VGS rare variant/error thread Nintendo edition

[Hybrid | 424]

15 hours ago, DK said:

It's real, the date codes are correct.

I don't think it is an attempted label swap. Whoever pulled the label was probably a kid when they did it.

This is what I was looking for was the dates on the chips.

Either way I may have the fine details mixed up but it will be added

[DK | 258]

6 minutes ago, guitarzombie said:

Nice.  So as I always re-iterate, my hypothesis is that:

The "USA" Capcom MM6 was actually released in NTSC countries outside the US.  (First print late 93)

 

The -1 Nintendo MM6 was for the US (Early 94, after Capcom gave Nintendo the rights for distribution after saying they were not going to release it in the US)

 

The Playtronics MM6 is Brazilian and was printed in 1996!

I would assume that the Capcom version was initially intended to be a USA release, and a print run was ready to go.

Then Capcom sold the distribution rights to Nintendo, so Nintendo had them un-box the printed copies and ship the carts to Playtronic, who printed Brazilian boxes and manuals to put the carts in.

When the Capcom carts ran out, Playtronic just used -1 carts (as evidenced on Mercado Livre, where there are many -1 MM6 with a Brazilian back sticker.)

When the -1 carts ran out Nintendo gave Playtronic permission to print their own labels, and Nintendo did a late board run and shipped them to Brazil.

[guitarzombie | 923]

24 minutes ago, DK said:

I would assume that the Capcom version was initially intended to be a USA release, and a print run was ready to go.

Then Capcom sold the distribution rights to Nintendo, so Nintendo had them un-box the printed copies and ship the carts to Playtronic, who printed Brazilian boxes and manuals to put the carts in.

When the Capcom carts ran out, Playtronic just used -1 carts (as evidenced on Mercado Livre, where there are many -1 MM6 with a Brazilian back sticker.)

When the -1 carts ran out Nintendo gave Playtronic permission to print their own labels, and Nintendo did a late board run and shipped them to Brazil.

I can't remember where but I can remember reading that Capcom said they were not going to release MM6 in the US.  I don't think it ever was intended.  Im thinking that "USA" on the label really just means "NSTC".  Which is why some of those games that didn't sell well went to South America.  I got my F2 from Chile.

[DK | 258]

11 minutes ago, guitarzombie said:

I can't remember where but I can remember reading that Capcom said they were not going to release MM6 in the US.  I don't think it ever was intended.  Im thinking that "USA" on the label really just means "NSTC".  Which is why some of those games that didn't sell well went to South America.  I got my F2 from Chile.

If that was the case, why would the box have "For sale and use in USA, Canada and Mexico only" on it?

If they had no plans to sell it in the USA they would have had "For sale and use in Mexico and South America only"

Maybe they made a 5000k print run for the US and didn't want to make more. Then Nintendo who was pushing the top loader in 1993 swooped in and bought the distribution from them, so they sent the carts to South America since they no longer had the distribution rights to the USA.

Just a guess, but it makes the most sense to me.

 

[guitarzombie | 923]

Maybe they considered SA to be part of Mexico?  Or maybe it was released in Mexico and not SA?  All of Latin America (Mexico, Honduras etc) all use NTSC

[DoctorEncore | 3,690]

1 hour ago, DK said:

If that was the case, why would the box have "For sale and use in USA, Canada and Mexico only" on it?

If they had no plans to sell it in the USA they would have had "For sale and use in Mexico and South America only"

Maybe they made a 5000k print run for the US and didn't want to make more. Then Nintendo who was pushing the top loader in 1993 swooped in and bought the distribution from them, so they sent the carts to South America since they no longer had the distribution rights to the USA.

Just a guess, but it makes the most sense to me.

 

Is this a second sealed copy or is this the one confirmed copy we've seen before (I'll leave the owner's name anonymous since he's not participating in this conversation)?

If they did make any significant number of US copies, I suspect they pulled the carts and manuals and destroyed the boxes before shipping them down south. My suspicion is they only printed a few "sample" boxes for proofing, but this clearly was never sold in the United States as an official release.

[phart010 | 1,705]

Somewhere out there is a Capcom employee who knows the whole story about what happened and they are laughing at us trying to figure out what may have happened  

[guitarzombie | 923]

That would be so odd that they would make these 'test' ones.  I wish I can remember where I read that Capcom was not releasing MM6 in the US but in Japan and elsewhere.  I cant imagine them even starting to print test copies because why waste those resources if you think its not gonna be profitable?  I suspected Capcom wanted to move on to the more successful SNES in the more 'cutting edge' country like the US, where elsewhere where they were a little behind, thought MM6 would sell well there since people haven't moved to the SNES yet or maybe wasn't even released there yet.

Still interesting. I was so wanting to get a copy but since I believe it was never intended for the US im happy not going bonkers looking for copy haha

[phart010 | 1,705]

3 hours ago, guitarzombie said:

That would be so odd that they would make these 'test' ones.  I wish I can remember where I read that Capcom was not releasing MM6 in the US but in Japan and elsewhere.  I cant imagine them even starting to print test copies because why waste those resources if you think its not gonna be profitable?  I suspected Capcom wanted to move on to the more successful SNES in the more 'cutting edge' country like the US, where elsewhere where they were a little behind, thought MM6 would sell well there since people haven't moved to the SNES yet or maybe wasn't even released there yet.

Still interesting. I was so wanting to get a copy but since I believe it was never intended for the US im happy not going bonkers looking for copy haha

This timeline of events probably provides some clues as to what happened:

JP Launch	US Launch	Title	Worldwide Sales
Dec 88	Jun 89	Mega Man 2	1.51 M
Sep 90	Nov 90	Mega Man 3	1.08 M
Nov 90	Aug 91	SNES
Dec 91	Jan 92	Mega Man 4	0.93 M
Dec 92	Dec 92	Mega Man 5	0.79 M
Dec 93	Oct 93	NES Version 2
Nov 93	Mar 94	Mega Man 6	0.52 M
Dec 93	Jan 94	Mega Man X	1.16M
Dec 94	Jan 95	Mega Man X2	0.56 M

Sales of Megaman had been declining since Megaman 2. SNES launched in US in Aug-91. Megaman 6 “officially” launched in Mar-94 ( I say “officially” in quotes because in the game it says Capcom 1993, so probably the non-1 version would have launched one month after the JP version like all other titles). SNES had already been out 30+ months by the time MM6 should have come out, Capcom probably projected poor sales, also probably wanted to focus on promoting Megaman X. If we had North American sales broken out separately, that would probably give a better story

As others here mentioned, Nintendo did have an interest in supporting NES as they had just launched NES version 2 so maybe that factored into their decision to publish MM6. 

Capcom of America may have also thought that Capcom JP was done with the regular Mega Man series as the X series was now coming out. Good thing Nintendo brought us MM6 because we’d have lost continuity in the story leading into to MM7 if they didn’t

Edited March 7, 2021 by phart010

[DK | 258]

5 hours ago, DoctorEncore said:

Is this a second sealed copy or is this the one confirmed copy we've seen before (I'll leave the owner's name anonymous since he's not participating in this conversation)?

If they did make any significant number of US copies, I suspect they pulled the carts and manuals and destroyed the boxes before shipping them down south. My suspicion is they only printed a few "sample" boxes for proofing, but this clearly was never sold in the United States as an official release.

This is the only verified boxed/sealed copy. The pics are from the old site. It is not mine.

I suspect they destroyed the manuals too. As far as I know, this is the only box (found in Canada), and I think there are 3 manuals? All found in North America.

[AverageOliver98 | 715]

3 hours ago, phart010 said:

Sales of Megaman had been declining since Megaman 2. SNES launched in US in Aug-91. Megaman 6 “officially” launched in Mar-94 ( I say “officially” in quotes because in the game it says Capcom 1993, so probably the non-1 version would have launched one month after the JP version like all other titles). SNES had already been out 30+ months by the time MM6 should have come out, Capcom probably projected poor sales, also probably wanted to focus on promoting Megaman X. If we had North American sales broken out separately, that would probably give a better story

As others here mentioned, Nintendo did have an interest in supporting NES as they had just launched NES version 2 so maybe that factored into their decision to publish MM6. 

Capcom of America may have also thought that Capcom JP was done with the regular Mega Man series as the X series was now coming out. Good thing Nintendo brought us MM6 because we’d have lost continuity in the story leading into to MM7 if they didn’t

Mega Man 6's Robot Master contest winners probably played some factor in it getting released in NA too(Thank you Daniel Vallée and Michael Leader).

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

8 hours ago, phart010 said:

( I say “officially” in quotes because in the game it says Capcom 1993, so probably the non-1 version would have launched one month after the JP version like all other titles). 

The in-game copyright date on the title screen of an NES title has absolutely no bearing on when said game was released, unless of course you believe that half the black-box titles were released in the US before the system even came out...

[phart010 | 1,705]

7 hours ago, Dr. Morbis said:

The in-game copyright date on the title screen of an NES title has absolutely no bearing on when said game was released, unless of course you believe that half the black-box titles were released in the US before the system even came out...

I’m not an expert on this, but aren’t many of the roms for black box titles identical between the Japanese and English versions? It’s just a title screen and gameplay, so there’s no localization required. 
 

For a game like Mega Man, they have to translate all of the text throughout the game, so while they are in there localizing, they could just change the date to the US release date.

I haven’t done this yet, but I’ll have to compare the in-game year on all the other Megaman titles between Japanese and English versions. A lot of them released end of year in Japan and  beginning of following year in US

EDIT: ok I just checked out Megaman 2 and Megaman 4 since they were staggered year releases between Japan and US. Megaman 2 reflects the staggered dates. Megaman 4 attempts to differentiate the dates, but it states 1991 for Japan and US, apparently it must have been planned to hit store shelves in 91, but didn’t actually make it until Jan-92.

Rockman 2:

Megaman 2:

Rockman 4:

 

Megaman 4:

Edited March 7, 2021 by phart010

[Stormarov.45 | 32]

On 3/5/2021 at 4:50 PM, phart010 said:

I’m confused. Why would one attempt to remove the label on the uncommon variant? I could see the motive for attempting to label swap off a 3 screw onto a 5 screw shell... but if you already have the uncommon variant, why screw it up? The label looks good as does the shell?

That's why I think its a fake label. More likely they screwed it up putting it on.

On 3/6/2021 at 10:59 AM, guitarzombie said:

Nice.  So as I always re-iterate, my hypothesis is that:

The "USA" Capcom MM6 was actually released in NTSC countries outside the US.  (First print late 93)

 

The -1 Nintendo MM6 was for the US (Early 94, after Capcom gave Nintendo the rights for distribution after saying they were not going to release it in the US)

 

The Playtronics MM6 is Brazilian and was printed in 1996!

I beleive yes, the MM6 Capcom version was released in Mexico and some Central American countries with distribution funded directly by Capcom before coming to the US and then being picked up by Nintendo America's distributors. (Its still had a USA serial number because they didn't differentiate in NA releases. I believe all of the South American releases were the Brazilian release being distributed.)

[Stormarov.45 | 32]

So I got one of these in this week. Excuse the low res pic taken with my PC. My phone is charging and I'm lazy.

 

 

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

4 hours ago, phart010 said:

I’m not an expert on this, but aren’t many of the roms for black box titles identical between the Japanese and English versions? It’s just a title screen and gameplay, so there’s no localization required. 
 

For a game like Mega Man, they have to translate all of the text throughout the game, so while they are in there localizing, they could just change the date to the US release date.

I haven’t done this yet, but I’ll have to compare the in-game year on all the other Megaman titles between Japanese and English versions. A lot of them released end of year in Japan and  beginning of following year in US

EDIT: ok I just checked out Megaman 2 and Megaman 4 since they were staggered year releases between Japan and US. Megaman 2 reflects the staggered dates. Megaman 4 attempts to differentiate the dates, but it states 1991 for Japan and US, apparently it must have been planned to hit store shelves in 91, but didn’t actually make it until Jan-92.

Rockman 2:

Megaman 2:

Rockman 4:

 

Megaman 4:

Assuming that these companies were doing their due diligence and actually filing for copyright protection, the dates seen in-game represent the year the game's code was copyrighted, nothing more.  Of course, that is usually very near to or the same as the year of release, but it is certainly not something you would want to base any sort of real world release date research on, especially when taking the global nature of the industry, then and now, into consideration...

[phart010 | 1,705]

55 minutes ago, Stormarov.45 said:

I beleive yes, the MM6 Capcom version was released in Mexico and some Central American countries with distribution funded directly by Capcom before coming to the US and then being picked up by Nintendo America's distributors. (Its still had a USA serial number because they didn't differentiate in NA releases. I believe all of the South American releases were the Brazilian release being distributed.)

@Stormarov.45 @Dr. Morbis
What do you make of the fact that all Mega Man games starting from MM3 forward were launched in US within 1 month of Japan, but MM6 launched in US 4 months after the Japan launch

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

4 minutes ago, phart010 said:

@Stormarov.45 @Dr. Morbis
What do you make of the fact that all Mega Man games starting from MM3 forward were launched in US within 1 month of Japan, but MM6 launched in US 4 months after the Japan launch

Extra months for Capcom to change their mind about MM6 and/or NOA to realize they wanted/needed MM6 out in the US, either to promote their new Toploader or to make good on the promises made in the NP robot design contest...

[Stormarov.45 | 32]

On 3/7/2021 at 1:57 PM, phart010 said:

@Stormarov.45 @Dr. Morbis
What do you make of the fact that all Mega Man games starting from MM3 forward were launched in US within 1 month of Japan, but MM6 launched in US 4 months after the Japan launch

It's simple really. Nintendo USA didn't expect to distribute MM6 here due to lower MM5 sales. Capcom said "Fine, we will fund a market test batch", it took a little longer, and then Nintendo like the results.

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

9 hours ago, Stormarov.45 said:

It's simple really. Nintendo USA didn't expect to distribute MM6 here due to lower MM5 sales. Capcom said "Fine, we will fund a market test batch", it took a little longer, and then Nintendo like the results.

That's not how it works.  First of all, of course NOA didn't expect to distribute MM6, but it had nothing to do with sales - it's a Mega Man game, hello!  Second, ain't no "market test batches" going on in the latter days of the NES, and certainly not by a third party.  You made an order with Nintendo of a required minimum quantity and then you prayed to God that Nintendo would smile upon you and agree to make your game.  You are aware that every single game Capcom released for the NES was manufactured by Nintendo, right?

[phart010 | 1,705]

14 minutes ago, Dr. Morbis said:

That's not how it works.  First of all, of course NOA didn't expect to distribute MM6, but it had nothing to do with sales - it's a Mega Man game, hello!  Second, ain't no "market test batches" going on in the latter days of the NES, and certainly not by a third party.  You made an order with Nintendo of a required minimum quantity and then you prayed to God that Nintendo would smile upon you and agree to make your game.  You are aware that every single game Capcom released for the NES was manufactured by Nintendo, right?

It’s very possible that Capcom decided not to release Megaman 6 in North America. They did not release Megaman 6 in Europe, and Europe also did not have an NES Version 2 (top loader). I think the NES Version 2 in North America may have had something to do with MM6 being published by Nintendo.

I think sales has everything to do with the decision making in business. 

If Capcom published it, they’d have to pay for manufacturing, marketing, handle distribution channels, customer support, etc. Maybe they didn’t see the ROI, unfortunately we can’t really say anything educated without seeing Megaman games sales figures specific to North America.

Since Nintendo published the game, Capcoms cost was zero and they just collected royalties off the sales from Nintendo.

 

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

3 hours ago, phart010 said:

It’s very possible that Capcom decided not to release Megaman 6 in North America.

Possible?!?  It's a forgone conclusion: they didn't publish it!

[ThePhleo | 2,184]

For what it’s worth we can only speculate on the real story here. Unless there’s someone who has access to actual data there’s simply not enough information out there in the public.

Perhaps someone has a press kit from that era that might provide some insight, but until they go public with it there’s just nothing to base our arguments off of.

What we do know for a fact though is that Brazil received a lot of later releases that we consider very rare here in the US. Dinosaur Peak being one particular example, they were plentiful enough there that it dropped the title from the #2 most expensive loose US NES title, to the #3.

Mega Man 6 USA-1 was clearly a USA release, and Mega Man 6 USA was clearly a Brazilian release.

That being said, the Brazilian library is every bit a part of the American library as the Canadian library is. People like myself consider it one group with minor distinctions, but others exclude it completely.

It’s analogous to how Australia is part of the “PAL A” library which is technically a “European” library and a small part of the bigger complete European library that includes PAL-B... but there are two exclusive games (International Cricket, and Aussie Rules Footy) as well as a properly named TMNT variant.

[phart010 | 1,705]

8 hours ago, ThePhleo said:

Mega Man 6 USA-1 was clearly a USA release, and Mega Man 6 USA was clearly a Brazilian release.

 

Just curious, do you know when they started using the “-LTN” codes

[ThePhleo | 2,184]

43 minutes ago, phart010 said:

Just curious, do you know when they started using the “-LTN” codes

Must be sometime during the SNES lifespan because to my knowledge there are no -LTN nes games, but there is ONE NES game with a Spanish seal of quality (World Games, oval seal)