The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) was released in August of 1991 in North America. I think Nintendo would have continued to improve and develop games for the NES and given the 8-bit era a longer life span had there not been competition from Sega and a few other companies. Sega had lost the 8-bit console war and released their 16-bit offering, the Genesis, in 1989, which gave them a nearly 2-year head start into the 16-bit era.

Unlike the Japanese Famicom, the SNES was identical to the Super Famicom other than a few minor cosmetic details in the outer plastic shell. Nintendo’s region locking was easily defeated by simply removing a plastic piece that mechanically prevented games from being inserted, thus allowing Japanese games on an American system and vice-versa.

The system was a very light gray, with a

couple of darker gray spots and purple accents (the Power and Reset buttons). Games were top-loaded into a slot that had a spring-loaded door to prevent dust from getting in when not in use. That plus a few other advances prevented the blinking “Gray Screen of Death.” Unlike the NES, I can only count on a handful of times where a SNES game hasn’t worked correctly. Using my analogy from the NES section on Windows, it’s like comparing how stable Windows XP or 7 is to Windows 95. 

To eject the games, there was a button that acted as a lever to pop the games out of place. Earlier games had a small oval recess in the cartridge, and when the power button was pressed a plastic tab mechanically inserted itself into the recess to prevent the game from being ejected or pulled out during play. Later cartridge design changed the shape of the recess in response to (what I can only guess is) tabs breaking because someone ejected a game forcefully during play and broke something. The new design helped keep the game in, but also allowed for it to be pulled out without breaking if it happened.

The aesthetics of the system were more symmetrical than the

NES, and other than the printed words of “Power,” “Reset,” and “Eject,” the only thing that made the system asymmetrical was the power light on the left side.  The games came with a small hard-plastic cover that only protected the bottom of the game.

Like the NES, the system had two controller ports in the front, and connection ports in the back. The power cord was shaped differently than the NES, but the RF/coaxial jack was exactly the same. Instead of RCA jacks, there was a new “multi-out” jack that was used for TVs with those kinds of hookups which were more common by 1991. Like the NES, the power cord had the transformer on the plug so having the NES and SNES plugged in simultaneously was hard to do, as those two plugs would take up a whole power strip. It was possible to daisy-chain the coaxial inputs, but whichever one was plugged directly into the TV could override the other one.

The redesigned controller was one of the new features of the SNES. The NES controller had 4 buttons if you counted Start and Select, but the SNES boasted 8. The new buttons were X and Y for the thumb, and R and L on the top of the controller for the index fingers. Start and Select were still black and rubber like before, but they were angled to save space. The 4 main buttons (A, B, X, and Y) were set in a diamond pattern which made playing easier because it’s more natural for the thumb to be at an angle than totally horizontal. The result was that B and Y were the two most commonly used buttons. The “dogbone” shape of the controller itself was rounded to feel more comfortable. Instead of the multi-color button design of the Famicom controller, NoA opted to have purple and lavender buttons for some reason. But one thing they did was make X and Y concave while A and B were convex. Supposedly this was to help the player feel the difference between the buttons without having to look down, but in reality very few probably noticed the difference.

There were quite a few graphical, audio, and other technical updates. Graphically, it could show many, many more colors and a lot more simultaneously. More sprites could be utilized without blinking, and having multiple backgrounds and foregrounds was standard. Other effects included transparent sprites, more animation frames, Mode 7 (used on games like Pillotwings or Super Mario Kart for rotating the background), and accurate scaling (zooming in/out). All of these combined together to give the feel and illusion of a more 3-D environment. After getting used to this, I went back and played Super Mario 3 one time and it caught me off guard how flat everything looked in comparison.

Originally the system came with Super Mario World, which was a big selling point. The game added upon ground broke in SMB3 and added Yoshi with a cohesive world where any level could be replayed endlessly and some had multiple exits creating different paths. Later, a smaller, cheaper SNES package could be bought that only included 1 controller and no game giving the consumer the option of buying the game they wanted if Mario wasn’t their thing.

About this time the “Bit Wars” were in full swing. The major players were Nintendo and Sega (and to a lesser extent, Atari), though there were other failed consoles who tried to play (TurboGrafix16, for example). Though Sega had a 2 year head start and had been running on a “Genesis does what Nintendon’t” campaign, the SNES was superior in every way except for pure processing speed. It could display more colors, more simultaneous colors, greater resolution, more sprites, and had a vastly superior sound chip. Sega pushed its greater processing speed in a “blast processing” ad that worked like a charm. Kids didn’t know what that meant, they just knew that the Genesis had it. Looking back, the Genesis console was more aesthetically pleasing and less kiddy looking, had more sports games, didn’t censor violence as much as NoA, and the fact that their boxes were plastic cases were plusses, but in terms of gameplay, controllers, franchises, graphics or sound the SNES was superior.

Later in its life, games like Donkey Kong Country and StarFox

added graphical capabilities that wowed everyone. By comparison, the Genesis had add-ons like the 32X and SegaCD to accomplish what the SNES was already doing. Games like StarFox and Stunt Racer FX had an added on chip that was hard-wired to the game to help with the polygon graphics. Games like Donkey Kong Country used a different technique to make graphics. Rather than draw everything by hand, sprites were created by making animated 3-D models and using flattened versions to make frames. The result is a fairly realistic-looking character with incredibly smooth animation.

Like the NES, there were several controllers available for the SNES. But I think in general fewer were made and sold because most people just used the standard controller. I always thought the standard controller was the best with one exception: the Ascii Pad. It was like a standard controller except that it had separate Turbo and Auto functions for each button as well as slow. The top of it was slightly sloped so reaching the L and R buttons was a little easier as well. Ironically, this controller died at the hands of another controller: a bat controller my brothers bought for their baseball games. I guess while I was in Japan they were playing and one of them hit the Ascii Pad with the bat. RIP, old buddy.

There was also a mouse made for the SNES that came with Mario Paint. As far as I know it only worked with one other game, but it worked great for Mario Paint. The NES came with a Zapper light gun, but the SNES equivalent was called the Super Scope, and it didn’t rely on light gun technology. Instead, there was a sensor that plugged into controller port #2 that was placed on top of the TV, much like today’s Wii remote sensor. It was a bazooka style gun that required 6 batteries, and it came with 6 mini-games to play. There were

a few other games that were compatible with the gun, but none of them were very popular. Most peripherals were and are that way; in fact, the only one that was wildly successful is the guitar from Guitar Hero/Rockband.

Many of the first wave of games were designed to show off capabilities, such as Pilotwings’ scaling, F-Zero’s Mode 7 abilities, and Mario World showed off the colors. The new addition of L and R buttons added different things to different games – screen scrolling for Mario, leaning for better turning in F-Zero, and weapon scrolling for Mega Man X. Later they would become just regular buttons, like the Fierce Punch and Kick buttons for Street Fighter II.

On the bottom of the system was a little expansion port, just like the NES had. It wasn't used outside of Japan, though. Japanese players had the option to buy something called a Satteliview add-on, which let players download games and receive news via satellite radio broadcast. It was a primitive predecessor of today's Wi-Fi connection, and required having the SNES, the Satelliview, and a subscription to the service. A little more on it can be found on the BS-Legend of Zelda information. The expansion port would have also been how a CD add-on would have been used, but the project was canceled and eventually became the Sony Playstation. 

Many of the SNES games were 16-bit updates of older games (essentially remakes) of 8-bit games (Super Offroad, Super Star Wars, and Super Castlevania IV, for example), while others were continuations of past series (Zelda: LttP, Metroid III, Mega Man X, etc.), while others were updates of older games with newer features and rosters, such as sports games. Many of these games perfected their formulas during the 16-bit era. After years of making games for the NES with its limitations, the SNES let platformers shine since they had the superior hardware and years of experience for the programmers to build on.

A few years after being released, Nintendo made the Super Gameboy. It was an adapter to play Gameboy games on the SNES. There were several advantages to doing this, including bigger screen, easier to hold, and adding color. For more details, see the Super Gameboy section.

The SNES was the most powerful console of its generation, and (like its predecessor) the most popular, but it didn’t dominate the way the NES had. The Sega Genesis gained ground on Nintendo from its PR department’s ad campaigns and (mainly) because it was released earlier. It remained the main console until the N64 came out in 1997, even though the Virtual Boy was released in 1996 and died a quiet death less than a year after its debut. 

Additional Resources:

Adam Koralik talks about the 4th Generation of Video Game Consoles.

Adam Koralik talks about the SNES

James (the AVGN) talks about the SNES vs. the SEGA Genesis Part 1 (no language)

James (the AVGN) talks about the SNES vs. the SEGA Genesis Part 2 (no language)

Classic Gaming Quarterly's review of the launch of the SNES.