The Super Nintendo Shrine

The Super Nintendo Entertaintment System - The beginning

Nintendo's follow-up to the all conquering NES, the Super Nintendo (or Super Famicom in Japan) was released in Japan during November 1990 for the sum of 25,000 Yen (about £120 today), accompanied by possibly the very best launch titles ever - Super Mario World, F-Zero and Pilot Wings.

Demand for Nintendo's new console was manic, with people queueing outside stores days before launch. Its even been rumoured that, due to such demand, consoles had to be shipped overnight to try to avoid the attention of the Japanese Yakuza!

Nintendo was begining to see its maket domination in the US and Japan (the UK being far more interested in doing homework on their personal computers!) threatend by Sega's 16bit Megadive, which had a number of top arcade releases to draw from including Golden Axe, Shinobi, Afterburner, and later on a certain spikey blue hedgehog.
 
The Super Nintendo was released in North America during August 1991 with Super Mario World for $200 (about £113) and finally made it's way to the UK in April 1992 for £150.Its believed that the Super Nintendo went on to sell a rather respectable 49 million consoles worldwide, and was the number one 16bit console in both Japan and the US.

Spot the difference.

To me the US Super Nintendo is one ugly beast with its square case design, and big square purple power and reset buttons. Compare this to the Japanese and UK design with its elegant curves and tasteful colours its the one I'd rather have on dispaly. Its is such a shame that these days many Super Nintendos look like a mountain gorilla has relieved itself on it for many a year (Donkey Kong maybe?). Yes indeed, that nasty yellow effect is very common and apparently has nothing to do with smoking (or gorillas), but is a chemical reaction that cannot be washed away. A tin of pink paint may solve the problem.

Tech Specs
CPU: 16bit 65816 running at 1.79, 2.68, 3.58MHZ
Sound Channels: 8
Palette: 32,768 Colours 256 onscreen
Memory: 128K

Perhaps the most famous add-on for the SNES was actually never released. Nintendo was working with both Philips and Sony to develop a CDROM add-on for the console, but neither project was given the green light.

I'm sure that Nintendo never lost any sleep over Philips going on to create the Philips CDI console because of the terminated project, but oh how it must regret letting Sony loose to create the Playstation.

The Nintendo Super Gameboy

The most popular add-on for the SNES was the Super Gameboy adaptor. This unit plugs into the cartridge slot allowing Gameboy games to be played on a TV. It also allows the colour palette to be changed and a selection of screen borders to be chosen. Really, this should have been called the Super Tetris Convertor!

The Nintendo Super Scope

Nintendo's wireless lightgun (more like light Bazooka) the Super Scope comes packaged with a six game cartridge (the Super Scope 6 cartridge) and is a rather cumbersome unit. The Super Scope seemed to find quite a good level of support, with games such as Operation Thunderbolt, T2: The Arcade Game and Yoshi's Safari all using the device. The Super Scope runs off 6 AA batteries, but play time only lasts about 4 hours before the batteries run out. Nowadays, these units can be found at just about every car boot sale, usually in a pile of Lego bricks!

The Super Nintendo Mouse

The SNES mouse was released in 1992 and came bundled with Mario Paint. Games that support this device include Arkanoid, Cannon Fodder, Civilization, Eye Of The Beholder, Jurassic Park, King Arthur's World, Lemmings 2: The Tribes, Mario and Wario, Might and Magic 3, Operation Thunderbolt, Sim Ant, Terminator 2: The Arcade Game and Utopia.

The Super Multitap

The Super Multitap was released by Hudson Soft to complement the mega addictive Super Bomberman game. With the Multitap in place up to 5 players can join in (4 on the Multitap, and one on the remaining SNES joypad port). Super Bomberman 1-6 all supported this device along with titles such as Secret Of Mana, Saturday Night Slam Masters and numerous sport games such as Fifa, Madden, NBA, NHL etc.

The following are games that every Super Nintendo collector really should have in their collection. This list is in no way complete and will grow over time.

The list also made up of only three publishers which, believe it or not, is not intentional. Should you ever wonder who are the best publishers of Super Nintendo games then you can't go far wrong with Nintendo, Konami and Capcom.

Axelay - Konami

With its combination of vertical and horizontal levels, amazing end of level bosses (check out the animated robot and the fire demon opposite) this shoot-em up cannot fail to impress.

Contra 3/Contra Spirits/Super Probotector - Konami

Amazing 2 player sideways and top down shoot-em up. Great graphics with nice Mode 7 scaling effects, and awesome end of level bosses. Look out for the skeleton machine that rips through the background wall.

Final Fight - Capcom

The Daddy of sideways scrolling beat-em-ups. This is a conversion of the hit coin-op machine featuring Haggar and Cody, but unfortunately doesn't include Guy. Beat the hell out the thugs who have kidnapped Cody's girlfriend using hand-to-hand combat and weapons such as pipes, knives and swords.

F-Zero - Nintendo

The SNES launch titile that made you just stand and stare. Nothing like the amazing Mode 7 scaling and rotating courses had ever been seen before on a home console. A great, fast and furious racing game.

Super Ghouls N Ghosts - Capcom

Based on the arcade hit with awesome graphics (the ghost ship springs to mind), but be warned, this is one tough game. Think you've just completed it? Then how about having to do it again for the real ending?!

Super Mario World - Nintendo

Can you rescue Princess Peach from the evil Bowser? Possibly the single best launch title for a console. Typical colourful graphics with toe-taping tunes, loads of levels and secrets to find. Miyamoto magic yet again.

The Legend Of The Mystical Ninja - Konami

A 2-D action game with really cute oriental graphics and music. Can be played 2 player, with plenty of items to be purchased and mini games to find such as gambling, whack-a-mole and even Gradius. Released as Ganbare Goemon - Yuki-Hime Kyûshutsu Emaki in Japan.

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - Nintendo

The mix of the Miyamoto and Mario magic, together with some excellent crayon textured graphics, all aided by the Super FX chip makes Yoshi's Island a must have title.

Super Metroid - Nintendo

Samus's third installment turns out to be a near perfect platform adventure game. Great story, atmosphere, graphics and music, with loads of different moves, weapons and secrets to find.

UN Squadron/Area 88 - Capcom

A conversion of the hit arcade game featuring great graphics with some nice parallax scrolling backgrounds. Gets incredibly hard and suffers from some slow-down, but a classic none the less.