Final Fantasy (WonderSwan Color)
The first in a vast battalion of Final Fantasy rereleases, the Wonderswan remake actually gets it righter than any that were to come. Sure, the Playstation version has FMV intros (whoo-hoo?), the GBA version has some mostly extraneous new dungeons, and the PSP version has sharper graphics. But the Wonderswan version gave the NES original a beautiful visual makeover that later ports would simply poach, and more importantly, it corrected some of the original game's antiquated design quirks in a totally optional fashion. In the NES game, if two characters attack one enemy and the first one kills it, the second character's attack will be ineffective. This is annoying, but it also forces you to plan; it adds some strategy to the essentially one-dimensional battle system. You could really argue for or against the feature, and the Wonderswan port gives you a choice. The same goes for a number of other idiosyncracies we cranky old-timers like to keep in our enhanced remakes; subsequent rereleases dumbed the game down until you could grind through it with a rubber band around the A button. — PS
Mega Man: Powered Up (PlayStation Portable)
People are excited about Mega Man 9's back-to-basics approach for good reason. The Mega Man name has become synonymous with chatty drama-fests in the past decade and a half, less about hard-as-nails action than lame anime tropes. The 2006 remake of the first Mega Man, Powered Up, isn't short on talking heads. It's also not an especially good recreation of the original's gameplay and, as for its new bosses, the less said about the Jim-Crow-faced Oil Man, the better. But Powered Up is a great game, and if it changes the original's exact scale, feel, and pace, it perfectly maintains the original's principles, albeit in its own super-cute fashion. The wealth of options in Powered Up is staggering, letting you play through the game as almost every character you run into in addition to an intimidatingly deep level-creation feature. If you want to remember how Mega Man was back in the day, well, that's included. — JC
Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles (PlayStation Portable)
Koji Igarashi remade Rondo of Blood last year out of necessity more than a need to improve upon the first. The final proper Castlevania sidescroller has aged exceptionally well in the past fifteen years, but it's impossibly rare, was never released outside of Japan, and is difficult to properly emulate. But Igarashi's Castlevania team did far more than just put some spit-and-polish on Richter Belmont's adventure, creating Castlevania's first truly attractive polygonal outing. More importantly, none of the game's perilous jumps have been hurt by the shift in presentation, unlike in so many 2.5D games. The remixed soundtrack isn't quite as spectacular as the original's, but you can unlock that in the game. It's win-win! — JC
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