With the original Mega Man, (Rockman, ロックマン, ~Rokkuman) not meeting sales expectations, there was no plan for a follow up. It's mostly down to a single employee,Keiji Inafune, making Mega Man 2, largely on his own and in secret, during his spare time and staying late at the office that we now have so many titles in this infamous series. Known for their unforgiving but fair difficulty, which mostly consists of learning the level well enough to get through it with enough life left to kill the boss. Utilising well timed jumps, during platform sections, and learning enemy and boss patterns otherwise it's back to the start to try again. One of my favourite mechanic of the Mega Man Series is obtaining each of the stage bosses abilities, once they've been defeated. This will usually help out with another boss fight, in a rock, paper, scissors sort of way, each boss has a weakness to another bosses ability. The gameplay is kept simple and that's why these games still hold up today. You can jump or shoot.... Or jump and shoot. For those that praise Dark Souls for being hard and challenging and then cry like pussies when they can't make a jump. The Mega Man Collections have implemented a Rewind feature, allowing the player to go back and retake the jump they fumbled. To me, this defeats the point of playing Mega Man.
Legacy collection comprises of two parts.
Part One, holds the classic NES set of games:
Mega Man 1 - The one that started it all. Including the awful boxart.
Mega Man 2 - The one man passion project, that saved the series from laying dormant.
Mega Man 3 - The one fans argue is better than the second game.
Mega Man 4 - This is where it all starts going downhill.
Mega Man 5 - You can probably skip this one.
Mega Man 6 - No-one on the team, clearly, cared anymore.
Part Two comes in at a far larger storage size, accommodating for the more detailed sprite art, of the Snes and PSX era, and also the anime style FMV sequences.
Part Two contains the remaining:
Mega Man 7 - The first jump in the quality of sprite art. Shame about the game.
Mega Man 8 - A much improved attempt using the newer generation, with an anime style intro.
Mega Man 9 - Released in 2010, as a throwback to nostalgia, with a sudo 8-bit style, various homages and was surprisingly good.
Mega Man 10 - Was basically Capcom cashing in on the success of 9. 10 was rushed out just over a year later.
While it's nice to have these classics on a portable device, the Joy Cons lack of a real D-pad can make some of the more precise movement far more aggravating than it needs to be. Although, This is easily solved if you own a pricey Pro Controller. The Switch version also offers some additional content, hidden behind Nintendo's own notoriously evil version of microtransactions, known as Amiibo. Using the Mega Man Amiibo Legacy Collection One gives you all the Amiibo challenges from the 3DS version and Legacy collection Two you get a Stage Remix 3, for each 7, 8, 9 and 10.
Having been out on PS4 for a while now, it's usually in the PS Store sale and available for a much lower price... but the Mega Man Collections are still better use of your time and money than buying Mighty No. 9! Mega Man 11 is due October 2nd.
★★★★☆
Bry Wyatt
Mega Man at CeX
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