2 depending on which collection was picked up, allowing players to go after all of the X-series bosses back-to-back in challenging two-on-one battles, complete with leaderboard rankings for bragging rights. Both games also feature the X Challenge, either Vol. Rounding out the new Mega Man X Legacy Collection packages is a huge variety of extra goodies: both games feature a Hunter Medals menu listing that offers up a number of special achievements for completing various tasks, like using all powered-up attacks for each weapons or for diving far enough into the game's Museum feature.
Players will also note that both collections include the new Rookie Hunter mode, which essentially drops the level of challenge by cutting all incoming damage in half, plus it prevents instant deaths from bottomless pits and spike traps in Mega Man X4 through X8. Though that pattern largely holds true with X7 and X8, players will note that the 3D-enabled segments of X7 do tend to break up the usual sidescrolling formula, and serve as one of the only weak points of Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2 - fortunately, the first Mega Man X Legacy Collection is nothing but two-dimensional, sprite-based goodness.
There's just something addictive about making careful progress through stages, seeking out power-ups, and organizing the downfall of evil robotic empires through specific use of imaginative weaponry - and the X games present that timeless style in a package that's better looking and far less challenging than previous 8-bit series releases.Īs might be expected, the standard Mega Man gameplay loop can be found in all of the newer X titles: players will start in an introductory stage only to be confronted by a powerful force, and will afterward be tasked with taking down eight different bosses set across eight different stages before taking on the marathon-style final stage and ultimate boss battle. Mega Man had been kicking around for six years before the X series ever made its debut, and in that time Capcom managed to find a perfect balance between shooting, platforming, weapons, upgrades, and overall difficulty, culminating in a gameplay formula that would eventually become widely emulated through decades of new releases. Timeless Sidescrolling Actionīy now it should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: Mega Man games, and in my mind Mega Man X games specifically, offer up some of the finest platforming action to be seen in their respective eras. Mega Man X7 and X8 in particular weren't very well-received at the time, mostly due to X7's wonky 3D implementation and X8's lackluster use of 2.5D effects, but the rest of the games offer largely-similar 2D experiences with gradually increasing fidelity and gameplay enhancements. The new Mega Man X Legacy collections follow the same pattern, except they represent the more modern X series of games that kicked off in 1993 and ran through 2004: Mega Man X Legacy Collection 1 contains Mega Man X, X2, X3, and X4, while the Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2 contains Mega Man X5, X6, X7, and X8.Īs such, deciding between the two collections will likely come down to which Mega Man X era players are most familiar with: the first X collection offers up to the first two SNES and PlayStation era releases, while the second X collection covers up to the final two PlayStation 2 era releases. I previously reviewed both Mega Man Legacy collections, and both wound up being excellent ways to relive the Blue Bomber's early history, starting with the first 1987 Mega Man release and running all the way through the 2010 release of Mega Man 10. Seeing as how the Mega Man series just celebrated its 30th anniversary, the crew at Capcom have been busy creating polished, modern collections featuring all of the series' biggest hits. Like the Mega Man Legacy Collections that came before them, these new collections are hands-down the best way to experience the X series' greatest moments, plus they're rounded out with a challenging new boss gauntlet gameplay mode and a considerable assortment of added bonuses.
Capcom knows this, and that's one of the reasons why they've blessed retro gaming fans with releases such as the Mega Man X Legacy Collections 1 and 2. It's kind of a shame, because some of gaming's best moments aren't found in last-generation titles, but instead in the retro releases that paved the way for modern gaming experiences. Re-releasing older video games in modern-era collections is something of a trend these days, but a lot of developers have been ignoring older releases in favor of touching up newer games with increased resolutions and higher-quality textures.