Capcom and SNK are in a race, it seems, to see who can be the first to release every one of their classic games on modern platforms. Which has led to some great stuff, even if it occasionally gets a bit silly.
In Thursday’s version of that, SNK announced that the 2000 Japan-only Neo-Geo Pocket Color game Rockman Battle & Fighters is now available on Switch — under the name Mega Man Battle & Fighters in the west, though still in Japanese. It’s a port of two mid-’90s Capcom arcade games (Mega Man: The Power Battle and Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters, both of which added versus fighting game elements to the Mega Man formula), scaled down to fit the portable hardware. The package came from the era when SNK was building its Neo Geo Pocket Color roster by signing licenses like Pac-Man and Sonic the Hedgehog, but it came too late to make much of an impact in SNK’s fight against the Game Boy.
Where all this gets to be a bit of a dogpile is that Capcom just released the arcade versions of Mega Man: The Power Battle and Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters on Switch a couple weeks ago, as part of its Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium collection. Conveniently, each of those costs about $4 and SNK’s duo costs about $8.
So whether you’re looking to play two obscure Mega Man arcade games, or the portable versions of those two in Japanese and scaled down to the Neo Geo Pocket Color screen (and then back up to the Switch screen) — all of which are great, if you can keep track of them — Capcom and SNK have you covered.
