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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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well i only had that version.....fun game, most people didnt like it as they deemed it too hard....to an extent i agree but thats what makes a game interesting in my books....prograssivley difficult challenges, a steady learning curve...although i do enjoy games with a high learning curve as the sense of achievement is a lot greater
lucifer the snowman wrote:
> hey now that you mention the megadrive, does anyone remember a old
> game for it, came out in 1990. done by saega dn went by the name
> "decap-attck", twas a really cool platformer that starred
> a mummy called chuck D head and went around with a skull????
Yes I remember Decap-Attack, but I never played it in that form.
I did. however, have the pleasure of owning Magical Flying Hat Turbo Adventure. Which is exacltly the same game, gameplay wise, but it had a complete graphical make-over for it's UK launch, and became Decap-Attack!
> hey now that you mention the megadrive, does anyone remember a old
> game for it, came out in 1990. done by saega dn went by the name
> "decap-attck", twas a really cool platformer that starred
> a mummy called chuck D head and went around with a skull????
Yes I remember Decap-Attack, but I never played it in that form.
I did. however, have the pleasure of owning Magical Flying Hat Turbo Adventure. Which is exacltly the same game, gameplay wise, but it had a complete graphical make-over for it's UK launch, and became Decap-Attack!
Yep, it came out on the Amiga a few years back. Very cheesy.
No - Does anyone remember Rick Dangerous? A classic. Haaaa.....
Interesting stuff indeed.
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!
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.
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