BenoitRen

@Banjo- "Don't be obsessive." Can we please not resort to personal attacks?

"About "crashes" and "audio quality", it must be on the Switch version."

No, this isn't specific to the Switch version.

If you collect the sixth emerald using Sonic & Tails in the original game, the game crashes.

The remastered audio that was on the mobile remakes was replaced by muffled console recordings, the loop points that were restored for Sonic CD's mobile port are gone, audio volume is all over the place,...

And then we have other glitches like the falling debris in Marble Garden,...

Best trilogy? Reading RPGFan's review of the second game, I strongly doubt it. Let's hope this one at least has a better localisation.

@Banjo- You said: "It's not just that they are zoomed in but the resolution is lower on Game Gear"

That implies that the zooming in is a separate issue from the lower resolution.

@Banjo- The patch fixed a lot of issues, but it still crashes when playing as Sonic & Tailes in the first game, the audio is still low quality, Sonic's voice clips in Sonic CD are still missing, the save UI still doesn't let you replay cleared stages, and I'm probably forgetting a whole bunch of other issues that the originals didn't have.

@AG_Awesome This isn't an emulation job. These games have been rebuilt from the ground up using the Retro Engine. That's why you won't see save states or rewind.

@OstianOwl Probably because Game Gear emulation is better understood than 32X emulation.

@Banjo- They're zoomed in because the Game Gear's resolution is lower. What do you mean about the audio, though? It's identical.

@Oliver-1984

You should avoid Amazon when possible because they're modern slave drivers.

I recommend CDJapan as a good alternative.

@FX102A Games are meant to be played. Free those cartridges!

@Krull @Rayquaza2510 @Herna The good frequent sales in Europe were by NIS America, who published Atlus's games in that territory.

Meanwhile, Atlus forgot they published games digitally in Europe, so we haven't had a discount on Shin Megami Tensei IV in years.

"This was confirmed with the game's initial reviews on its Japanese release, with Famitsu awarding the title an impressive 31/40."

No, it wasn't, because Famitsu's scores are meaningless. The magazine is a shameless advertisement.

@GameOtaku You're probably someone not sensitive to input lag, then, because it was measured as being there using lag detection tools.

@YoshiAngemon A real man waits patiently for the physical release to be restocked.

@EarthboundBenjy The Cowabunga Collection is pretty bad, actually. Sure, it has plenty of games, but the emulation is *****. 6 frames of input lag (5 for the Game Boy games) is inexcusable.

@Funneefox Have you already forgotten how Capcom split up the Mega Man X Legacy Collection for no reason?

On the Switch only the first collection was on the cartridge, while the second one was download only. Unless you live in Japan, of course, but there they were two separate releases.

I'm tired of seeing this "they lost the source code" excuse.

First, has there been any credible source for this?

Second, even if they did lose the source code for the GameCube version, guess what the PS2 version was based on? The GameCube version! And obviously they modified the game to run at 30 FPS during battles for some reason. If they could do that, they could have changed it back to 30 FPS. But that costs money and requires them to care, so they didn't.

The common GBA SP has a frontlight, not a backlight. A backlight model came out late in the console's lifespan in North America, and had a limited release in Europe when the DS was already out.

@Darknilious It had a sleep mode, but the game had to explicitly support it and offer the option. As a result, I think few games had it.

@AJB83 Nothing is stopping anyone from buying the full-priced digital release after a physical release is announced.

@HeadPirate "You owe it to the hard working, talented game programmers who worked long hours to deliver this product"

Excuse me? This is nothing more than a collection of ROMs and already available emulators. On the developer side, little effort went into this.

@RetroOutcast "Come to think of it, it's a shame that M2 didn't bring out a Wonder Boy collection."

They did, on the PlayStation 2, but Japan only.

"all their alternate console ports"

NO IT DOESN'T.

It's missing Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair for the PC Engine.

It's weird to see almost everyone cheering for these hideous, bare-bones 'remasters'. The only good thing about them is the remastered music.

@KayFiOS "outside of that, they've typically left Western countries out of a physical release for Final Fantasy VII/VIII Remastered"

Europe actually got that one later on.

@Arawn93 I wager they appeal to that demographic because they have Japanese voice acting. An English dub is more accessible and would allow it to appeal to more people.

@Tom-Massey I assure you there's enough annoying Japanese voice acting as well. There's a lot of over-acting and screaming little girls that grate on the ears.

"The game is all voiced in Japanese with English subtitles, which is preferable"

No. No, it's not! Most of us don't understand Japanese, and it'd be preferable to hear something we can understand instead of taking our eyes away from the action to read subtitles.

It's okay, but I find the original Xenoblade Chronicles to be far better designed, with a more meaty and satisfying story.

The sequel has a pretty simple and short story that is needlessly stretched out to make sure you visit the entire world. As a result, not much of significance happens on each Titan. The worst offender is the region that contains Rex's home. I don't even remember why you had to go there, as you just visit his town, fight Zeke, then continue to the next Titan.

And after all this I still don't know what motivated the final boss.

The first game had lots of quests to make you explore the world. In the sequel, there are very few of them given by NPCs, the rest of them being stashed away in Blades's skill trees, which makes them easy to miss and a pain to check up on.

In battle, Blades decide your class, which decides most of your skills. As a result, every character feels the same, and there's no reason to use anyone else.

Finally, I found Rex to be a pretty one-dimensional main character.

Losing the source code of the GameCube version is a silly excuse. What do you think the PS2 version was based on? They just don't want to bother with improvements.

Personally, I really liked the sequel, and think that it had better story-telling. The original game was awesome until the Tower of Salvation, but after that they kept derailing the story, which was frustrating. But that seems to be part of the Tales of DNA that Dawn of the New World escaped from.

Having said that, while having monsters as party members fit the story, it didn't make for great battle party members.

@ChopperDX

Please don't use VGChartz. The webmaster has admitted that he often pulls numbers out of his ass.

@electrolite77 People forget that the Switch isn't even running at full power. There's no need for new hardware. We do need new developers.

@Browny

There is always a choice, and the one you made contributes to the practice of scalping.

These collections are great ideas, but poorly executed. And they don't even patch the issues. Such a shame.

"a fabulous sequel that scratches that Mega Man Zero itch we've been craving"

No. No, it doesn't. Please stop deceiving people into thinking that this series is anything like that!

@sixrings People keep buying shoddy releases, so developers have understood that they don't have to put much of an effort into it.

@Synthatron_Prime I thought it was only available through jailbreaking. Now I see that those options were available on NTSC consoles, but not PAL ones.

@sixrings "720p yikes. This is the og xbox days?" No, the original Xbox ran at 480i, though was technically capable of 720p. You're thinking of the Xbox 360.

You underestimate the terrible performance games by lazy developers can have on powerful hardware.

@BartoxTharglod I did not say the mere existence of bugs meant an unfinished game. I said it depends.

Clearly you didn't take a serious look at the lists I posted, because it's more than "some". If you think crash bugs and things like losing all Chaos Emeralds are trivial, I don't know what to tell you.

I've already explained why games' collision detection never was perfect, and you haven't brought anything else up, so Sonic the Hedgehog 2 does not count as a buggy game.

Note that I'm mainly talking about console games here. PC games like Ultima IX are a whole other can of worms (in part because patching was possible).

This practice of unfinished, bug-ridden games is still relatively new to console gaming. Since about 2014, in fact. Before that, day one patches were far from a common thing. You know why? Because releasing patches cost money. Now submitting them to the platform holder is free. If you're going to claim games were always equally buggy that's revisionism.

Clearly you have no interest in discussing this is good faith because you not only create a strawman re: bug-free, but the very first thing I said in this discussion is that Sonic Origins is not broken, yet you keep bringing it up.

@BartoxTharglod

Crashes do make for an unfinished game. I remember it being a big deal when Phantasy Star Collection on GBA had a crash bug, because it was rather rare. These days? Nobody bats an eye.

For bugs, it depends. Older games did have some quirks, most notably with their collision systems (which even to this day, is not a solved problem). But the amount and severity of those present in Sonic Origins are evidence enough that the game was released too early. Actually, I don't even need to use that evidence, because the developers of the Sonic 3 & Knuckles part said as much themselves.

It can be argued that people buying unfinished products is perpetuating the practice of releasing unfinished (and, at times, broken) games.

@Mauzuri @BartoxTharglod

The collection isn't broken, but you'd have to have your head in the sand to not acknowledge that it has many problems, many of which aren't trivial.

How about all the graphics being slightly distorted? Sonic the Hedgehog crashing when collecting the sixth Chaos Emerald with Sonic & Tails? Muffled background music? Inconsistent music volume? Losing all your Chaos Emeralds in the middle of Sonic 3 & Knuckles?

The list goes on, and they're being documented on Sonic Retro: https://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?threads/sonic-origins-known-issues.41063/

Even the latest patch notes acknowledge many of the problems by fixing them: http://www.benoitren.be/switchpatchnotes/sonicorigins.html

@SteamEngenius Clearly you forgot that lots of Game Boy games had battery-backed save systems, and passwords, and that they weren't all long games where progress mattered. Try again.

The Game Boy Advance SP had a frontlight, not a backlight. Only the revised model (AGS-101) that wasn't widely available had a backlight.