Mega Man Legacy Collection is a collection of retro 8 bit game series that managed to excite 90s gamers as much as the new Metal Gear Solid: Phantom Pain in 2015. After more than two decades, video game mammoths Capcom have decided to bring back their original Mega Man games, all six of them, which were first released between1987 and 1993, for 4th gen consoles and PCs, without any upgrades at all. When we speak of ‘upgrades’, we mean that the game has been kept in its original format even though it has been optimised for today’s gadgets—without taking away the original 8-bit audio or the gameplay mechanics. There are also a few added features, and they too do not alter the game, and in fact, only add to the experience.

For those oblivious of the game, the Mega Man series is one of the most well-known 8 bit games that easily wend their way into any “best game of all time” conversations. If you are a 90s kid who got a head start in gaming with the ever-so-excellent Terminator game console, and you had to save up your lunch money for a new game cartridge, you probably know what I am talking about and are probably getting goosebumps already. Mega Man is a game set in the year 20XX (which was pretty futuristic two decades ago), where you take on the role of the title character who is an android boy; you’ll battle six evil robot masters and then take on the ultimate villain Dr Wily. The number of villains goes up as you progress through the series but the core mechanics of the game remains the same. You have the option of choosing the stage and the boss you will be facing at the end of the each stage as soon as you start the game—without any hint about which order you should follow. The non-linear gameplay design is both the strength and weakness of the game, depending on the attitude of the gamer. The game has no way of telling you which boss is easier to beat, unless you try out each and everyone of them yourself first and fail, which will surely happen to you at first. Clearing each boss is extremely rewarding, as you will gain the weapon of the robot master you defeated; you can then use the weapon so earned on levels. The game has a certain rock/paper/scissor mechanics to it, as some

bosses are more susceptible to falling prey to the power of some types of weapons, but you can only figure that out after dozens of failed attempts—this is how gaming used to be in the 90s. There are many levels where attempting to beat the boss with your default weapon will only prove to be an exercise in futility, but the game does give you the option of trying and failing miserably. It is purely a matter of trial and error, a quality that many games today do not feature.

The games in the series do not exactly follow up on their predecessors, so you have the option of jumping through the products offered by the franchise—something we would advise too, since the first game in the instalment is as unforgiving as they come. Although the game does not evolve significantly over six games, since the franchise was only made during a span of seven years, the level design varies greatly. The bosses will surprise you every time with their movements and attacks, and a split-second-late reaction will spell doom for you. Knowing how extremely difficult the game is, the game’s creators provided a password feature back in day when the option of saving the game was available. If you were already a gamer then, you probably remember your teachers asking you about the scribbles on the back of your notebooks, which although they have made no sense to them summed up your entire game’s achievement and dozens of hours of hard work. However, since the game has been optimised for modern-day machines, you can expect the save feature to ease things up for you.

That said, the save feature has its own share of glitches, and it crashes on the first few games of the series, so you will still have to rely on the trusty password feature. We suggest starting out with the latter games of the series like Mega Man 2 or 3 to ease up on the learning curve, as the first one will get you utterly frustrated.

Mega Man games thrive on pixel-perfect jumps and knowledge of each and every stage, combined with deadly marksmanship and intensely reactive trigger fingers, which surprisingly our eight-year-old versions had a better hold of. Recently, when I tried the game that I had once mastered as a kid, I found it extremely frustrating that I was failing at the same jump over and over again, until I decided to quit. It made me realise how raw gaming used to be in the early days and how much they have been dumbed down over the years to appease casual gamers.

If I had not already completed those games when I was eight, I would now probably have been wondering if any kid of such age would be able to get it done. While gaming has established itself as a billion dollar industry and mastered technology that delivers realistic visuals, the core aspect of gaming seems to have been left far behind. Back in the day, every game completed gave us an immense sense of achievement and bragging rights among fellow gamers, while today it is just a matter of how many hours we can put in. As I quit the game from frustration, I realised that the eight-year-old me would not have given up no matter how hard the levels got and would not have rested until he had found a way to clear a level. This game is thus for anyone out there who wants to understand how the old-school gamers gamed; it will show you have things got done before the Call of Duty franchises had to remind us to press X to jump.

Mega Man Legacy Collection is a must-have for anyone who takes pride in calling themselves a “gamer” and also for the familiar fans of the series. An excellent game for PC and PS4 right now, it will also be making its way into the Xbox One and Nintendo 3DS consoles in 2016.

10/10