This topic came up in another forum I frequent, and I thought it was a fun one to ponder. What's your favorite way a franchise has celebrated an anniversary?
Some that came to mind for me include Contra 4. This is a fantastic game in its own right, successfully blending the best of the early titles' level design with the 16-bit entries' spectacle, setpieces, and boss fights. The sprite work is phenomenal, the music is great, and its difficulty setting are really well designed to help you learn how to beat the game on Hard (with the Challenge mode also contributing to this, letting you tackle some of the game's more difficult sequences in bite-sized chunks). And as a celebration, it was like Sonic Mania before Sonic Mania, with callbacks to everything in the form of weapons, playable characters, boss fights, etc. It blends Japanese, North American, and European localizations, it puts crazy twists on classic boss fights...it has everything a Contra fan could ask for. Plus it has some fun extras, including the NES games (Contra in particular has had surprisingly few official re-releases, to my knowledge, so this was precious).
Mega Man Anniversary Collection was so good that every Mega Man re-release since has faced criticism. Mega Men 1-8 with save features, adjustable difficulty, the ability to rotate through weapons with shoulder buttons MMX-style, optional hints, and turbo fire. Plus the arcade games and a few extras. I'm aware that some of these features were not created for this collection, but having all of this on one disc was pretty great. But...what anniversary was this celebrating, exactly? It came out in 2004.
Kirby's Dream Collection gave easy access to Dream Land 1-3, Adventure, Super Star, and 64. That may not be the most games available in a compilation, but it's still rare to see handheld and console games packaged together, and these were the quintessential games of Kirby's first decade. It also had a fairly meaty museum feature, and a nice helping of original content via copy ability challenge courses. Oh, and it came with a CD full of music throughout the series.
Some that came to mind for me include Contra 4. This is a fantastic game in its own right, successfully blending the best of the early titles' level design with the 16-bit entries' spectacle, setpieces, and boss fights. The sprite work is phenomenal, the music is great, and its difficulty setting are really well designed to help you learn how to beat the game on Hard (with the Challenge mode also contributing to this, letting you tackle some of the game's more difficult sequences in bite-sized chunks). And as a celebration, it was like Sonic Mania before Sonic Mania, with callbacks to everything in the form of weapons, playable characters, boss fights, etc. It blends Japanese, North American, and European localizations, it puts crazy twists on classic boss fights...it has everything a Contra fan could ask for. Plus it has some fun extras, including the NES games (Contra in particular has had surprisingly few official re-releases, to my knowledge, so this was precious).
Mega Man Anniversary Collection was so good that every Mega Man re-release since has faced criticism. Mega Men 1-8 with save features, adjustable difficulty, the ability to rotate through weapons with shoulder buttons MMX-style, optional hints, and turbo fire. Plus the arcade games and a few extras. I'm aware that some of these features were not created for this collection, but having all of this on one disc was pretty great. But...what anniversary was this celebrating, exactly? It came out in 2004.
Kirby's Dream Collection gave easy access to Dream Land 1-3, Adventure, Super Star, and 64. That may not be the most games available in a compilation, but it's still rare to see handheld and console games packaged together, and these were the quintessential games of Kirby's first decade. It also had a fairly meaty museum feature, and a nice helping of original content via copy ability challenge courses. Oh, and it came with a CD full of music throughout the series.
