I'd be interesting to know what the rentals for Mega Man 4 were in addition to sales. At the time I remember playing the game as a rental and never buying it. While game rentals are, and were at the time of these games, illegal in Japan, around the time of this game the video game market in the USA was in it's heyday and you can bet that pretty much all the fans of the Mega Man games at this point were at the very least renting the Mega Man 4 games like I did, if not outright buying them. With these games retailing with MSRP of $49.99 each a $2-5 rental for a weekend was a big deal. While I was trying to get the price right in the previous paragraph I was digging through old game mags, electronics boutique ads, and toys r us ads to try to get the sale price at the time right (More on that later) and it was then that something jumped out on me as to why Mega Man 4's sales might not be so great compared to Mega Man 3. Mega Man 4 released in the USA in January 1992. That means it just missed the Christmas 1991 holiday season here. Mega Man 5 released in the USA and Japan on December 1992 of the same year. Next Mega Man X came out in the USA January 1994. Then Mega Man 6 came out March 1994. (The delay of 6 to NA ended up flip flopping the release order between the last two, as in Japan 6 preceded X.) Since both of those missed the 1993 holiday season in the US you'd see the two of them next to each other on store shelves. Incidentally for the other US release dates: Mega Man December 1987. Mega Man 2 June 1989. November 1990 It seems like Mega Man 4 probably came out at the worst possible time for big sales. When I was researching I was seeing full page ads for Mega Man 3 in Gamepro up until the release of Mega Man 4 which were almost identical and proclaimed it was "Like nothing before" (LOL. Also those Mega Man 3 full page ads from December 1991 were for a year old game, how wild is that?) When Mega Man 2 and 3 came out they, as you said, got huge coverage in Nintendo Power. By the time 4 came the top billing in magazine in magazines was quickly dominated by the Genesis and SNES. Mega Man 3 also came out right in time for the holiday season which Mega Man 4 missed and then it ended up getting sandwiched next to Mega Man 5 later that year, and it also had to compete with adoption of new gaming systems to contend with. It definitely shows why #2 and to a lesser extend #3 loom so big in the memory or people in the US as the releases had a lot more time to breathe and solidify themselves. It also meant they could be picked up used and had more time to reach more players. Also as for that promised aside about prices, the reason was digging through game magazines to get the prices right is, because unlike today the prices of retro games back then would fluctuate a lot as sellers were trying to move stock. Also all game carts aren't created equal and some become more expensive due licenses, more ROM chips on the board, or extra expansion chips. The NES had quite a few different chips, the most common being the various memory mappers that ended up in almost every cart but the first ones meaning that not only were devs learning the hardware better as time went on, they were getting minor upgrades in hardware through the cart which is something that doesn't happen these days. When researching, I didn't see huge difference in game prices for NES carts but when you look through SNES/Genesis you start to see huge differences in cart MSRP prices with them ranging from $50 to $100 depending on the game.
PS: Sorry, I do tend to write entire essays in these comment sections... And I do agree with you that 4 is definitely an improvement over 3. I think when people say which one is "the best" It's usually not solely on quality. They are often speaking to the impact it had or how revolutionary it was at the time. For example you see Street Fighter 2: The World Warriors or Turbo really listed as the best at the time even though objectively there's a lot more improvements in Super Street Fighter 2.
I enjoy reading the essays lol. These long comments make my videos worth it because I get to read more perspectives about those that grew up with the games
yeah, megaman 4 is very good, but i like more 2 because of 1: nostalgia obviously, 2: without it we would never get the others, 3: it has the best soundtrack of them all, besides all that megaman 4 was my second megaman game and i like it a lot, with the first instance of the mega buster and the first 2 castles game (something that later games will do a lot XD
MM2 music is my favorite thing about it, but I LOVE Dive Man's music the most haha. Also yeah you make a good point that without MM2 we wouldn't have gotten others.
I'd be interesting to know what the rentals for Mega Man 4 were in addition to sales. At the time I remember playing the game as a rental and never buying it. While game rentals are, and were at the time of these games, illegal in Japan, around the time of this game the video game market in the USA was in it's heyday and you can bet that pretty much all the fans of the Mega Man games at this point were at the very least renting the Mega Man 4 games like I did, if not outright buying them. With these games retailing with MSRP of $49.99 each a $2-5 rental for a weekend was a big deal.
While I was trying to get the price right in the previous paragraph I was digging through old game mags, electronics boutique ads, and toys r us ads to try to get the sale price at the time right (More on that later) and it was then that something jumped out on me as to why Mega Man 4's sales might not be so great compared to Mega Man 3. Mega Man 4 released in the USA in January 1992. That means it just missed the Christmas 1991 holiday season here. Mega Man 5 released in the USA and Japan on December 1992 of the same year. Next Mega Man X came out in the USA January 1994. Then Mega Man 6 came out March 1994. (The delay of 6 to NA ended up flip flopping the release order between the last two, as in Japan 6 preceded X.) Since both of those missed the 1993 holiday season in the US you'd see the two of them next to each other on store shelves. Incidentally for the other US release dates: Mega Man December 1987. Mega Man 2 June 1989. November 1990
It seems like Mega Man 4 probably came out at the worst possible time for big sales. When I was researching I was seeing full page ads for Mega Man 3 in Gamepro up until the release of Mega Man 4 which were almost identical and proclaimed it was "Like nothing before" (LOL. Also those Mega Man 3 full page ads from December 1991 were for a year old game, how wild is that?) When Mega Man 2 and 3 came out they, as you said, got huge coverage in Nintendo Power. By the time 4 came the top billing in magazine in magazines was quickly dominated by the Genesis and SNES. Mega Man 3 also came out right in time for the holiday season which Mega Man 4 missed and then it ended up getting sandwiched next to Mega Man 5 later that year, and it also had to compete with adoption of new gaming systems to contend with. It definitely shows why #2 and to a lesser extend #3 loom so big in the memory or people in the US as the releases had a lot more time to breathe and solidify themselves. It also meant they could be picked up used and had more time to reach more players.
Also as for that promised aside about prices, the reason was digging through game magazines to get the prices right is, because unlike today the prices of retro games back then would fluctuate a lot as sellers were trying to move stock. Also all game carts aren't created equal and some become more expensive due licenses, more ROM chips on the board, or extra expansion chips. The NES had quite a few different chips, the most common being the various memory mappers that ended up in almost every cart but the first ones meaning that not only were devs learning the hardware better as time went on, they were getting minor upgrades in hardware through the cart which is something that doesn't happen these days. When researching, I didn't see huge difference in game prices for NES carts but when you look through SNES/Genesis you start to see huge differences in cart MSRP prices with them ranging from $50 to $100 depending on the game.
PS: Sorry, I do tend to write entire essays in these comment sections... And I do agree with you that 4 is definitely an improvement over 3. I think when people say which one is "the best" It's usually not solely on quality. They are often speaking to the impact it had or how revolutionary it was at the time. For example you see Street Fighter 2: The World Warriors or Turbo really listed as the best at the time even though objectively there's a lot more improvements in Super Street Fighter 2.
I enjoy reading the essays lol. These long comments make my videos worth it because I get to read more perspectives about those that grew up with the games
I just rented through block buster for games like Megan that could be beat in a weekend.
yeah, megaman 4 is very good, but i like more 2 because of 1: nostalgia obviously, 2: without it we would never get the others, 3: it has the best soundtrack of them all, besides all that megaman 4 was my second megaman game and i like it a lot, with the first instance of the mega buster and the first 2 castles game (something that later games will do a lot XD
MM2 music is my favorite thing about it, but I LOVE Dive Man's music the most haha. Also yeah you make a good point that without MM2 we wouldn't have gotten others.
Best 8-Bit Mega Man? No argument!
Best NES game? Not even close.
Agreed, I meant nes mega man game but I didn't want the title to be too wordy 😂
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