-It's taken this long to get another one of these up, and how do I start off? By kissing Capcom's ass for fixing Mega Man again, of course. This time, it's about the next "Collection" that's coming out. No, not the compilation of the 5 Game Boy titles, no one knows if that one's even coming out anymore. Lousy Capco- ...er, wait. Yes, that's right, I was about to levy praise upon the forthcoming Mega Man X Collection.
I say with 100% certainty that it's extremely probable several Capcom representatives saw the things I'd written about last time on a variety of things Mega, and decided to tailor their next project exactly to my needs. You see, despite selling huge, many fans of the original Mega Man series were not thrilled with the Mega Man Anniversary Collection. The games were there, mostly unaltered. Not much else was. Bare bones on the extras, even cheaply dividing them up between the PS2 and Cube version. Speaking of the Cube version, that's the one I went with - I took an interview with Inafune (creator of Mega Man) over an episode of the godawful "He's a fighting robot ... Mega Man!" cartoon, figured the load times would be a bit quicker, and of course, I wanted to use my Hori Pad. Perhaps preordering wasn't the best idea, as I learned the day it came out that the PS2 version had remixed songs that the Cube version didn't, and the "correct" control scheme. No customization. Certainly, a player of Polas caliber can adjust even to the senseless inversion of the classic B-A relationship, but after 15 years of Mega Man, why should I have to? In short, it seems that Capcom had passed off this project to a developer (Atomic Planet) that clearly had little to no idea what they were doing, and put out a halfass compilation at a budget price in order to tap the Mega Man fans.
Then, it sold. Quite well. Enough to make Capcom very happy. What I'm sure made them less happy are the complaints from whiny hardcores such as myself, but unlike me in that they use ALL CAPS as a substitute for puncuation and sentence structure. If you've ever been to the majority of the GameFAQs Message Boards, you'd start to feel bad for them even if they charged full price for this thing. So for X, Capcom decided not to take the easy way out, instead listening to the fans. What we got is nothing short of amazing, according to such reputable, abbreviated Mega-sites such as PMM and MMN.
Remember the ...interesting anime cutscenes from X4? If not, PMM again has your hookup (and lots of other great stuff on that page). They brought in the same crew that did Mega Man 8 - the one that included Elmer Fudd's breakout performance as Dr. Light. X sounded like, and I think was, voiced by a little girl. It was painful. How about X6? I'm sure it sounded good, but since I don't speak Japanese, I couldn't tell you, as all we got were some badly translated (even for Capcom) subtitles, in a rush to get X6 released here. Well, Capcom is bringing the group that voiced X8 (and Command Mission), to completely redo X4 and X6, AND come up with a sensical English script for X6. That's definite. Rumor has it that even the Super Nintendo X games will receive the vocal treatment to a degree. That's just insane.
No difference, repeat, no difference between the different versions. Remixed soundtracks and unlockables for all. Configurable control schemes abound. Rumored to have the "premium" versions where applicable; we missed out on Cut Man in the Saturn version of MM8, but we may get Duo in Battle & Chase (this collection's bonus) and the weird boss scenes from the later, non-SNES versions of X3. Capcom is developing this one in-house and putting a good chunk of chnage behind it. They even set up an email address that you can use to tell Capcom what else you want to see, although as the aforementioned sites and I have pointed out, hopefully not too much "OMG MAKE ZERO PLAYABLE IN EVERY GAME" type crap.
You may think the old-school purist in me wouldn't want to see these changes made, but that's really not the case. Certainly, I'd like there to be an option to play the games in their original form, if you so desire. But I've played through every X game more times than I'd care to admit. Except X7. :Ahem: This Collection, and others like it should be more than a convienient way to play the first 6 games on one system, especially for the people who have had them already for years. There need to be extras, updates, and fanservice up the Kuwanger, to make the people who have been loyal to the series feel like they're being truly rewarded. If that means losing "Metal Shark Player", and even my beloved "Duff McWhalen", then so be it. I still have the originals.
-It's a tad worrisome, as far as next-gen is concerned anyway, that after E3, despite some interesting, much-hyped announcements from the Big 3, that the feeling I came away with was a renewed faith in the DS. Perhaps not in the touchscreen as a truly innovative gaming apparatus, but simply the fact that there's a shitload of great, mostly 2D games coming out for it. Really now, what have there been so far, maybe 5 good games released for it? The PSP was starting to look pretty good, until E3 showed me that it doesn't really have much on the horizon compared to the DS. Except of course for freaky Japanese porn, but come on, we already have the Internet for that. I guess if it HAS to be portable, although that could certainly become awkward. Anyway, rather than go on and on about I'm excited over Castlevania, Metroid Pinball, Mario Kart Online, etc., I'll just direct you to this link, where you can see screens and brief descriptions for a lot of the upcoming games. Including, and I'm not kidding, a brand new A Boy & His Blob. Really! As long as there's still a market for it, 2D will never die. Did I mention the first brand-new 2D Mario game since Super Mario World?
-To close things off for today, I'd be remiss not to mention one more offering from Capcom, budget priced, coming soon...