Almost nine months to the day after Mega Man Anniversary Collection made it to the PS2 and GameCube platforms, the battling-blue robot that started his career on the Nintendo Entertainment System comes to retro gaming fans playing on the Xbox. It was a significant wait, but Capcom gave Xbox players a $10 break in the price for being patient. And while it is an impressive compilation of one of the most popular game franchises to grace the NES, SNES, PlayStation and arcade, it still sports some of the same shortcomings its PS2 and GameCube counterparts had.
As is usual when I review a compilation of old titles, the ground rules are that I am not going to critique the actual Mega Man games that are on the disc. The games were made in a different time when gaming hardware was much less powerful than it is today. It is like comparing muskets to machineguns. We cannot really stack them up against each other. What will be considered is the choice of games, the faithfulness of their reproduction on the modern system, control with modern input devices, and any extras that may have been included.
The original Mega Man games featured a blue robot character, designed by Capcom’s Keiji Inafune, that fights the minions of his arch nemesis, Dr. Wily. These enemies take the form of strange robots. Unlike so many linear games of the time, the player could send Mega Man into battle against Dr. Wily’s robots in any order he wanted. After working his way through the level and defeating the boss robot, Mega Man got that boss’ weapon to use in later battles. Some weapons were better against certain bosses than others, so it became an exercise in learning which weapons to get first to take down all the bosses most effectively.
There are 10 games on the Mega Man Anniversary Collection disc. The eight main games represent the 2D roots of the franchise and are for the fans of the franchise who remember it back to its beginnings in 1987. Of these eight games, six are from the NES era, one from the SNES and one originally appearing on the PlayStation. Two more unlockable games are Mega Man outings that appeared in the arcades – only one of which made it to the USA in very limited numbers. Those looking for the Mega Man X games will have to search elsewhere. The ones that are included here are the perfect mix for letting players see what made Mega Man such an enduring franchise back in the day.
Emulation of the games on the Xbox is every bit as excellent as it was on the PlayStation and GameCube. If the player is a purist, the games can be played almost one-hundred-percent faithfully to the originals. Capcom also thoughtfully made it possible to add improvements to gameplay that appeared in Mega Man 8 to make playing easier in the earlier titles. The “Navi mode” gives the player an on-screen display of game and directional information. This mode can be turned off in the earlier games for authenticity. Full points for game emulation.
Control was fairly simple in the Mega Man games: a directional pad and two buttons to jump and shoot for the most part. Dedicated buttons for sliding and autofire are also assigned in this version. The good folks at Capcom thoughtfully gave gamers a choice of four different configurations for controlling the games. For my money the default Xbox controller settings work very well and are adequately responsive. Full points for game control.
The extras are where Mega Man Anniversary Collection is still a disappointment. I complained about this on the previous versions and the shortcomings are still here. There are numerous good-quality extras on the disc that chronicle Mega Man’s history, but they are locked up in a “secrets” area that can only be reached by playing through the games. One of the great things about these compilations of classic games is that today’s gamer gets to learn about the historically significant games and franchises of the past. If companies are going to lock up the historical information, they’ve missed a big part of the point to these compilations. On the plus-side, Capcom did put both of the previously-platform-exclusive extras on the Xbox disc. Sorry though, it is not enough. In my book the locked historical extras are a big shortcoming in the disc.
Capcom still touts Mega Man Anniversary Collection as a celebration of the 15th anniversary of Mega Man. In reality it had been 17 years when the other versions were released; it is 18 now. So we have an increasingly incorrect anniversary celebration. That does not change the fact that if you played the Mega Man games on your dearly-departed NES and want to give them another spin for old times sake, this is the compilation you’ve been looking for. For those looking for insight into the franchise, you’re only going to be half satisfied. The games are here to experience but, since they are not up to modern quality, you’ll probably not want to play them through. That means the great extra content will remain locked and the package will offer no historical insights until a code becomes available to allow the extras to be examined. A terrific collection of games from a very influential (though now grossly over-exposed) franchise that none the less fails as a full-featured compilation.
