Tag Archives: collection

Mega Man X Legacy Collection — Issue 47

Posted on by

A good start to a long-last­ing legacy

I’m a huge Mega Man fan. It start­ed with the orig­i­nal series and evolved to include the X series. Fear­less GI leader Lyn­d­sey gift­ed me a trea­sure trove of Mega Man X games wor­thy of Cap­com’s next gen­er­a­tion blue titan, and Mega Man X Lega­cy Col­lec­tion has risen to the top of the pile.

The first disc of Lega­cy Col­lec­tion cov­ers the first four MMX games that were released for the SNES and PSOne. In these games, you con­trol our favorite hero in blue or his lat­er part­ner Zero in their quest to achieve peace in the future. Each game has a dif­fer­ent sto­ry that builds on the pre­vi­ous game, but over­all X and Zero are the stars of the show with var­i­ous ver­sions of long­time antag­o­nist Sig­ma attempt­ing to achieve world dom­i­na­tion. Each of the first four games has var­i­ous boss­es X or Zero faces with the suc­cess­ful result of gain­ing the boss’ weapon or skill that can be used for var­i­ous lev­els. X has a slight advan­tage in the game by using hid­den upgrade cham­bers designed by the late Dr. Light that increas­es fire­pow­er, speed and protection. 

The val­ue of the first disc is per­fect for fans or those begin­ning the X series and increas­es with the ani­me-inspired designs of heroes and vil­lains, which encour­ages replay of all the col­lec­tion’s games. This first disc also has a lot of inter­est­ing ele­ments that include pre­sent­ing 16-bit and ani­me-style inter­mis­sion screens that were includ­ed when the games were orig­i­nal­ly released. Cap­com also intro­duced a high-res­o­lu­tion fil­ter, giv­ing the game’s graph­ics a stream­lined yet col­or­ful approach and a unique box frame for each game. A music play­er con­tain­ing all the music from the orig­i­nal games also rounds out the pre­sen­ta­tion extras, which were nice. 

One of the oth­er cool addi­tions is the X Chal­lenge, which pits you against two leg­endary boss­es of the series while choos­ing three weapons to use. This requires some fore­thought and under­stand­ing of the series’ mechan­ics, which is a wel­come change of pace when you want some­thing dif­fer­ent from the sto­ry modes. I also thought that the art gallery and the ani­mat­ed movie focus­ing on Sig­ma was a nice touch. 

The only crit­i­cism I had of the col­lec­tion is with some of the oth­er extras. Cap­com decid­ed to show off nev­er-before-seen Mega Man X col­lectibles that were only avail­able in Japan. Cap­com nev­er did license these out­side of Japan, mak­ing fans like me curse them for their dense busi­ness prac­tices. Because, real­ly, why would you tease oth­er regions with this, know­ing Mega Man is glob­al? It just seems like anoth­er slap in the face where Mega Man is concerned. 

Mega Man X Lega­cy Col­lec­tion is a great trib­ute to the X series. Despite my hang-ups with Cap­com, this is a great love let­ter to Mega Man X fans and can be a tem­plate to con­tin­ue the sto­ry of X and company.

Final Fantasy Anthology — Issue 42

Posted on by

Reach­ing a new audience

Chances are, if you’re think­ing about buy­ing this retro pack­age of Final Fan­ta­sy, you’ve already played at least one of the two games includ­ed. So, why buy this? Because the pack­ag­ing is the draw, and it’s a must-own if you like the Final Fan­ta­sy series.
Let’s start with the obvi­ous: Final Fan­ta­sy Anthol­o­gy does not have a lot of Final Fan­ta­sy games includ­ed. Two clas­sics with inter­est­ing and sto­ried back­grounds are here: Final Fan­ta­sy V and Final Fan­ta­sy VI. Until this release, Final Fan­ta­sy V had nev­er been trans­lat­ed and released in the U.S because it was deemed too hard for the mar­ket. Final Fan­ta­sy VI was released in the U.S. as Final Fan­ta­sy III. It was a crit­i­cal dar­ling in both mar­kets and is wide­ly regard­ed as one of the best retro-era Final Fan­ta­sy games and role-play­ing games ever. So, Square Enix putting these two games togeth­er in a pack­age would kill two birds with one stone: Good sales — near­ly a mil­lion copies sold — and intro­duc­tion of a “lost” game to the bare­ly tapped mar­ket. Square Enix suc­ceed­ed on both fronts.
Released in the U.S. and PAL regions, FF Anthol­o­gy fea­tures FFV and FFVI in full with new CG intro­duc­tion movies for both games. Although we have reviewed FFV pre­vi­ous­ly (see 2Q2010 issue), we have nev­er reviewed FFVI. Just know, how­ev­er, that both games are fan­tas­tic, with FFV as our choice to play in the pack­age. Both games have a deep sto­ry with mem­o­rable char­ac­ters that you come to know and love by the end of your adven­ture, and beau­ti­ful graph­ics and stun­ning sound­tracks. It’s a tes­ta­ment to the strong sto­ry­telling found in the retro FF era, and the pack­age is bet­ter for includ­ing these two games particularly.
Round­ing out the pack­age is the oth­er high­light: The includ­ed bonus sound­track CD. The sound­track fea­tures 22 of the best tracks from both games, with our favorites com­ing from the FFV por­tion. FFVI does have some bangers, also, so the sound­track is great addi­tion all around. 
What you should care about — and why you should buy this pack­age — is the fact that you’re get­ting the best of the 2D Final Fan­ta­sy games. Add in that sound­track CD, which is like a gate­way to FF music, and you have a good deal with in-depth game­play to boot. This is Square Enix at its best before it embraced the 3D era for its flag­ship role-play­ing series.