@goodbot16 are vertical lifebars possible? The answer is yes, but only feasible within a full game setting. To do this would require first disabling the Lifebar (in doing this it will disable all power/life bars).
Mugen can do all sorts of things most people don't even know about. Look at Electr0's interactive mugen, or armin_iuf's Dino Crisis, Streets of Rage Stage 6, and Omegapsycho's boss characters, etc.
Code:
[Statedef -2]
[State -2, AssertSpecial]
type = AssertSpecial
trigger1 = 1
ignorehitpause = 1
flag = NoBarDisplay
Code snippet from Sheng Long on MFG. He has one of his 8-bit mega man characters (sorry not too sure what character) with a vertical life/power bar. I'm sure you could reference that character.
Then you would have to code your own life/power bars in every character.
Here is the thread at the guild about this:
code-http://mugenguild.com/forum/topics/character-use-its-own-lifebar-170141.0.html