Saturday, January 3, 2015

Mega Man 4 for NES (1992)

Mega Man 4 for NES advertisement
Original ad published in the March 1992 edition of EGM (no. 32)


Historical Background



Mega Man achieved a large following in the 80's thanks to excellent action games with memorable soundtracks and enemies. Classics in the series are Mega Man 2 (1988) and Mega Man 3 (1990), both which where challenging, balanced, and very entertaining video games.

By the time Mega Man 4 (1991) arrived for the NES, all the cool kids started to shift to 16-bit platforms and left the original Mega Man series as a secondary interest. Capcom of course launched Mega Man X in 1993 for the Super NES, but bifurcated the story in the original Mega Man and the aforementioned X series. Mega Man 4, 5 and 6 all were made available for the NES, the last one of those being released 1994.

Genesis and the Super NES where firmly entrenched in gamers hands by that year, but Capcom plowed through both consoles with solid, if not spectacular, iterations. In retrospect it was a good move. Today, the NES releases are considered canon. They just "feel" right when played with the original NES gamepad, flickering and all. They are quite sought after carts, so if you feel the urge to start collecting them, I amply recommend you dive into the Mega Man lore beforehand.

Graphical Analysis 


As for the artwork, it's functional. It maintains the serie's clarity of simple lines and presentation. But this was the 90's, so you had to include at least one word that seemed cool:  in this case, "Gnarly!".


Original Copy:
Mega Man 4...
Like Nothing Before 
New enemies like Dr. Cossack.
New Weapons like the Mega Buster.
New Robots like Toad Man and Skull Man.
"Gnarly!" Devices like Ballon adaptaers and Grappling hooks. "Handy!"
Get Mega Man 4--
The rest were just warm-ups. "Really!" 
Crush the party at Dr. Cossack's citadel.
Toad man will have you hopping.
Rise to new height with the Ballon adapter.

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