 One thing that sucks about having a hobby that goes back 3 decades is that there is a lot of misinformation out there, and no real way to prove what's true and what isn't. Hell, I'm guilty of obliviously peddling some misinformation, I mean I don't know any better just because I'm sharing my hobby through a YouTube channel, doesn't make me any kind of authority on anything, I'm some guy trying to do the best I can. But, there are bits and pieces out there that need to be flushed out like turds than a toilet bowl, factoids that don't really have any hard evidence to back them up. A good example of this is the myth surrounding the game Hagane. Somehow, someway, this game got saddled with the label Blockbuster Exclusive, meaning it was only available for rent through Blockbuster Video, and only available for purchase if they decided to sell it to dump some inventory. The first instance I can see of this floating around is from a CGR video from 2009, which has since accumulated 48,000 views, but then the story really blew up when it was brought up on Mike Matej's Super Nintendo Hidden Gems video, which has well over 2 million views. Well, let's put this one to bed right now. Here is an actual Blockbuster Exclusive game cover for the game Final Fight Guy. It says right there on the cover with a huge logo Blockbuster Exclusive. Let's look at Hagane's cover. Huh, no mention of Blockbuster whatsoever. In fact, on the back cover, it says this game is for sale. And sure enough, there's a bunch of mail order listings out there where you can buy Hagane for the same price as just about any other game. Let's check out Nintendo Power's 6-page review of the game. Surely that's gotta mention something. Nope, not a word about any sort of Blockbuster deal. Same with Game Fan and Game Pros reviews. So yeah, don't believe the nonsense about Hagane because it doesn't appear that that story is based on anything. Unfortunately, that hasn't stopped the meteoric rise in the price of the cartridge. Hagane remains one of the most expensive Super Nintendo games out there, and that leads me to the BS surrounding cartridge rarity. Let's face it, nobody knows anything about how rare a game really is, despite what an eBay, Craigslist, or Amazon listing might try and tell you. Sure, there are some instances where production of a game like Uniracers was halted due to a lawsuit, and there's proof written in court records saying the game had to be limited to its initial run of 300,000 copies, so that much we know. And of course, we know certain games have sold a ton, like just about all of Nintendo's first-party titles. But after that, there's not a lot of hard information to base anything on, simply because too much time has passed, and a lot of game publishers of the time have since folded or have been bought out, leading to a lot of data being lost. To give you an example, when I was trying to find out more information about Hagane, I had to contact Konami. Hagane was published on the Super Nintendo by Hudson Soft, but they were bought out in 2011 by Konami Digital Entertainment. I sent them an email asking about Hagane's publishing run, and they responded two days later essentially saying, And realistically, how would they know? I'm probably talking to some overworked, underpaid customer service rep who just wants me to go away, so unless someone out there with a lot of resources does a deep dive into this thing, nobody really knows anything, and that's just how it is. However, not all is without hope, and collectors out there are making do with what information is still out there. For instance, the folks at NintendoAge.com have created what's considered a rarity guide. Now, this is still based on a lot of anecdotal information, but it's at least provided by a large group of people who have been in the SNES collecting game for decades. It ranks the cartridge, instruction manual, and box individually, and it comes with some pretty interesting conclusions, based on scattershot information, personal experience, and informal tidbits, like how often this stuff is actually seen in the wild. It is far from perfect, but it's better than nothing. I just thought I'd throw that out there. Anyway, moving on, thanks to Twist C from the SNES Drunk Discord Chat for pointing this one out. Another rumor that's lingered for years involves Donkey Kong Country. There was a quote that had been floating around for years that Nintendo producer and game designer Shigeru Miyamoto saying Donkey Kong Country proves gamers will put up with mediocre gameplay if the art is good. That quote spawned all kinds of nonsense theories like that Miyamoto resented Donkey Kong Country's success and thought his vision for Yoshi's Island was far superior, or whatever. It was ridiculous. It turns out the quote was a complete mistranslation from Japanese to English, and Miyamoto was actually closely involved with the development of the game, providing feedback to Rare at every turn. And to this day, Miyamoto remains involved in the development of the modern Donkey Kong Country series. Thanks to LHC Greg from the chat for mentioning this, it's one that I myself have gotten wrong for years. Remember that Final Fight Guy game I mentioned earlier? I've always thought this game was just the exact same game as the SNES Port of Final Fight, only with Guy replacing Cody. You know, whoop-de-doo, who cares? But they actually did make some subtle improvements in the gameplay, a lot of it just from simply fixing most of the slowdown. There's four different difficulty modes as well, and the enemy placement reflects that. There's also small touches here and there that help the game align with the original arcade version. For instance, now there's one-ups and invincibility power-ups and barrels, and there's some subtle visual changes as well. Yeah, this game is definitely still flawed and still a missed opportunity. It's still censored, there's no checkpoints, it's still missing a level, and there's no two-player co-op. But Final Fight Guy is actually a better playthrough than the first SNES Final Fight port. And even better, if you get the Super Famicom version of the game, it has Roxy and Poison instead of Billy and Sid. So, there you go. Here's one pointed out by Coolor from the chat, and it comes from the Super Mario 64 Wikipedia page. It says that Miyamoto considered using the Super FX chip to try and develop a 3D Mario game for Super Nintendo, as he told Nintendo Power in January of 1996, and so began the myth that there was a 3D Mario game in development that was never released. After all, the code name for the Super FX chip was Super Mario FX, and the chip has the name Mario printed on it. But this was never the case. The always rock solid and reliable SNES Central took to Twitter and straight up asked former Argonaut engineer Dylan Cuthbert about it, and he would know since he was the lead coder for Star Fox, and should anyone be chosen to work on such a Mario game, it would, in all likelihood, be him. However, he flat-out denied that there was any development, saying that Super Mario FX was just a code name. To end this video, I want to address a few talking points regarding certain Super Nintendo games. Now, these obviously aren't factual statements, they're just things that many people have come to a consensus on over the years. And one of them is that Shaq Fu is not only the worst Super Nintendo game ever, but the worst video game ever, period. Yes, that's right, I've come to bat for Shaq Fu, but not because it's good. Just because, you know, it's not that bad. In fact, it's not even in the top three worst fighting games on the Super Nintendo. There's crap like Rise of the Robot, Street Combat, and of course, Who Could Forget Pitfighter. Shaq Fu at least has good-looking sprites and good music. Yeah, the combat sucks, but I still feel like the game isn't even half as bad as people say it is. I think people hate the idea of Shaq Fu more than anything else. Like, Shaq in a fighting game? Yeah, that's pretty stupid. But there is so much worse out there. There's another talking point that everyone just kind of agrees on, and that's that the Sega Genesis has better sports games than the Super Nintendo. This one's always been kind of interesting to me, because if you remember when the Genesis launched back in 1989, it relied heavily on name recognition. It invested a lot of dough in names like Joe Montana, Mario Lemieux, Heavyweight Champion Buster Douglas, Pat Riley, Tommy Lasorda, on and on. Many of those games were fine at the time, and definite upgrades over their NES contemporaries, especially in terms of visuals and sound. But playing them today, your mileage varies big time. Another part of the sports game argument is EA Sports. Let's face it, a lot of EA games on Super Nintendo frickin' suck. The FIFA series is a disaster with crappy controls and a bad frame rate, most of the Madden games are a mess of nonsense, and the NHL series simply plays better on Genesis. All that leads people to believe that the Genesis, undisputedly, has the advantage when it comes to sports games, but I think it's pretty stupid to jump to that big of a conclusion. There's still the Tecmo Super Bowl games, there's still NBA give and go, there's still extra innings, Super Baseball Simulator 1000, Ken Griffey Jr. presents Major League Baseball. The point is, the gap is much smaller when it comes to sports games than people think. Alright, that's all for now. I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.