In fact, they’re some of the hardest Mega Man games ever made.
Mega Man 7 is the weakest game of the bunch.
A second collection of Mega Man games is out today, this time including Mega Men 7 through 10. Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 also offers a CRT filter mode, a variety of background art, and completely customizable controller options. While the four remaining games in this collection aren’t often talked about as much as the entries before it, Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 serves as a reminder that these games are a worthy part of Mega Man’s history.
Fortunately, Mega Man 10 somewhat redeems the collection as a textbook example of how to create unpredictable challenges with a familiar foundation.
Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10 were originally released as downloadable titles in 2008 and 2010 respectively.
When Mega Man 7 came out on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1995, it had the unfortunate luck of following Mega Man X on the same console. It adds an easy mode to help you learn the levels, and the bosses are the looniest bunch yet: Sheep Man fortifies his domain with evil mouse pointers and Pump Man pumps his own pump (his head, thankfully).
This series has always been reserved for gamers who are a cross between masochists and perfectionists. As a callback to the NES titles before them, Mega Man 9 and 10 return the series to its 8-bit roots. That’s why it was an excellent design choice to not include save states in this collection. Each stage has two checkpoints: one in the middle of the stage and one at the boss gate. While the enlarged character sprites may take some getting used to, most will find that Mega Man 7 doesn’t play all that different from any other Mega Man game.
But if Mega Man 10 functions (for now) as an acceptable swansong for the series, it’s merely clever for a Mega Man sequel. The museum is back with high-res sprites of almost every enemy from every game, plus the ability to listen to each game’s soundtrack. I’m told I’m a monster for preferring my 8-bit graphics stretched graphics to fill a 16-9 television, but that’s the beauty of choice! It only has four games instead of the six classics for the original collection, and this lineup of games isn’t as beloved as “Mega Man 1″ through “6”. It doesn’t up the ante on the dynamism of the series like Mega Man 3 did with its faster screen-to-screen transitions and emphasis on evasion, nor does it reimagine the primary method of defeating enemies like the Mega Man series’s spiritual successor Mighty No. 9, where, for the best benefits, the player dashes into enemies and absorbs them rather than shooting them to death. These collections are designed for the most serious of “Mega Man” fans, and those fans will be pleased with what’s here. The latter kicked the Mega Man model into overdrive, introducing adrenaline-pumping acrobatics like wall-scaling and dash-jumping.