Known as "Power Instinct" in English territories, this one-on-one fighting game by Atlus was just about acceptable in the arcades. It was never a huge hit like Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Kombat but enjoyed as much coin-dropping as the Fatal Fury games. The characters are stock and forgettable (Keith Wayne is basically a palette-swap of Axel Stone from Streets of Rage), the backgrounds are generic and bland, the music is passable as energetic noise, and the fighting never really extends beyond four different moves. A rather lazy attempt. The only thing that makes it stand out from the rest is the ability to break through the left and right side of the screen to a wider fighting platform by smashing wooden boxes or a pile of tyres.
For it's 16-BIT little brother the arcade version had to make some compromises and I'm sorry to say that the Mega Drive port of Power Instinct, by Atlus themselves, is pretty crappy all round. Released in November 1994, after the more famous fighting games had already made their name on home consoles. Power Instinct seemingly makes no attempt to copy their success and makes do with smaller sprites, bad sound effects, and no attempt to improve the inherited shortcomings. The poor sound in particular is a letdown as the driver is a modified SMPS Z80, which has provided superior sound quality for several Mega Drive games. This was clearly just a rush-job and a cash-grab and it was never released outside of Japan. An arcade sequel was made, but this is not a franchise that took off.
Don't let the inflated price tag fool you into thinking that this game is some kind of rare, hidden treasure. It's really not.
Arcade version 2.5/5
Mega Drive version 1/5