Now, technically speaking, it is very possible that we will one day get to play this game, or rather, games. We could go to Ebay and drop the $100+ on all of the original carts and fire ‘em up on whatever hardware we may have available to play original Game Boy games (Super Game Boy, Game Boy Player, Game Boy Advance, hell, why not Gunpei Yokoi’s glorious grey brick from 1989 if we’re feeling especially devoted to an authentic experience.) We could download one of them fancy emulators and five ROMs. We could just go ahead and wait for the inevitable, when the DS Ware store gets a little Capcom love and we all drop fifteen dollars on all five games. But we will never, ever get to pop a Game Boy Advance cart into a machine, hit power, and play the aborted Mega Man Anniversary Collection.
Planned to release shortly after its older console brethren in late 2004, the GBA Anniversary Collection compiled the five Game Boy Rockman World games, known as Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge and Mega Man II through V here in the States. When it comes to old fashioned Mega Man-ning, these games are far from essential. I through IV are amalgamations of NES I through V, with the respective robot master levels being slightly remixed. They did sport a handful of additions, each game starring a brand new boss (Mega Man Killers) that gave up a unique weapon, and all of them culminating in a new Dr. Wily fortress. Like most Game Boy games, the Rockman World adventures were cramped affairs, with too-big sprites and levels that never properly emulated the big, open hallways of console Mega Mans. Anniversary Collection was delayed for eighteen months before getting officially cancelled in January 2006. 
The real loss here is that more people didn’t get a chance to play Rockman World V, a cart rare when it was first released and that’s fetched a high price on the collector’s market for a long time. The only totally original game of the series, it’s also Mega Man’s most unique outing: instead of fighting eight worker robot “Mans”, you take on nine (nine!) robots based on the planets in our solar system. Mega Man also got a robot kitty and his Mega Buster charge shot was replaced by the Mega Arm.
Hopefully, we’ll get easy access to this lost relic of the Blue Bomber’s history at some point in the future. In the mean time, enjoy this hilariously narrated play through of V.
Related links:
Game Compilations: The Good, the Bad, and the Fugly
What I'm Playing This Weekend: Mega Man Anniversary Collection
Games We Will Never Get to Play: River City Ransom Online
Games We Will Never Get to Play: Kenji Eno’s D2 for M2