The biggest problem I have with the retro collections is that so many of them are cheap (in the production value sense) and incomplete. If the companies would produce and promote proper collections I suspect that they'd sell quite well. However, too often we end up with stuff that ranges from lackluster to outright shovelware:
- Phantasy Star Collection on GBA, which is missing PS4. Yeah, there's a cost argument for this. There's also a cost argument for not releasing it at all.
- Square's Final Fantasy "Anthology" that only had FF5 and FF6, followed up by Final Fantasy Chronicles with the inexplicable combination of FF4 and Chrono Trigger. All of which have in-game load times and more slowdown than the originals despite being on a system that's at least ten times as powerful with enough RAM to hold most of the original game.
- Konami Classics Collection: Contra, Super C, and Castlevania 1-3. Not too bad, but they restricted themselves to NES games. Where are Contra 3, Castlevania 4, and Dracula X? Oh yeah, they're probably hoping to charge $35 each for them as cheap GBA ports. <_<
- Gradius 3&4. Maybe it's different in Japan, but it's a little tough to get hold of Gradius 1&2 stateside, not to mention Parodius and Salamander.
To be fair, Capcom seems to be headed in the right direction with Mega Man Anniversary Collection. Although I would have liked to see Mega Man X-X3 on it, or at least Rockman & Forte (which is probably excluded solely to not undercut sales of the GBA port <_<) the Mega Man collection has all of the main series and throws in the arcade games as a neat extra. Sonic Mega Collection seems similarly good; it likewise collects the main series but leaves out Sonic CD. If they could just bring themselves to go that last ten yards, they could set an awesome example for the rest of the industry...
- Phantasy Star Collection on GBA, which is missing PS4. Yeah, there's a cost argument for this. There's also a cost argument for not releasing it at all.
- Square's Final Fantasy "Anthology" that only had FF5 and FF6, followed up by Final Fantasy Chronicles with the inexplicable combination of FF4 and Chrono Trigger. All of which have in-game load times and more slowdown than the originals despite being on a system that's at least ten times as powerful with enough RAM to hold most of the original game.
- Konami Classics Collection: Contra, Super C, and Castlevania 1-3. Not too bad, but they restricted themselves to NES games. Where are Contra 3, Castlevania 4, and Dracula X? Oh yeah, they're probably hoping to charge $35 each for them as cheap GBA ports. <_<
- Gradius 3&4. Maybe it's different in Japan, but it's a little tough to get hold of Gradius 1&2 stateside, not to mention Parodius and Salamander.
To be fair, Capcom seems to be headed in the right direction with Mega Man Anniversary Collection. Although I would have liked to see Mega Man X-X3 on it, or at least Rockman & Forte (which is probably excluded solely to not undercut sales of the GBA port <_<) the Mega Man collection has all of the main series and throws in the arcade games as a neat extra. Sonic Mega Collection seems similarly good; it likewise collects the main series but leaves out Sonic CD. If they could just bring themselves to go that last ten yards, they could set an awesome example for the rest of the industry...