Mach Breakers Numan Athletics 2 Arcade Archives Sophia Playthrough & Extra Stage on PlayStation 4

Sophia longplay, playthrough, walkthrough, gameplay, attract & guide, complete with the extra race against Sharon L'Alles from the first Numan Athletics game. In order to race against Sharon, you have to clear all the events without skipping any and come 1st in the overall ranking. The original Numan Athletics never did that well in arcades by all accounts and it is somewhat surprising that it got a sequel. Which might explain why the subtitle Numan Athletics 2 got dropped for the English version. Even if all the characters from the first game cameo in it, either as a background statue in the Future Gate event or the exhibition race directly against Sharon, who is the canon winner of the first tournament.

Mach Breakers is a better game in all areas, but suffers from the same flaw as the original, which is the difficulty gets to hard, too quickly and the game continues the credit guzzler theme of the first title.

It's a pity Namco didn't learn from their mistakes, but the lack of retires for events, is just miserly. Added to that each character has different strengths and weaknesses. Which mean if you pick events in the wrong order you can totally shaft yourself, pick Bomb's Away the missile catch and throw event last on the 3rd day as a weaker characters and even a turbo function isn't going to save you.

It's easy to see why both games never did that well and were rare to find in arcade. Namco didn't do themselves any favours by not porting the game to home systems either. A combined pack of both games on PlayStation or SEGA Saturn might well have done well. As it stands Mach Breakers has excellent, sound, co-op graphics, gameplay and music. One best played with friends and not against the CPU. It captures the humour and spirit of the first game as well.

It seen Namco never heard of the expression "once bitten, twice shy" as they should have noted the flaws with the first game and fixed them. If the difficulty was better balanced, this would be on par with SEGA's Decathlete / Athlete Kings and Konami's Track & Field.

Note the game seems to have released in 1995, based on the arcade flyer information and Hamster's & Namco records. The Japanese version of the arcade has a 1994 copyright, but we suspect this was a late 1994 title that got pushed into 1995, as the Japanese flyer has a 1995 date. However as with pretty much every arcade game going the exact release date seems lost to time.

Time Stamp & Chapter Details:
00:00 Game Details & Intro
01:14 Event 1 Maximum Speed
02:52 Event 2 Ice Crusher
04:42 Event 3 Hyper Glider
06:34 Event 4 Monster Drag
08:32 Event 5 Super Stunt
10:07 Event 6 Future Gate
11:49 Event 7 Bomb's Away
13:35 Event 8 Beast Hole
15:32 Event 9 Rapid Jump
17:02 Event 10 Deep Diver
19:44 Event 11 Block Buster
21:05 Event 12 Ground Spike
22:30 Exhibition Stage
23:42 Ending & Credits
27:05 Full attract with athlete bibliographies

Also known as: マッハブレイカーズニューマンアスレチックス2 (Japan) Mach Breakers (Rest of World)

Release: 2025 (Arcade 1995 by Namco)
Developer: Namco / 株式会社ナムコ (Emulation by Hamster)
Publisher: Hamster / ハムスター
Genre: Track & Field / Sport
Players: 1 - 4
Version Shown: PAL
Format: PlayStation 4 / プレイステーション4 (PS4)

Mach Breakers Numan Athletics 2 is available on Nintendo Switch 1 & 2, PlayStation 4 & 5 and Xbox One & Series. Also on phones which support, iOS & Android

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Footage is captured directly from a PlayStation 4 via HDMI for all games, using an Elgato Pro HD60 capture card. Upscaled to UHD 4K to improve the video bit rate, watch in HD or UHD for best video playback on YouTube.

#MachBreakers # NumanAthletics2 #Namco