Mega Man Anniversary Collection Review

In Mega Man 7 and 8, you also find bolts when killing ennemies. Those bolts are used to upgrade Mega Man and make him stronger throughout the game. You spend those bolts on whatever you like when you are between 2 stages and it can help you by making the game a little bit easier. Something that was also really nice in Mega Man 7 is the fact that you can use certain weapons on walls or other machines in order to activate, for example, elevators or to reveal secret areas. There were also letters to find in order to spell a word and get some more stuff, and you could go back in stages you had already completed if you had missed them the first time.

Even though all of the Mega man games are classics, I still think that the more they made, the less original they were as it seems like the bosses in the later games weren’t really original compared to those in the first Mega Man games. Off course, there’s always at least one that you’ll remember, like Pharaoh Man from Mega Man 4, but it’s like the rest of the bosses in that game really sucked and you didn’t really care about them. It was still fun to play though, but not as fun as the first Mega Man, or, my favorite, Mega Man 2.

For this compilation though, they’ve added 2 Mega Man arcade games that were only released in Japan. You have to unlock them first in order to play them, and even though they don’t last very long, they are still fun and are a nice addition since most of us didn’t really know about them. They are Mega Man: The Power Battle and Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters. As you probably guessed, they are fighting games featuring characters from the Mega Man universe as well as bosses from all the games. Everything that applied to the other games also apply for this one. That means that when you defeat a boss you get to use his ability, every boss has a weakness, and at the end you have to fight with doctor Willy. So you go from stage to stage and you fight every boss in order to save your friends and, of course, save the world.

Since these are all really old games, except maybe for the SNES and PS games, the graphics are exactly the same as they were in the 80s and early 90s. It might turn some gamers off, and it could have been cool if they had updated the graphics. But the most important thing about those games was the incredible gameplay they offered, and that hasn’t changed one bit, so you’ll get as much fun as you’d get with any newer games that uses the latest technology. Like I said, when you play on normal difficulty, it offers an incredible challenge. It also seems like they hit a peak with the last Mega Man games on the NES, and then it became easier afterwards. Some bosses really require some skills, while some you can nearly run after them and fire away.

The music also hasn’t been changed. On the PS2 version, you get the choice to use remixed music, but on the GC version you only have the original music because there wasn’t enough space to fit it on the disc. Still, if you are nostalgic like me, you’ll only want to play with the original music anyway, and if I still remember some of the songs more than 10 years later, it’s probably because they were extremely good! Some of the music on the 7th and 8th game sound more kiddy, but if you go back to another one like Mega man 2, you’ll see that they were able to do some amazing stuff, even with only the NES hardware.

Since it doesn’t cost really much and features 10 wonderful games as well as some picture galleries, a few remixed tunes and interviews, I think that people should buy this compilation. Wether you are nostalgic or not, there’s no way you won’t like playing any of those games. It still offers a good challenge and with 10 games, it’ll last for some time. If you don’t believe me than rent it first, but I assure you, you’ll be hooked on those games for the next few weeks!