A Boy and His Blob Retro Collection

I have mixed feelings about this, as I love the games themselves, but I can't in good conscience give this collection a positive review. First up, the positives: Both the Japanese and US versions of both games, meaning you can play as both designs of the boy, there's a sound test, save states and the usual retro games collection options of toggleable CRT filters, borders and resizeable gameplay window. Additionally, there is one more positive: Steam achievements. This, however, is where it ends. Firstly, this is just an emulator, which would be fine, if it weren't for the fact that the vast majority of assets other than the emulators themselves is unencrypted. This allows for some further investigation where we can see some particularly lazy parts of this collection. For example, there are a number of, albeit empty files referencing LRG's previous Steam game, the Jurassic Park collection, as well as referencing emulation support for GBA, GBC and SNES ROMs. Additionally, the files contain borders for gameplay sizes which the collection doesn't actually support. This gets us to our next topic, settings. Despite what I mentioned earlier, this game has next to no settings. Borders, although numerous, the vast majority of them only serve as a reminder of who developed this shoddy collection with only three of its many border options actually relating to A Boy and His Blob in any way, two of which are just one asset placed over and over in a tile pattern, and window sizes only consist of zoomed in to the point of removing top and bottom segments of the border and zoomed in but less so. Actual settings (i.e. windowed/fullscreen mode, resolution settings, etc.) are completely non-existent, forcing you to use Alt-Enter on startup, reminiscent of an early 2010s Game Maker game. Most of this is nothing that different from what other companies do with their own game collections, however we then get onto the in-game tweaks. My first major grievance with this collection is the tweaks made to the title screens. No longer is it David Crane's A Boy and His Blob, simply A Boy and His Blob, and although Crane is still credited elsewhere, the same cannot be said for Absolute Entertainment, the ones responsible for making this franchise even able to exist in the first place, whose name, as well as its history as a Nintendo game are wholly removed leaving "copyright Ziggurat". Oh, what's that? You've never heard of Ziggurat? Nor had I until I'd bought this game. As it turns out, they're a relatively under the radar company, who somehow have the financial capability to buy out the rights to formerly major publishers' intellectual property. Buying the rights to intellectual property is fine, but what about stealing? There's this one new feature in this collection I've neglected to mention until now, the ability to check the entire map on the pause menu. This is an interesting premise, however mysteriously these maps are entirely covered by pictures of the eponymous blob of the series, almost as if they're telling the player where to go. Long term fans of the internet era of retro gaming may recognise why. In fact, these maps come from a formerly immensely popular game mapping website, The Video Game Atlas, also known as vgmaps, with the only difference being the credits to the mapper having been removed. To sum up, only buy this collection if you're desperate for more Steam achievements of a game series you once loved. The fact that this collection received a full price physical release on Limited Run Games complete with its own $65 collector's edition is actually disgusting.