Capcom Announces Mega Man Legacy Collection – Enhanced Classics

Fans have been wondering what’s been going on with Mega Man for a while, with many still bitter about the cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3. But with Capcom’s announcement of Mega Man Legacy Collection it looks like the Wii U could potentially be knocked aside as my classic Mega Man console of choice. And it’s not just a collection of the 6 classic games, but a truly enhanced collection.

 

That’s right, the Wii U is worryingly absent from Capcom’s list of consoles the game will come out on. They promise a summer release for Mega Man Legacy Collection, priced at $14.99, releasing on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC digitally. The game will later have a digital 3DS release too. The presence of a 3DS release does make the absence of a Wii U one odd. Perhaps it will be announced later. In any case, Wii U does already have access to the original 6 Mega Man games via the Virtual Console.

 

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Check out the trailer:

 

 

A Fan-Centric Approach

The trailer’s music is the “Searing Scissors”, part of OverClocked ReMix’s “For Everlasting Peace: 25 Years of Mega Man!!” fan remix album. On top of this, the classic games in the collection themselves have all been enhanced by Digital Eclipse using their Eclipse Engine. The Eclipse Engine “rebuilds the original games from their source elements. The result is a sharp, clean picture that proudly displays these iconic sprites in lovely 1080p, and presents the games as they existed in their original forms.”

 

Movies have the Criterion Collection, but there hasn’t been anything like that for games,” said Frank Cifaldi, Head of Restoration for Digital Eclipse. “We’re living in the golden age of a brand new form of artistic expression, and we’re not doing a very good job of making sure our games will be available five years from now, let alone fifty. The more we can do right now to take video game preservation seriously, the safer our history will be.”

The approach is very reminiscent of Sega’s own classic Sonic the Hedgehog enhanced rereleases, which were mostly fantastic but sadly fairly under-marketed — to the point where a lot of people still don’t know of their existence. These were enhanced versions of Sonic CD, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 by Christian Whitehead, using his Retro Engine. Sonic CD was the first and most prominent release, on XBLA, PSN, Steam, iOS, and Android; but his remasters of the first two Sonic games are sadly much more obscure, being released only on iOS and Android.

 

Unlike Sega, Capcom seem to be backing this in a much bigger way — and that’s super cool.

 

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Additional Modes

Leaderboards, challenges, replays: Challenge Mode takes moments from each title and weaves them into a series of, well, challenges! So things like ‘can you do these six areas strung together with one life bar’ or ‘try fighting all six Mega Man 1 bosses in a row.’ And to keep the quest for the best time alive, the top performers in each Challenge will have their replay data uploaded and viewable to everyone! There will be many challenges to vex seasoned players AND help train newcomers in the ways of the Blue Bomber.

Database: Each Mega Man game will have a database that includes enemy lists. From here you can read details about certain enemies and hop directly to them for a practice session. For example, say you’re tired of playing all the way to Quick Man just to lose over and over. With the database, you can hop directly to him and practice that buster run until you get it down to a science. Then it’s off to the full game for the real deal!

Museum: MMLC will sport an exhaustive collection of sketches, art and other visual materials that help put you in that 1987~1992 time period. Part of this game’s goal is the preservation of history, and the folks at Digital Eclipse are scanning items at absurdly high resolutions to make them as clean and clear as possible.

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Mega Man Legacy Collection will be streamed at E3 2015, and will also be playable at San Diego Comic-Con!

 

This will be the first new Mega Man release since Otoranger in 2013, a Japanese rhythm game spin-off. However, Mega Man Legacy Collection does follow on from a large range of past titles being released on the Virtual Console recently. With Capcom hopefully now secure in the knowledge that love for older Mega Man titles is indeed real, hopefully they can push some new Mega Man projects onward. It’s about time.

 

“I knew you’d risk yourself for the fans.”

 

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