Mega Man Legacy preserves the past by playing in the present

Capcom announces the Mega Man Legacy Collection, letting it be known that they'll not just be stopping here when it comes to restoring the classics. Just like we've got restoration for comic books, and we've got preservation efforts in place to keep historic buildings intact, so too will Capcom – and the rest of the gaming industry – bring back, restore, and rejuvenate classic video games from our past. This effort brings the original six Mega Man games to our present for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo 3DS, and PC this summer.

This isn't the first time we've heard of video games being preserved. Check our recent visit to the traveling part of the Videogame History Museum from this March at GDC 2015. There you'll see arcade games given their due credit.

But what about the software? What about the games themselves, not just the hardware they were delivered with?

Imagine a world where software was given as much of a place in our social history as hardware.

That's where Capcom comes in.

Working the developers at Digital Eclipse, Capcom is making certain the Mega Man story remains active and available.

Digital Eclipse is re-building the Mega Man video game series – the first six games, that is – from their original elements, doing so on their new Eclipse Engine. The games will look the same and play the same – they'll just be as sharp or sharper than they originally were on your 25-year-old TV, this time in fabulous 1080p.

"Movies have the Criterion Collection," said Frank Cifaldi, Head of Restoration for Digital Eclipse, "but there hasn't been anything like that for games,"

"We're living in the golden age of a brand new form of artistic expression, and we're not doing a very good job of making sure our games will be available five years from now, let alone fifty. The more we can do right now to take video game preservation seriously, the safer our history will be."

This Mega Man Legacy Collection will cost gamers a cool $14.99 when it's released later this year.

In addition to full versions of all six of the first Mega Man games, you'll get leaderboards and challenges, high-resolution images, and the ability to replay action.

The "high-resolution images" bit comes in the Museum. In the Legacy Collection you'll find "an exhaustive collection of sketches, art and other visual materials that help put you in that 1987~1992 time period."

"Part of this game's goal is the preservation of history," says Capcom, "and the folks at Digital Eclipse are scanning items at absurdly high resolutions to make them as clean and clear as possible."

Sound radical enough for you? Here's hoping the preservation of games like these doesn't stop here. Nintendo – we're looking at you!