Collection essentials #485 & #486: Mega Man Anniversary Collection (Xbox) and Mega Man X Collection (PS2)

In this console generation it started to become much more common for companies to release compilations of their older games. And boy, what a great opportunity this was for Capcom who had made so many Mega Man titles in the previous few console generations! 


The Mega Man Anniversary Collection first came out in 2004 (though this Xbox version didn’t until the following year) and contains the six NES Mega Man titles, Mega Man 7 which was originally on SNES, and Mega Man 8 ported from the PlayStation 1 version. They could have done a simple bare-bones release, but thankfully there are all kinds of things to sweeten the package. There are two bonus arcade games included, and special features (sorta like stuff you’d get on a DVD) which vary depending on which version of the game you have. And of course, you can save the game normally instead of relying on passwords, which is always great.


If that weren’t enough, the NES Mega Man games have optional features from the PlayStation 1 ports that were previously only released in Japan, and if you turn those on it changes the experience quite a bit and makes them more noob-friendly. For example there’s a rapid-fire button, you can increase your number of starting lives, and there are hints to tip you off on things that would be tough to deal with on the first go-around. And to sweeten the deal, there are remixed versions of most background music, and a lot of it sounds super awesome. Of course, all of these features are optional if you want to have an experience that’s faithful to the original releases.


The collection is not perfect. One of the biggest criticisms was the lack of customizable controls. This was particularly annoying for the GameCube release, because the “jump” and “shoot” buttons are flipped from what they were originally. In the Xbox version you can change them to a few different settings, but you can’t freely assign buttons as you wish and I’m not sure why. There are some minor things missing or different in the games themselves too, such as graphics missing from the ending credits sequence in Mega Man 7. The PS1 version of Mega Man 8 used for this release is objectively inferior to the Sega Saturn too, which had some extra content to boot which is missing here.


Mega Man X Collection came out in 2006, and was only on PlayStation 2 and GameCube. This contains the first six “Mega Man X” titles (remember, that’s the letter X and not a Roman numeral). It has the first two ported from the SNES, while the other four are ported from the PlayStation 1. This is notable because Mega Man X3 came out on both those consoles, but previously the PS1 port had only been released in Japan and Europe. I like that version a lot and I think it has awesome music, though the complete absence of the original SNES release is unfortunate as some fans do prefer it. Like with the Anniversary Collection, you can save your game without having to write down a password.


There isn’t as much bonus content for the X Collection unfortunately. But one cool extra is the one unlockable game, “Mega Man Battle & Chase”, a PlayStation kart racer that had only previously been released in Japan and Europe. I haven’t played nearly enough of that game to give my own opinion, but it’s great that it’s here regardless.


I picked up the pictured copy of the Anniversary Collection back in 2005 when the Xbox release was fairly new (I want to say it was at the Enfield Mall in Enfield, CT), and it was one of the first Mega Man games I ever owned. I was excited to get into the series, though I was rudely greeted by the frustration factor that the first two Mega Man games can bring, and I put down the series for years after that. I grabbed this copy of the X Collection in 2008, and similarly got frustrated with the first Mega Man X since I didn’t really know what I was doing. But after a while I revisited these games and learned to properly enjoy them. 


These games have been released in modern platforms across four compilations, so there are more-accessible ways to play these games now. However, these collections do have things to offer that these newer collections don’t, so if you have the consoles to play them then they’re certainly worth a look. For a fan of classic gaming like me, they are clearly essentials alongside the original games themselves.

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