Megaman Anniversary Edition

Game companies that have been around for a long time have, in the past, released collections of old games. We've had good ones that come with a lot of old games designed to get high on nostalgia (namely the Atari Collections), we've had bad ones (Midway's collections), we've even had some people *cough*Nintendo*cough* try and get as much money as possible by releasing these games seperately at a high price. Most of these games are overly simple and only good at either bringing back memories or killing five minutes. Not Mega Man Anniversary Collection. The games here proudly stand the test of time and are more than worth playing through, especially at the bargain price you're getting them at.

MMAC consists of the eight Mega Man games. The first six are from the NES, 7 from the SNES and 8 from the Playstation. Each game pits gamers as the Blue one himself, playing through various levels of seemingly basic shooting action. From the top, you choose which level to play through (and thus, which robot boss to tackle). After a level of enemy shooting and platform jumping, you'll fight a themed robot boss (Ice Man, Cut Man, etc) and should you win, you earn a new weapon. The key is that each boss has a weakness to a different weapon earned from another boss that makes the fight that much easier (mind you, this is optional, you can always prove how good you are by beating them all with your standard weapon) After you beat all the robot bosses, you process to a series of stages based in evil Dr Wily's current evil residence of choice before defeating the mad scientist once and for all. All of the game's follow this same formula, and subsecquent games would add various abilities and features, like the chargable Mega Buster and Rush, the dog that changes into various vehicles. The NES games all look the same, while the SNES and PS1 versions would get graphical updates (with Mega Man 8 even getting anime cutscenes)

The games are all ported perfectly, or at least close enough to satisfy fans. Glitches, like the pause glitch that made the first game so easy, are gone, though slowdown is still intact (that's more of a good thing in this case) You need not bother with writing down complex passwords anymore as now the games have an auto-save feature. The other changes are strictly optional; you can now determine how many lives you start the game with, and you can use L and R to scroll between weapons in all the games. Finally, the triangle button is now designated as a rapid-fire button. One that you don't have to use though.

There's a decent amount of unlockable goods in MMAC, mostly consisting of music tracks for those that are into that sort of thing. You can unlock two Mega Man arcade games that were never released here. They just consist of you fighting bosses and neither are particularly outstanding, but that's not why you bought this game. Finally, the PS1 version has the first episode of the Mega Man cartoon, which is a real treat.

Realistically, someone who knows what they're doing can beat a Mega Man game in a few hours. The thing is that there's eight of them here and they are all very good and worth your while. Throw in the game's low price of $40 ($30 American) and you have a fantastic game that's more than worth getting, both as a nostalgic tribute and a great game on it's own right.