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Arcade Archives: Mach Breakers
Sep. 5th, 2025 07:45 amThis week's Arcade Archives release is... Mach Breakers (Namco, 1995)
Both the Japanese (Mach Breakers: Numan Athletics 2) and World (Mach Breakers) ROMs are included. Preference Settings allow players to set the World version to either Europe or Asia, which changes a few character names and nationalities. On the Asia setting, Makoto Kotobuki of Asakusa, Tokyo becomes Li Shao Yen of Huangcho, China and alters her costume to be all white without the Japan flag on her headband, while on the Europe setting, Makoto Kotobuki's Asakusa, Tokyo origin changes to Osaka, Japan, Sophia Rayleigh's London, England origin changes to São Paulo, Brazil and Karl Weiseman's Munich, Germany origin changes to London, England. This was a setting on the original board's test menu, but it's nice they remembered to include it anyway. As with Nebulasray, this is another non-3D, non-licensed double-price ACA game because this is beefier hardware than normal, running on Namco's NB-2 board (also the home of The Outfoxies) so please keep it in mind and don't make me tap the sign. Two minor complaints are that there's no Network Mode (maybe Hamster's saving it for something like Ridge Racer 2?) and that unlike Numan Athletics, the Hi-Score Mode no longer lets you pick a specific event to play, and you just do a full run of the game on one credit. If you want to pick out an event to play at your leisure, consider using the save state function to save on the event selection screens for each day, there's enough slots for all of them!
"Welcome, one and all, to the 765 Stadium, where we'll show you the best events! Yes, seven of the world's greatest Numans- humans with incredible strength and marvellous special powers- are gathered here for the next four days to compete in a staggering twelve events testing their speed, strength and cunning! We've got the traditional Maximum Speed event (blink and you'll miss it!), the ever-popular Monster Drag where our competitors drag a gigantic kaiju across town, Bomb's Away where we see how far they can throw a gigantic missile (please be sure to use the ear defenders under your seat if the missile blows up too early), the Rapid Jump across platforms in a live volcano which is my personal favourite (nothing like the smell of lava in the morning) and many more! Johnny Sanders of the USA, Makoto Kotobuki of Japan, Michael Fletcher of Jamaica, Sophia Rayleigh of England, Karl Weiseman of Germany, Masala Tikka Masala of India, and Long Rui Hu'An of China are all here to prove they've got what it takes to win in all twelve events and take on the mystery Numan waiting for them with one final challenge at the end! The first event is about to begin, are you ready? Here we go!!"
Here it is, the most important video game release of the week, nothing else is even close! Mach Breakers is the follow-up to one of my all-time favourite Namco arcade games, Numan Athletics, a take on the Track & Field style multi-event sports game where the twist is that superhuman athletes take part in outrageous events no humans could dream of being capable of. The first game got an Arcade Archives rerelease last year, and so the sequel now makes its home debut, and I couldn't be more pleased. This is an excellent game, a standout in its genre, with charming presentation (some of the failure animations are great, like the guy whose food stall keeps getting destroyed if you fail the Hyper Glider) and an imaginative and fun set of events to play through, with Rapid Jump, Monster Drag and Deep Dive being particular favourites, and if it seems I'm being a bit brief, it's because the game mostly speaks for itself, just take a look at a few events and you'll see why I love it so much. Back in 1995, this was definitely one of those arcade games that was too much for the SNES or Mega Drive to handle, but not something considered for the Playstation (Namco was all-in on 3D on that console after all) so it didn't get a contemporary home port, there's many arcade games from this era like that. Now, though, you can play the game at home, thirty years later- better late than never, eh?
Luckily for you (and me), I don't have to go too in-depth on this one, because I've done it before. Good work, Past Me! I've written about both Numan Athletics and Mach Breakers on my lil' website in the past, and while this article's quite a few years old now, it still stands up and hopefully gets across what I love about these games. I still lean towards the first one as my favourite (the aesthetc is just a bit more appealing to me, and the Beast Hole event in Mach Breakers is a bit worse than the equivalent on in Numan Athletics) but honestly, you can't go wrong with either of them if you want some button-mashing fun, especially if you can get some local play going with friends, and I'm just delighted that these games are now more accessible than ever. I think it says a lot that when I mentioned the game on Bluesky, a lot of the responses were "I've never even heard of this game, this looks like it kicks ass" and, well, that's what I like to see, introducing people to games they'd never even dreamed of.