Just finished replaying the original trilogy from one of my favorite series, Mega Man X. Played through X1 2 and 3 over the last week on the SNES. The first game was so good at showing players mechanics without needless explanation or hand-holding, and gave the Mega Man series some fresh blood and attitude adjustment when making his transfer over to 16bit. X2 took everything that the first one did so well and made it even better, which was tough because X1 was already so near perfection. X2 had better tunes, better level design, more epic mini bosses and stage bosses, and a sometimes steep but always fair difficulty level. X3 didn't quite live up to all the hype, especially considering it's a $300-400 game nowadays. There were some noticeable improvements such as the addition of different ride armors and the vertical dash (which is awesome btw,) but the stages just don't have that personality that the other two games do, except Blizzard Buffalo's stage which is great but that stage feels only as good as nearly every stage in X2. X3 also suffers from some very noticeable slowdown in some areas where there are too many moving sprites on screen at once, which can be bad in tight situations.
Guess this'll have to tide me over until The Mighty Number 9 is released
Now if only I still had a Playstation, I could fire up my copies of X4 and 5
edit: just realized the PS3 can play PS1 games. Huzzah!