mega Man Manga's, but I've never read those and couldn't care less.  If you're dying to find out, cough up the cash to Capcom, the game is in the Mega Man X collection.

Aesthetics
This is Mega Man's first real 3D appearance, and it looks okay for the graphics of the time.  Compared to Mario Kart though it looks awful.  I realize Mario Kart 64 is more or less highly detailed sprites, but they're put to better use than this game's 3D models.  All the locations are blocky, forgettable and boring.

Sound
VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.  You know what a racing game sounds like?  This sounds like that. The music is pretty generic too.

Design
Alright there are some good ideas here.  Most of the tracks have an interesting gimmick or two to keep things interesting, but the core game is pretty boring.  The weapons for the vehicles aren't all that great or varied like in Mario Kart, and 5 laps seems like an eternity in this game.  The game has some great ideas in the career mode though.  Basically you race against a robot master and some of his cronies at various difficulties, up to four times.  Each time you beat them, you can take a car part from them.  The parts do all kinds of different things.  Some make it easier to drive off road, some make you accelerate faster when trailing behind, and you can mix and match yourself a nice custom set up to your liking.

After you beat all the racers, you face Dr. Wily for one of his parts, but this is extremely tough, so you better have some damn good parts as it is.  There's some replay value here with this, and you do get some cutscenes for beating the game, so you'll have something to look forward too.  Multiplayer is alright as well, but all of these good things about this game just don't add up to it being as good as Mario Kart.

Playability
Honestly, I suck at racing games in general, so I can't tell if the sliding and bad handling is just me sucking at the game, or poor controls.  I'm betting on the former though, but your mileage may vary.

Extras

• I think you'll have an easier time going after the bosses one by one and coming back to them rather than just focusing on one boss at a time.  For each time you face Wily, you need to beat all the robots in a single round of races, that means if you beat one of the robots twice, your second victory won't carry on the next round and you'll have to beat them again.
• There are all kinds of extra unlockables for this game and bonus challenges, none of which I know about since I don't think this game is any fun, but that's what gamefaqs is for.

I've played worse games, but I'd rather waste my Mega Man hours on a more traditional Mega Man game and my kart racing hours on Mario Kart.  Nice try Capcom.

Playthroughs
N/A