27th June 2004, 2:31 PM
Well, due to a combination of the low price and my own desire for it, I got this collection. I've beaten every single game in it now, including the two arcade games, and I have my opinion on it fully formed. Keep in mind this is for the PS2 version here.
First off, the music remixes in MM1-6 are great! A few notes though. MM1-3 don't have FULL remixing. Only a few tracks are remixed, and there's no rhyme or reason to which ones they did and did not do. You'll go into Crash Man's stage and hear some awesome music, and then the old school stuff in Metal Man's stage. Also, in MM3 a lot of the updated music isn't even a remix of the original track. For example, Top Man's updated music is actually the music from the opening stage of MM7 remixed. And yes, Spark Man has no remix, but it's okay because the original was fine. You can always go straight original music of course. MM4, 5, and 6 however have full remixing of all tracks. I guess this is because in Japan these tracks were originally released in that complete works package for PS1, and there was time between them, and they weren't really trying too hard with MM1-3...
A few notes about the emulation of the NES games. They are done almost flawlessly, and in almost every way are better than the originals. I have to assume this of MM5 and 6, but MM1-4 play exactly as they should (or as I remember in the case of MM3), so it's a safe assumption to make. I say almost due to one TINY music error. It's really nothing major at all, but I'll mention it anyway. The original music tracks aren't actually being emulated. They are actually recorded from the NES using direct feed or something and played back as music tracks all their own. I guess they couldn't get the various sound forms of the music emulated just so, so they just recorded it. Normally, this doesn't matter. However, the tracks are only so long, so after several minutes of the track repeating like it should, it will suddenly fade out and start over straight from the beginning. It's nothing major, but you may notice it every now and then if you take your time on a few levels. Doesn't hurt a thing.
I will say this. For MM1, 2, and 4, I played them from the start in navi mode since I've beaten them more than enough, and recently too, in their NES forms. For MM3, 5, and 6 though (3 due to it being a long time since I played it), I turned it off to get the pure original form first, and THEN turned it on to experience the new stuff. Keep in mind I haven't played MM5 and 6 in Navi mode yet.
On another note, my personal favorite music remix so far is Bubble Man's. It just starts out so peaceful and then goes all cool.
MM5 and MM6 are really fun by the way. I suppose I let reviews get to me, but like the rest of the series, they have all that fun charm.
Graphically, the games are BETTER than before. First off, if you have played Metroid in Metroid Prime, you will be familiar with the softening effect they applied to the NES games here. It really makes things look better than they are, and nothing is ever blurred by it or smudged in a way that makes it look worse. It's a very nice effect. Just a little antialiasing... Also, as the reviews have said, they really did a number on the NES game's slowdown and flicker. The slowdown is GONE. The ONE negative to this is that the Yellow Demon in MM1 is now MUCH harder to beat than before, at least for me. I hadn't realized that I was actually depending on slowdown all these years. With it gone, you have to get your reflexes sharpened a bit more to defeat it, but once you figure it out, just as always, it's still beatable fairly easily. The flicker is ALMOST gone. As opposed to the NES games where Megaman would suddenly vanish at certain parts of Metal Man's stage, you now see everything at all times. A screen full of enemies now looks and acts exactly like a screen with only Megaman. Keep in mind that flicker and slowdown don't affect gameplay and are really just graphical things, so the removal of them is hardly damaging the classics.
As to the rest of Navi Mode, the navigation and hint systems, they are fairly useless. They provide you with hints and friendly robots that tell you what road to take, but considering this was hardly a maze of a series anyway, it's really useless. The hints are obvious things like "don't touch the thorns!" (why they call them thorns is beyond me, but it's very apparent that the people who translated these hints did a very poor job anyway). A symbol will appear, VERY big and annoying, in areas where they have hints for you. EM is right, they should let you turn off that symbol, or at LEAST shrink it WAY down and put it as a small dot on the life bar display. That I could ignore, and wouldn't cover up ENEMIES or THINGS THAT I NEED TO SEE :D. Yes, you can turn off navi mode altogether, but then the music is gone. The life bars aren't MM8 style, or MM7 style. They are SIMILAR, but the remade life bars are their own design. The weapons menus were only redone in MM1-3, which is just fine because MM4-6 had great looking menus anyway. One note, even though Megaman only got the Mega Buster in MM4, the remade menus show his normal P-shot weapon as the Megabuster in 1-3 now, which doesn't really make any sense. I still don't know what P stands for (I think "power"), but just calling it the Mega Buster when Megaman clearly can't charge in those games is wrong. And yes, I am certain that the charge shot is EXACTLY what the Mega Buster is, because it's explained in the beginning of Megaman 4.
As for the always-on extras, the L+R button weapon scrolling ala MM7 are useful tools that really don't hurt anything. I could say a similar thing about the circle button being a slide button (though it's awkward to use it so down+X does just fine). I will say that in MM1-3, just like using pause, when you use L or R to change weapons it should phase you out. Then the gameplay is maintained to a stuck up degree :D. The autofire on triangle is iffy. Honestly, it really IS a cheat they basically put in there. Sure, if you are The Flash and can push the button at that speed naturally, there's no difference, but for us HUMANS it's something that makes a lot of parts of the games, a LOT, much easier, and thus it's cheating. I used it in the Megaman games I own while in Navi mode simply because I knew I could beat it without it anyway. When I was playing MM 5 and 6 (oh and MM3 the first time since I hadn't played it in a while and wanted to prove to myself I still was good at it), I refrained from using it at all. Fortunatly, it's easy enough to ignore that button without it calling out to you to be used or anything, so you can always just play the games without even touching the autofire button when you want the full challange of the original game. Note that these always-on features are only in the NES games, as the later games used the SNES or PS1 controller to the full extent they could and thus no little extras could realistically be added there. No matter, I honestly had no need for them. Oh yes, one other thing, ALL th games can be controlled via the control stick, but honestly I wouldn't if I were you because this sort of game is a LOT easier to control with a d-pad.
The two Arcade games are also, as far as I can tell, emulated flawlessly. They aren't up to the originals, but they are fun in their own right. Fun thing to pass the time and a nice half hour session with a friend in co-op. Certainly not worth a buy on their own, but with the package, a fun addition. I will say I have played Power Battles in the arcade before, though I died at Wood Man and didn't want to spend any more quarters on the game. I really don't know why people think they haven't been released in America before, as I played it perfectly translated in the arcade (well maybe not perfect, but the same translation as I got in this collection).
Now, onto the last two. The SNES and PS emulation are NOT spot on. This is a dissappointment. I could understand the SNES, but the PS? I mean, playing the original PS1 game on my PS2 plays flawlessly, but this, a port TO PS2, is full of glitches?! What is WITH that? I ask you!
Anyway, onto the details. MM7 (the SNES game) is still fully playable, but there are lots of bits of slowdown in areas where there weren't before. Also, the sound is a bit sketchy. Some notes will be almost muted while others will be suddenly loud. In fact, a lot of the sound effects have a wide variance in volume unlike the original. One enemy will just kinda sputter away, but some other enemy will explode and it will freak out my cat (and me actually, I mean that was LOUD). This is NOT like the original. There are also some graphical errors and one gameplay issue. The gameplay issue is that the boxes in Spring Man's level don't rotate correctly any more. It took me FOREVER to do a task that was MUCH easier in the SNES original. That's the only gameplay issue but it's an annoying one. The graphical issue is that areas that were dark in the original are PITCH BLACK now. It's one thing to make it a little hard to figure out where the platforms are, it's another entirely to completely obscure them. Fortunatly, by the time you reach these areas, you WILL already have an item that will light up the room for a split second when used, so you can make it through. Other than that, the slowdown and the sound errors, it's a perfect emulation though I suppose. It even keeps those little codes like activating the Super Ghouls and Ghosts music in Shade Man's stage and the Megaman Fighting game with the uber code.
MM8 is a shame, it's the worst emulated game in the bunch. Honestly, they have no excuse for this. I can play the original on the SAME SYSTEM and it runs BETTER. But, I already said that. Anyway, here's the deal. Just like MM7, there are the same sound issues, only they are more pronounced here. When that first boss exploded, I thought my TV exploded! You'll have some sounds really low and subdued and others WAY too loud and deafening, and this really presents itself as a problem when you are turning up the volume bit by bit to make out some stage's background music and suddenly BOOOOOM. And oh yes, I've tried messing with the volume control master settings in the collection menu, but that only did so much. I managed to boost the other sound effects so they aren't SO off from the super loud noises, and I fixed the volume difference between sound and music in the NES games, but that's as good as it got.
Also, the first two FMVs skip. I've checked around and this is apparently common. It's not that bad, but it's noticable and annoying. Not as annoying as hearing Dr. Light stutter and talk like Elmer Fudd mind you (seriously, he calls the evil villian "Dr. Wiwy", what were those translators THINKING?!). The later ones seem fine, but it's still pretty stupid.
Unlike the PS1 original, there is only ONE save slot (the original had 3). I really don't know why they felt they had to cut it down, but they did. Fortunatly, it's a short enough game, like all Megaman games, that playing from start to finish, finding everything, only takes a few hours anyway, so loosing that save file isn't even a big deal. One plus is that the load times are gone now. Though, playing the original on a PS2 with fast loading nearly removes the original's load times too. This IS the PS1 version through and through, meaning none of the Saturn extras are there, like Cutman and Woodman's appearence (I found all 40 bolts without either of them showing up).
Anyway, aside from MM7 and MM8 being glitchy enough to make me glad I didn't sell the originals, it's a solid collection. I'm still very glad I got it since I didn't get it for second copies of MM7 and MM8 to begin with. Also, MM7 and MM8 are still fully playable and if you haven't played the originals, you likely won't notice anything wrong except for a few of the more pronounced things I mentioned above.
As for the bonus material, let me tell you about that. There is no actual sound test. The "sound options" mentioned are NOT to let you hear the remixed tracks whenever you want, much to my disappointment. The sound bonuses are just brand new remixed tracks. Some of them are nice, but honestly the remixed tracks in the games are much better than any of the 7 or so hidden tracks. The bonus artwork is a nice way of saying "here is a slide show of little napkin drawings I found in the trash". First off, the interface is the worst I've ever seen for bonus artwork. There is none. It just shows you the pics at a fixed zoom and moves to the next. You can't scroll through yourself, or pan and scan, it's all fixed. Very annoying when every other art gallery I've seen in other games lets you do that. The actual clip art is really poor. As opposed to massive full color artwork like in other artwork galleries with a lot of attention to detail, these clips are just basic outline art, and only a few are even decently drawn. Some of them aren't anything other than random words that mean nothing to me like "Mighty Kid", which I GUESS was some alternate name for Megaman or something.
The last bonus is the originally announced system exclusive bonus (though now it seems the updated music for the NES games is also an exclusive bonus). That is to say, the "anime" episode of some Megaman series. I felt like I should have gotten another bonus just for surviving that pile of robotic dog vomit (which consists of antifreeze, oil, and regular dog vomit). Honestly, when it comes to this, the GCN owners WIN. A developer interview would have been MUCH better, and honestly saying that is an extreme understatement. This show, while it's apparent some of it was in fact made in Japan, was written and made in America, by Americans FOR Americans, and exemplifies EVERYTHING that is horridly wrong with American action shows, or what's wrong with each and every single one on the air in 1994. It has everything from an "I'll get you next time!" villian (though to be honest that is pretty much what Dr. Wily is, I'd say of all the characters in the stupid show he's closest to the original) to moronic heros that just spout out cheesy lines and saying stuff that may have been "edgy" in 1960 or so, but is just stupid now like "Hey! We girl robots are just as good as you!" (why would robots even have genders anyway? Ask Futurama! :D). Aside from ruining everything that makes Megaman great, and making the in-game stories look like Shakespear, it also completely ruined the characters. Megaman was as mutilated as Link was in the Zelda cartoon, and so was Roll. Of ALL the offenses, none offends more though than what they did to one of the coolest Megaman characters EVER, Protoman! First off, they make him Dr. Wily's creation, AND his servant. They actually made his personality into a retarded Bass, as his only goal is to prove his superiority to Megaman, but just before they accidently make a character in an American action cartoon cool, they fixed that problem and made him go about it in the most idiotic way possible. He acts like a stupid teenager rebelling against his "dad" Wily. Slap together a bunch of odd charicature voices (Cutman for example) and an annoying version of Rush, and you get something I actually would rather NOT have on this disk, staining everything that is Megaman with it's mere presence. I heard there was another Megaman cartoon series, made BY Japan though, and I can only hope it was better than this, because if that was worse... ugh... I'm certainly happy there was only one episode there. Anyway, though the character designs are these ugly American things, the actual battle scenes, since it is drawn in Japan, aren't that bad I guess. The only thing close to a saving grace, but it still belongs in the gutter. Ugh, you don't have to say it 30 times in a row! We get that Megaman can copy powers!
Okay, anyway the "secrets" section really doesn't have much of worth except a few pretty nice songs.
Well, aside from the problems listed above, the collection really IS amazing. It's something that, regardless of the system you get it for, pretty much any gamer SHOULD get. It's a VERY fun thing that should keep someone busy for at least a couple days if they have played it all before (in which case, they got it for the remixed music), or if like in my case, you haven't played a few of them, means you get a chunk of brand new games and stuff to mess around with. Nothing like staring down 8 bosses you've never seen before and saying "oh ssssnap!, well I think Stone Man sounds easier than the rest...".
I will say I certainly can't wait for my friend to get the GCN version and unlock the interview so I can watch that.
First off, the music remixes in MM1-6 are great! A few notes though. MM1-3 don't have FULL remixing. Only a few tracks are remixed, and there's no rhyme or reason to which ones they did and did not do. You'll go into Crash Man's stage and hear some awesome music, and then the old school stuff in Metal Man's stage. Also, in MM3 a lot of the updated music isn't even a remix of the original track. For example, Top Man's updated music is actually the music from the opening stage of MM7 remixed. And yes, Spark Man has no remix, but it's okay because the original was fine. You can always go straight original music of course. MM4, 5, and 6 however have full remixing of all tracks. I guess this is because in Japan these tracks were originally released in that complete works package for PS1, and there was time between them, and they weren't really trying too hard with MM1-3...
A few notes about the emulation of the NES games. They are done almost flawlessly, and in almost every way are better than the originals. I have to assume this of MM5 and 6, but MM1-4 play exactly as they should (or as I remember in the case of MM3), so it's a safe assumption to make. I say almost due to one TINY music error. It's really nothing major at all, but I'll mention it anyway. The original music tracks aren't actually being emulated. They are actually recorded from the NES using direct feed or something and played back as music tracks all their own. I guess they couldn't get the various sound forms of the music emulated just so, so they just recorded it. Normally, this doesn't matter. However, the tracks are only so long, so after several minutes of the track repeating like it should, it will suddenly fade out and start over straight from the beginning. It's nothing major, but you may notice it every now and then if you take your time on a few levels. Doesn't hurt a thing.
I will say this. For MM1, 2, and 4, I played them from the start in navi mode since I've beaten them more than enough, and recently too, in their NES forms. For MM3, 5, and 6 though (3 due to it being a long time since I played it), I turned it off to get the pure original form first, and THEN turned it on to experience the new stuff. Keep in mind I haven't played MM5 and 6 in Navi mode yet.
On another note, my personal favorite music remix so far is Bubble Man's. It just starts out so peaceful and then goes all cool.
MM5 and MM6 are really fun by the way. I suppose I let reviews get to me, but like the rest of the series, they have all that fun charm.
Graphically, the games are BETTER than before. First off, if you have played Metroid in Metroid Prime, you will be familiar with the softening effect they applied to the NES games here. It really makes things look better than they are, and nothing is ever blurred by it or smudged in a way that makes it look worse. It's a very nice effect. Just a little antialiasing... Also, as the reviews have said, they really did a number on the NES game's slowdown and flicker. The slowdown is GONE. The ONE negative to this is that the Yellow Demon in MM1 is now MUCH harder to beat than before, at least for me. I hadn't realized that I was actually depending on slowdown all these years. With it gone, you have to get your reflexes sharpened a bit more to defeat it, but once you figure it out, just as always, it's still beatable fairly easily. The flicker is ALMOST gone. As opposed to the NES games where Megaman would suddenly vanish at certain parts of Metal Man's stage, you now see everything at all times. A screen full of enemies now looks and acts exactly like a screen with only Megaman. Keep in mind that flicker and slowdown don't affect gameplay and are really just graphical things, so the removal of them is hardly damaging the classics.
As to the rest of Navi Mode, the navigation and hint systems, they are fairly useless. They provide you with hints and friendly robots that tell you what road to take, but considering this was hardly a maze of a series anyway, it's really useless. The hints are obvious things like "don't touch the thorns!" (why they call them thorns is beyond me, but it's very apparent that the people who translated these hints did a very poor job anyway). A symbol will appear, VERY big and annoying, in areas where they have hints for you. EM is right, they should let you turn off that symbol, or at LEAST shrink it WAY down and put it as a small dot on the life bar display. That I could ignore, and wouldn't cover up ENEMIES or THINGS THAT I NEED TO SEE :D. Yes, you can turn off navi mode altogether, but then the music is gone. The life bars aren't MM8 style, or MM7 style. They are SIMILAR, but the remade life bars are their own design. The weapons menus were only redone in MM1-3, which is just fine because MM4-6 had great looking menus anyway. One note, even though Megaman only got the Mega Buster in MM4, the remade menus show his normal P-shot weapon as the Megabuster in 1-3 now, which doesn't really make any sense. I still don't know what P stands for (I think "power"), but just calling it the Mega Buster when Megaman clearly can't charge in those games is wrong. And yes, I am certain that the charge shot is EXACTLY what the Mega Buster is, because it's explained in the beginning of Megaman 4.
As for the always-on extras, the L+R button weapon scrolling ala MM7 are useful tools that really don't hurt anything. I could say a similar thing about the circle button being a slide button (though it's awkward to use it so down+X does just fine). I will say that in MM1-3, just like using pause, when you use L or R to change weapons it should phase you out. Then the gameplay is maintained to a stuck up degree :D. The autofire on triangle is iffy. Honestly, it really IS a cheat they basically put in there. Sure, if you are The Flash and can push the button at that speed naturally, there's no difference, but for us HUMANS it's something that makes a lot of parts of the games, a LOT, much easier, and thus it's cheating. I used it in the Megaman games I own while in Navi mode simply because I knew I could beat it without it anyway. When I was playing MM 5 and 6 (oh and MM3 the first time since I hadn't played it in a while and wanted to prove to myself I still was good at it), I refrained from using it at all. Fortunatly, it's easy enough to ignore that button without it calling out to you to be used or anything, so you can always just play the games without even touching the autofire button when you want the full challange of the original game. Note that these always-on features are only in the NES games, as the later games used the SNES or PS1 controller to the full extent they could and thus no little extras could realistically be added there. No matter, I honestly had no need for them. Oh yes, one other thing, ALL th games can be controlled via the control stick, but honestly I wouldn't if I were you because this sort of game is a LOT easier to control with a d-pad.
The two Arcade games are also, as far as I can tell, emulated flawlessly. They aren't up to the originals, but they are fun in their own right. Fun thing to pass the time and a nice half hour session with a friend in co-op. Certainly not worth a buy on their own, but with the package, a fun addition. I will say I have played Power Battles in the arcade before, though I died at Wood Man and didn't want to spend any more quarters on the game. I really don't know why people think they haven't been released in America before, as I played it perfectly translated in the arcade (well maybe not perfect, but the same translation as I got in this collection).
Now, onto the last two. The SNES and PS emulation are NOT spot on. This is a dissappointment. I could understand the SNES, but the PS? I mean, playing the original PS1 game on my PS2 plays flawlessly, but this, a port TO PS2, is full of glitches?! What is WITH that? I ask you!
Anyway, onto the details. MM7 (the SNES game) is still fully playable, but there are lots of bits of slowdown in areas where there weren't before. Also, the sound is a bit sketchy. Some notes will be almost muted while others will be suddenly loud. In fact, a lot of the sound effects have a wide variance in volume unlike the original. One enemy will just kinda sputter away, but some other enemy will explode and it will freak out my cat (and me actually, I mean that was LOUD). This is NOT like the original. There are also some graphical errors and one gameplay issue. The gameplay issue is that the boxes in Spring Man's level don't rotate correctly any more. It took me FOREVER to do a task that was MUCH easier in the SNES original. That's the only gameplay issue but it's an annoying one. The graphical issue is that areas that were dark in the original are PITCH BLACK now. It's one thing to make it a little hard to figure out where the platforms are, it's another entirely to completely obscure them. Fortunatly, by the time you reach these areas, you WILL already have an item that will light up the room for a split second when used, so you can make it through. Other than that, the slowdown and the sound errors, it's a perfect emulation though I suppose. It even keeps those little codes like activating the Super Ghouls and Ghosts music in Shade Man's stage and the Megaman Fighting game with the uber code.
MM8 is a shame, it's the worst emulated game in the bunch. Honestly, they have no excuse for this. I can play the original on the SAME SYSTEM and it runs BETTER. But, I already said that. Anyway, here's the deal. Just like MM7, there are the same sound issues, only they are more pronounced here. When that first boss exploded, I thought my TV exploded! You'll have some sounds really low and subdued and others WAY too loud and deafening, and this really presents itself as a problem when you are turning up the volume bit by bit to make out some stage's background music and suddenly BOOOOOM. And oh yes, I've tried messing with the volume control master settings in the collection menu, but that only did so much. I managed to boost the other sound effects so they aren't SO off from the super loud noises, and I fixed the volume difference between sound and music in the NES games, but that's as good as it got.
Also, the first two FMVs skip. I've checked around and this is apparently common. It's not that bad, but it's noticable and annoying. Not as annoying as hearing Dr. Light stutter and talk like Elmer Fudd mind you (seriously, he calls the evil villian "Dr. Wiwy", what were those translators THINKING?!). The later ones seem fine, but it's still pretty stupid.
Unlike the PS1 original, there is only ONE save slot (the original had 3). I really don't know why they felt they had to cut it down, but they did. Fortunatly, it's a short enough game, like all Megaman games, that playing from start to finish, finding everything, only takes a few hours anyway, so loosing that save file isn't even a big deal. One plus is that the load times are gone now. Though, playing the original on a PS2 with fast loading nearly removes the original's load times too. This IS the PS1 version through and through, meaning none of the Saturn extras are there, like Cutman and Woodman's appearence (I found all 40 bolts without either of them showing up).
Anyway, aside from MM7 and MM8 being glitchy enough to make me glad I didn't sell the originals, it's a solid collection. I'm still very glad I got it since I didn't get it for second copies of MM7 and MM8 to begin with. Also, MM7 and MM8 are still fully playable and if you haven't played the originals, you likely won't notice anything wrong except for a few of the more pronounced things I mentioned above.
As for the bonus material, let me tell you about that. There is no actual sound test. The "sound options" mentioned are NOT to let you hear the remixed tracks whenever you want, much to my disappointment. The sound bonuses are just brand new remixed tracks. Some of them are nice, but honestly the remixed tracks in the games are much better than any of the 7 or so hidden tracks. The bonus artwork is a nice way of saying "here is a slide show of little napkin drawings I found in the trash". First off, the interface is the worst I've ever seen for bonus artwork. There is none. It just shows you the pics at a fixed zoom and moves to the next. You can't scroll through yourself, or pan and scan, it's all fixed. Very annoying when every other art gallery I've seen in other games lets you do that. The actual clip art is really poor. As opposed to massive full color artwork like in other artwork galleries with a lot of attention to detail, these clips are just basic outline art, and only a few are even decently drawn. Some of them aren't anything other than random words that mean nothing to me like "Mighty Kid", which I GUESS was some alternate name for Megaman or something.
The last bonus is the originally announced system exclusive bonus (though now it seems the updated music for the NES games is also an exclusive bonus). That is to say, the "anime" episode of some Megaman series. I felt like I should have gotten another bonus just for surviving that pile of robotic dog vomit (which consists of antifreeze, oil, and regular dog vomit). Honestly, when it comes to this, the GCN owners WIN. A developer interview would have been MUCH better, and honestly saying that is an extreme understatement. This show, while it's apparent some of it was in fact made in Japan, was written and made in America, by Americans FOR Americans, and exemplifies EVERYTHING that is horridly wrong with American action shows, or what's wrong with each and every single one on the air in 1994. It has everything from an "I'll get you next time!" villian (though to be honest that is pretty much what Dr. Wily is, I'd say of all the characters in the stupid show he's closest to the original) to moronic heros that just spout out cheesy lines and saying stuff that may have been "edgy" in 1960 or so, but is just stupid now like "Hey! We girl robots are just as good as you!" (why would robots even have genders anyway? Ask Futurama! :D). Aside from ruining everything that makes Megaman great, and making the in-game stories look like Shakespear, it also completely ruined the characters. Megaman was as mutilated as Link was in the Zelda cartoon, and so was Roll. Of ALL the offenses, none offends more though than what they did to one of the coolest Megaman characters EVER, Protoman! First off, they make him Dr. Wily's creation, AND his servant. They actually made his personality into a retarded Bass, as his only goal is to prove his superiority to Megaman, but just before they accidently make a character in an American action cartoon cool, they fixed that problem and made him go about it in the most idiotic way possible. He acts like a stupid teenager rebelling against his "dad" Wily. Slap together a bunch of odd charicature voices (Cutman for example) and an annoying version of Rush, and you get something I actually would rather NOT have on this disk, staining everything that is Megaman with it's mere presence. I heard there was another Megaman cartoon series, made BY Japan though, and I can only hope it was better than this, because if that was worse... ugh... I'm certainly happy there was only one episode there. Anyway, though the character designs are these ugly American things, the actual battle scenes, since it is drawn in Japan, aren't that bad I guess. The only thing close to a saving grace, but it still belongs in the gutter. Ugh, you don't have to say it 30 times in a row! We get that Megaman can copy powers!
Okay, anyway the "secrets" section really doesn't have much of worth except a few pretty nice songs.
Well, aside from the problems listed above, the collection really IS amazing. It's something that, regardless of the system you get it for, pretty much any gamer SHOULD get. It's a VERY fun thing that should keep someone busy for at least a couple days if they have played it all before (in which case, they got it for the remixed music), or if like in my case, you haven't played a few of them, means you get a chunk of brand new games and stuff to mess around with. Nothing like staring down 8 bosses you've never seen before and saying "oh ssssnap!, well I think Stone Man sounds easier than the rest...".
I will say I certainly can't wait for my friend to get the GCN version and unlock the interview so I can watch that.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)