MEGA MAN LEGACY COLLECTION

PS4/XBO/3DS/PC

Mega Man Legacy has a bit of a rough history. The announcement of this compilation was met with controversy namely because the lack of Wii U support and the lack of Mega Man 7 and 8 (which were present in Mega Man Anniversary back in 2004). Along with that, this compilation was seen as a cheap cash grab by Capcom, a way to make more money off of Mega Man by just repackaging the old games, especially since there has been a new Mega Man game since 2010. Despite the pre-release controversy, Mega Man Legacy is offered a decent value and a good amount of effort was put into bringing these classic games on modern systems.

For $15 you get the six NES Mega Man games, a challenge mode, and leaderboards, along with some minor features such as a museum, database, and music player. Buying these games separately on the Virtual Console would cost you double the price in total and have less content. While that is all good, Mega Man Legacy pales in comparison to other compilations including Capcom's own Mega Man Anniversary (2004) which released with two more games (plus two arcade games and other extra content depending on the console), the Navi mode from the Playstation re-releases, art, and music, all for $20 at the time. Overall it’s a decent value, Legacy has less games (although the challenge mode compensates for that to a certain extent) but it also cheaper than Anniversary Collection.

The games themselves run great, in the sense that they run how they did on the NES, meaning that the sprite flicker and slowdown is all there. That might seem like a complaint but considering the purpose behind this collection is to create faithful recreations of the NES games, it makes sense. Personally I would like for compilations (unless they are noted to be remasters or remakes) to run games exactly how they did on the original hardware so I applaud Digital Eclipse   for their effort here. This contrasts with Anniversary Collection which is not entirely faithful to the originals and suffers a few technical bugs such as with the audio.

I do have to say that the inclusion of turbo-fire and save states are a little questionable. Unless you had a controller such as the NES Max back in the day, there was no way to use turbo-fire so it's a bit of an odd inclusion. It is available in the challenge mode which makes certain challenges easier for better or for worse.

Save states suffer from a similar problem. The advantages being that the player can save and quit at any time, passwords do not have to be memorized, and it makes the games easier and therefore more accessible. However save states render checkpoints, lives, and to a certain extent E-Tanks, meaningless because it reduces the challenge and punishment for a player doing poorly. In all fairness, all other major collections have save states so I cannot blame DE/Capcom too much for this decision and it's not detrimental to the experience as a whole but I would recommend on avoiding save states during the first playthrough.

The image quality is great; the sprites are all crisp and clean, and Mega Man looks better than ever on my monitor. There are some other optional aesthetic features such as TV/monitor scan lines, an illustrated border, and a “widescreen” feature (which I would recommend against because it stretches the image instead of widening the view). At least most if not all of the glitches and bugs present in the original versions are also present here which is a nice touch.

Mega Man Legacy also fixes two issues that Anniversary Collection has, Legacy has fully customisable controls (which was a rather frustrating issue of the Gamecube version of Anniversary since the fire and jump buttons were reversed) and input lag does not seem to be a problem.

As mentioned before, the game features a challenge mode. The challenges vary from boss rushes, mashups, and megamixes from all six games. The challenges bring you right into the heat of the action and can be very addicting especially because you are competing with other players on the leaderboards. It's a lot of fun and if you ever need a reason to come back to Legacy after finishing all the games, the challenge is that. There is also the music player and museum. Not much to say about them but they work well.

Finally the database functions like a mini-wiki. It gives a brief description about all the robots in the game and shows some stats such as attack points and enemy weaknesses. It's a nice touch that such vital information is so accessible.

Overall Mega Man Legacy is a pretty decent collection. It plays as advertised, it's offered at a fair price point and the challenge mode is great. Legacy falls a bit short compared to Anniversary Collection, since the latter has more games, but Legacy is a more polished experience overall, I would rather play Mega Man 1-6 here than on Anniversary Collection and Legacy is more accessible since it’s available right now on most online stores while Anniversary has been out of print for years. If anyone is looking to get into the Classic Mega Man series or just looking for some classic platforming action, I think Legacy will suit you well.

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Side Note:

This review was done using the Steam version of the game. I have to note that I had a number of technical problems with the game such as refusing to boot, problems which continue to the time of this review. Most of the issues are easily fixed by running the game in compatibility mode or deleting some files but I disappointed that issues exist in the first place, so until these issues are fixed, I would avoid the Steam version.

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Thank you guys for reading, this is my first time writing a review for anything so I hope you enjoyed the review but I appreciate all feedback so I can improve for future reviews

I definitely like Legacy Collection, and while I do wish it also had 7-10, the first 6 games will definitely hold someone over for a good amount of time.

I like the video options as well, including the different screen filters, and the ability to have borders.

I'd like a new Mega Man game sometime, but this is a nice distraction.

I have it and I love it, as you say it feels really polish, it has a good amount of content for the price, challenge mode is addictive and there is no better way to play this games nowaday. Capcom didn´t fuck it up this time. And is really amazing how well this games have aged, they are really fun to play (except the first one...)

If only Legacy had Mega Man 7-10! Oh well, I will probably get it sooner or later since I don't have the Anniversary collection anymore.

I just gonna assume that Capcom just doesn't remember that they made more mega man games.. It hard to remember them all when you are kicking mega man in the garbage bin..

Yeah Mega Man 1 is a bit of a rough one, main problem I've always had with it is the slippery controls.

"Personally I would like for compilations (unless they are noted to be remasters or remakes) to run games exactly how they did on the original hardware..."

Same here! I already own the Anniversary Collection, but I might have to invest in this compilation also, as it seems like these games are true reproductions of the original NES titles.

Great review, Blue!

Not a bad first review. Not "omg amazing", but certainly not bad. My suggestions:

1. Proofread a bit more. You have various grammatical errors that can make the review awkward to read. My suggestion is reading through the review, speaking it out loud to yourself. It's a tried and true trick for writing essays in school, and it helps you to see where your grammar has fallen short.

2. Have somebody else proofread the piece. It is seriously valuable having somebody else read through and proof your piece. Preferably the person who does this is someone you know to have writing ability beyond your own so that they're able to point out areas of improvement, make general fixes, and otherwise.

3. Italicize the game names. It helps the game name to standout, and it's relatively proper to do so.

4. Use screenshots. Screenshots, strategically placed, add length to a review, as well as giving examples of the content you describe. I personally aim for around four or five screenshots in any one review depending on length, as that tends to be enough to make any one area of text look more easily digested.

5. Avoid excessive use of parentheses. Often times in general, people use parentheses when it really isn't necessary. If you're shoving an entire sentence in parentheses, or most of one, then just make it a sentence in the paragraph. Parentheses should be used sparingly only for small amounts of information, which is good to remember for any writing.

6. This one you did okay on, but try to keep paragraphs small. That doesn't mean less content on a subject, but rather, just separating it more. Often times, a big block of a paragraph can easily be split in half at a given point to make two paragraphs, and it ultimately makes the writing more tempting for people, as they perceive smaller, two to four line paragraphs as easier to digest.

7. I didn't do a word count here, but in general, try for around 1000 to 1200 words. That is usually fairly adequate for explaining everything worth explaining in substantial enough detail to leave readers satisfied. More is okay, but less runs the risk of a review seeming short and lacking. Depending on the number of words, four to five screenshots may need to become more. I find that one about every 200 words is adequate.

If you need some reason to take my tips seriously, I've been writing news and reviews for money now for about two months, and have been praised by accomplished writers that I personally see as much better than myself for my writing ability. Overall, even I'm a little bit impressed with my rate of improvement, and my reviews have been consistently well received. It's a lot of fun seeing improvement in your own writing, and I encourage you to keep on writing so that you can feel the same sense of accomplishment in seeing how far you can go.

Thanks for the tips! You brought up a lot of good points and I reall appreciate the feedback. I'll be keeping this all in mind for future pieces.