I'm one of the lucky ones whose parents didn't throw too much of a fit over NES games not working on SNES. I think I gave my dad, a big time hunter, an analogy about how you can't use .22 shells with a .308 and he got it immediately. Still took me something like 3 years to save up the funds tho...
I was surprised to hear you mention "Dirt Trax FX." I spent many months of my life as an assistant developer on this game. Less so on "Doom", but I was pleased to be involved.
@@juliohernandez9372 I'm not sure how well the game holds up almost 30 years later. I thought that it was pretty cool at the time. The two-player combat mode was pretty interesting. My only gripe with the game is that it is easy to run into things that slow you down, but maybe that is a proper part of the gameplay. Also, the music could have been more varied. Although it is an amazing game for its time, I'm not sure about the "fun factor."
The more I think about it as time goes on, the more I genuinely feel like the SNES was "my console"; even though I only played a handful of games for it as a kid, the more I listen to it's music, the more I look at the games that were made for it, they just... speak to me, in a way that NES or Nintendo 64 games don't. It's a strange sensation, and I absolutely adore it.
I totally get what you're coming from. It's my favorite system with some of my favorite games. I also love the 16-bit look, feel, atmosphere, etc. It just speaks to me and i love it so. Now there's a lot of new games on Switch that mimic that style, and there's some excellent games to be had, one i like is Battle Princess Madelyn, a spiritual successor to Super Ghouls'N Ghosts, and it's a good game in its own right. That game along with other games such as Tanuki Justice are done in such a way that they feel like they fit right in, but as good as they are i still prefer the Super Nintendo which is and forever will be my favorite video game system.
@@derek-64 agreed. I wish they could put some of these current indie games on older platforms. They definitely would fit right in. I got xenocrisis on genesis and my dreamcast and it's very fun and just feels right. When playing xenocrisis on xbox or playstation, it still a great game but just seems kinda off.
I remember when my dad brought out the SNES for my birthday in 1991. I looked at the box and was puzzled, he hooked the system up to our late 80s Sony Trinitron and he loaded up Super Mario World, my brother and myself were blown away by the graphics and sound quality. Playimg SNES titles on original hardware, Analogue SUper NT and Switch i can appreciate these classic titles as an adult with great nostalgia.
What you don't often hear about though (then or now) is in fact the SNES encouraged gamers to still keep their NES around, both on the back of the SNES box and in its manual showed you how you can either daisy chain both RF Switches or use one or both of a TV's AV hookups. Not to mention they redid the NES and its controllers in 1993 to make it look more like the SNES.
You really captured the spirit of the times back then. Another strange difference between then and now is that, back then, when a new console did come out, there was usually a feeling of one competitor leapfrogging past the other in terms of technological prowess. Nowadays, everyone just seems to come out with a roughly comparable upgrade at roughly the same time.
I'm Brazilian and I can confirm that the Master System was extremely famous here at that time. My dad gave me a Master System in 1987, although I wanted to have a NES as well. Then, in 1992, I got the best gift of my entire life (Super NES). 😊
Yep. Another Brazilian here. My first console was the Master System and I can confirm it also had many good titles. Sonic the Hedghog 2 (the first game I ever owned), Fantasy Zone II, Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap, Land of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, Asterix and the Great Rescue, Dynamite Dux, Ghouls'n Ghosts, Psycho Fox, Psychic World, Spellcaster and Penguin Land to name a few. That said, I confess I converted to Nintendo after trying out the NES and the SNES 😆 Thankfully we no longer live at a time we have to choose between one platform over another, so I enjoy the Master System, NES, SNES and other systems using emulators on my PC and my tablet.
For some reason the SNES's graphics and sound chip along with the amazing controller and games just sealed the deal with me back then and still to this day.
One thing that has kind of been lost in the advancement of technology is that competing video game consoles used to have distinct hardware advantages that could play to different strengths in their software line-up. Ever since the PS4/XB1 dropped it's kind of felt that consoles have just become low-end PCs with fixed hardware configurations.
Xbox and PlayStation have been homogenizing since at least the late 360/PS3 era. I think it's good that Nintendo still tries to produce hardware that distinguishes itself from the competition, even if we sometimes get a Wii U out of that philosophy.
Very true statement my boy. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that, that's why gaming is a joke now. The last great consoles was the 360/ps3 Era, facts!!!
What I found quite fascinating about Mode 7 in hindsight, is no gaming magazines ever refered to the technique as "Mode 7" until the release of the US SNES, all the Super Famicom previews were always refered to as "rotational graphics" or not really mentioned at all. So always curious if it was a Nintendo of America marketing thing to call it Mode 7, as Sega of America did with Blast Processing.
Seems less likely to be purely a marketing name than with Blast Processing, since they are referred to as (numbered) background modes 0-7 in the official US SNES Dev manual. They probably lucked out that "Mode 7" happened to sound rad enough to market. I do wonder if the background modes are numbered/named in the same way in the JP documentation.
I've been reading through some old TOTAL! magazines and noticed the same, "rotational graphics" being the buzz phrase used when the console will still a Japan only console
Honestly, rotational graphics are a much more clear way to describe i than "Mode 7", but obviously Mode 7 has a lot more of that marketing word magic to it, similar to "Blast Processing".
@@Bannanawaffles2 The background modes would be numbered the same regardless of documentation language. It wasn't just a convention in the documentation - you actually had to set a hardware register to the integer value of 7 in order to set that mode. It wasn't like the ordering of mode numbers came from alphabetical sorting or something.
The president of Nintendo said that he wanted backward compatibility with the SNES, but it would have raised the cost of the system to $300. That is equivalent to $747 today, whereas the $200 price tag is equivalent to around $498 today. Videogame systems were still a major investment.
I loved the much more substantial thunk of the SNES cartridge clicking into place and the power switches crisp click and power light shining to life. Dreams came true and lives were shaped by those elegant yet efficient engineering choices.
Nintendo's main focus has always been on making quality fun games instead of keeping up to date on industry trends. That's what I love and hate about them. Fun games on a system that barely competes with last gen.
+1 like for this retrospective. As a game music nerd, I know there's an encyclopedia of content to be harvested from the Super NES soundtrack library. The Super Famicom wasn't even a year old when folks like Tim Follin were showing their mastery of the audio hardware. (Super Off-Road and Spider-man & the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge were released in 1992.) Nintendo Power was immensely helpful in getting my adolescent self to understand how developers were using custom sound engineering to show off the power of that console's audio chip. The versatility of that chip still astounds me. Perhaps for another video.
Video game music nerd here too. The SNES soundtracks were fucking incredible. FFIV was my first FF and god it was so good. Actraiser, Zelda ALTTP, Secret of Mana, Illusion of Gaia, Lufia 1 and 2, FFVI, Secret of Evermore, DKC 1 and 2, Chrono Trigger, SMRPG, Axelay, Super Metroid, Terranigma, Earthbound, it just goes on
Huge video game music nerd here too - I've transcribed a ton of classic game music to piano sheet music. The SNES soundtrack library is almost unparalled in greatness.
Very well timed video, and a welcome addition to Super NES Works. The 16-bit era is fascinating and many games from the Super Famicom, Mega Drive and the PC Engine still give us nostalgia today.
As a videogame programmer, I liked the better sound, more colors, and more powerful PPU of the SNES over the Genesis. The difference in processor speed is not so much because the 68000 processor in the Genesis takes more clock cycles to execute instructions, but it can also execute more complex instructions. The DMA on the Genesis, also known as "blast processing" gave it a noticeable speed boost for games like Sonic. If I had to choose the greatest videogame system, I would choose the NES or the SNES for their impact.
@@LITTLE1994 I should point out that the NES sold 69 million consoles compared to 49 million for the SNES. Yes, the SNES is far more capable, but the NES single-handedly resurrected a dying videogame industry. I was there, trying to write video games.
@@john2001plus That's because the Genesis took a huge chunk of the market outside of Japan. If Nintendo maintained a monopoly with SNES they probably sell around 80-90M million units.
I have great parents but I didn’t have much money for consoles back in the day. My dad found a nes with duck hunt Mario and Mario 3 for $7 and I loved it. Mom and dad paid me to do chores and would give it to me in quarters so I could go to the arcade with friends and have a great time. Thanks mom and dad for the great childhood 🙂 I love u very much
Episode 0 has always been one of my favourite episodes of NES works, yet I didn't realize how much was missing from Super NES Works without one until now. Thanks for doing this, and great job as always!
I remember my friend got a snes right when it came out. I was blown away by Super Mario world. I came home as an 11 year old kid just talking nonstop about it. This was in September so I figured the earliest I had any chance of even possibly getting it would be for Christmas, so when my mom drove me to my grandparents house just a day or two later, and she walked out holding that beautiful new snes box, words couldn't do justice to my excitement. No matter how great the graphics become on newer systems like the PS5, there was just something special about the Nintendo and Super Nintendo. They will always be my favorite systems. Nintendo and its developers released games like yoshis island and donkey kong country that did things you wouldn't expect a 16 bit game to do. I think the creativity back then has somewhat been lost nowadays because all of the current gen systems are pretty much the same. For my money, the nes and snes will always be the best gaming consoles
Jeremy, I have been consuming TH-cam videos over 12 hours a day for the last 12 years with retro video games, guns, and cars as my primary channels and I just discovered your channel 2 weeks ago. Your retrospectives are absolutely amazing and professionally done. I have no idea why you don't have a million subs, but you deserve it. Im working on watching the whole library. Thanks for what you do! I hope the "algorithm" sways in your favor. People are missing out on great informative retro gaming history.
A retrospective unlike any other. I love how you touch on the business aspects. People forget Nintendo and other console makers are a BUSINESS first, Makers of Dreams™️ later.
Hey! The opening camera looks way better. I assume it’s the same one, but the difference is night and day for me watching. Thanks so much! You’re continuing to do great work.
The past few videos I was using a VHS for playback that was unfortunately trashed beyond redemption, no matter how I tried to coax it back to life. Now I'm capturing video directly from the camcorder, which has much cleaner playback heads.
That makes total sense. Stinks you have to use the camcorder more to capture the footage, but it looks really great. Thanks again for making these every week. A great part of my routine.
My favorite console ever. It built upon and perfected the 2D gameplay of the NES era, much like PS2 iterated on the rudimentary 3D graphics of the PS1 generation.
like that you mentioned the PS2, looking at Gran Turismo 3,even to this day it's amazing that the PS2 was capable of those visuals, that game has definitely aged very well graphically
I came to the Super NES as a grown-up via the Yobo FC Twin clone console. As a kid, my two best friends both had Genesis so that's what I got to play when I wasn't playing the NES at home. In a certain sense, though, my first SNES experience was playing the GBA rerelease of Super Mario World.
Our parents struggled to see why anyone should upgrade to a SNES, but for us the difference was obvious, with games like Super Mario World, F-Zero and Pilotwings.
The SNES. Living proof that a great game can come from anywhere, and that all it takes to make something amazing is effort and talent. Then again, that sums up a lot of consoles. It was in the 16-bit era where it was most apparent that gaming could benefit from demoscene programmers. The SNES had Mode 7, and the Sega Genesis had speed, but they could both do demoscene effects. They attempted to outperform each other with some demoscene effects, like the entirety of Adventures of Batman & Robin on the Genesis, Sparkster on the SNES, Vectorman, Axelay, Another World (either version), Seven Force in Gunstar Heroes, and even Winter Gold's menu screen. Oh, and a lot of what made Mode 7 work was HDMA, H-Blank Direct Memory Access. Retro Game Mechanics Explained has a whole video about it. I'm not here to debate which one was better, as both have their strengths and weaknesses, and both consoles still have power left within them, yet to be tapped.
>both consoles still have power left within them, yet to be tapped. How so? I don't see these consoles being resurrected anytime soon by SEGA or Nintendo. They peaked and will never return.
Jeremy up bright and early with the 7:45 AM upload. I hope you ate a good breakfast and not just pop tarts & yoo-hoo before you played with your Super Atari tapes
Maybe it was different in other parts of the country, but Street Fighter II is specifically the first game I remember costing more than 25 cents. 50 cents per play in every arcade, 7-11, bowling alley and pizza place in my home town. Same for Mortal Kombat. A couple years later I would be dropping a whole dollar per play in Daytona. To my memory Street Figher is the beginning of games costing more, rather than a vestige of games costing less. Maybe Jeremy grew up in some place where the arcade owners weren't upping prices, but I've never seen Street Fighter II that cheap.
Woohoo, the SNES! I can't wait till you start going through the classics, in video form! Man so many memories with the snes...of course had good ones with the nes...but snes was another level
Great time in life. I was born in 78. Played the coleco, 5200, 7800, NES and the holy grail=SNES came long and wow, was that a transformation! The SNES actually had a lot more horsepower left to give and Big N even considered making it somewhat akin to PC's, where the system owner would be able to upgrade the console with plug/play components. Nintendo was also experimenting with new versions of the FX chips among others that would upgrade the gaming experience. Sadly, the push for polygonal graphics was basically impossible to fight and we ended up with the N64. The 64 had some great games, but for me it's always been a little bit ad hoc and has always made me wonder if Nintendo really wanted to go that direction, when they did? Long live the SNES!
Jeremy must have put so much work into this video. Was expecting a review of a Sokoban clone or some Gameboy puzzle game, not this prime time ready excellence!
I think the smartest decision Nintendo made with the SNES was the controller. Sega clearly didn’t anticipate SF2 and how important six-button fighting games would become. Did Nintendo know what was coming, or did they just get lucky?
I remember my mom putting the Super Nintendo on lay away at Kmart every weekend remembering her to go pay till we finally got it best day of my life my favorite system!!!!
I always love the times you give subjects like this a deep dive, and this did not disappoint. This was the first system I bought with my with my saved up 11 year old allowance money, (as I was told I would have to sell my NES before my mom would OK the purchase) So I initially had mixed feelings…. I think with the hindsight of history, this may have been the console battle where both competitors (and turbografx) were nearly equally matched in offering competing but not identical experiences. So many modern games, the only difference is “a few frame rates better on one vs. the other”. This may be the first and only time where the two main competitors basically tied (while offering different things)
The early 1990s were definitely a great time for video games. Plus the NES was still getting new games, the Nintendo Game Boy, Atari Lynx, and Sega Game Gear were competing for the handheld market, arcades were revitalized by the success of Street Fighter II, and the Neo Geo truly offered the arcade experience at home for those who could afford it.
can't believe it's 30 years already. god i'm old lol anyway i'm glad Nintendo is still here thriving in the console business despite their ups and downs and after WiiU failure it's just great that they manage to bounce back with the Switch. hope they can still find success for many more years cos gaming world is so much better with Nintendo in it than without :D
I really appreciate this video! I was a little too young for the SNES. But I love hearing about the history behind the console and what people thought about it at the time.
I remember as a kid my brother and I (we already had a bunch of Nintendo games) and when the super Nintendo came out the only reason my parents bought it is because we read and we showed them a Nintendo power or some magazine like that, that there was going to be an adapter to play the old games. when that never came out my dad wasn't really too pleased about that
Yeah, basically. The SNES didn't have true sprite scaling like those arcade machines had, so games in this style pretty much just had hand-drawn frames of the other vehicles and obstacles at a range of sizes to simulate scaling. Then the road is drawn with linescroll effects, same as Out Run and similar games. Technically, the title screen of Top Gear, where the logo spins onto the screen, might be done with mode 7, so if you're being pedantic you could probably still argue it's a mode 7 game, but if you did you'd be a real jerk.
Absolutely fantastic! The strengths of the SNES and the MegaDrive/Genesis are such that to this day you can still see people trying to fight that console war (you mention Chris Kohler, has he finally admitted that Sega's offering was worthwhile?)
I was never really into consoles as a kid but I did end up getting the SNES much later on, I was more into home computers like the C64 and the Amiga and what struck me the most once I had the SNES is how expensive it was to game on it compared to the Amiga and I remember thinking to myself as a kid, I made the right choice going for the Amiga as a lot of the games you could buy on budget for under £10 and many for like £5 or £3, the cheapest games on the Snes was £20 whiles most used to be around £35, £40 which was crazy for a kid. So even thought I had both, I had a lot more fun using the Amiga and it also helped that it was a computer which half my time using it wasn't even gaming lol.
Your presentation is lovely and always improving as always, love your stuff! You should consider making your videos on 4:3, since TH-cam has some great support for it and you're almost always using 4:3 footage anyway.
And now Nintendo releases a console every year and then 20 versions of the same console and people still go nuts even though they haven't had a good console since the SNES. (Consoles not handhelds).
I grew up without a Super Nintendo in the 1990's, but I played either at a store or a friend's house. I didn't get a Super NES until later life in 2002 and played it all in high school through 2003 and again in 2005, even when I had an NES in the 1990s and a Nintendo 64 in late 1999-2001. I haven't played it about 19 years, but I want to get a working Super NES in its good condition one day, and play my games Super Mario World, World Heroes 2, Wheel of Fortune; Deluxe Edition and Super Star Wars, and get more games, like F-Zero, Final Fight, Final Fight 2, Final Fight 3, Final Fight Guy, ActRaiser, Joe & Mac, Super E.D.F.: Earth Defense Force, Super Smash T.V., Rival Turf!, Contra III: The Alien Wars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time, Super Mario Kart, Gunforce, Sonic Blast Man, Batman Returns, Dragon‘s Lair, Family Dog, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, Sunset Riders, Mega Man X, The Jetsons: Invasion of the Planet Pirates, The Pirates of Dark Water, R-Type III: The Third Lightning, Super Punch-Out!!, Super Mario All-Stars+ Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong Country 2, Donkey Kong Country 3, Wario‘s Woods, Bust-A-Move, The Ren & Stimpy Show: Buckeroo$!, WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game, Power Rangers Zeo: Battle Racers, Mr. Do!, Williams Arcade‘s Greatest Hits, Ms. Pac-Man, Marvel Super Heroes in: War of the Gems, NBA Hangtime, Arkanoid: Doh It Again, Space Invaders, Kirby‘s Dream Land 3, and Frogger on the Super NES and the accessories, such as the Super Advantage, Super NES Mouse, AsciiPad controller, the Super Advantage, the Specialized Fighter Pad, SN Pro Pad, SN Program Pad, Capcom Fighter Power Stick, Fighter Stick SN, the Power Plug, the Super Game Boy, and the Super Controller.
I wonder why there are not as many new games for the SNES as the Genesis. Is it because programmers like the 6800 better or is there no renaming power to be squeezed out of the SNES. Some of those new genesis games looked amazing
It's interesting to be reminded that parents in the 80's were not used to the concept of hardware obsolescence for video games and there was massive backlash against the concept. My own parents rejected the idea of this infinite upgrade cycle. They just weren't used to computers, and exponential power increases. They were used to the idea of something built to last a lifetime that you bought once and were done for life. So the idea of getting a new console when "you already have a Nintendo" was outrageous to them. People forget that games used to cost $50-70 (or more!) which in the 80's was a LOT of money.
The main reason my father bought me an NES instead of an Atari system was because he felt the former was much more arcade authentic. Given this, I think he was probably stoked to get us an SNES. I remember early on, he rented Link to the Past specifically for himself to play. He was an awful person in many, _many_ respects, but as far as video games go, I'm glad he was an outlier among parents.
I liked the Super NES. The Super NES was a 16-bit upgrade follow-on to their earlier hit console, the NES, that seem to be so much better than the original NES and this is coming from someone who had that briefly, maybe too briefly, but still since I played a handful of NES games, I honestly just can get into the NES the same way as others did as I don't find their games to be as good and I do mean that they're not bad, but the 16-bit generation of consoles truly got me into gaming in comparison. The Super NES could handle twice the amount of data as the original NES, and the hardware boasted upgrades across the board--better resolution, more colors, a separate sound processor, and the ability to display many more moving objects (sprites) and simultaneous graphical layers than other consoles on the market.
Great video, Jeremy! This video fueled a lot of nostalgia for me. As a kid, I had a choice between the SNES and the Genesis, and my love for this big cartoony character action game with a blue hedgehog made me go Genesis. I think I made the better choice; I would've been a very different adult now if I grew up as an SNES kid.
It’s amazing to think the snes only had 5 years in North America before the 64 came out. The switch is hitting that next year and it fells like the next Nintendo system is at least 2 years away.
The beginning of this video is highly important. The idea of a videogame console "life cycle" did not really exist in the minds of the public at that time. It also didn't really exist within the industry itself. I've thought long and hard about why this was so, and I think the largest reason is, simply, how people viewed videogames in the 1980s: not as consumer electronics or computers, but toys. The game industry was seen as a segment of the toy industry. This is why Sega of America chose the former head of Mattel to take the reigns in 1991, Tom Kalinske, for example. The toy industry has always been a very fast, fad-driven business. You put out a product and hope that it becomes a hit for the upcoming Christmas season. Your ultimate goal is a product that sells for one holiday season, maybe two if you are lucky. But then the fad wanes and consumers are on the prowl for the Next Big Thing. This year, Rubik's Cube is the hit toy of the season. Next year, Cabbage Patch Dolls will hit big. The year after that, GI Joe and Transformers will clear the shelves. There are no expectations that any of these toys will endure past one or two cycles, aside from a very small handful of iconic products like Barbie or Monopoly. In addition to this, videogames are treated with utmost suspicion by adults. Back in the 80s, nearly every parent over age 30 was either confused by electronic games, or outright afraid of them. This was the dawn of the Computer Age, and these new amazing machines were likewise welcomed with a mixture of puzzlement and fear. Most people saw computers through the lens of science fiction like Star Trek, dystopian tales of killer robots, or soulless machines that enslaved humanity. Indeed, computer technology was severely disrupting blue-collar jobs, such as robot arms replacing human workers at an automobile assembly line. Grownups had no idea how computers worked or what made them tick. Software language coding may as well have been magic spells conjured by wizards in pointy hats. And this fueled a great generational divide, which also extended into videogames. Of course, the biggest videogame sensations like Pac-Man had crossover appeal to all ages, the fact is that this new medium was embraced mostly by children aged 6-14. Here we come into another factor: Puritanical Guilt. This is probably more of an American phenomenon, this underlying belief that leisure itself is bad, that work in itself is good, that your role in life is to suffer and toil to provide for your family. The idea of sitting in front of a television moving little blocks around a screen, accompanied by bleeps and bloops, seemed almost sinful. Little Johnny isn't doing his schoolwork. Little Suzy isn't reading her books. The teens aren't working their after-school jobs. All they ever do is obsess over these stupid games. And so, because of this, videogames were treated with a great deal of skepticism, tolerated at best, feared at worst. It surely didn't help that prophets of the Computer Age like Steve Jobs openly mocked the very idea of computer games, because it was a waste of the machines' potential. These are meant to change the world, to create art and music, to automate every aspect of daily working life. They aren't here to futz around with a yellow ball chomping dots on a maze. As a result, there was an underlying hope that this silly fad would just quietly go away. And in 1983, that is precisely what happened. The US videogame industry--arcades, consoles, home computers--collapsed under its own weight, becoming all but extinct by 1985. Enter Nintendo, who then revived the industry in the late 1980s, enslaving a new generation of children with its wicked, sinful toys. These games were almost seen as electronic drugs, something to become addicted to, something to make your children lazy and unproductive. Yet, despite all this resentment, the NES became monstrously successful in homes with children by the early 1990s. There were rivals, of course, Atari and Sega being the most notable, who offered competing products on a yearly or semi-yearly basis. Atari was modestly successful in repacking their ancient Atari 2600 as a cheap $50 budget product, which sold on nostalgia while also heightening the sense of disposable nature (Jack Tramiel sold the 2600 Jr and 7800 largely to clear out unsold inventory, his main focus on the more "serious" Atari ST computers for the business market). By 1989, a new wave of technology was becoming affordable, and we saw the arrival of new "16-bit" consoles in NEC's Turbografx-16 and Sega's Genesis. Nintendo was reluctant to kill its successful console, which allowed the NES to endure far longer than most toys, but then the arms race made changes inevitable. Enter the Super NES in 1991, two full years after NEC and Sega. Nintendo could afford to wait as they held a near-monopoly on the US home videogame market, and wanted to squeeze every last dollar out of the NES (after all, do they really want to back to making playing cards?). The kids didn't seem to mind too much, and having blockbuster hits like Super Mario Bros 3 in 1990 surely helped a lot. However, the long-awaited arrival of the "Super" Nintendo ran into surprising resistance, not from retailers or game-playing kids, but from parents. The parents, after all, were the ones who were mostly buying these for their children, and they were very upset that they were now expected to throw away one expensive toy for another one, especially when they honestly cannot see what all the fuss is about. This silly thing just plays stupid games, what's the difference? You know that meme that shows a mom calling every game console a "Nintendo?" Yeah, that was real. Parents couldn't tell any of these apart from one another, had little interest in learning, and were still hoping that it would all just go away for good. Funny enough, this almost happens again in the mid-90s as the 16-bit generation winds down. The US videogame industry contracted by roughly two-thirds from 1993-1996, and was only turned around with, once again, the arrival of Nintendo, this time with their fifth-generation Nintendo 64 and a little character named Mario. Also, let's not forget the arrival of Sony, whose presence as a consumer electronics giant greatly helped to shed gaming's "kiddie" image in the late 90s. Looking back, we can clearly see that there were sales curves for each generation of hardware, as the technology emerged, matured, and then was surpassed. This wasn't understood at the time for all the reasons mentioned above. I think the key was to realize that videogames were not part of the toy industry, but the consumer electronics industry, or perhaps the computer industry. And in that field, technological obsolescence is baked into the formula. And, over time, the mainstream public learned to adopt new formats and technologies: VHS to DVD, Records to CD, Apple II to Macintosh, and NES to Super NES to Nintendo 64. Every form of media has its own set of rules, Marshal Macluhan taught, and this is very true for videogames. It only took a couple industry crashes (one major, one minor) for this to be understood by the industry, retailers and the public. Anyway, that's my TED Talk. I did not mean to write a full essay here, hah! I am available for lectures and birthday parties. Thank you very much.
Feels like the jump between these two was insane but I’m in no rush to get the current generation because there is barely a difference but I didn’t get a steamdeck I love it
I was 6 years old when the super Nintendo entertainment system was made any system or game made by Nintendo was good also games made by konami and capcom had unforgettable music
I finished SaGa Scarlet Grace Ambitions last night, and who's name did I see in the credits under localization? Nicely done, that game was absolutely fantastic from beginning to end. It's become an instant all-time favourite. As for the video, great stuff, nailed all the relevant little details. Every time I thought "Oh, he missed factoid X" you'd come back around to it shortly after. Also filled in some gaps I didn't know, like why the SFC lasted so much longer in Japan. The only point I'd have disagreed on was the relative merits of 16-bit colour palettes. I've long thought the Genesis' limits there were a damaging factor; the PC Engine managed to punch well above its weight thanks to its colour display, while Genesis versions of games, rather than bold, often looked washed out and dithered to me. Though there were a few very notable exceptions like the Sonic titles, in which the art team understood well what they were working with and how to balance it. But where it really hurt was the Sega CD not enhancing those capabilities. It meant that SoA's already dumb decision to lean on FMV was utterly doomed because it didn't have the palette to look like anything other than oatmeal.
I'm one of the lucky ones whose parents didn't throw too much of a fit over NES games not working on SNES. I think I gave my dad, a big time hunter, an analogy about how you can't use .22 shells with a .308 and he got it immediately. Still took me something like 3 years to save up the funds tho...
I know what that was like!
Clever!
I'll never forget dad coming home with that big SNES box after a business trip to the Netherlands. It changed me and my brothers lives for sure.
I was surprised to hear you mention "Dirt Trax FX." I spent many months of my life as an assistant developer on this game. Less so on "Doom", but I was pleased to be involved.
"John Coffey, just like the drink, only not spelled the same" Never thought I would ever be able to use that quote relevantly :)
@@ninjacrumbs I was using this name about 36 years before Stephen King didi.
But I didn`t know you 36 years ago...
Thank you so much! I spent many joyous hours on dirt track fx as a kid!
@@juliohernandez9372 I'm not sure how well the game holds up almost 30 years later. I thought that it was pretty cool at the time. The two-player combat mode was pretty interesting. My only gripe with the game is that it is easy to run into things that slow you down, but maybe that is a proper part of the gameplay. Also, the music could have been more varied. Although it is an amazing game for its time, I'm not sure about the "fun factor."
The more I think about it as time goes on, the more I genuinely feel like the SNES was "my console"; even though I only played a handful of games for it as a kid, the more I listen to it's music, the more I look at the games that were made for it, they just... speak to me, in a way that NES or Nintendo 64 games don't. It's a strange sensation, and I absolutely adore it.
Yup, agreed. I had the nes in the early 90s and I loved it, but when SNES came along it was a whole different ball game for me as well.
I share your sentiment.
I totally get what you're coming from. It's my favorite system with some of my favorite games. I also love the 16-bit look, feel, atmosphere, etc. It just speaks to me and i love it so. Now there's a lot of new games on Switch that mimic that style, and there's some excellent games to be had, one i like is Battle Princess Madelyn, a spiritual successor to Super Ghouls'N Ghosts, and it's a good game in its own right. That game along with other games such as Tanuki Justice are done in such a way that they feel like they fit right in, but as good as they are i still prefer the Super Nintendo which is and forever will be my favorite video game system.
@@derek-64 agreed. I wish they could put some of these current indie games on older platforms. They definitely would fit right in. I got xenocrisis on genesis and my dreamcast and it's very fun and just feels right. When playing xenocrisis on xbox or playstation, it still a great game but just seems kinda off.
I have that for NES games.
I remember when my dad brought out the SNES for my birthday in 1991. I looked at the box and was puzzled, he hooked the system up to our late 80s Sony Trinitron and he loaded up Super Mario World, my brother and myself were blown away by the graphics and sound quality. Playimg SNES titles on original hardware, Analogue SUper NT and Switch i can appreciate these classic titles as an adult with great nostalgia.
i remember when my parents bought me a SNES and I hated it
I got mine in 91' too, with Actraiser, Mario world and final fight
What you don't often hear about though (then or now) is in fact the SNES encouraged gamers to still keep their NES around, both on the back of the SNES box and in its manual showed you how you can either daisy chain both RF Switches or use one or both of a TV's AV hookups. Not to mention they redid the NES and its controllers in 1993 to make it look more like the SNES.
You really captured the spirit of the times back then. Another strange difference between then and now is that, back then, when a new console did come out, there was usually a feeling of one competitor leapfrogging past the other in terms of technological prowess. Nowadays, everyone just seems to come out with a roughly comparable upgrade at roughly the same time.
I'm Brazilian and I can confirm that the Master System was extremely famous here at that time. My dad gave me a Master System in 1987, although I wanted to have a NES as well. Then, in 1992, I got the best gift of my entire life (Super NES). 😊
Yep. Another Brazilian here. My first console was the Master System and I can confirm it also had many good titles. Sonic the Hedghog 2 (the first game I ever owned), Fantasy Zone II, Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap, Land of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, Asterix and the Great Rescue, Dynamite Dux, Ghouls'n Ghosts, Psycho Fox, Psychic World, Spellcaster and Penguin Land to name a few. That said, I confess I converted to Nintendo after trying out the NES and the SNES 😆
Thankfully we no longer live at a time we have to choose between one platform over another, so I enjoy the Master System, NES, SNES and other systems using emulators on my PC and my tablet.
For some reason the SNES's graphics and sound chip along with the amazing controller and games just sealed the deal with me back then and still to this day.
One thing that has kind of been lost in the advancement of technology is that competing video game consoles used to have distinct hardware advantages that could play to different strengths in their software line-up. Ever since the PS4/XB1 dropped it's kind of felt that consoles have just become low-end PCs with fixed hardware configurations.
Xbox and PlayStation have been homogenizing since at least the late 360/PS3 era. I think it's good that Nintendo still tries to produce hardware that distinguishes itself from the competition, even if we sometimes get a Wii U out of that philosophy.
Very true statement my boy. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that, that's why gaming is a joke now. The last great consoles was the 360/ps3 Era, facts!!!
@@ShadowEl If only they would keep up with the graphical capabilities of their contemporaries.
What I found quite fascinating about Mode 7 in hindsight, is no gaming magazines ever refered to the technique as "Mode 7" until the release of the US SNES, all the Super Famicom previews were always refered to as "rotational graphics" or not really mentioned at all.
So always curious if it was a Nintendo of America marketing thing to call it Mode 7, as Sega of America did with Blast Processing.
Seems less likely to be purely a marketing name than with Blast Processing, since they are referred to as (numbered) background modes 0-7 in the official US SNES Dev manual. They probably lucked out that "Mode 7" happened to sound rad enough to market. I do wonder if the background modes are numbered/named in the same way in the JP documentation.
I've been reading through some old TOTAL! magazines and noticed the same, "rotational graphics" being the buzz phrase used when the console will still a Japan only console
Honestly, rotational graphics are a much more clear way to describe i than "Mode 7", but obviously Mode 7 has a lot more of that marketing word magic to it, similar to "Blast Processing".
@@Bannanawaffles2 The background modes would be numbered the same regardless of documentation language. It wasn't just a convention in the documentation - you actually had to set a hardware register to the integer value of 7 in order to set that mode. It wasn't like the ordering of mode numbers came from alphabetical sorting or something.
@@guaposneeze I figured as much.
Now you're playing with Power! SUPER Power!
It was Thirty Years Ago Today
Super Ninty had the games to play
They’ve been going in and out of style
But they’re guaranteed to raise a smile
Chorus
''It was Sgt Yamauchi's own big dream!''.
The most legendary console ever made, and my first console. So great to have that as a kid and to this still with a good library of titles.
The president of Nintendo said that he wanted backward compatibility with the SNES, but it would have raised the cost of the system to $300. That is equivalent to $747 today, whereas the $200 price tag is equivalent to around $498 today. Videogame systems were still a major investment.
I loved the much more substantial thunk of the SNES cartridge clicking into place and the power switches crisp click and power light shining to life. Dreams came true and lives were shaped by those elegant yet efficient engineering choices.
"And so Nintendo gave in to the inevitable."
"And so Nintendo gave in to the inevitable."
A history that repeats to this day!
Was this intentional or an editing accident?
Nintendo's main focus has always been on making quality fun games instead of keeping up to date on industry trends. That's what I love and hate about them. Fun games on a system that barely competes with last gen.
@@lamontyaboy718 That's only been true since the Wii. The SNES, N64, and GameCube were all computational powerhouses compared to their competition.
@@thecianinator The Famicom was also advanced compared to other home video game consoles when it was released in Japan in 1983.
@@lamontyaboy718 I was hoping for an improved Switch. Not yet. Eventually Nintendo has to give into the inevitable.
+1 like for this retrospective. As a game music nerd, I know there's an encyclopedia of content to be harvested from the Super NES soundtrack library. The Super Famicom wasn't even a year old when folks like Tim Follin were showing their mastery of the audio hardware. (Super Off-Road and Spider-man & the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge were released in 1992.)
Nintendo Power was immensely helpful in getting my adolescent self to understand how developers were using custom sound engineering to show off the power of that console's audio chip. The versatility of that chip still astounds me.
Perhaps for another video.
Video game music nerd here too. The SNES soundtracks were fucking incredible. FFIV was my first FF and god it was so good. Actraiser, Zelda ALTTP, Secret of Mana, Illusion of Gaia, Lufia 1 and 2, FFVI, Secret of Evermore, DKC 1 and 2, Chrono Trigger, SMRPG, Axelay, Super Metroid, Terranigma, Earthbound, it just goes on
Huge video game music nerd here too - I've transcribed a ton of classic game music to piano sheet music. The SNES soundtrack library is almost unparalled in greatness.
Thirty years later the snes still very cool. 😀👍🎮
Very well timed video, and a welcome addition to Super NES Works. The 16-bit era is fascinating and many games from the Super Famicom, Mega Drive and the PC Engine still give us nostalgia today.
As a videogame programmer, I liked the better sound, more colors, and more powerful PPU of the SNES over the Genesis. The difference in processor speed is not so much because the 68000 processor in the Genesis takes more clock cycles to execute instructions, but it can also execute more complex instructions. The DMA on the Genesis, also known as "blast processing" gave it a noticeable speed boost for games like Sonic.
If I had to choose the greatest videogame system, I would choose the NES or the SNES for their impact.
Clearly SNES is greater than NES.
@@LITTLE1994 I should point out that the NES sold 69 million consoles compared to 49 million for the SNES. Yes, the SNES is far more capable, but the NES single-handedly resurrected a dying videogame industry. I was there, trying to write video games.
@@john2001plusawesome thanks for the insight
@@john2001plus That's because the Genesis took a huge chunk of the market outside of Japan. If Nintendo maintained a monopoly with SNES they probably sell around 80-90M million units.
I have great parents but I didn’t have much money for consoles back in the day. My dad found a nes with duck hunt Mario and Mario 3 for $7 and I loved it. Mom and dad paid me to do chores and would give it to me in quarters so I could go to the arcade with friends and have a great time. Thanks mom and dad for the great childhood 🙂 I love u very much
FF VI in the background! I just started replaying the game this week.
Best game ever. Music is amazing
Arguably the best game system ever created!
Episode 0 has always been one of my favourite episodes of NES works, yet I didn't realize how much was missing from Super NES Works without one until now. Thanks for doing this, and great job as always!
Please, for God's sake, more Super NES Works! I need year two!
I swear Jeremy parish never ages.
The magic of standard definition video
I remember my friend got a snes right when it came out. I was blown away by Super Mario world. I came home as an 11 year old kid just talking nonstop about it. This was in September so I figured the earliest I had any chance of even possibly getting it would be for Christmas, so when my mom drove me to my grandparents house just a day or two later, and she walked out holding that beautiful new snes box, words couldn't do justice to my excitement. No matter how great the graphics become on newer systems like the PS5, there was just something special about the Nintendo and Super Nintendo. They will always be my favorite systems. Nintendo and its developers released games like yoshis island and donkey kong country that did things you wouldn't expect a 16 bit game to do. I think the creativity back then has somewhat been lost nowadays because all of the current gen systems are pretty much the same. For my money, the nes and snes will always be the best gaming consoles
My favorite system ever!! So many great memories!
Jeremy, I have been consuming TH-cam videos over 12 hours a day for the last 12 years with retro video games, guns, and cars as my primary channels and I just discovered your channel 2 weeks ago. Your retrospectives are absolutely amazing and professionally done. I have no idea why you don't have a million subs, but you deserve it. Im working on watching the whole library. Thanks for what you do! I hope the "algorithm" sways in your favor. People are missing out on great informative retro gaming history.
Almost skipped this video because of the VHS style intro and the 720P stream....stuck through it and glad I did.
A retrospective unlike any other.
I love how you touch on the business aspects. People forget Nintendo and other console makers are a BUSINESS first, Makers of Dreams™️ later.
Hey! The opening camera looks way better. I assume it’s the same one, but the difference is night and day for me watching. Thanks so much! You’re continuing to do great work.
The camera in past videos looked as it should. It’s not production issue.
The past few videos I was using a VHS for playback that was unfortunately trashed beyond redemption, no matter how I tried to coax it back to life. Now I'm capturing video directly from the camcorder, which has much cleaner playback heads.
That makes total sense. Stinks you have to use the camcorder more to capture the footage, but it looks really great. Thanks again for making these every week. A great part of my routine.
this channel is goated.
they say jeremy is nice with it
My favorite console ever.
It built upon and perfected the 2D gameplay of the NES era, much like PS2 iterated on the rudimentary 3D graphics of the PS1 generation.
like that you mentioned the PS2, looking at Gran Turismo 3,even to this day it's amazing that the PS2 was capable of those visuals, that game has definitely aged very well graphically
I came to the Super NES as a grown-up via the Yobo FC Twin clone console. As a kid, my two best friends both had Genesis so that's what I got to play when I wasn't playing the NES at home. In a certain sense, though, my first SNES experience was playing the GBA rerelease of Super Mario World.
Our parents struggled to see why anyone should upgrade to a SNES, but for us the difference was obvious, with games like Super Mario World, F-Zero and Pilotwings.
The SNES, the best video game console with the best joypad design!
The SNES. Living proof that a great game can come from anywhere, and that all it takes to make something amazing is effort and talent. Then again, that sums up a lot of consoles.
It was in the 16-bit era where it was most apparent that gaming could benefit from demoscene programmers. The SNES had Mode 7, and the Sega Genesis had speed, but they could both do demoscene effects. They attempted to outperform each other with some demoscene effects, like the entirety of Adventures of Batman & Robin on the Genesis, Sparkster on the SNES, Vectorman, Axelay, Another World (either version), Seven Force in Gunstar Heroes, and even Winter Gold's menu screen.
Oh, and a lot of what made Mode 7 work was HDMA, H-Blank Direct Memory Access. Retro Game Mechanics Explained has a whole video about it.
I'm not here to debate which one was better, as both have their strengths and weaknesses, and both consoles still have power left within them, yet to be tapped.
>both consoles still have power left within them, yet to be tapped. How so? I don't see these consoles being resurrected anytime soon by SEGA or Nintendo. They peaked and will never return.
Jeremy up bright and early with the 7:45 AM upload. I hope you ate a good breakfast and not just pop tarts & yoo-hoo before you played with your Super Atari tapes
My wife has developed an annoying habit of waking up at around 5, and I am a light sleeper. So, here you go.
Somehow "Super Atari tapes" got me 😂
@@JeremyParish She will make a respectable man out of you yet Parish
Another well-polished trip down memory lane from JP!
Maybe it was different in other parts of the country, but Street Fighter II is specifically the first game I remember costing more than 25 cents. 50 cents per play in every arcade, 7-11, bowling alley and pizza place in my home town. Same for Mortal Kombat. A couple years later I would be dropping a whole dollar per play in Daytona. To my memory Street Figher is the beginning of games costing more, rather than a vestige of games costing less. Maybe Jeremy grew up in some place where the arcade owners weren't upping prices, but I've never seen Street Fighter II that cheap.
Woohoo, the SNES! I can't wait till you start going through the classics, in video form! Man so many memories with the snes...of course had good ones with the nes...but snes was another level
Great time in life. I was born in 78. Played the coleco, 5200, 7800, NES and the holy grail=SNES came long and wow, was that a transformation! The SNES actually had a lot more horsepower left to give and Big N even considered making it somewhat akin to PC's, where the system owner would be able to upgrade the console with plug/play components. Nintendo was also experimenting with new versions of the FX chips among others that would upgrade the gaming experience. Sadly, the push for polygonal graphics was basically impossible to fight and we ended up with the N64. The 64 had some great games, but for me it's always been a little bit ad hoc and has always made me wonder if Nintendo really wanted to go that direction, when they did? Long live the SNES!
The NES helped make me a console gamer for quite a while but the SNES is still my favorite console of all time!
You relayed a great amount of facts and feels about this timeless console in 20 minutes! Great video.
Jeremy must have put so much work into this video. Was expecting a review of a Sokoban clone or some Gameboy puzzle game, not this prime time ready excellence!
I think the smartest decision Nintendo made with the SNES was the controller. Sega clearly didn’t anticipate SF2 and how important six-button fighting games would become. Did Nintendo know what was coming, or did they just get lucky?
I remember my mom putting the Super Nintendo on lay away at Kmart every weekend remembering her to go pay till we finally got it best day of my life my favorite system!!!!
One of my cousins had a snes and she's the reason I got interested in games in the first place
My first console, from '92. Still use it sometimes.
I could've sworn you had done this already, but false memories or not. This was excellent
Now you're playing with power. SUPER POWER!
I always love the times you give subjects like this a deep dive, and this did not disappoint. This was the first system I bought with my with my saved up 11 year old allowance money, (as I was told I would have to sell my NES before my mom would OK the purchase)
So I initially had mixed feelings….
I think with the hindsight of history, this may have been the console battle where both competitors (and turbografx) were nearly equally matched in offering competing but not identical experiences. So many modern games, the only difference is “a few frame rates better on one vs. the other”. This may be the first and only time where the two main competitors basically tied (while offering different things)
The early 1990s were definitely a great time for video games. Plus the NES was still getting new games, the Nintendo Game Boy, Atari Lynx, and Sega Game Gear were competing for the handheld market, arcades were revitalized by the success of Street Fighter II, and the Neo Geo truly offered the arcade experience at home for those who could afford it.
I love seeing some attention given to Fatal Labyrinth at 4:19.
can't believe it's 30 years already. god i'm old lol anyway i'm glad Nintendo is still here thriving in the console business despite their ups and downs and after WiiU failure it's just great that they manage to bounce back with the Switch. hope they can still find success for many more years cos gaming world is so much better with Nintendo in it than without :D
I really appreciate this video! I was a little too young for the SNES. But I love hearing about the history behind the console and what people thought about it at the time.
Thank you again for your seemingly tireless efforts ^^
Wow, the FPS or style of seeing you made me think of those 80's/90's old soap TV shows.
Amazed how much you packed into 22 minutes!
I remember as a kid my brother and I (we already had a bunch of Nintendo games) and when the super Nintendo came out the only reason my parents bought it is because we read and we showed them a Nintendo power or some magazine like that, that there was going to be an adapter to play the old games. when that never came out my dad wasn't really too pleased about that
Pretty sure Top Gear did not utilize Mode 7 and rather was just a sprite scaling racer like Out Run or Hang-On.
Yeah, basically. The SNES didn't have true sprite scaling like those arcade machines had, so games in this style pretty much just had hand-drawn frames of the other vehicles and obstacles at a range of sizes to simulate scaling. Then the road is drawn with linescroll effects, same as Out Run and similar games.
Technically, the title screen of Top Gear, where the logo spins onto the screen, might be done with mode 7, so if you're being pedantic you could probably still argue it's a mode 7 game, but if you did you'd be a real jerk.
Perfectly timed since I just ordered the Analogue Super Nt (black edition). Thanks Jeremy!
Absolutely fantastic! The strengths of the SNES and the MegaDrive/Genesis are such that to this day you can still see people trying to fight that console war (you mention Chris Kohler, has he finally admitted that Sega's offering was worthwhile?)
It begins
I was never really into consoles as a kid but I did end up getting the SNES much later on, I was more into home computers like the C64 and the Amiga and what struck me the most once I had the SNES is how expensive it was to game on it compared to the Amiga and I remember thinking to myself as a kid, I made the right choice going for the Amiga as a lot of the games you could buy on budget for under £10 and many for like £5 or £3, the cheapest games on the Snes was £20 whiles most used to be around £35, £40 which was crazy for a kid.
So even thought I had both, I had a lot more fun using the Amiga and it also helped that it was a computer which half my time using it wasn't even gaming lol.
Ooooh, whatever you did to your camera has made it extra crispy!
This was a great video. Thank you for your continued efforts
Your presentation is lovely and always improving as always, love your stuff! You should consider making your videos on 4:3, since TH-cam has some great support for it and you're almost always using 4:3 footage anyway.
Nah
@@JeremyParish fair enough. Also i think I made this comment a few years ago as well. Sorry for asking it again, lol.
Bought the book. Look forward to reading it.
The SNES is my favorite console of all-time.
Great work as usual, but that T2 clip really got me.
And now Nintendo releases a console every year and then 20 versions of the same console and people still go nuts even though they haven't had a good console since the SNES. (Consoles not handhelds).
I grew up without a Super Nintendo in the 1990's, but I played either at a store or a friend's house. I didn't get a Super NES until later life in 2002 and played it all in high school through 2003 and again in 2005, even when I had an NES in the 1990s and a Nintendo 64 in late 1999-2001. I haven't played it about 19 years, but I want to get a working Super NES in its good condition one day, and play my games Super Mario World, World Heroes 2, Wheel of Fortune; Deluxe Edition and Super Star Wars, and get more games, like F-Zero, Final Fight, Final Fight 2, Final Fight 3, Final Fight Guy, ActRaiser, Joe & Mac, Super E.D.F.: Earth Defense Force, Super Smash T.V., Rival Turf!, Contra III: The Alien Wars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time, Super Mario Kart, Gunforce, Sonic Blast Man, Batman Returns, Dragon‘s Lair, Family Dog, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, Sunset Riders, Mega Man X, The Jetsons: Invasion of the Planet Pirates, The Pirates of Dark Water, R-Type III: The Third Lightning, Super Punch-Out!!, Super Mario All-Stars+ Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong Country 2, Donkey Kong Country 3, Wario‘s Woods, Bust-A-Move, The Ren & Stimpy Show: Buckeroo$!, WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game, Power Rangers Zeo: Battle Racers, Mr. Do!, Williams Arcade‘s Greatest Hits, Ms. Pac-Man, Marvel Super Heroes in: War of the Gems, NBA Hangtime, Arkanoid: Doh It Again, Space Invaders, Kirby‘s Dream Land 3, and Frogger on the Super NES and the accessories, such as the Super Advantage, Super NES Mouse, AsciiPad controller, the Super Advantage, the Specialized Fighter Pad, SN Pro Pad, SN Program Pad, Capcom Fighter Power Stick, Fighter Stick SN, the Power Plug, the Super Game Boy, and the Super Controller.
I wonder why there are not as many new games for the SNES as the Genesis. Is it because programmers like the 6800 better or is there no renaming power to be squeezed out of the SNES. Some of those new genesis games looked amazing
It's interesting to be reminded that parents in the 80's were not used to the concept of hardware obsolescence for video games and there was massive backlash against the concept.
My own parents rejected the idea of this infinite upgrade cycle. They just weren't used to computers, and exponential power increases. They were used to the idea of something built to last a lifetime that you bought once and were done for life.
So the idea of getting a new console when "you already have a Nintendo" was outrageous to them. People forget that games used to cost $50-70 (or more!) which in the 80's was a LOT of money.
I love all of your videos, thank you for making them!
R.I.P Masayuki Uemura (1943-2021)
The main reason my father bought me an NES instead of an Atari system was because he felt the former was much more arcade authentic. Given this, I think he was probably stoked to get us an SNES. I remember early on, he rented Link to the Past specifically for himself to play. He was an awful person in many, _many_ respects, but as far as video games go, I'm glad he was an outlier among parents.
Still one of my top 3 consoles I've have, got a SNES classic also a ps classic with SNES games and more.
2:21 I saw Carrier Air Wing in the arcades way, way back when, and I just couldn't remember the name. This has been bugging me forever!
this was such a great video, thanks
I feel like you've saved this Terminator 2 shot juuust for this episode lmao
I liked the Super NES. The Super NES was a 16-bit upgrade follow-on to their earlier hit console, the NES, that seem to be so much better than the original NES and this is coming from someone who had that briefly, maybe too briefly, but still since I played a handful of NES games, I honestly just can get into the NES the same way as others did as I don't find their games to be as good and I do mean that they're not bad, but the 16-bit generation of consoles truly got me into gaming in comparison. The Super NES could handle twice the amount of data as the original NES, and the hardware boasted upgrades across the board--better resolution, more colors, a separate sound processor, and the ability to display many more moving objects (sprites) and simultaneous graphical layers than other consoles on the market.
Nice work! Thanks :D
Great video, Jeremy! This video fueled a lot of nostalgia for me.
As a kid, I had a choice between the SNES and the Genesis, and my love for this big cartoony character action game with a blue hedgehog made me go Genesis. I think I made the better choice; I would've been a very different adult now if I grew up as an SNES kid.
Yeah you might've grown up to be a wuss
Nice Terranigma shout out. I really wish that had been released in America..
Great work as always.
It’s amazing to think the snes only had 5 years in North America before the 64 came out. The switch is hitting that next year and it fells like the next Nintendo system is at least 2 years away.
The beginning of this video is highly important. The idea of a videogame console "life cycle" did not really exist in the minds of the public at that time. It also didn't really exist within the industry itself. I've thought long and hard about why this was so, and I think the largest reason is, simply, how people viewed videogames in the 1980s: not as consumer electronics or computers, but toys. The game industry was seen as a segment of the toy industry. This is why Sega of America chose the former head of Mattel to take the reigns in 1991, Tom Kalinske, for example.
The toy industry has always been a very fast, fad-driven business. You put out a product and hope that it becomes a hit for the upcoming Christmas season. Your ultimate goal is a product that sells for one holiday season, maybe two if you are lucky. But then the fad wanes and consumers are on the prowl for the Next Big Thing. This year, Rubik's Cube is the hit toy of the season. Next year, Cabbage Patch Dolls will hit big. The year after that, GI Joe and Transformers will clear the shelves. There are no expectations that any of these toys will endure past one or two cycles, aside from a very small handful of iconic products like Barbie or Monopoly.
In addition to this, videogames are treated with utmost suspicion by adults. Back in the 80s, nearly every parent over age 30 was either confused by electronic games, or outright afraid of them. This was the dawn of the Computer Age, and these new amazing machines were likewise welcomed with a mixture of puzzlement and fear. Most people saw computers through the lens of science fiction like Star Trek, dystopian tales of killer robots, or soulless machines that enslaved humanity. Indeed, computer technology was severely disrupting blue-collar jobs, such as robot arms replacing human workers at an automobile assembly line.
Grownups had no idea how computers worked or what made them tick. Software language coding may as well have been magic spells conjured by wizards in pointy hats. And this fueled a great generational divide, which also extended into videogames. Of course, the biggest videogame sensations like Pac-Man had crossover appeal to all ages, the fact is that this new medium was embraced mostly by children aged 6-14.
Here we come into another factor: Puritanical Guilt. This is probably more of an American phenomenon, this underlying belief that leisure itself is bad, that work in itself is good, that your role in life is to suffer and toil to provide for your family. The idea of sitting in front of a television moving little blocks around a screen, accompanied by bleeps and bloops, seemed almost sinful. Little Johnny isn't doing his schoolwork. Little Suzy isn't reading her books. The teens aren't working their after-school jobs. All they ever do is obsess over these stupid games.
And so, because of this, videogames were treated with a great deal of skepticism, tolerated at best, feared at worst. It surely didn't help that prophets of the Computer Age like Steve Jobs openly mocked the very idea of computer games, because it was a waste of the machines' potential. These are meant to change the world, to create art and music, to automate every aspect of daily working life. They aren't here to futz around with a yellow ball chomping dots on a maze. As a result, there was an underlying hope that this silly fad would just quietly go away. And in 1983, that is precisely what happened. The US videogame industry--arcades, consoles, home computers--collapsed under its own weight, becoming all but extinct by 1985.
Enter Nintendo, who then revived the industry in the late 1980s, enslaving a new generation of children with its wicked, sinful toys. These games were almost seen as electronic drugs, something to become addicted to, something to make your children lazy and unproductive. Yet, despite all this resentment, the NES became monstrously successful in homes with children by the early 1990s.
There were rivals, of course, Atari and Sega being the most notable, who offered competing products on a yearly or semi-yearly basis. Atari was modestly successful in repacking their ancient Atari 2600 as a cheap $50 budget product, which sold on nostalgia while also heightening the sense of disposable nature (Jack Tramiel sold the 2600 Jr and 7800 largely to clear out unsold inventory, his main focus on the more "serious" Atari ST computers for the business market). By 1989, a new wave of technology was becoming affordable, and we saw the arrival of new "16-bit" consoles in NEC's Turbografx-16 and Sega's Genesis. Nintendo was reluctant to kill its successful console, which allowed the NES to endure far longer than most toys, but then the arms race made changes inevitable.
Enter the Super NES in 1991, two full years after NEC and Sega. Nintendo could afford to wait as they held a near-monopoly on the US home videogame market, and wanted to squeeze every last dollar out of the NES (after all, do they really want to back to making playing cards?). The kids didn't seem to mind too much, and having blockbuster hits like Super Mario Bros 3 in 1990 surely helped a lot.
However, the long-awaited arrival of the "Super" Nintendo ran into surprising resistance, not from retailers or game-playing kids, but from parents. The parents, after all, were the ones who were mostly buying these for their children, and they were very upset that they were now expected to throw away one expensive toy for another one, especially when they honestly cannot see what all the fuss is about. This silly thing just plays stupid games, what's the difference? You know that meme that shows a mom calling every game console a "Nintendo?" Yeah, that was real. Parents couldn't tell any of these apart from one another, had little interest in learning, and were still hoping that it would all just go away for good.
Funny enough, this almost happens again in the mid-90s as the 16-bit generation winds down. The US videogame industry contracted by roughly two-thirds from 1993-1996, and was only turned around with, once again, the arrival of Nintendo, this time with their fifth-generation Nintendo 64 and a little character named Mario. Also, let's not forget the arrival of Sony, whose presence as a consumer electronics giant greatly helped to shed gaming's "kiddie" image in the late 90s.
Looking back, we can clearly see that there were sales curves for each generation of hardware, as the technology emerged, matured, and then was surpassed. This wasn't understood at the time for all the reasons mentioned above. I think the key was to realize that videogames were not part of the toy industry, but the consumer electronics industry, or perhaps the computer industry. And in that field, technological obsolescence is baked into the formula. And, over time, the mainstream public learned to adopt new formats and technologies: VHS to DVD, Records to CD, Apple II to Macintosh, and NES to Super NES to Nintendo 64.
Every form of media has its own set of rules, Marshal Macluhan taught, and this is very true for videogames. It only took a couple industry crashes (one major, one minor) for this to be understood by the industry, retailers and the public.
Anyway, that's my TED Talk. I did not mean to write a full essay here, hah! I am available for lectures and birthday parties. Thank you very much.
Great video!!!
Great video
Sarah Connor witnessing Judgement Day was totally unexpected as an intro for this video, but fully endorsed haha
Happy 30th birthday Super nintendo 😭😭🍾🍾
Unfortunately your champagne bottles will need to be censored for the U.S. version
@@JeremyParish aww man lol
Feels like the jump between these two was insane but I’m in no rush to get the current generation because there is barely a difference but I didn’t get a steamdeck I love it
The SNES had easily some of the best RPG games ever
I was 6 years old when the super Nintendo entertainment system was made any system or game made by Nintendo was good also games made by konami and capcom had unforgettable music
Genesis was the console my brother and I got after nes. Definitely the king of 16 bit.
God I love your videos so
Nostalgic
I finished SaGa Scarlet Grace Ambitions last night, and who's name did I see in the credits under localization? Nicely done, that game was absolutely fantastic from beginning to end. It's become an instant all-time favourite.
As for the video, great stuff, nailed all the relevant little details. Every time I thought "Oh, he missed factoid X" you'd come back around to it shortly after. Also filled in some gaps I didn't know, like why the SFC lasted so much longer in Japan. The only point I'd have disagreed on was the relative merits of 16-bit colour palettes.
I've long thought the Genesis' limits there were a damaging factor; the PC Engine managed to punch well above its weight thanks to its colour display, while Genesis versions of games, rather than bold, often looked washed out and dithered to me. Though there were a few very notable exceptions like the Sonic titles, in which the art team understood well what they were working with and how to balance it.
But where it really hurt was the Sega CD not enhancing those capabilities. It meant that SoA's already dumb decision to lean on FMV was utterly doomed because it didn't have the palette to look like anything other than oatmeal.