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I could talk about N64, GameCube, Game Boy Advance or any of the latest consoles but instead, of waffling on about how amazing they are and how they have made leaps and bounds in the gaming and electronic industry, I'm going to talk about a subject, which is centred around something great which, can never be forgotten, the SNES. The SNES, or Super Nintendo Entertainment System, was released in 1991 and was a complete instant hit, with just over a million machines sold all over the world in the first week, and many more hundreds of thousands of machines to be sold in the next 5 years of it's great reign on the shelves of computer stores worldwide.
The reason for it's success, an amazing breakthrough in what some people thought impossible, to replace Sega's Mega Drive as the machine of the early nineties. Probably the most difficult thing for Nintendo was the fact that they had released the Game Boy in 1987 and it's creator Gunpie Yokoi had died and the Game Boy was now in effect waning as a successful machine anymore. Nintendo knew that they had to take steps to ensure that they made a machine which would catch people's minds in the early nineties. Sega, being their arch rivals since the gaming industry began in the early eighties, had produced the Sega Master System, an 8 bit machine which had been good for the time of the late eighties and the Sega Mega Drive which was a 16 bit machine with a difference. Nintendo knew that they had to more than equal the Mega Drive's capabilities to ensure excellent sales in the 3 main worldwide gaming markets of Japan, the US, and of course the UK.
The Nintendo genius, Shigeru Miyamoto, who had created the money making characters of Mario, Link and Donkey Kong, spent a whole 2 years between 1989 and 1991 researching, testing and finalising what would finally be the SNES. He asked and found what people wanted and delivered from a new machine that Mega Drive didn't deliver. So, after 2 years of intense hard work, and persuasion and convincing the Nintendo President, Hiroshi Yamauchi about his designs and ideas, the construction of the dream machine began. Because of the sheer size of Nintendo, the first working prototype of the SNES was ready by early 1991, an amazing achievement! Released at gaming exhibitions across the world, the SNES really stunned people. People couln't believe that Nintendo had made so much progress in the space of 2 years, main thanks to Shigeru Miyamoto, and no one was more stunned than poor old Sega. After this first impression of the machine's power and speed, the gaming customer was hungry for the realease of the machine. The critical appraise of the machine gave Nintendo the boost and confidence to mass produce the SNES in time for Christmas 1991, and when that baby hit the shelves, there were queues for it down the escalators in shopping malls nationwide. The games that were launched with it, were superb and were strong launch titles for the SNES, i.e. Super Mario Brothers 2, which showed what the machine was made of.
The main reason for the SNES's success. A very strong advertising campaign, new advances in technology and it made the Sega Mega Drive games look so simple and boring. Many, many more games would follow on the SNES, such as, Street Fighter II Turbo, which some regard as the greatest beat 'em up of all time and not many people would disagree, Super Mario Kart, The Prince of Mana, and other great titles too, until it's sad death at the old, wrinkly age of 5 years in 1995-1996 when the N64 and the Playstation were released, introducing the next stage of computer technology. I had my SNES from 1992-1997, and I had 5 great years with it, and all I can say to anyone who still owns one, don't sell it! Keep it and enjoy what once was and what still I consider the great Nintendo machine.
Thanks for your time,
Alex.
The reason for it's success, an amazing breakthrough in what some people thought impossible, to replace Sega's Mega Drive as the machine of the early nineties. Probably the most difficult thing for Nintendo was the fact that they had released the Game Boy in 1987 and it's creator Gunpie Yokoi had died and the Game Boy was now in effect waning as a successful machine anymore. Nintendo knew that they had to take steps to ensure that they made a machine which would catch people's minds in the early nineties. Sega, being their arch rivals since the gaming industry began in the early eighties, had produced the Sega Master System, an 8 bit machine which had been good for the time of the late eighties and the Sega Mega Drive which was a 16 bit machine with a difference. Nintendo knew that they had to more than equal the Mega Drive's capabilities to ensure excellent sales in the 3 main worldwide gaming markets of Japan, the US, and of course the UK.
The Nintendo genius, Shigeru Miyamoto, who had created the money making characters of Mario, Link and Donkey Kong, spent a whole 2 years between 1989 and 1991 researching, testing and finalising what would finally be the SNES. He asked and found what people wanted and delivered from a new machine that Mega Drive didn't deliver. So, after 2 years of intense hard work, and persuasion and convincing the Nintendo President, Hiroshi Yamauchi about his designs and ideas, the construction of the dream machine began. Because of the sheer size of Nintendo, the first working prototype of the SNES was ready by early 1991, an amazing achievement! Released at gaming exhibitions across the world, the SNES really stunned people. People couln't believe that Nintendo had made so much progress in the space of 2 years, main thanks to Shigeru Miyamoto, and no one was more stunned than poor old Sega. After this first impression of the machine's power and speed, the gaming customer was hungry for the realease of the machine. The critical appraise of the machine gave Nintendo the boost and confidence to mass produce the SNES in time for Christmas 1991, and when that baby hit the shelves, there were queues for it down the escalators in shopping malls nationwide. The games that were launched with it, were superb and were strong launch titles for the SNES, i.e. Super Mario Brothers 2, which showed what the machine was made of.
The main reason for the SNES's success. A very strong advertising campaign, new advances in technology and it made the Sega Mega Drive games look so simple and boring. Many, many more games would follow on the SNES, such as, Street Fighter II Turbo, which some regard as the greatest beat 'em up of all time and not many people would disagree, Super Mario Kart, The Prince of Mana, and other great titles too, until it's sad death at the old, wrinkly age of 5 years in 1995-1996 when the N64 and the Playstation were released, introducing the next stage of computer technology. I had my SNES from 1992-1997, and I had 5 great years with it, and all I can say to anyone who still owns one, don't sell it! Keep it and enjoy what once was and what still I consider the great Nintendo machine.
Thanks for your time,
Alex.
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I could talk about N64, GameCube, Game Boy Advance or any of the latest consoles but instead, of waffling on about how amazing they are and how they have made leaps and bounds in the gaming and electronic industry, I'm going to talk about a subject, which is centred around something great which, can never be forgotten, the SNES. The SNES, or Super Nintendo Entertainment System, was released in 1991 and was a complete instant hit, with just over a million machines sold all over the world in the first week, and many more hundreds of thousands of machines to be sold in the next 5 years of it's great reign on the shelves of computer stores worldwide.
The reason for it's success, an amazing breakthrough in what some people thought impossible, to replace Sega's Mega Drive as the machine of the early nineties. Probably the most difficult thing for Nintendo was the fact that they had released the Game Boy in 1987 and it's creator Gunpie Yokoi had died and the Game Boy was now in effect waning as a successful machine anymore. Nintendo knew that they had to take steps to ensure that they made a machine which would catch people's minds in the early nineties. Sega, being their arch rivals since the gaming industry began in the early eighties, had produced the Sega Master System, an 8 bit machine which had been good for the time of the late eighties and the Sega Mega Drive which was a 16 bit machine with a difference. Nintendo knew that they had to more than equal the Mega Drive's capabilities to ensure excellent sales in the 3 main worldwide gaming markets of Japan, the US, and of course the UK.
The Nintendo genius, Shigeru Miyamoto, who had created the money making characters of Mario, Link and Donkey Kong, spent a whole 2 years between 1989 and 1991 researching, testing and finalising what would finally be the SNES. He asked and found what people wanted and delivered from a new machine that Mega Drive didn't deliver. So, after 2 years of intense hard work, and persuasion and convincing the Nintendo President, Hiroshi Yamauchi about his designs and ideas, the construction of the dream machine began. Because of the sheer size of Nintendo, the first working prototype of the SNES was ready by early 1991, an amazing achievement! Released at gaming exhibitions across the world, the SNES really stunned people. People couln't believe that Nintendo had made so much progress in the space of 2 years, main thanks to Shigeru Miyamoto, and no one was more stunned than poor old Sega. After this first impression of the machine's power and speed, the gaming customer was hungry for the realease of the machine. The critical appraise of the machine gave Nintendo the boost and confidence to mass produce the SNES in time for Christmas 1991, and when that baby hit the shelves, there were queues for it down the escalators in shopping malls nationwide. The games that were launched with it, were superb and were strong launch titles for the SNES, i.e. Super Mario Brothers 2, which showed what the machine was made of.
The main reason for the SNES's success. A very strong advertising campaign, new advances in technology and it made the Sega Mega Drive games look so simple and boring. Many, many more games would follow on the SNES, such as, Street Fighter II Turbo, which some regard as the greatest beat 'em up of all time and not many people would disagree, Super Mario Kart, The Prince of Mana, and other great titles too, until it's sad death at the old, wrinkly age of 5 years in 1995-1996 when the N64 and the Playstation were released, introducing the next stage of computer technology. I had my SNES from 1992-1997, and I had 5 great years with it, and all I can say to anyone who still owns one, don't sell it! Keep it and enjoy what once was and what still I consider the great Nintendo machine.
Thanks for your time,
Alex.
The reason for it's success, an amazing breakthrough in what some people thought impossible, to replace Sega's Mega Drive as the machine of the early nineties. Probably the most difficult thing for Nintendo was the fact that they had released the Game Boy in 1987 and it's creator Gunpie Yokoi had died and the Game Boy was now in effect waning as a successful machine anymore. Nintendo knew that they had to take steps to ensure that they made a machine which would catch people's minds in the early nineties. Sega, being their arch rivals since the gaming industry began in the early eighties, had produced the Sega Master System, an 8 bit machine which had been good for the time of the late eighties and the Sega Mega Drive which was a 16 bit machine with a difference. Nintendo knew that they had to more than equal the Mega Drive's capabilities to ensure excellent sales in the 3 main worldwide gaming markets of Japan, the US, and of course the UK.
The Nintendo genius, Shigeru Miyamoto, who had created the money making characters of Mario, Link and Donkey Kong, spent a whole 2 years between 1989 and 1991 researching, testing and finalising what would finally be the SNES. He asked and found what people wanted and delivered from a new machine that Mega Drive didn't deliver. So, after 2 years of intense hard work, and persuasion and convincing the Nintendo President, Hiroshi Yamauchi about his designs and ideas, the construction of the dream machine began. Because of the sheer size of Nintendo, the first working prototype of the SNES was ready by early 1991, an amazing achievement! Released at gaming exhibitions across the world, the SNES really stunned people. People couln't believe that Nintendo had made so much progress in the space of 2 years, main thanks to Shigeru Miyamoto, and no one was more stunned than poor old Sega. After this first impression of the machine's power and speed, the gaming customer was hungry for the realease of the machine. The critical appraise of the machine gave Nintendo the boost and confidence to mass produce the SNES in time for Christmas 1991, and when that baby hit the shelves, there were queues for it down the escalators in shopping malls nationwide. The games that were launched with it, were superb and were strong launch titles for the SNES, i.e. Super Mario Brothers 2, which showed what the machine was made of.
The main reason for the SNES's success. A very strong advertising campaign, new advances in technology and it made the Sega Mega Drive games look so simple and boring. Many, many more games would follow on the SNES, such as, Street Fighter II Turbo, which some regard as the greatest beat 'em up of all time and not many people would disagree, Super Mario Kart, The Prince of Mana, and other great titles too, until it's sad death at the old, wrinkly age of 5 years in 1995-1996 when the N64 and the Playstation were released, introducing the next stage of computer technology. I had my SNES from 1992-1997, and I had 5 great years with it, and all I can say to anyone who still owns one, don't sell it! Keep it and enjoy what once was and what still I consider the great Nintendo machine.
Thanks for your time,
Alex.
Actually Game Boy was released in 1989 but there were a few out in 1988.
The SNES was indeed a great console.
The quality of Super Mario World, as a launch title was streets ahead ofeverything else that was on the market at the time. It took platform gaming onto a new level, and was a truely remarkable gaming experience.
What was really special about the SNES is that it just kept on pushing the boundaries of what a 16-bit console coul do. Firstly a special 'FX' chip lead to games such as the original StarFox (Starwing) game to be possible, taking the SNES to a level beyond that it's competitors could reach.
In the last years of the consoles life Rare produced some stunning titles, again pushing the console to it's very limits to create beautiful landscapes and characters in the Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct games.
There were so many great games available too. Other than the already mentioned games there was Super Mario Kart, a fantastically addictive racer, that has lead to a ridiculus amout of copy-cat games featuring all sorts of characters. Bomberman was a fantastic multiplayer experience. Very simple in concept, it could create some amazing tactical battles of wits as you tried to catch out your opponent. Street Fighter 2 (Turbo) was a great beat em up, and definitely the best of it's era, the cheat to whack the speed up to level 10 made this faster than the arcade version!
My only gripe with the SNES is that Nintendo weren't committed to releasing all of the RPGs to the European market, and we missed out on some classics. Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 4-6, Earthbound, even the Super Mario RPG didn't see a UK release. This was a great shame, as they're top quality titles. At least we did get Secret of Mana, and Zelda: A Link to the Past!
The SNES was special, and though I enjoy my N64, it doesn't have the same quantity of top quality titles. Hopefully the GAMECUBE will bring even more fantastic Nintendo gaming experiences!
The quality of Super Mario World, as a launch title was streets ahead ofeverything else that was on the market at the time. It took platform gaming onto a new level, and was a truely remarkable gaming experience.
What was really special about the SNES is that it just kept on pushing the boundaries of what a 16-bit console coul do. Firstly a special 'FX' chip lead to games such as the original StarFox (Starwing) game to be possible, taking the SNES to a level beyond that it's competitors could reach.
In the last years of the consoles life Rare produced some stunning titles, again pushing the console to it's very limits to create beautiful landscapes and characters in the Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct games.
There were so many great games available too. Other than the already mentioned games there was Super Mario Kart, a fantastically addictive racer, that has lead to a ridiculus amout of copy-cat games featuring all sorts of characters. Bomberman was a fantastic multiplayer experience. Very simple in concept, it could create some amazing tactical battles of wits as you tried to catch out your opponent. Street Fighter 2 (Turbo) was a great beat em up, and definitely the best of it's era, the cheat to whack the speed up to level 10 made this faster than the arcade version!
My only gripe with the SNES is that Nintendo weren't committed to releasing all of the RPGs to the European market, and we missed out on some classics. Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 4-6, Earthbound, even the Super Mario RPG didn't see a UK release. This was a great shame, as they're top quality titles. At least we did get Secret of Mana, and Zelda: A Link to the Past!
The SNES was special, and though I enjoy my N64, it doesn't have the same quantity of top quality titles. Hopefully the GAMECUBE will bring even more fantastic Nintendo gaming experiences!
I "accidently" broke it while in a bad mood. It's very difficult to damage it - I cut my finger trying to pry the dark grey inner plastic casing from the main body, and it took a lot of effort. I then sold all 18 of my SNES games for £30. Oh well. I still have a copy of SSFII, which is a Japanese version if anyone values import games.
You are right about one thing, the SNES is still an awsome machine to play with. I still have mine from when I had it on day of UK release of it.
I bet you didn't know this. The SNES or Super Famicom wasn't a true 16 bit console. The reason for the power of the machine is because it had not 1 16 bit processor but 2 8 bit processors running at the same time. Thus producing the excellent quality games and being the first console to bring us 3D gaming. Known as the Super FX chip the console used what is known as Mode7 graphics to produce titles such as StarWing, Stunt Race FX, Vortex and Doom.
As for the Mega Drive, it wasn't as much as a failure as you make it out to be. It wasn't successful enough in Japan where the biggest market is but it was a hit in the USA and European markets.
I bet you didn't know this. The SNES or Super Famicom wasn't a true 16 bit console. The reason for the power of the machine is because it had not 1 16 bit processor but 2 8 bit processors running at the same time. Thus producing the excellent quality games and being the first console to bring us 3D gaming. Known as the Super FX chip the console used what is known as Mode7 graphics to produce titles such as StarWing, Stunt Race FX, Vortex and Doom.
As for the Mega Drive, it wasn't as much as a failure as you make it out to be. It wasn't successful enough in Japan where the biggest market is but it was a hit in the USA and European markets.
All the 16 bit actually refers to is the number of bits it can process in one second, in this case 16 bits. If it has two 8 bit processors doing 8 bits independantly each per second that still makes 16 bits a second, so it is a true 16 bit console.
Change all those "seconds" for "cycles". Still saying the same thing though, just remebered my wee mistake while posting in another thread. There are many cycles per second and the bits rate refers to the number of bits per cycle. If it was persecond it would take your computer ages to do anything!
Interesting stuff indeed.
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