In case you’ve just gotten into gaming or have suddenly come out of a coma you were in since 1992—if it’s the latter welcome back you’ve got a lot to catch up on—now's your chance to play some games from one of gaming's greatest series. Mega Man is one of the greatest video games series of all time, where you play as the aforementioned Mega Man jumping and shooting his arm cannon at various enemies, trying to survive. The original games feature The Blue Bomber side-scrolling his way through a wide variety of levels and defeating powerful robot bosses and taking their powers to beat the game.
The Mega Man Legacy Collection puts all six NES Mega Man games together in one place. This collection is intended to be as faithful as possible to how the original games played. This is why the collection is just Mega Man one through six, and the Mega Man Legacy Collection definitely delivers, right down to being able to apply filters to replicate the effect of old television sets and computer monitors to the game. You can also change the screen size and add a neat little border if you don’t go full screen. Also you can save your game at any point during a level and come back to it later.
The games control very faithfully to the originals to a certain extent, but the controls can feel a bit odd if you’re using the controller sticks instead of the d-pad. There are some frame rate/stuttering issues as well when there are a lot of enemies on screen; hopefully this will be addressed through a patch, but until then it is a small issue.
However, the Mega Man Legacy Collection isn’t simply a port of the first six games. Digital Eclipse Software and Capcom have added a great collection of bonus content to make it more than a simple port. For each of the Mega Man games there is a Database and Museum section. The Database shows all the enemies from that game, how much health they have, their attack, and their weaknesses. The Database section for each Mega Man game also lets you jump into a battle with any of the bosses to get some practice in. The Museum section shows concept art, packaging illustrations, character files, unused bosses, and more. There is also a music player that features each of the original soundtracks from the six games. These sections are pretty interesting, especially the unused bosses to see what could have been.
The biggest and most fun addition by far is the Challenges section. It features level remixes, from boss rushes, special boss fights, to Wiley battles, and more. Each have three levels of completion: bronze, silver, and gold. There are 54 so there are plenty to keep you busy, not even taking into account the fact that some are pretty damn difficult. And with the Leaderboards for each challenge you’ll be able to check how good (or bad) you did compared to everyone else.
Overall, the Mega Man Legacy Collection is a great addition to a Mega Man fan's library, or a great way to finally play the classic Mega Man games if you haven’t already. The minor frame rate problems could be an issue if they don’t try to fix it at some point, but it doesn’t detract too much from the collection as a whole. Each game has been remade as faithfully as possible to keep the spirit of Mega Man alive, and the added bonus content and challenges make it more than a well-done port, allowing you to put a lot of time into this collection.
Right now I’m ranked 11th for my 00:17:68 run on Mecha Dragon, see if you can beat me.
This game was obtained from Capcom and reviewed on the Xbox One platform
Review Summary
Overall, the Mega Man Legacy Collection is a great addition to a Mega Man fan's library, or a great way to finally play the classic Mega Man games if you haven’t already.