Megaman the Wily Wars is quite an interesting title. To put it simply, it's essentially a remaster of the original trilogy of the classic megaman games on the nes. Individually as games these all have their own quirks and such inherently built into their original design so they naturally vary in quality, but this is down to how they were originally created.

I don't think it would be worth discussing the problems of the games themselves, because those flaws are tied to the game's original design that's been maintained here, so I don't feel the need to outline the good and the bad of those games but rather the changes that the Wily Wars provides.

In terms of how the remaster itself is handled for these games, I don't think it's solid, but it's passable. For reference, I personally played this through the Sega Mega Drive online that is packaged with the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pass. I know that if you play the version on original hardware (I believe the PAL one, but this could be wrong), it suffered a lot of performance issues and slowed down a lot, but I personally didn't go through any of that. I'm going to assume that the version provided to me was the version of the game that was apart of the Sega Channel service that was provided to North American users.

To further go into detail about the remasters themselves, I don't believe these are the optimal ways to play the game. Whilst there weren't many I encountered some technical errors that weren't present in the original version of the game (at least to my recollection) one of the big ones I dealt with was the speed of wood man was way faster than it originally was when I played it on the original and felt almost impossible without using rewind for me. Another thing is the removal of preset pickups which seems like a deliberate design choice, which would in theory be fine if it didn't potentially soft lock your game until you die. Whilst this didn't affect me personally, there is a section in the original megaman where it is required to make use of the optional, but not so optional item the magnet beam to create platforms to reach the ladder before the yellow devil. Fortunately, if your weapon energy is low there are two pickups on the screen below and you can constantly switch between screens in the original to reobtain the energy if necessary. This isn't possible in Wily Wars so you can only make a finite amount of mistakes here. Additionally, I found the physics to not be accurate to the NES originals and they felt a lot heavier compared to the relatively floatier jump that the classics typically had. It wasn't too difficult to adjust to but it can throw you off sometimes.

Visually, I don't think the game really makes use of the 16 bit upgrade that it was given to enhance the visuals. It feels like they just took the original sprites and added more colour to them, rather than just make more detailed looking sprites and I think that this could've definitely better made use of the upgraded hardware of the mega drive but unfortunately I generally prefer the way it looked originally.

Even with the music, none of it is necessarily bad but the remixes I don't think are always as good as they used to be except most of Megaman 3, I think that one had the most effort put into it overall.

In terms of additions that the game has that I think are pretty neat, the game comes with a save feature with multiple save slots for all 3 games, but other than that there aren't really many other quality of life upgrades, as most the games are left untouched. Although one thing to note is that Megaman 2 in this is based off of the Famicom version and therefore there is no difficulty option and by default you're playing the North American equivalent of "Difficult" mode, as an easier difficulty was only later added in the western release.

After going through all 3 games, you unlock "Wily Tower". Essentially a bonus chapter to cap of the collection and tie it to the loose story the collection had of Dr Wily creating a time machine to make you go through the 3 adventures again.

Wily Tower is one of the most fun additions to the classic series and honestly I wish it was longer because of just how fun it is. The gimmick is that you have 8 weapon slots and 3 item slots. You have access to the entire arsenal of tools from all 3 games to pick from to decide on using with your given slots. I love this idea so much and I love that it allows you to experiment with whichever weapons you like having. You want metal blades, elec beam, magnet missile, rush jet and all the best weapons in the series then just use them. I love that if you pick certain items they can also be used for alternate paths and the music and visuals work so much better here. The level design also makes use of any sort of level obstacle or enemies in the three games. Along with completely original stage designs and bosses. Personally I would love if there was more of this and I would be happy to play a longer wily tower because I think this is a great concept and I would really like this game if it was more like Wily Tower.

Overall, the reason I rated this relatively highly is because I really love the Wily Tower segment. Otherwise the game is relatively okay, and definitely an interesting play experience, but in no way make the originals obsolete. I think this is something definitely worth trying but because it requires beating 3 games to get to the best part I wouldn't recommend regularly replaying the game. I would definitely have been interested to see an idea like Wily Wars extend to the other megaman games, but unfortunately we can't all have nice things. Definitely play this if you're a big classic series fan, but otherwise it's not mandatory even if Wily Tower is very fun.