Mega Man Anniversary Collection. Midway Arcade Treasures. Activision Anthology. Sonic Mega Collection. Namco Museum. Konami Arcade Advanced. Nintendo Classic Box.
One of those doesn’t belong. Putting out massive game collections for a low price seems to be all the rage these days. You’ll find ten, twenty, sometimes over fifty games on a disc or cart for under $30, and you really can’t beat that with a stick. Many of gaming’s icons are represented in this fashion, from Pac-Man to Pitfall Harry to the guy from Yie-Ar Kung Fu. But where’s Mario?
Nintendo steadfastly refuses to release any type of real anthology collection. Sure, they’ve put out Super Mario All-Stars and Legend of Zelda Collector’s Edition, but the former was far in the past, and the latter only had four titles. That hardly counts.
There’s a very simple reason for this: Nintendo wants to continue screwing the gamer out of as much money as possible. There’s really no other explanation. If you don’t believe me, look at the facts: rather than dumping a bunch of classic NES games on a single GBA cart, they’ve been reissuing them ONE per cart, for $20! That’s insanely expensive. Even the “but they’re new and sealed!” argument doesn’t hold any water, especially since you can get many of the games on e-Cards for only $5 a pop! Plus, they’re direct ports, with NO extra features. Ridiculous. You can get Activision Anthology for $20, which has over fifty titles AND a wealth of extras.
Nintendo’s been subtly pulling this crap for years. Look at the Super Mario Advance series on GBA; only one game per cart (I’m sorry, multiplayer Mario Bros. isn’t good enough), with a few extras to make people think that the games are actually worth $30 or more. Since they’ve actually released all the SMB titles on a single cart in the past, this is just another slap in the face.
If there was some type of grassroots effort, I’m sure gamers could coerce Nintendo into releasing SOMEthing. I mean, c’mon, there’s still money to be made by repackaging old stuff…just give us more bang for our buck. Sadly, many casual gamers and Nintendo fanboys will be happy enough to keep throwing down ridiculous amounts of money for the same games they bought 15 years ago, so in the interim, we’re screwed.