"Rock And Roll Never Forgets"

Picked up the Mega Man Anniversary Collection for the Gamecube earlier today. Pretty sweet collection--all eight of the original series Mega Man games (the first six were for the old NES, number seven was for the SNES, and the eighth was released for the Playstation and Sega Saturn, I believe). The collection was released simultaneously for both the Gamecube and the Playstation 2, each with unique content. Thing is, Gamecube owners kinda got hosed here.

First problem: the issue of remixed music. It's available for both games, but on the PS2, it's something you can have going while you're actually playing the game. For the Gamecube, it's something you have to unlock, and can then access as a sort of special feature in a soundtest thing, not something that plays during the actual game. This in and of itself isn't that big of a deal, since for me the collection is mostly about getting to play all these games. But there are other concerns as well...

Second problem: controls. In the old NES games, the controls were very simple, very standard, and very ingrained in my mind. The A button was for jumping, the B button for shooting. Simple, yes? That's how it always was. That's how most NES games were set up, from Mario Bros. on. A was always the jump button, and B was always the shoot button. This is not the case on the Gamecube version of the Anniversary Collection. No, here they are reversed, and we have the A button for shooting, and the B button for jumping. That's all well and good, except most people who're like me and grew up playing the games with the controls the other way are confused as hell, and it's messing up my gameplay. This wouldn't be such a problem if they'd included a button configuration option, but they didn't.

Those issues aside--the first being minor, the second being of rather greater importance and annoyance--I love the collection. It's fun getting the chance to play all these old games again. And they've added a few nice innovations that take advantage of the more advanced controllers available with the next generation consoles. For instance, both versions have a button which allows you to do rapidfire (just hold the button down and you get constant fire, essentially) instead of having to tap the fire button as fast as you can. You can still just tap the fire button, but the rapidfire button is rather reminiscent of having a turbo controller for the old NES (anyone remember those? You had the smaller Maxx, and the big arcade joysticked thing, the Advantage. Ah, good times). They also set a button for the slide move (you usually do the slide by holding down and hitting the jump button, but that's sometimes difficult to manage). Of course, the slide isn't activated until Mega Man 3 (the game in which the maneuver was introduced), but that's the way it ought to be. You can also use the shoulder buttons (L and R) to cycle through your available weapons instead of having to go to your menu every time you want to switch weapons.

One of the other nice features is the addition of tons of unlockable bonus material, including a couple of never-before-available-in-the-US arcade games, Power Battle and Power Fighters. There's also interviews with the creators of the Mega Man series, art galleries, and all sorts of stuff. it's going to take forever just to beat the eight games, let alone unlock all the bonus material. But that's alright by me.

Anyway, haven't had much of a chance to play it much yet, since I had to work all afternoon/evening. Dunno how much time I'll have after work, either, since I think I'm supposed to hang out with Dom and Jess tonight. Ah well. Lots of time ahead, right?

I've started playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance again. I beat Sword of Mana the other day, and had the urge to go play back through Tactics again, since I loved it so much the first time (ended up logging over 75 hours the first time through). Dunno how long it'll take this time. Last time through, I tended to focus on one or two of the races, and completely neglected one of them (the lizard-like bangaas). I think it's because I didn't care for most of the abilities that race had. But this time, I'm making an effort to give them a shot, just 'cause I want to see what they can do.

Oh, I picked up Wilco's latest, A Ghost is Born. It's rather different from Summer Teeth, the only other album I have by Wilco. Very good, but rather quiet at times. Not quite so many songs that just rock, and more that are subtle, melodic, and winding (there are two songs over 10 minutes on the album). It's an album that's going to take a while to sink in, but I think will ultimately be worth the time spent coming to grips with it.

~chaos cricket

Song of the Moment: Wilco, "Theologians"