Companies Should Release More Classic Game Collections

Capcom recently announced a 10-game Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection, bundling together the six Game Boy Advance Battle Network titles and the various versions that were originally released. I’m excited by the news because I was worried these excellent spin-offs would never receive a revival like the platforming Mega Man series did a few years back. Many Battle Network games are currently only available on the Game Boy Advance or the now-dying Wii U virtual console, while others remain locked away on the Nintendo DS. A large portion of the series is now available for anyone with a PlayStation 4 or Switch and a PC that runs Steam. It’s great to see these classic games on modern platforms, and I hope other companies take note of the preservation strategy Capcom has taken in recent years.

Capcom Fighting Collection, a collection of fighting games that we received this month, is an excellent example. The collection includes both Japanese and US arcade ports of all the Darkstalkers series, along with other long-suffering titles like Red Earth and Cyberbots. The Capcom Arcade Stadium series, a brand new package that is available this month, fills in all the missing fighting game games and revives a variety of Capcom arcade games. Mega Man X received multiple collections before that to allow for the release of both Mega Man X as well as the original series. I’m truly happy to have these collections at the ready on my Switch. 

I love the Capcom’s recent collections of archival photos and documents. These documents include concept art and early sketches. Even seeing just a peek at the dev’s thought process while piecing together these classics at the time is awesome, and I hope the practice becomes more prevalent even in current game releases.

Atari isn’t a name you often hear in the video game discourse in 2022, but even it is trying to keep its legacy alive and playable. The brand is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a massive collection of notable Atari titles from throughout the company’s history. Digital Eclipse manages the development of Atari 50 – The Anniversary Celebration. It includes over 90 games on six Atari consoles, as well as a few original games. It also features a timeline of Atari’s history, with interviews with key company members throughout its five decades.

I know everything above makes it looks like the accessibility of games is mostly in a good place, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. There are plenty of obscure Genesis games I’m yearning to try, licensed SNES games I rented over and over I’d like to experience again. An entire generation of games in the transition between the late ‘90s to early 2000s console generations feels lost and is ripe for revival. Even sports titles are like dust in the wind, especially when a new game is released yearly. I’d take a Tiger Woods PGA Tour collection in a heartbeat to play through the PS1 and PS2 entries and see how the series shifted and evolved over time. Consoles like the Sega Saturn or Gamecube feel similarly trapped in time despite emulation for these devices being possible with today’s technology. A few select games have shown up in recent years, like Nights Into Dreams and Super Mario Sunshine, but much more can be done to preserve those platforms. 

Sony and Nintendo made an effort to allow games on older platforms to be purchased or played. Although some old games have been made available on the Nintendo Switch Online or PlayStation Plus, they are far from what should and could be played on modern hardware. Microsoft on the other side has made many of its games accessible on their consoles from the original Xbox games, including graphical enhancements. If every major company started to make a consistent and concerted effort to keep their prior generations of games available, like Xbox and Capcom have, the gaming industry and ecosystem would be much better off.