Happy 20th Anniversary, Super Nintendo!
It’s hard to believe that it has been twenty years since the launch of the Super Nintendo. It may have taken us an extra nine months to get the machine here in North America, but I’m sure we can all agree it was worth the wait. My friends and I had been drooling over the screenshots in gaming magazines for what seemed like forever, but was probably only a few months. They showed off the latest Mario, where he was riding some kind of crazy looking dinosaur.
There were screenshots of games we had no idea what they were about, like Act Raiser. There was this flying game that looked like they were pulling off actual 3D. Our minds were sufficiently blown.
August 1991 was a magical time for many, I’m sure. But I was 11, and I sure as heck didn’t get my grubby mitts on the impressive looking gaming machine for several more years. If you were like me, you had to settle for grabbing every second you could on the demo stations they had at most retailers. I was often told that “This isn’t an arcade” when I would hang out in the gaming section of a store while my mom did all the boring shopping (clothes shopping is THE WORST at that age).
The big killer was that the system was $200 and neither my, nor any of my friends parents, would go for that price. If my shaky memory serves me, I believe the first real play time I had with the console was when a friend of mine rented a SNES for the weekend and we played through as much Super Mario World as we could possibly cram into a weekend. We couldn’t quite figure out how they had managed to make a game this awesome.
Eventually Nintendo offered a version of the console that came with both Super Mario World and a mail-in certificate for Super Mario All-Stars, an updated collection of the SNES Mario games. This is when everyone I knew started getting them. They also did a bundle that came with no game and only one controller, which every gamer I knew thought was complete crap. It’s funny to me how that has now become the norm. The good news was, the mail-in certificates worked with this version as well. Thankfully that was the case, because this was the edition we eventually had in our house.
"All-Stars Version of Super Mario Bros. 3"
One of our older brothers that we usually didn’t get along with had spontaneously decided to do something really nice. When Jesse and I got home from school one day, there was a SNES sitting on his bed. It was technically for him, but we usually gamed together anyway. I had the better TV in my room (I had bought it for $10 at a garage sale), so it was often hooked up in there. It is the same SNES Jesse still uses today. I can’t even say that about my current 360, and it’s only a few years old.
This not only kickstarted the SNES era of gaming in our house, but also introduced us much earlier than most households to being able to play all the games. You see, not too long before this, our NES had died and our parents, in association with me paying a small part and the same above mentioned older brother paying half, had purchased a Sega Genesis. The console wars were soon in full effect in the schoolyard. Everyone would pick a side based on the system they owned, but even before owning a SNES, I liked it better. It had the games that appealed to me. They are the same games that still hold up, whereas almost none of the Genesis games I enjoyed back then do. Baditude could not match good game design…itude.
But I don’t want to focus on the negatives here. I really just wanted to get everyone thinking about old games. They are the ones that have already stood the test of time, and I’m confident they will continue to do so.
The actual date of the Super Nintendo’s launch in North America is debated as some retailers sold it earlier than others. While some sources note an August 23rd launch, others note August 19th or even earlier depending on where in the country they were.
Tags: Act Raiser, Nintendo, SNES, SNES 20th Anniversary, Super Mario All-Stars, Super Mario World
This entry was posted on Friday, August 19th, 2011 at 10:49 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 19th, 2011 at 5:09 pm
Jesse Gregory says:Even today I think of the Super Nintendo as the best game system. Super Metroid, Mega Man X, Chrono Trigger… there are just too many amazing games to list.
August 19th, 2011 at 5:26 pm
Adam Anania says:I have vague memories of the night getting my SNES. Pretty sure we picked it up from Target. It had to have been near the release, I think, which is surprising considering the cost. On the other hand I generally didn’t get a whole lot of pricy toys growing up, so maybe this was the exception. I just remember being so excited I wouldn’t shut up that night.
The system did indeed have loads of fantastic games. Super Mario World, Mega Man X, Kirby Super Star, Super Mario Kart, Donkey Kong Country, Mario Paint. Yoshi’s Island is a bit bittersweet, since I traded in all my NES and GB games to afford it on my own, which is one of my greatest regrets (I got most of them back though). And those are just the ones I owned. I also remember renting and enjoying F-Zero, Mega Man 7, Earthworm Jim and The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse. Heck, I even liked Faceball 2000, to be honest.
The SNES really does seem like the last time everyone in the gaming business was fighting to make a better game than everyone else. The result is a ton of fun and memorable games.
August 22nd, 2011 at 11:39 am
PStart says:The Super Nintendo is absolutely my favorite system, even if my favorite game was on the NES. It has The Mystical Ninja (and 3 more Goemon games if you live in Japan : ( ), Mega Man X, some of Nintendo’s best games, and tons of great arcade ports.
If companies went back to developing titles for it, I would not complain one bit.
August 22nd, 2011 at 4:51 pm
Sam Diaz says:The SNES is too unique, can’t be imitated. The console was even outdated not too long after it was released when 24-bit consoles were being developed. The SNES remained to be the top dog in the console war of that era. Nintendo kept the console alive and well for years simply with it’s great library of games.
August 23rd, 2011 at 6:31 am
David "Trigger" Helton says:I had the misfortune of missing out on almost the entire SNES era (You know that one parent that hates video games and thinks they’re evil and will kill your brain? Yeah I had one of those) — skipped straight from the NES to the N64 with only some rare second-hand experiences with the SNES. And even I, looking back at the console’s library through emulation and re-releases, can say it was easily one of the greatest things to happen to gaming. That’s when you know you’ve got a classic on your hands.