My Mega Man Collection

Today I realized that I spend way too much money on video games.

This is my own personal Mega Man Anniversary collection. Every single one of these games is included on the Playstation 2 disc in the lower right-hand corner.

Even though I already own all of the games in the collection, I still see the Mega Man Collection as a must have. It's well worth $30 to have the convenience of playing all of the old Mega Man games without busting out my Japanese PS2, my PocketStation, Saturn, SNES, Neo Geo Pocket, and a pencil and a pad of paper to write down all of the passwords. I also can't resist things like remixed soundtracks, updated life bars, and less pixilated sprites running in a higher resolution - all of which are present in the Anniversary collection. I thought I would like these upgrades more than I actually do though. After playing the game a bit, I feel like these changes take away from the whole nostalgic part of the package. I still appreciate having the upgrades because they give another reason to play through the games, but a small part of the ol' 8-bit charm is undeniably missing.

Reading everyone's reviews and impressions I also have issues with what it seems most people say is the best Mega Man game. For me, Mega Man 7 was the pinnacle of the series. The larger, more colorful Mega Man sprites are much closer to what I imagined the abstract sprites of the 8-bit version to look like than the slightly more realistic proportions of Mega Man 8. The game's balance also has a much more natural curve and plays with a greater focus on gaming skills than level memorization than the earlier Mega Man games do.

The only thing that drags down Mega Man 7 is the unnecessary story text that does more to break people's previous vision of the world than to flesh it out. At the beginning of the game there is a scene where a helper robot hands the helmetless Mega Man a construction helmet, then Roll points out that Mega Man is wearing the wrong helmet and they throw it aside, replacing it with the classic blue helmet. Every time I start a new game and get confronted with this I tap through the text, groaning to myself and wondering why the designers decided to waste time on a bad joke at the beginning instead of putting you right into the action.

Any points that need to be docked from Mega Man 7 because of the terrible story are made up for by the existence of a secret code in Shademan's stage. In the SNES version, holding B when you select Shademan from the menu would turn the usual Shademan music into the Ghouls and Ghosts theme! I haven't tried the equivalent in the PS2 version yet, but if they remixed the Ghouls and Ghosts theme just for a code that not many people know about I'll go ahead and buy the Gamecube version too.

Besides, one more Mega Man game in the collection couldn't hurt, could it?