The SNES and you, 25 years of SUPER POWER!

[fastbilly1]

We had an NES as our only game console for a long time. My older brothers got it for a combined birthday present back in 88 or 89. My cousins were hardcore Sega fans with dozens of Genesis games in 91. So when the SNES came out we wanted one, but my family could not justify it at $200, so in 92 my older brother got a Genesis. We traded Genesis games with my cousins and still played alot of the NES. But in 94 Donkey Kong Country got hyped. I wanted the Donkey Kong packed in SNES so badly, but the price was still to high. However in the summer of 94 my older brother had two friends (brothers) who wanted $130 for their SNES with some games. Being that $100 is what I got for my birthday, this was awesome. I did lots of chores for my Grandmother to get the extra $30.

Then the day came, my older brother and mother went to go get it. It was a SNES, 2 controllers, Mario World, Fzero, Megaman X, Mortal Kombat, Final Fight, Street Fighter 2, Sunset Riders, and Mario Allstars. I sold Mortal Kombat and Final Fight to buy Link to the Past. That SNES still travels with me and occasionally gets new games. I ended up getting Gradius 3 from a friend for free, trading a spare NES and RCR to another for Chrono Trigger, FFVI, and Earthbound. I sadly sold several SNES games to fund Mario Kart 64, but it is what it is.

To this day, I still fondly remember those summers of the SNES. It is when I first got Nintendo Power, not reading months old ones from a cousin or schoolmate. The 1996 push toward Super Mario RPG consumed me. It was a magical time. Currently my SNES lives in a box, but I think it is coming out tonight and being hooked up for a round of Mario RPG.

I know there is an FPGA clone console coming (like the Retrousb AVS for the NES), but does anyone know anything about it?

[Ziggy]

I love reading everyone's stories, by the way.

I know there is an FPGA clone console coming (like the Retrousb AVS for the NES), but does anyone know anything about it?

No, this is the first I'm hearing about it. Links, please!

[Tanooki]

Exed: Hah wow nice, doubt we'll see many stories of parents dropping $100+tax on the other 2 launch games pop up here. The funny thing was, at the time I had NO interest in them, look at what I jumped at. Actraiser and Gradius III...and why? They felt like stuff I had done both on NES and PC before. The first was a mishmosh of console and classic sim city, the other I had Gradius on NES. True story though, my first experience with both games came later in the systems life. F-Zero a friend had, played it for a few afternoons straight and I loved it, but never got it because limited $ and other better things, but I did get it, used, pre-N64 though for just a few bucks complete at my ex-friends shop. The same thing could be said of Pilotwings ultimately too, but I never had played it before, but I got very curious and splurged on it. Shame that game never had as solid and proper of a sequel quality wise.

And that Super Scope 6, I got one of those, but it was a nice way around to it. Anyone here remember the mall outlet Captron? They would do monthly contests. I had actually geared up to play Gradius III in one. I got so good at that game I'd play it on arcade difficulty and I had that game down so well. The day of the compo you had 5min to play for best score, enough to plug through stage 1 at least. I racked up an insane score in the first half of the day no one even touched it or came close. I got a $20 gift card for it, turned it around and got the SS6. I really do miss that thing, the pack-in game is still fantastic, but it was a shame it never got proper future support but it was a bulky bazooka.

The thing that always got me on SNES was how all the games ended up retailing at $50 and they'd often stay there far longer than games do now, sometimes a good year or two even (or at least until a potential sequel.) Square though had the square nerd tax, anything they touched was a good $10-20 over MSRP. I wanted their stuff but I didn't bite day one, ever. I waited for reliable Target or elsewhere to do a deal to get it right. I recall scoring FF3 new for $40 because PlayCo was going under, and FF2 was the usual retail with a Target sale some week. I never got into Soul Blazer, Mana, or others (aside from SMRPG) until the N64 was alive, bought them used complete, never regretted it as it gave the SNES a longer life.

[Exhuminator]

My first experience with the SNES was around when I was 12 years old. It was via a friend who got one on release day, so this was back in 1991. He lived three miles from my house, and I used to walk through the woods to get to his place so I could play his SNES. I thought this thing was phenomenal, amazing, compared to the NES. I remember the first two games I played on his system were Super Mario World and Actraiser. One night I spent with him I beat Super Mario World in its entirety, not stopping until I'd cleared even the special worlds. Another night I beat all of Actraiser just before the sun came up. The game he had that impressed me the most though, was A Link to the Past. I couldn't beat that one in a night, and had to wait to do so.

In 1992, I was able to successfully convince my mom to buy me a SNES for Christmas. I borrowed many games from friends, but the first ones I remember beating on my own SNES were Pilot Wings and F-Zero. I remember borrowing Star Fox from someone right around when it released, and being totally and utterly blown away by polygons. But my fondest memory of my early days of being a SNES owner, was playing through A Link to the Past. The game was absolutely astonishing, and was everything I could possibly had wanted a "Super Zelda" to be. I put dozens of hours into the first time I beat it, searching gleefully for every little secret. I also was blown away by Out of this World around that same time.



During the 1993-95 period, I started mowing lawns to make enough money to buy SNES games I wanted on release day. I bought Super Metroid right when it came out, and then feigned being sick the next day to play it instead of school. I bought Mortal Kombat II when it released as well, along with Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. I played both of those games incessantly, and they remain my favorite fighters to this day. Mega Man X and Donkey Kong Country completely blew my mind, and are as perfectly enjoyable today as they were twenty some odd years ago. Hell, I remember being super happy when I found Secret of Mana in a pawn shop for a pittance! But the most mind blowing SNES experience of that era was of course Final Fantasy III/VI. To buy it new on release day cost me $74 at Walmart, which in today's money is $120! I guess I don't have to tell you folks it was worth it. Shortly after I got ahold of such wonders as Demon's Crest, Soul Blazer, Super Mario RPG, Cybernator, so many wonderful wonderful memories.



From 95-97 I didn't play SNES much, I was wooed away by PC and PS1 during that time. However, in late 1997 when ZSNES dropped, my love for the SNES once again renewed, or rather my love for the SFC. I was finally able to play a world of imports, most of which I'd never even heard of, and I felt like I was discovering the Super Nintendo again for the first time all over. It was glorious. And shortly after that, fan translations started releasing, which served as the succulent cherry on top of the delicious emulation sundae. And so it is today, all these years later, I am still discovering and playing new SNES games thanks to emulation and fan translations. What more can you ask from a creaky ol' 16-bit piece of archaic technology?

But we all know the SNES is more than that. The SNES really is the apex of 2D gaming. Yes I lived through the console wars, and because I had both a Genesis and a SNES, I couldn't ever reach a decision back then. But all these years later, it's clear to me now that the SNES is indeed the top 16-bit console. It's a work of art that just keeps on giving. Playing 2D today doesn't get any better than what the SNES gave us all those years ago, and still happily gives us today. Its library is a vast and worthy treasure trove worth plundering often, and every time you do, you'll come back with a shiny hidden gem.

[fastbilly1]

I know there is an FPGA clone console coming (like the Retrousb AVS for the NES), but does anyone know anything about it?

No, this is the first I'm hearing about it. Links, please!

http://pgate1.at-ninja.jp/SNES_on_FPGA/

[Ziggy]

I know there is an FPGA clone console coming (like the Retrousb AVS for the NES), but does anyone know anything about it?

No, this is the first I'm hearing about it. Links, please!

http://pgate1.at-ninja.jp/SNES_on_FPGA/

It's kinda hard to read the translation, but it looks promising!

[retrosportsgamer]

I've enjoyed all the stories shared so far.

My sister got a SNES in, I think 1997, pretty late to the party (I was a Sega kid and had only dabbled with the SNES at friend's houses). I had completely skipped 16-bit Mario until she got Yoshi's Island (and then the zsnes emulator came out). I fondly remember beating the light world on Link to the Past with her also.

I had been collecting game and systems since '93 or 94 - flea markets and video rental stores mainly. Grabbing stuff that had been out for years but was totally new to me. I worked at Hollywood Video in the summer of 1998 and that summer we took down all the SNES games for rent and boxed them up for sale (with manuals too).

I picked up copies of Super Mario RPG and Final Fantasy III (I had just played a ton of FF VII that previous semester) for $9.99 a piece before they even hit the bin (complete too). I have those proudly in my collection still today.

[Sarge]

Nice on the FFIII and SMRPG pickups. My copy of FFIII is complete as well, although the box isn't in the best shape. And my copy of Super Mario RPG is pristine, having purchased it for $15 in Toys 'R' Us back in the day. I always hated how they never did bring Kirby's Dream Land 3 down to that price, though. It stayed at $30 until they just didn't have it anymore when I visited. Which, to be fair, may mean that it eventually did hit that level, but I certainly didn't manage to score it.

Of course, I added it to the collection later, in cart-only form, for $50...

[ExedExes]

Exed: Hah wow nice, doubt we'll see many stories of parents dropping $100+tax on the other 2 launch games pop up here.

It was because I did so well in school in the previous year (straight A's final grades and principal's list for the year). That was around with tax, probably $350 ($620 in 2016) all said and done! But that next school year... um, heh, yeah, grades took a backseat. Not only was I able to rent new SNES games, I also got UN Squadron, Sim City, and John Madden Football for my birthday and Christmas in 1991. Then my friend got it in September and he had Darius Twin, Hyperzone, and Gradius III so we did a lot of cartridge swaps.

[isiolia]

I don't remember being distinctly aware of the SNES coming out, so no begging for one at launch. It was probably on the shelves at the same time I was still trying to get SMB3 . We were moving, so first it was not buying it because we'd not have our stuff, then it was because things were in transit, etc.
It was prior to really reading magazines or following the game industry at all. Most of our NES library consisted of games family members gifted us.

I first got to play one at my dad's boss's house. His kid had one, and I got to play F-Zero. He also had a Famicom (I'd never seen one prior), though I don't think we played that. Other than store demos, I also got to play a little Super Mario World thanks to another of my dad's coworkers having bought their kid an SNES.

In the meantime, my dad had bought our first family x86 PC. A computer shop built 386 DX40, to replace the Apple IIe we had. To him, that's where games could be played, so we didn't need another console. We did play plenty of stuff on it, but I still wanted console games too. Street Fighter II was probably the thing to convince my brothers that pooling our money to buy a SNES (which had the port coming out) was worthwhile.

We bought a Super Mario World bundle system, and either along with it or shortly thereafter bought Turtles in Time because SFII wasn't out yet. My mom subscribed me to Nintendo Power with the mail in, netting me the Mario Mania guide. I started buying GamePro and EGM and the like as well (and Computer Gaming World).
While I think part of it was just timing, the SNES was the system there when I really got into gaming. I wasn't allowed to play that much, with the "system" eventually settling on not being able to play on school days (except friday night), but I wasn't deterred.

After we'd moved again, I actually bought a second SNES for myself, since it was the Zelda bundle system for $45 new. Eventually, after I'd gotten a PS1, I wound up sending that system and a subset of our games, to a friend of mine who had more siblings to compete with for console time. My dad tended to encourage us to get rid of our old systems. Our NES had been given to our cousin, Genesis had been sold, Virtual Boy, etc.

Turned out though, when I was in college (around 2000), there was a bit of a retro peak, and I started rebuying some of what I'd had. That same friend sent most of what I'd given him back to me. It's my one console from that era that I actually have part of my original collection from.