Not bad...

[A Black Falcon]

One thing I forgot to mention is that MM8 has better graphics on Saturn than on Gamecube. I compared them, and the GC collection looks much jaggier -- everything looks much more pixelated and ugly. On Saturn, the picture quality is better. There's a real difference. Also, the Saturn version doesn't have that weird border that the GC collection does, so it's actually fullscreen. Even aside of the other extras (and I did find Wood Man, though not Cut Man yet; I'll have to go find him), the game's more fun with the Saturn controller and these better-looking visuals, I think. :)

It's really fashionable these days to say "Megaman isn't Megaman without 8 bit graphics.". Well, my glasses aren't nearly as rose tinted I suspect, so allow me to say that I actually LIKED the look of Megaman in Mega Man 8. I really don't mind updating the game's graphics to fit the times. According to Keiji Inafune, he didn't go with the 8 bit look for Megamens 9 and 10 out of pure artistic choice, but because Capcom refused to provide adequate funding for Megaman games by that point. Now, don't get me wrong, I loved the retro styling of Megaman 9, but when Megaman 10 came along and it used the SAME retro look, it came off as "milking the well dry" to me. Now we know why. Yes, Megaman classic is practically burned into our memories as that old 8 bit sprite, but isn't that because Capcom just refused to create new artwork 6 games in a row? Wasn't that a bad thing at the time?

All I'm saying is we can't forget our old opinions and pretend we never thought those things.

I looked up the two old MMAC threads on TC as well, and yeah, you were defending MM7/8's graphics back then too, while I was definitely not, though I seem to have preferred 8 to 7 at first, oddly (my memory says I liked 7 more by the time I got to the Wily levels... probably because of that horrible first Wily stage in 8!). Also I see I was defending the MM series' ability to sell... well it was doing okay in 2004, but it admittedly degraded over time, and the series has been essentially dead for a few years now. With Inafune now gone from Capcom, I wonder when the series will come back... they canned all the MM games they had in progress when Inafune left. I still think the series is potentially popular and could sell, if they'd release decent Mega Man games again... ah well.

Also, it is kind of too bad that MM8 was the last classic-series Mega Man title to actually use up-to-date (at the time) power, but I really liked MM9 and MM10, so I don't have any complaints about them at all. They were both great games. I think I liked 9 a bit more than 10, but both were very good.

But yes, I kind of like MM8 now, I think.