Game Collections With Historical Extras Worth Exploring Between Sessions

Walk into the Toy Pop room in the original PlayStation collection and open its Japanese instructions. The museum presents arcade games alongside things that once surrounded them, even Pac-Man clothing. A browse through the rooms gives the games a place in everyday arcade life before you launch one.

Once you unlock the developer interviews, look for Rieko Kodama talking about Phantasy Star. Then open Phantasy Star II's museum pages for the history and artwork. The interview adds a developer's perspective to a series you can otherwise encounter here by jumping from sequel to sequel.

The Xbox One collection unlocks interviews and production footage as you play. Look for the Rare Revealed feature on Blast Corps and hear the developers discuss making the game. Then return to the Nintendo 64 original included in the collection.

Start with the unused enemy sketches in the first Legacy Collection's Museum. Compare those paper designs with the small characters on screen in the six NES games. You can also open the Robot Master database and try a practice fight, a quick way to see how a design works once you have to move around it.

Open the Museum's character viewer and look through the animation sprites, then browse the design documents. Seeing a move broken into drawings makes it easier to pick out its windup when you go back to a match. The timeline lets you follow that work across the early arcade series.

Follow the annotated art and advertising in the museum before trying games such as Athena or Ikari Warriors. The collection traces the years before the Neo Geo, when SNK was already making games for arcades and home consoles. The archive makes those releases easier to see as part of one company's history.

Open the Book of the Crescent Moon and turn to the Design Archives. Early sketches and developer interviews show how the series took shape, and the box art gallery shows how it was presented to players. Try reading a few pages before going back to a Belmont's first steps toward the castle.

In the expanded collection with Aladdin, The Lion King, and The Jungle Book, start in The Jungle Book's museum. It includes material from the animated film as well as game development art. Seeing sketches and pixel art side by side gives you something specific to notice the next time you move through the game.

Use the original collection's Museum to put the artwork from Darkstalkers and the other arcade games next to their development materials. You can also play tracks recorded from the arcade versions. Try following one title through the art and music before starting a match to hear and see how its style comes together.

In the Turtles' Lair, open a few pages from Konami's original design documents, then look at a manual or magazine ad. One set shows what the team was trying to make and the others show what a player was told about it. That gap is worth exploring even if you already know the arcade games.

The original collection's five timelines let you open games alongside documents and interviews about the people who made them. Follow the early trail from Pong toward the Atari 2600 to see how play moved from public spaces into homes. Open something playable from the timeline before you go back to the historical material.

Play one of Jordan Mechner's early prototypes, then open the design notes and video features about his rotoscoped animation. Returning to a finished version afterward makes it easier to notice how much personality comes from the timing of a few movements. The set also includes material from his unpublished Deathbounce.

Find the Attack of the Mutant Camels demo for the unreleased Konix Multi-System in the interactive timeline. You can see a familiar Minter idea on hardware that never reached stores. Then try one of his light synthesizers for another example of what he made outside ordinary high-score play.

Start with the playable recreation of the 1984 Electronika 60 game and then watch Alexey Pajitnov and Henk Rogers discuss their collaboration. Going from that spare presentation to later experiments such as Tetris Battle Gaiden gives the documentary some practical context. You can see how much the same basic idea could absorb.

Start with the interviews about using filmed performers to make the arcade game's digitized characters. Then compare the original arcade release with one of the included handheld versions. The archival footage and character histories give you a way to trace what carried across those very different screens.