fbpx
Wikipedia

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

January 19, 2023

"Super Nintendo" redirects here. For Nintendo's area in Universal Studios Japan, see Super Nintendo World.

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES),[b] commonly shortened to Super NES or Super Nintendo,[c] is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea,[16] 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Oceania, and 1993 in South America. In Japan, it is called the Super Famicom (SFC).[d] In South Korea, it is called the Super Comboy[e] and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics.[17] The system was released in Brazil on August 30, 1993,[16][18] by Playtronic. Although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent cartridges for one version from being used in other versions.

Super Nintendo Entertainment System


Top: North American (NTSC) Super NES (c. 1991)
Bottom: Japanese Super Famicom (The European (PAL) Super NES has the same design.)
Other variations are pictured under Casing below.
DeveloperNintendo R&D2
ManufacturerNintendo
TypeHome video game console
GenerationFourth
Release date
Lifespan1990–2005[7]
Introductory price¥25,000
US$199
Discontinued
Units sold
  • Worldwide: 49.10 million[7]
    • North America: 23.35 million
    • Japan: 17.17 million
    • Other: 8.58 million
MediaROM cartridge
CPURicoh 5A22 @ 3.58 MHz
SoundNintendo S-SMP
Online servicesSatellaview (Japan only)
XBAND (USA and Canada only)
Nintendo Power (Japan only)
Best-selling game
PredecessorNintendo Entertainment System
SuccessorNintendo 64

The Super NES is Nintendo's second programmable home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The console introduced advanced graphics and sound capabilities compared with other systems at the time. It was designed to accommodate the ongoing development of a variety of enhancement chips integrated into game cartridges to be competitive into the next generation.

The Super NES received largely positive reviews and was a global success, becoming the best-selling console of the 16-bit era after launching relatively late and facing intense competition from Sega's Genesis console in North America and Europe. Overlapping the NES's 61.9 million unit sales, the Super NES remained popular well into the 32-bit era, with 49.1 million units sold worldwide by the time it was discontinued in 2003. It continues to be popular among collectors and retro gamers, with new homebrew games and Nintendo's emulated rereleases, such as on the Virtual Console, the Super NES Classic Edition, Nintendo Switch Online; as well as several non-console emulators which operate on a desktop computer, such as Snes9x.

History

 
Early concept designs for the Super NES are called the "Nintendo Entertainment System 2".

To compete with the popular Family Computer in Japan, NEC Home Electronics launched the PC Engine in 1987, and Sega followed suit with the Mega Drive in 1988. The two platforms were later launched in North America in 1989 as the TurboGrafx-16 and the Sega Genesis respectively. Both systems were built on 16-bit architectures and offered improved graphics and sound over the 8-bit NES. However, it took several years for Sega's system to become successful.[19] Nintendo executives were in no rush to design a new system, but they reconsidered when they began to see their dominance in the market slipping.[20]

On September 9, 1987, then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi revealed the development of the Super Famicom in the newspaper Kyoto Shimbun. On August 30, 1988, in an interview with TOUCH Magazine, he announced the development of Super Mario Bros. 4, Dragon Quest V, three original games, and he projected sales of 3 million units of the upcoming console. Famicom Hissyoubon magazine speculated that Nintendo's early announcement was probably made to forestall Christmas shopping for the PC Engine, and relayed Enix's clarification that it was waiting on sales figures to select either PC Engine or Super Famicom for its next Dragon Quest game. The magazine and Enix both expressed a strong interest in networking as a standard platform feature.[21][22] The console was demonstrated to the Japanese press on November 21, 1988, and again on July 28, 1989.[23][24]

Launch

 
 
The four-color Super Famicom mark is part of the logo in the Japanese and PAL regions, with colors corresponding to those of the control pad buttons. The North American logo has a striped background outlining four oval shapes.

Designed by Masayuki Uemura, the designer of the original Famicom, the Super Famicom was released in Japan on Wednesday, November 21, 1990, for ¥25,000 (equivalent to ¥27,804 in 2019). It was an instant success. Nintendo's initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out within hours, and the resulting social disturbance led the Japanese government to ask video game manufacturers to schedule future console releases on weekends.[25] This gained the attention of the Yakuza criminal organization, so the devices were shipped at night to avoid robbery.[26]

With the Super Famicom quickly outselling its rivals, Nintendo reasserted itself as the leader of the Japanese console market.[27] Nintendo's success was partially due to the retention of most of its key third-party developers, including Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square, Koei, and Enix.[28]

Nintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a redesigned version of the Super Famicom, in North America for US$199 (equivalent to $400 in 2021). It began shipping in limited quantities on August 23, 1991,[a][34] with an official nationwide release date of September 9, 1991.[35] The Super NES was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in April 1992 for £150 (equivalent to £330 in 2021).[36]

Most of the PAL region versions of the console use the Japanese Super Famicom design, except for labeling and the length of the joypad leads. The Playtronic Super NES in Brazil, although PAL-M, uses the North American design.[37] Both the NES and Super NES were released in Brazil in 1993 by Playtronic, a joint venture between the toy company Estrela and consumer electronics company Gradiente.[38]

The Super NES and Super Famicom launched with few games, but these games were well received. In Japan, only two games were initially available: Super Mario World and F-Zero.[39] Bombuzal was released during the launch week.[40] In North America, Super Mario World was launched as a bundle with the console; other launch games include F-Zero, Pilotwings (both of which demonstrate the console's Mode 7 pseudo-3D rendering), SimCity, and Gradius III.[41]

Console wars

Main article: Console war § Sega versus Nintendo

The rivalry between Nintendo and Sega was described as one of the most notable console wars in video game history,[42] in which Sega positioned the Genesis as the "cool" console, with games aimed at older audiences, and aggressive advertisements that occasionally attacked the competition.[43] Nintendo, however, scored an early public-relations advantage by securing the first console conversion of Capcom's arcade hit Street Fighter II for Super NES, which took more than a year to make the transition to the Genesis. Though the Genesis had a two-year lead to launch time, a much larger library of games, and a lower price point,[44] it only represented an estimated 60% of the American 16-bit console market in June 1992,[45] and neither console could maintain a definitive lead for several years. Donkey Kong Country is said to have helped establish the Super NES's market prominence in the latter years of the 16-bit generation,[46][47][48][49] and for a time, maintain against the PlayStation and Saturn.[50] According to Nintendo, the company had sold more than 20 million Super NES units in the U.S.[51] According to a 2014 Wedbush Securities report based on NPD sales data, the Super NES outsold the Genesis in the U.S. market by 1.5 million units.[52]

Changes in policy

During the NES era, Nintendo maintained exclusive control over games released for the system – the company had to approve every game, each third-party developer could only release up to five games per year (but some third parties got around this by using different names, such as Konami's "Ultra Games" brand), those games could not be released on another console within two years, and Nintendo was the exclusive manufacturer and supplier of NES cartridges. However, competition from Sega's console brought an end to this practice; in 1991, Acclaim Entertainment began releasing games for both platforms, with most of Nintendo's other licensees following suit over the next several years; Capcom (which licensed some games to Sega instead of producing them directly) and Square were the most notable holdouts.[53]

Nintendo continued to carefully review submitted games, scoring them on a 40-point scale and allocating marketing resources accordingly. Each region performed separate evaluations.[54] Nintendo of America also maintained a policy that, among other things, limited the amount of violence in the games on its systems. The surprise arcade hit Mortal Kombat (1992), a gory fighting game with huge splashes of blood and graphically violent fatality moves, was heavily censored by Nintendo.[f] Because the Genesis version allowed for an uncensored version via cheat code,[55] it outsold the censored Super NES version by a ratio of nearly three to one.[56]

U.S. Senators Herb Kohl and Joe Lieberman convened a Congressional hearing on December 9, 1993, to investigate the marketing of violent video games to children.[g] Though Nintendo took the high ground with moderate success, the hearings led to the creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association and the Entertainment Software Rating Board and the inclusion of ratings on all video games.[55][56] With these ratings in place, Nintendo decided its censorship policies were no longer needed.[56]

32-bit era and beyond

While other companies were moving on to 32-bit systems, Rare and Nintendo proved that the Super NES was still a strong contender in the market. In November 1994, Rare released Donkey Kong Country, a platform game featuring 3D models and textures pre-rendered on Silicon Graphics workstations. With its detailed graphics, fluid animation, and high-quality music, Donkey Kong Country rivals the aesthetic quality of games that were being released on newer 32-bit CD-based consoles. In the last 45 days of 1994, 6.1 million copies were sold, making it the fastest-selling video game in history to that date. This game conveyed that early 32-bit systems had little to offer over the Super NES, and proved the market for the more advanced consoles of the near future.[57][58] According to TRSTS reports, two of the top five best-selling games in the U.S. for December 1996 are Super NES games.[59]

In October 1997, Nintendo released a redesigned model of the Super NES (the SNS-101 model referred to as "New-Style Super NES") in North America for US$99 (equivalent to $200 in 2021), with some units including the pack-in game Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island.[60][61] Like the earlier New-Style NES (model NES-101), this is slimmer and lighter than its predecessor,[61] but it lacks S-Video and RGB output, and it is among the last major Super NES-related releases in the region. A similarly redesigned Super Famicom Jr. was released in Japan at around the same time.[62] However, the redesign did not make it to Europe.

Nintendo ceased production of the Super NES in North America in 1999,[8] about two years after releasing Kirby's Dream Land 3 (its final first-party game in the US) on November 27, 1997, and one year after releasing Frogger (its final third-party game in the US) in 1998. In Japan, Nintendo continued production of both the Family Computer and the Super Famicom until September 25, 2003,[10] and new games were produced until the year 2000, ending with the release of Metal Slader Glory Director's Cut on November 29, 2000.[63]

Many popular Super NES games were ported to the Game Boy Advance, which has similar video capabilities. In 2005, Nintendo announced that Super NES games would be made available for download via the Wii's Virtual Console service.[64] On October 31, 2007, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would no longer repair Family Computer or Super Famicom systems due to an increasing shortage of the necessary parts.[65] On March 3, 2016, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would bring Super NES games to the New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL (and later the New Nintendo 2DS XL) via its eShop download service.[66] At the Nintendo Direct event on September 4, 2019, Nintendo announced that it would be bringing select Super NES games to the Nintendo Switch Online platform.[67][68]

Hardware

Technical specifications

The 16-bit design of the Super NES[69] incorporates graphics and sound co-processors that perform tiling and simulated 3D effects, a palette of 32,768 colors, and 8-channel ADPCM audio. These base platform features, plus the ability to dramatically extend them all through substantial chip upgrades inside of each cartridge, represent a leap over the 8-bit NES generation and some significant advantages over 16-bit competitors such as the Genesis.[70]

CPU and RAM

The CPU is a Ricoh 5A22, which is a derivative of the 16-bit WDC 65C816 microprocessor. In NTSC regions, its nominal clock speed is 3.58 MHz but the CPU will slow down to either 2.68 MHz or 1.79 MHz when accessing some slower peripherals.[71]

This CPU has an 8-bit data bus and two address buses. The 24-bit "Bus A" is designated for general accesses, and the 8-bit "Bus B" can access support chip registers such as the video and audio co-processors.

The WDC 65C816 supports an 8-channel DMA unit, an 8-bit parallel I/O port a controller port interface circuits allowing serial and parallel access to controller data, a 16-bit multiplication and division unit, and circuitry for generating non-maskable interrupts on V-blank and IRQ interrupts on calculated screen positions.[71]

Early revisions of the 5A22 used in SHVC boards are prone to spontaneous failure which can produce a variety of symptoms including graphics glitches in Mode 7, a black screen on power-on, or improperly reading the controllers.[72] The first revision 5A22 has a fatal bug in the DMA controller that can crash games; this was corrected in subsequent revisions.[73]

The console contains 128 KB of general-purpose RAM, which is separate from the 64 KB VRAM dedicated to the video and audio subsystems.

Video

The Picture Processing Unit (PPU) consists of two closely tied IC packages. It contains 64 KB of SRAM for video data, 544 bytes of object attribute memory (OAM) for sprite data, and 256 × 15 bits of color generator RAM (CGRAM) for palette data. This CGRAM provisions up to 256 colors, chosen from the 15-bit RGB color space, from a palette of 32,768 colors. The PPU is clocked by the same signal as the CPU and generates a pixel every two or four cycles.[69]

Audio

The S-SMP audio chip consists of an 8-bit CPU, a 16-bit DSP, and 64 KB of SRAM. It was designed and produced by Sony[74] and is completely independent from the rest of the system. It is clocked at a nominal 24.576 MHz in both NTSC and PAL systems. It is capable of stereo sound, composed from 8 voices generated using 8 bit audio samples and various effects such as echo.[75]

Regional lockout

 
The North American design is compared to the Japanese and PAL region design, which has the optional pins for enhancement chips such as the Super FX chip.

Nintendo employed several types of regional lockout, including both physical and hardware incompatibilities.

Physically, the cartridges are shaped differently for different regions. North American cartridges have a rectangular bottom with inset grooves matching protruding tabs in the console, and other regions' cartridges are narrower with a smooth curve on the front and no grooves. The physical incompatibility can be overcome with the use of various adapters, or through modification of the console.[76][77]

Internally, a regional lockout chip (CIC) within the console and in each cartridge prevents the PAL region games from being played on Japanese or North American consoles and vice versa. The Japanese and North American machines have the same region chip. This can be overcome through the use of adapters, typically by inserting the imported cartridge in one slot and a cartridge with the correct region chip in a second slot. Alternatively, disconnecting one pin of the console's lockout chip will prevent it from locking the console; hardware in later games can detect this situation, so it became common to install a switch to reconnect the lockout chip as needed.[78]

PAL consoles face another incompatibility when playing out-of-region cartridges: the NTSC video standard specifies video at 60 Hz but PAL operates at 50 Hz, resulting in an approximately 16.7% slower framerate. PAL's higher resolution results in letterboxing of the output image.[76] Some commercial PAL region releases exhibit this same problem and, therefore, can be played in NTSC systems without issue, but other games will face a 20% speedup if played in an NTSC console. To mostly correct this issue, a switch can be added to place the Super NES PPU into a 60 Hz mode supported by most newer PAL televisions. Later games will detect this setting and refuse to run, requiring the switch to be thrown only after the check completes.[79]

Casing

Super Nintendo Entertainment System cases
  •  

    Japanese SHVC-001 model
    (1990–1998)

  •  

    North American SNS-001 model
    (1991–1997)

  •  

    PAL-region SNSP-001A model
    (1992–1998)

  •  

    New-Style Super NES SNS-101
    (1997–1999)

  •  

    Japanese SHVC-101 model
    (1998–2003)

  •  

    South Korean SNSN-001 model

  •  

    Nintendo Super System controller

All models of the Super NES control deck are predominantly gray, of slightly different shades. The original North American version, designed by Nintendo of America industrial designer Lance Barr[80] (who previously redesigned the Famicom to become the NES[81]), has a boxy design with purple sliding switches and a dark gray eject lever. The loading bay surface is curved, both to invite interaction and to prevent food or drinks from being placed on the console and spilling as with the flat-surfaced NES.[80] The Japanese and European versions are more rounded, with darker gray accents and buttons. The North American New-Style Super NES (model SNS-101) and the Japanese Super Famicom Jr. (model SHVC-101), all designed by Barr, are both smaller with a rounded contour; however, the SNS-101 buttons are purple where the Super Famicom Jr. buttons are gray. The European and American versions of the Super NES controllers have much longer cables compared to the Japanese Super Famicom controllers.

All versions incorporate a top-loading slot for game cartridges, although the shape of the slot differs between regions to match the different shapes of the cartridges. The MULTI OUT connector (later used on the Nintendo 64 and GameCube) can output composite video, S-Video and RGB signals, as well as RF with an external RF modulator.[82][83] Original versions additionally include a 28-pin expansion port under a small cover on the bottom of the unit and a standard RF output with channel selection switch on the back;[84] the redesigned models output composite video only, requiring an external modulator for RF.[85]

The Nintendo Super System (NSS) is an arcade system for retail preview of 11 particular Super NES games in the United States, similar to the PlayChoice-10 for NES games. It consists of slightly modified Super NES hardware with a menu interface and 25-inch monitor, that allows gameplay for a certain amount of time depending on game credits.[86][87] Manufacturing of this model was discontinued in 1992.[88][89]

Yellowing

 
The plastic can yellow with age.

The ABS plastic used in the casing of some older Super NES and Super Famicom consoles is particularly susceptible to oxidization with exposure to air. This, along with the particularly light color of the original plastic, causes affected consoles to quickly become yellow; if the sections of the casing came from different batches of plastic, a "two-tone" effect results.[90] This issue may be reversed with a method called Retrobrighting, where a mixture of chemicals is applied to the case and exposed to UV light.[91]

Game cartridge

Main article: Super Nintendo Entertainment System Game Pak

Super NES games are distributed on ROM cartridges, officially referred to as Game Pak in most Western regions,[92] and as Cassette (カセット, Kasetto) in Japan and parts of Latin America.[93] Though the Super NES can address 128 Mbit,[h] only 117.75 Mbit are actually available for cartridge use. A fairly normal mapping could easily address up to 95 Mbit of ROM data (48 Mbit at FastROM speed) with 8 Mbit of battery-backed RAM. However, most available memory access controllers only support mappings of up to 32 Mbit. The largest games released (Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean) contain 48 Mbit of ROM data,[94][95] and the smallest games contain only 2 Mbit.

Cartridges may also contain battery-backed SRAM to save the game state, extra working RAM, custom coprocessors, or any other hardware that will not exceed the maximum current rating of the console.

Games

Main article: List of Super Nintendo Entertainment System games
See also: List of best-selling Super Nintendo Entertainment System video games and List of cancelled Super NES and Super Famicom games

1757 Super NES games were officially released: 717 in North America (plus 4 championship cartridges), 521 in Europe, 1,448 in Japan, 231 on Satellaview, and 13 on Sufami Turbo. Many Super NES games have been called some of the greatest video games of all time, such as Super Mario World (1990), The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1991), Donkey Kong Country (1994), EarthBound (1994), Super Metroid (1994), and Yoshi's Island (1995). Many Super NES games have been rereleased several times, including on the Virtual Console, Super NES Classic Edition, and the classic games service on Nintendo Switch Online. All Game Boy games are playable with the Super Game Boy add-on. Many Super NES emulators have been produced. Mode 7 is a graphics mode that can simulate simple 3D effects.

Peripherals

Main article: List of Super Nintendo Entertainment System accessories
 
North American Super NES controller

The Super NES controller design expands on that of the NES, with A, B, X, and Y face buttons in a diamond arrangement, and two shoulder buttons. Lance Barr created its ergonomic design, and he later adapted it in 1993 for the NES-039 "dogbone" controller.[80][81] The Japanese and PAL region versions incorporate the four colors of the face buttons into the system's logo. The North American version's buttons are colored to match the redesigned console; the X and Y buttons are lavender with concave faces, and the A and B buttons are purple with convex faces. Several later controller designs have elements from the Super NES controller, including the PlayStation, Dreamcast, Xbox, and Wii Classic Controller.[96][97][98] This face button layout is on future Nintendo systems since the Nintendo DS.

Several peripherals add to the functionality of the Super NES. Some are required by certain games, such as the Super Scope light gun, and the Super NES Mouse for a point and click interface. Various third-parties, under license from Nintendo, released multitap adapters connecting up to five controllers into a single console, starting with the Super Multitap by Hudson Soft in conjunction with the Super Bomberman series. Specialized third-party controllers, such as the AsciiPad and Super Advantage (the successor to the NES Advantage) by Asciiware, and the Capcom Fighter Power Stick, an arcade-like joystick controller by Capcom designed specifically for Street Fighter II. Unusual controllers include the BatterUP baseball bat, the Life Fitness Entertainment System (an exercise bike controller with built-in monitoring software),[99] the TeeV Golf golf club,[100][101] and the Justifier (a revolver-shaped light gun made by Konami for Lethal Enforcers).

 
The Super Game Boy cartridge adapts Game Boy games to the Super NES.

Though Nintendo never released an adapter for playing NES games on the Super NES, the Super Game Boy adapter cartridge allows games designed for Nintendo's portable Game Boy system to be played on the Super NES. The Super Game Boy touts several feature enhancements over the Game Boy, including palette substitution, custom screen borders, and access to the Super NES console's features by specially enhanced Game Boy games.[102] Japan also saw the release of the Super Game Boy 2, which adds a communication port to enable a second Game Boy to connect for multiplayer games.

Like the NES before it, the Super NES has unlicensed third-party peripherals, including a new version of the Game Genie cheat cartridge designed for use with Super NES games.

Soon after the release of the Super NES, companies began marketing backup devices such as the Super Wildcard, Super Pro Fighter Q, and Game Doctor.[103] These devices create a backup of a cartridge, and can be used to play illicit ROM images or to copy games, violating copyright laws in many jurisdictions.

 
Satellaview with Super Famicom

The Japan-only Satellaview is a satellite modem attached to the Super Famicom's expansion port and connected to the St.GIGA satellite radio station from April 23, 1995, to June 30, 2000. Satellaview subscribers could download gaming news and specially designed games, which were frequently either remakes of or sequels to older Famicom games, and released in installments.[104] In the United States, the relatively short-lived XBAND allowed users to connect to a network via a dial-up modem to compete against other players around the country.

Nintendo attempted partnerships with Sony and then Philips, to develop CD-ROM-based peripheral prototypes for the console to compete with the Sega CD. Sony produced a Nintendo Play Station prototype which was canceled, diverting this inertia into its own PlayStation console. The Philips project was canceled without a prototype but Philips retained the contractual right to develop games based on Nintendo franchises, which it published for its CD-i multimedia console.[105][106]

Enhancement chips

Main article: List of Super NES enhancement chips
 
Star Fox is the first Super FX game, based on 3D polygons.

As part of the overall plan for the Super NES, rather than include an expensive CPU that would still become obsolete in a few years, the hardware designers made it easy to interface special coprocessor chips to the console, just like the MMC chips used for most NES games. This is most often characterized by 16 additional pins on the cartridge card edge.[107]

The Super FX is a RISC CPU designed to perform functions that the main CPU can not feasibly do. The chip is primarily used to create 3D game worlds made with polygons, texture mapping and light source shading. The chip can also be used to enhance 2D games.[108]

The Nintendo fixed-point digital signal processor (DSP) chip allowed for fast vector-based calculations, bitmap conversions, both 2D and 3D coordinate transformations, and other functions.[109] Four revisions of the chip exist, each physically identical but with different microcode. The DSP-1 version, including the later 1A and 1B bug fix revisions, is used most often; the DSP-2, DSP-3, and DSP-4 are used in only one game each.[110]

Similar to the 5A22 CPU in the console, the SA-1 chip contains a 65C816 processor core clocked at 10 MHz, a memory mapper, DMA, decompression and bitplane conversion circuitry, several programmable timers, and CIC region lockout functionality.[108]

In Japan, games could be downloaded cheaper than standard cartridges, from Nintendo Power kiosks onto special cartridges containing flash memory and a MegaChips MX15001TFC chip. The chip manages communication with the kiosks to download ROM images and has an initial menu to select a game. Some were published both in cartridge and download form, and others were download only. The service closed on February 8, 2007.[111]

Many cartridges contain other enhancement chips, most of which were created for use by a single company in a few games.[110]

Reception and legacy

 
European version of the Super NES control deck at the Computer and Video Game Console Museum of Helsinki in 2012

Approximately 49.1 million Super NES consoles were sold worldwide, with 23.35 million of those units sold in the Americas and 17.17 million in Japan.[7] Although it could not quite repeat the success of the NES, which sold 61.91 million units worldwide,[7] the Super NES was the best-selling console of its era.

In a 1997 year-end review, a team of five Electronic Gaming Monthly editors gave the Super NES scores of 5.5, 8.0, 7.0, 7.0, and 8.0. Though they criticized how few new games were coming out for the system and how dated its graphics were compared to current generation consoles, they regarded its selection of must-have games to be still unsurpassed. Additionally noting that used Super NES games were readily available in bargain bins, most of them still recommended buying a Super NES.[112] In 2007, GameTrailers named the Super NES as the second-best console of all time in their list of top ten consoles that "left their mark on the history of gaming", citing its graphics, sound, and library of top-quality games.[113] In 2015, they also named it the best Nintendo console of all time, saying, "The list of games we love from this console completely annihilates any other roster from the Big N."[114] Technology columnist Don Reisinger proclaimed "The SNES is the greatest console of all time" in January 2008, citing the quality of the games and the console's dramatic improvement over its predecessor;[115] fellow technology columnist Will Greenwald replied with a more nuanced view, giving the Super NES top marks with his heart, the NES with his head, and the PlayStation (for its controller) with his hands.[116] GamingExcellence also gave the Super NES first place in 2008, declaring it "simply the most timeless system ever created" with many games that stand the test of time and citing its innovation in controller design, graphics capabilities, and game storytelling.[117] At the same time, GameDaily rated it fifth of the ten greatest consoles for its graphics, audio, controllers, and games.[118] In 2009, IGN named the Super NES the fourth-best video game console, complimenting its audio and number of AAA games.[96]

Emulation

See also: List of SNES emulators

Super NES emulation began with VSMC in 1994, and Super Pasofami became the first working Super NES emulator in 1996.[119] During that time, two competing emulation projects, Snes96 and Snes97, merged to form Snes9x.[108] In 1997, ZSNES development began.[120] In 2004, Bsnes development began with the goal of preservation through maximal accuracy and compatibility, and was renamed to Higan.

Nintendo of America maintained its stance against the distribution of Super NES ROM image files and the use of emulators as it does with the NES, insisting that these things represent flagrant copyright infringement.[121] Emulation proponents assert that the discontinued hardware production constitutes abandonware status, the owners' right to make a personal backup, space shifting for private use, the development of homebrew games, the frailty of ROM cartridges and consoles, and the lack of certain foreign imports. Nintendo designed a hobbyist development system for the Super NES, but never released it.[122]

Unofficial Super NES emulation is available on virtually all platforms, such as Android,[123] iOS,[124][125] game consoles, and PDAs.[126] Individual games have been bundled with official dedicated emulators on some GameCube discs, and Nintendo's Virtual Console service for the Wii introduced diverse and officially licensed Super NES emulation.

The Super NES Classic Edition was released in September 2017 following the NES Classic Edition. This emulation-based mini-console, which is physically modeled after the North American and European versions of the Super NES, is bundled with two Super NES-style controllers and 21 games, including the previously unreleased Star Fox 2.[127]

Notes

  1. ^ a b Kent says that September 1 was planned but later rescheduled to September 9.[29] Newspaper and magazine articles from late 1991 report that the first shipments were in stores in some regions on August 23,[30][31] and it arrived in other regions at a later date.[32] August 23 is also the release date officially recognized by Nintendo of America.[33]
  2. ^ The name "SNES" can be pronounced by English speakers as an acronym (one word, like "NATO") with various pronunciations, an initialism (a string of letters, like "IBM"), or as a hybrid, like "JPEG". In written English, the choice of indefinite article ("a" or "an") is therefore problematic.[13]
  3. ^ Though the use of "Super Nintendo" is common in colloquial speech and Nintendo of Europe's website,[14] Nintendo of America's official guidelines discourage it, preferring instead the shorthand "Super NES", as written on many of its products such as Super NES Control Deck, Super NES Controller, Super NES Mouse, and Super NES Multi-Player Adapter.[15]
  4. ^ Japanese: スーパーファミコン, Hepburn: Sūpā Famikon, officially adopting the abbreviated name of its predecessor, the Famicom
  5. ^ Korean: 슈퍼 컴보이; RR: Syupeo Keomboi
  6. ^ In both The Ultimate History of Video Games and Purple Reign: 15 Years of the SNES, the disparity in sales is directly attributed to the Super NES version lacking the excessive blood which was recolored grey and described as "sweat", and lacking some of the more gruesome finishing moves. See the Talk page for details.
  7. ^ Some contend that Nintendo orchestrated the Congressional hearings of 1993, but Senator Lieberman and NOA's Senior Vice President (later Chairman) Howard Lincoln both refute these allegations.[56]
  8. ^ Unless otherwise specified, kilobyte (KB), megabyte (MB), and megabit (Mbit) are used in the binary sense in this article, referring to quantities of 1024 or 1,048,576.

References

  1. ^ "Retro Diary: 08 November – 05 December". Retro Gamer. No. 122. December 13, 2013. p. 11.
  2. ^ a b c "Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Platform)". Giant Bomb. from the original on March 30, 2019. Retrieved August 16, 2019.
  3. ^ "History | Corporate". Nintendo. Archived from the original on September 4, 2012. Retrieved February 24, 2013.
  4. ^ C. Portilla (November 21, 2015). "Los juegos más recordados a 25 años del lanzamiento de la Super Nintendo". La Tercera. Retrieved January 20, 2022.
  5. ^ "Nintendo chega hoje ao mercado". O Estado de S. Paulo. August 30, 1993. from the original on February 27, 2014. Retrieved May 6, 2018.
  6. ^ "Соглашение Steepler и Nintendo". November 1994.
  7. ^ a b c d "Consolidated Sales Transition by Region" (PDF). Nintendo Co., Ltd. (PDF) from the original on June 13, 2018. Retrieved October 25, 2017.
  8. ^ a b Reisinger, Don (January 21, 2009). "Does the Xbox 360's 'Lack of Longevity' Matter?". CNET. from the original on December 8, 2015. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
  9. ^ Wolf, Mark J. P. (November 21, 2018). The Routledge Companion to Media Technology and Obsolescence. Routledge. ISBN 9781315442662. from the original on August 1, 2020. Retrieved August 16, 2019.
  10. ^ a b Niizumi, Hirohiko (May 30, 2003). . GameSpot. Archived from the original on January 22, 2012. Retrieved July 15, 2007.
  11. ^ . Edge. June 25, 2007. p. 2. Archived from the original on August 20, 2012. Retrieved June 27, 2007.
  12. ^ . Capcom. Archived from the original on June 5, 2011. Retrieved August 21, 2010.
  13. ^ . Nintendo NSider Forums. Archived from the original on May 5, 2008. Retrieved September 23, 2007. Additional archived pages: 3 4 5 8 9 ; "Pronouncing NES & SNES". GameSpot forums. Archived from the original on February 14, 2012. Retrieved May 16, 2007.
  14. ^ Nintendo of Europe. "Super Nintendo". nintendo.co.uk. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
  15. ^ "SNES Development Manual" (PDF). (PDF) from the original on February 6, 2016. Retrieved February 5, 2016.
  16. ^ a b Brian Byrne, Brian (2017). History of the Super Nintendo (SNES): Ultimate Guide to the SNES Games & Hardware. Console Gamer Magazine. p. 4. ISBN 978-1549899560.
  17. ^ Brian Byrne, Brian (2017). History of the Super Nintendo (SNES): Ultimate Guide to the SNES Games & Hardware. Console Gamer Magazine. p. 5. ISBN 978-1549899560.
  18. ^ Coelho, Victor (November 24, 2014). "Super Nintendo completa 24 anos" [Super Nintendo turned 24 years old]. Exame (in Portuguese). from the original on November 6, 2018. Retrieved June 3, 2018.
  19. ^ Sheff (1993), pp. 353–356. "The Genesis continued to flounder through its first couple of years on the market, although Sega showed Sisyphean resolve.... [By mid-1991] Sega had established itself as the market leader of the next generation."
  20. ^ Kent (2001), pp. 413–414.
  21. ^ Covell, Chris. "Super Famicom: August 1988". from the original on May 1, 2021. Retrieved March 13, 2021.
  22. ^ "スーパーファミコン発売前夜". Niconico (in Japanese). August 1, 2013. from the original on July 9, 2021. Retrieved March 13, 2021.
  23. ^ Covell, Chris. "The First Super Famicom Demonstration". from the original on April 21, 2021. Retrieved March 13, 2021.
  24. ^ Covell, Chris. "The Second SFC Demonstration". from the original on February 24, 2021. Retrieved March 13, 2021.
  25. ^ Kent (2001), pp. 422–431.
  26. ^ Sheff (1993), pp. 360–361.
  27. ^ Kent (2001), pp. 431–433. "Japan remained loyal to Nintendo, ignoring both Sega's Genesis and NEC's PC Engine (the Japanese name for TurboGrafx).... Unlike the Japanese launch in which Super Famicom had outsold both competitors combined in presales alone, Super NES would debut against an established product."
  28. ^ Kristan Reed (January 19, 2007). "Virtual Console: SNES". Eurogamer. from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved February 12, 2009.
  29. ^ Kent (2001), p. 432.
  30. ^ Campbell, Ron (August 27, 1991). "Super Nintendo sells quickly at OC outlets". The Orange County Register. Last weekend, months after video-game addicts started calling, Dave Adams finally was able to sell them what they craved: Super Nintendo. Adams, the manager of Babbages in South Coast Plaza, got 32 of the $199.95 systems Friday. Based on the publication date, the "Friday" mentioned would be August 23, 1991.
  31. ^ "Super Nintendo It's Here!!!". Electronic Gaming Monthly. No. 28. Sendai Publishing Group. November 1991. p. 162. The long awaited SNES is finally available to the U.S. gaming public. The first few pieces of this fantastic unit hit the store shelves on August 23, 1991. Nintendo, however, released the first production run without any heavy fanfare or spectacular announcements.
  32. ^ . Chicago Sun-Times. August 27, 1991. Archived from the original (abstract) on November 3, 2012. Retrieved March 5, 2010. On Friday, area Toys R Us stores […] were expecting SNES, with a suggested retail price of $199.95, any day, said Brad Grafton, assistant inventory control manager for Toys R Us. Based on the publication date, the "Friday" mentioned would be August 23, 1991.
  33. ^ Nintendo of America [@NintendoAmerica] (August 23, 2021). "On this day 30 years ago, the Super..." (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  34. ^ Campbell, Ron (August 27, 1991). "Super Nintendo sells quickly at OC outlets". The Orange County Register. Super Nintendo began showing up in Southern California stores Wednesday, nearly three weeks before the official Sept. 9 release date. ... Until the official nationwide release Sept. 9, availability will be limited.
  35. ^ "COMPANY NEWS; Super Nintendo Now Nationwide". The New York Times. September 10, 1991. from the original on August 28, 2016. Retrieved August 23, 2016.
  36. ^ Phillips, Tom (April 11, 2012). "SNES celebrates 20th birthday in UK". Eurogamer. from the original on May 14, 2019. Retrieved September 13, 2020.
  37. ^ "Playtronic SNES Games". SNES Central. from the original on August 9, 2014. Retrieved February 9, 2015.
  38. ^ (in Portuguese). Nintendo. Archived from the original on July 17, 2007. Retrieved August 2, 2007.
  39. ^ Sheff (1993), p. 361.
  40. ^ "Big in Japan: Nintendo 64 Launches at Last". Next Generation. No. 21. September 1996. pp. 14–16.
  41. ^ Jeremy Parish (November 14, 2006). . 1UP.com. Archived from the original on August 4, 2011. Retrieved July 3, 2007.
  42. ^ Kent (2001), p. 431. "Sonic was an immediate hit, and many consumers who had been loyally waiting for Super NES to arrive now decided to purchase Genesis.... The fiercest competition in the history of video games was about to begin."
  43. ^ Kent (2001), pp. 448–449.
  44. ^ Kent (2001), p. 433.
  45. ^ Hisey, Pete (June 1, 1992). "16-bit games take a bite out of sales — computer games". Discount Store News.
  46. ^ Kent (2001), p. 496-497. "The late November release of Donkey Kong Country stood in stark contrast to the gloom and doom faced by the rest of the video game industry. After three holiday seasons of coming in second to Sega, Nintendo had the biggest game of the year. Sega still outperformed Nintendo in overall holiday sales, but the 500,000 copies of Donkey Kong Country that Nintendo sent out in its initial shipment were mostly sold in preorder, and the rest sold out in less than one week. It (Donkey Kong Country) established the SNES as the better 16-bit console and paved the way for Nintendo to win the waning years of the 16-bit generation."
  47. ^ . Newsweek. January 14, 1996. Archived from the original on May 13, 2013. Retrieved January 21, 2012.
  48. ^ Greenstein, Jane (1997). "Don't expect flood of 16-bit games". Video Business. 1.4 million units sold during 1996
  49. ^ "Sega farms out Genesis". Television Digest. March 2, 1998. "Sega of America sold about 400,000 16-bit consoles in N. America last year, based on estimates extrapolated from NPD Group's Toy Retail Statistical Tracking Service. That compares with just over one million Super Nintendo Entertainment Systems (SNES) sold by Nintendo of America."
  50. ^ Danny Allen (December 22, 2006). . PC World. Archived from the original on May 8, 2008. Retrieved July 15, 2007.
  51. ^ . Nintendo. Archived from the original on December 9, 2003. Retrieved January 21, 2012.
  52. ^ Pachter, Michael; McKay, Nick; Citrin, Nick (February 11, 2014). "Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc; Why the Next Generation Will Be as Big as Ever". Wedbush Equity Research. p. 36. from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved November 9, 2015.
  53. ^ Kent (2001), pp. 308, 372, 440–441.
  54. ^ Reeder, Sara (November 1992). "Why Edutainment Doesn't Make It In A Videogame World". Computer Gaming World. p. 128. from the original on January 10, 2020. Retrieved July 5, 2014.
  55. ^ a b Ray Barnholt (August 4, 2006). . 1UP.com. p. 4. Archived from the original on November 2, 2012. Retrieved July 13, 2007.
  56. ^ a b c d Kent (2001), pp. 461–480. "nearly three to one".
  57. ^ Kent (2001), pp. 491–493, 496–497.
  58. ^ Doug Trueman. . GameSpot. p. 4. Archived from the original on May 15, 2012. Retrieved July 13, 2007.
  59. ^ "Nintendo Boosts N64 Production". Electronic Gaming Monthly. No. 93. Ziff Davis. April 1997. p. 22.
  60. ^ Chris Johnston (October 29, 1997). . GameSpot. Archived from the original on January 24, 2012. Retrieved June 14, 2007.
  61. ^ a b "Classic System Gets New Shell". Electronic Gaming Monthly. No. 102. Ziff Davis. January 1998. p. 22.
  62. ^ Yutaka Ohbuchi (January 16, 1998). . GameSpot. Archived from the original on January 18, 2012. Retrieved June 14, 2007.
  63. ^ "スーパーファミコン (Super Famicom)" (in Japanese). Nintendo Japan. from the original on August 28, 2019. Retrieved May 19, 2007.
  64. ^ "E3 2005: Nintendo's E3 2005 Press Conference". IGN. May 17, 2005. from the original on February 14, 2012. Retrieved April 14, 2007.
  65. ^ . AFP. October 31, 2007. Archived from the original (Reprint) on May 27, 2013. Retrieved November 9, 2007.
  66. ^ Gwaltney, Javy. "Super Nintendo Games Are Coming To New Nintendo 3DS". Game Informer. Game Informer. from the original on October 18, 2018. Retrieved January 21, 2019.
  67. ^ "Nintendo Direct - 09.04.2019". www.nintendo.com. from the original on September 4, 2019. Retrieved September 10, 2019.
  68. ^ "NES™ and Super NES™ – Nintendo Switch Online – Nintendo Switch™ Official site". www.nintendo.com. from the original on September 9, 2019. Retrieved September 10, 2019.
  69. ^ a b "Fullsnes – Nocash SNES Specs". from the original on January 2, 2015. Retrieved February 6, 2015.
  70. ^ Jeremy Parish (September 6, 2005). . 1UP.com. Archived from the original on May 23, 2011. Retrieved May 27, 2007.
  71. ^ a b Nintendo (1993). "SNES Development Manual - Book I, Section 4 "Super NES CPU Data"". Nintendo. from the original on November 28, 2018. Retrieved September 11, 2018.
  72. ^ "NA » Need help » SNES Gen 1 Video Repair more than 50 units". from the original on March 31, 2019. Retrieved March 31, 2019.
  73. ^ "Is the SNES a realible console?". from the original on August 17, 2018. Retrieved September 13, 2020.
  74. ^ Hayward, Andrew (March 12, 2017). "The Nintendo PlayStation is the coolest console never released". TechRadar. from the original on September 12, 2018. Retrieved September 12, 2018. Nintendo and Sony first linked up for the Super Nintendo itself, as Sony produced the S-SMP sound chip for the iconic 16-bit console.
  75. ^ Nintendo (1993). "SNES Development Manual - Section 3, Super NES Sound". Nintendo. from the original on November 28, 2018. Retrieved September 11, 2018.
  76. ^ a b Nintendo Life (July 6, 2013). "Soapbox: Why Region Locking Is A Total Non-Issue". Nintendo Life. from the original on September 5, 2015. Retrieved October 24, 2015.
  77. ^ "The Ultimate Retro Console Collectors' Guide". Eurogamer.net. May 6, 2012. from the original on August 22, 2015. Retrieved October 24, 2015.
  78. ^ Mark Knibbs (December 27, 1997). . Archived from the original on January 21, 2003. Retrieved April 14, 2007.
  79. ^ Mark Knibbs (January 25, 1998). . Archived from the original on May 2, 2001. Retrieved April 14, 2007.
  80. ^ a b c "Super Nintendo Entertainment System". Nintendo Power. Vol. 25. Redmond, Washington: Nintendo of America. June 1991. pp. 45–46.
  81. ^ a b Chad Margetts & M. Noah Ward (May 31, 2005). "Lance Barr Interview". Nintendojo. from the original on July 22, 2016. Retrieved March 2, 2013.
  82. ^ "- Nintendo – Customer Service – Super Nintendo – AV to TV". nintendo.com. from the original on August 5, 2016. Retrieved July 22, 2016.
  83. ^ "- Nintendo – Customer Service – New-Style Super NES RF to TV Hookup". nintendo.com. from the original on August 5, 2016. Retrieved July 22, 2016.
  84. ^ "Nintendo Support: Original-Style Super NES RF to TV Hookup". Nintendo. from the original on March 10, 2010. Retrieved February 28, 2010.
  85. ^ "Nintendo Support: New-Style Super NES RF to TV Hookup". Nintendo. from the original on May 20, 2010. Retrieved June 30, 2010.
  86. ^ "Nintendo Super System: The Future Takes Shape". Arcade Flyers Archive. from the original on December 3, 2019. Retrieved April 19, 2008.
  87. ^ "Nintendo Super System on SNES Central". from the original on December 3, 2019. Retrieved December 3, 2019.
  88. ^ "Nintendo Will No Longer Produce Coin-Op Equipment". Cashbox. September 5, 1992. Retrieved December 8, 2019.
  89. ^ "Nintendo Stops Games Manufacturing; But Will Continue Supplying Software". Cashbox. September 12, 1992. Retrieved December 8, 2019.
  90. ^ Edwards, Benj (January 12, 2007). "Why Super Nintendos Lose Their Color: Plastic Discoloration in Classic Machines". Vintagecomputing.com. from the original on January 1, 2012. Retrieved August 19, 2009.
  91. ^ Dziezynski, James (October 24, 2013). "Retrobright Restoration Project". www.mountainouswords.com. from the original on October 24, 2019. Retrieved October 24, 2019.
  92. ^ "Game Pak Troubleshooting". Customer Service. Nintendo of America, Inc. from the original on August 14, 2010. Retrieved August 23, 2010.
  93. ^ ゼルダの伝説 神々のトライフォース 取扱説明書. Nintendo Co., Ltd. November 21, 1991. p. 1.
  94. ^ Ogasawara, Nob (November 1995). "Future Fantasies from overseas". GamePro. Vol. 7, no. 11. San Mateo, CA: Infotainment World. p. 126. ISSN 1042-8658.
  95. ^ "Star Ocean". Nintendo Power. No. 86. Redmond, WA: Nintendo of America. July 1996. pp. 60–61. ISSN 1041-9551.
  96. ^ a b . IGN. September 4, 2009. Archived from the original on March 4, 2010. Retrieved October 24, 2010.
  97. ^ Sud Koushik (January 30, 2006). . Advanced Media Network. Archived from the original on February 7, 2009. Retrieved May 25, 2007.
  98. ^ Chris Kohler (September 13, 2005). . 1UP.com. p. 4. Archived from the original on September 29, 2012. Retrieved May 25, 2007.
  99. ^ "Use Your Super Nintendo to Play Your Way to Perfect Health". Electronic Gaming Monthly. No. 67. Ziff Davis. February 1995. p. 54.
  100. ^ Super Nintendo ( SNES ) Controller – TeeV Golf by Sports Sciences. August 22, 2015 – via YouTube.
  101. ^ "Popular Mechanics". google.com. Hearst Magazines. March 1995. from the original on May 5, 2016. Retrieved October 24, 2015.
  102. ^ Eric Levenson (April 21, 2014). "Feature: Remembering the Super Game Boy". The Atlantic. from the original on October 25, 2017. Retrieved July 13, 2017.
  103. ^ . RED #9. Archived from the original on June 26, 2007. Retrieved September 17, 2007.
  104. ^ Bivens, Danny (October 27, 2011). "Nintendo's Expansion Ports Satellaview". from the original on January 27, 2016. Retrieved January 22, 2016.
  105. ^ Edge staff (April 24, 2009). . Edge. Future Publishing. Archived from the original on May 16, 2012. Retrieved March 7, 2012.
  106. ^ "History of the PlayStation". IGN. August 27, 1998. from the original on February 18, 2012. Retrieved March 8, 2012.
  107. ^ "SNES Development--Schematics, Ports, and Pinouts" May 4, 2015, at the Wayback Machine "Many carts connect only to pins 5-27 and 36-58, as the remaining pins are mainly useful only if the cart contains special chips."
  108. ^ a b c (2007-05-01) Snes9x readme.txt v1.51. Snes9x. Snes9x. Retrieved on July 3, 2007.
  109. ^ Overload (May 29, 2006). . Overload's Puzzle Sheet. Archived from the original on March 11, 2007. Retrieved May 9, 2007. Refer to the command summaries for all four DSP versions.
  110. ^ a b Nach; Moe, Lord Nightmare. . Archived from the original on July 8, 2007. Retrieved May 9, 2007.
  111. ^ Robinson, Andy (February 8, 2007). . Computer and Video Games. Archived from the original on May 9, 2013. Retrieved May 9, 2015.
  112. ^ "EGM's Special Report: Which System Is Best?". 1998 Video Game Buyer's Guide. Ziff Davis. March 1998. pp. 54–55.
  113. ^ Top Ten Consoles. GameTrailers. April 19, 2007. Event occurs at 9:00. Archived from the original (Flash video) on October 1, 2021. Retrieved September 14, 2017.
  114. ^ Top Ten Nintendo Systems (Flash video). Gametrailers. March 28, 2015. Event occurs at 10:48. Retrieved March 29, 2015.
  115. ^ Reisinger, Don (January 25, 2008). "The SNES is the greatest console of all time". CNET Blog Network. from the original on February 19, 2012. Retrieved October 24, 2010.
  116. ^ Greenwald, Will (January 28, 2008). "The greatest game console of all time?". CNET Blog Network. from the original on February 19, 2012. Retrieved October 24, 2010.
  117. ^ Sztein, Andrew (March 28, 2008). "The Top Ten Consoles of All Time". GamingExcellence. from the original on May 10, 2012. Retrieved October 24, 2010.
  118. ^ Buffa, Chris (March 5, 2008). . GameDaily. Archived from the original on March 9, 2008. Retrieved October 24, 2010.
  119. ^ Altice, Nathan (May 2015). I Am Error. ISBN 9780262028776. from the original on April 28, 2016. Retrieved October 24, 2015.
  120. ^ "ZSNES v1.51 Documentation". ZSNES. ZSNES. from the original on January 19, 2016. Retrieved July 16, 2007.
  121. ^ "Legal Information (Copyrights, Emulators, ROMs, etc.)". Nintendo of America. from the original on June 18, 2016. Retrieved June 14, 2007.
  122. ^ "What Does This... Have to Do with This?". Electronic Gaming Monthly. No. 94. Ziff Davis. May 1997. p. 22.
  123. ^ Head, Chris (August 12, 2010). "Android: A Gamer's Guide". PCWorld. from the original on March 9, 2012. Retrieved August 22, 2010.
  124. ^ Sorrel, Charlie (January 23, 2008). "SNES Emulator for iPhone". Wired. from the original on March 17, 2012. Retrieved August 22, 2010.
  125. ^ Sorrel, Charlie (June 9, 2010). "Video: SNES for iPad, Controlled by iPhone". Wired. from the original on January 13, 2012. Retrieved August 22, 2010.
  126. ^ Werner Ruotsalainen (May 10, 2007). . Expert Blogs. Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine. Archived from the original on January 11, 2012. Retrieved February 12, 2009.
  127. ^ "Nintendo Announces SNES Mini, and it'll Include Star Fox 2". Kotaku UK. from the original on June 27, 2017. Retrieved June 26, 2017.

Bibliography

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Super Famicom and variants.
  •   Super NES Programming at Wikibooks

January 19, 2023
super, nintendo, entertainment, system, super, nintendo, redirects, here, nintendo, area, universal, studios, japan, super, nintendo, world, snes, commonly, shortened, super, super, nintendo, home, video, game, console, developed, nintendo, that, released, 199. Super Nintendo redirects here For Nintendo s area in Universal Studios Japan see Super Nintendo World The Super Nintendo Entertainment System SNES b commonly shortened to Super NES or Super Nintendo c is a 16 bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea 16 1991 in North America 1992 in Europe and Oceania and 1993 in South America In Japan it is called the Super Famicom SFC d In South Korea it is called the Super Comboy e and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics 17 The system was released in Brazil on August 30 1993 16 18 by Playtronic Although each version is essentially the same several forms of regional lockout prevent cartridges for one version from being used in other versions Super Nintendo Entertainment SystemTop North American NTSC Super NES c 1991 Bottom Japanese Super Famicom The European PAL Super NES has the same design Other variations are pictured under Casing below DeveloperNintendo R amp D2ManufacturerNintendoTypeHome video game consoleGenerationFourthRelease dateJP November 21 1990 1 NA August 23 1991 a UK April 11 1992 2 IRL April 11 1992 2 EU June 1992 3 CHL June 8 1992 4 AU July 3 1992 2 BR August 30 1993 5 RU November 1994 6 Lifespan1990 2005 7 Introductory price 25 000 US 199DiscontinuedEU 1998NA 1999 8 BR 2003KOR April 1 2003 9 JP September 25 2003 10 UK May 23 2005Units soldWorldwide 49 10 million 7 North America 23 35 million Japan 17 17 million Other 8 58 millionMediaROM cartridgeCPURicoh 5A22 3 58 MHzSoundNintendo S SMPOnline servicesSatellaview Japan only XBAND USA and Canada only Nintendo Power Japan only Best selling gamePack in Super Mario World 20 60 million 11 Stand alone Street Fighter II The World Warrior 6 3 million 12 PredecessorNintendo Entertainment SystemSuccessorNintendo 64The Super NES is Nintendo s second programmable home console following the Nintendo Entertainment System NES The console introduced advanced graphics and sound capabilities compared with other systems at the time It was designed to accommodate the ongoing development of a variety of enhancement chips integrated into game cartridges to be competitive into the next generation The Super NES received largely positive reviews and was a global success becoming the best selling console of the 16 bit era after launching relatively late and facing intense competition from Sega s Genesis console in North America and Europe Overlapping the NES s 61 9 million unit sales the Super NES remained popular well into the 32 bit era with 49 1 million units sold worldwide by the time it was discontinued in 2003 It continues to be popular among collectors and retro gamers with new homebrew games and Nintendo s emulated rereleases such as on the Virtual Console the Super NES Classic Edition Nintendo Switch Online as well as several non console emulators which operate on a desktop computer such as Snes9x Contents 1 History 1 1 Launch 1 2 Console wars 1 3 Changes in policy 1 4 32 bit era and beyond 2 Hardware 2 1 Technical specifications 2 1 1 CPU and RAM 2 1 2 Video 2 1 3 Audio 2 2 Regional lockout 2 3 Casing 2 3 1 Yellowing 2 4 Game cartridge 3 Games 4 Peripherals 5 Enhancement chips 6 Reception and legacy 6 1 Emulation 7 Notes 8 References 9 Bibliography 10 External linksHistory Edit Early concept designs for the Super NES are called the Nintendo Entertainment System 2 To compete with the popular Family Computer in Japan NEC Home Electronics launched the PC Engine in 1987 and Sega followed suit with the Mega Drive in 1988 The two platforms were later launched in North America in 1989 as the TurboGrafx 16 and the Sega Genesis respectively Both systems were built on 16 bit architectures and offered improved graphics and sound over the 8 bit NES However it took several years for Sega s system to become successful 19 Nintendo executives were in no rush to design a new system but they reconsidered when they began to see their dominance in the market slipping 20 On September 9 1987 then Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi revealed the development of the Super Famicom in the newspaper Kyoto Shimbun On August 30 1988 in an interview with TOUCH Magazine he announced the development of Super Mario Bros 4 Dragon Quest V three original games and he projected sales of 3 million units of the upcoming console Famicom Hissyoubon magazine speculated that Nintendo s early announcement was probably made to forestall Christmas shopping for the PC Engine and relayed Enix s clarification that it was waiting on sales figures to select either PC Engine or Super Famicom for its next Dragon Quest game The magazine and Enix both expressed a strong interest in networking as a standard platform feature 21 22 The console was demonstrated to the Japanese press on November 21 1988 and again on July 28 1989 23 24 Launch Edit The four color Super Famicom mark is part of the logo in the Japanese and PAL regions with colors corresponding to those of the control pad buttons The North American logo has a striped background outlining four oval shapes Designed by Masayuki Uemura the designer of the original Famicom the Super Famicom was released in Japan on Wednesday November 21 1990 for 25 000 equivalent to 27 804 in 2019 It was an instant success Nintendo s initial shipment of 300 000 units sold out within hours and the resulting social disturbance led the Japanese government to ask video game manufacturers to schedule future console releases on weekends 25 This gained the attention of the Yakuza criminal organization so the devices were shipped at night to avoid robbery 26 With the Super Famicom quickly outselling its rivals Nintendo reasserted itself as the leader of the Japanese console market 27 Nintendo s success was partially due to the retention of most of its key third party developers including Capcom Konami Tecmo Square Koei and Enix 28 Nintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System a redesigned version of the Super Famicom in North America for US 199 equivalent to 400 in 2021 It began shipping in limited quantities on August 23 1991 a 34 with an official nationwide release date of September 9 1991 35 The Super NES was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in April 1992 for 150 equivalent to 330 in 2021 36 Most of the PAL region versions of the console use the Japanese Super Famicom design except for labeling and the length of the joypad leads The Playtronic Super NES in Brazil although PAL M uses the North American design 37 Both the NES and Super NES were released in Brazil in 1993 by Playtronic a joint venture between the toy company Estrela and consumer electronics company Gradiente 38 The Super NES and Super Famicom launched with few games but these games were well received In Japan only two games were initially available Super Mario World and F Zero 39 Bombuzal was released during the launch week 40 In North America Super Mario World was launched as a bundle with the console other launch games include F Zero Pilotwings both of which demonstrate the console s Mode 7 pseudo 3D rendering SimCity and Gradius III 41 Console wars Edit Main article Console war Sega versus Nintendo The rivalry between Nintendo and Sega was described as one of the most notable console wars in video game history 42 in which Sega positioned the Genesis as the cool console with games aimed at older audiences and aggressive advertisements that occasionally attacked the competition 43 Nintendo however scored an early public relations advantage by securing the first console conversion of Capcom s arcade hit Street Fighter II for Super NES which took more than a year to make the transition to the Genesis Though the Genesis had a two year lead to launch time a much larger library of games and a lower price point 44 it only represented an estimated 60 of the American 16 bit console market in June 1992 45 and neither console could maintain a definitive lead for several years Donkey Kong Country is said to have helped establish the Super NES s market prominence in the latter years of the 16 bit generation 46 47 48 49 and for a time maintain against the PlayStation and Saturn 50 According to Nintendo the company had sold more than 20 million Super NES units in the U S 51 According to a 2014 Wedbush Securities report based on NPD sales data the Super NES outsold the Genesis in the U S market by 1 5 million units 52 Changes in policy Edit During the NES era Nintendo maintained exclusive control over games released for the system the company had to approve every game each third party developer could only release up to five games per year but some third parties got around this by using different names such as Konami s Ultra Games brand those games could not be released on another console within two years and Nintendo was the exclusive manufacturer and supplier of NES cartridges However competition from Sega s console brought an end to this practice in 1991 Acclaim Entertainment began releasing games for both platforms with most of Nintendo s other licensees following suit over the next several years Capcom which licensed some games to Sega instead of producing them directly and Square were the most notable holdouts 53 Nintendo continued to carefully review submitted games scoring them on a 40 point scale and allocating marketing resources accordingly Each region performed separate evaluations 54 Nintendo of America also maintained a policy that among other things limited the amount of violence in the games on its systems The surprise arcade hit Mortal Kombat 1992 a gory fighting game with huge splashes of blood and graphically violent fatality moves was heavily censored by Nintendo f Because the Genesis version allowed for an uncensored version via cheat code 55 it outsold the censored Super NES version by a ratio of nearly three to one 56 U S Senators Herb Kohl and Joe Lieberman convened a Congressional hearing on December 9 1993 to investigate the marketing of violent video games to children g Though Nintendo took the high ground with moderate success the hearings led to the creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association and the Entertainment Software Rating Board and the inclusion of ratings on all video games 55 56 With these ratings in place Nintendo decided its censorship policies were no longer needed 56 32 bit era and beyond Edit While other companies were moving on to 32 bit systems Rare and Nintendo proved that the Super NES was still a strong contender in the market In November 1994 Rare released Donkey Kong Country a platform game featuring 3D models and textures pre rendered on Silicon Graphics workstations With its detailed graphics fluid animation and high quality music Donkey Kong Country rivals the aesthetic quality of games that were being released on newer 32 bit CD based consoles In the last 45 days of 1994 6 1 million copies were sold making it the fastest selling video game in history to that date This game conveyed that early 32 bit systems had little to offer over the Super NES and proved the market for the more advanced consoles of the near future 57 58 According to TRSTS reports two of the top five best selling games in the U S for December 1996 are Super NES games 59 In October 1997 Nintendo released a redesigned model of the Super NES the SNS 101 model referred to as New Style Super NES in North America for US 99 equivalent to 200 in 2021 with some units including the pack in game Super Mario World 2 Yoshi s Island 60 61 Like the earlier New Style NES model NES 101 this is slimmer and lighter than its predecessor 61 but it lacks S Video and RGB output and it is among the last major Super NES related releases in the region A similarly redesigned Super Famicom Jr was released in Japan at around the same time 62 However the redesign did not make it to Europe Nintendo ceased production of the Super NES in North America in 1999 8 about two years after releasing Kirby s Dream Land 3 its final first party game in the US on November 27 1997 and one year after releasing Frogger its final third party game in the US in 1998 In Japan Nintendo continued production of both the Family Computer and the Super Famicom until September 25 2003 10 and new games were produced until the year 2000 ending with the release of Metal Slader Glory Director s Cut on November 29 2000 63 Many popular Super NES games were ported to the Game Boy Advance which has similar video capabilities In 2005 Nintendo announced that Super NES games would be made available for download via the Wii s Virtual Console service 64 On October 31 2007 Nintendo Co Ltd announced that it would no longer repair Family Computer or Super Famicom systems due to an increasing shortage of the necessary parts 65 On March 3 2016 Nintendo Co Ltd announced that it would bring Super NES games to the New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL and later the New Nintendo 2DS XL via its eShop download service 66 At the Nintendo Direct event on September 4 2019 Nintendo announced that it would be bringing select Super NES games to the Nintendo Switch Online platform 67 68 Hardware EditTechnical specifications Edit The 16 bit design of the Super NES 69 incorporates graphics and sound co processors that perform tiling and simulated 3D effects a palette of 32 768 colors and 8 channel ADPCM audio These base platform features plus the ability to dramatically extend them all through substantial chip upgrades inside of each cartridge represent a leap over the 8 bit NES generation and some significant advantages over 16 bit competitors such as the Genesis 70 CPU and RAM Edit The CPU is a Ricoh 5A22 which is a derivative of the 16 bit WDC 65C816 microprocessor In NTSC regions its nominal clock speed is 3 58 MHz but the CPU will slow down to either 2 68 MHz or 1 79 MHz when accessing some slower peripherals 71 This CPU has an 8 bit data bus and two address buses The 24 bit Bus A is designated for general accesses and the 8 bit Bus B can access support chip registers such as the video and audio co processors The WDC 65C816 supports an 8 channel DMA unit an 8 bit parallel I O port a controller port interface circuits allowing serial and parallel access to controller data a 16 bit multiplication and division unit and circuitry for generating non maskable interrupts on V blank and IRQ interrupts on calculated screen positions 71 Early revisions of the 5A22 used in SHVC boards are prone to spontaneous failure which can produce a variety of symptoms including graphics glitches in Mode 7 a black screen on power on or improperly reading the controllers 72 The first revision 5A22 has a fatal bug in the DMA controller that can crash games this was corrected in subsequent revisions 73 The console contains 128 KB of general purpose RAM which is separate from the 64 KB VRAM dedicated to the video and audio subsystems Video Edit The Picture Processing Unit PPU consists of two closely tied IC packages It contains 64 KB of SRAM for video data 544 bytes of object attribute memory OAM for sprite data and 256 15 bits of color generator RAM CGRAM for palette data This CGRAM provisions up to 256 colors chosen from the 15 bit RGB color space from a palette of 32 768 colors The PPU is clocked by the same signal as the CPU and generates a pixel every two or four cycles 69 Audio Edit The S SMP audio chip consists of an 8 bit CPU a 16 bit DSP and 64 KB of SRAM It was designed and produced by Sony 74 and is completely independent from the rest of the system It is clocked at a nominal 24 576 MHz in both NTSC and PAL systems It is capable of stereo sound composed from 8 voices generated using 8 bit audio samples and various effects such as echo 75 Regional lockout Edit The North American design is compared to the Japanese and PAL region design which has the optional pins for enhancement chips such as the Super FX chip Nintendo employed several types of regional lockout including both physical and hardware incompatibilities Physically the cartridges are shaped differently for different regions North American cartridges have a rectangular bottom with inset grooves matching protruding tabs in the console and other regions cartridges are narrower with a smooth curve on the front and no grooves The physical incompatibility can be overcome with the use of various adapters or through modification of the console 76 77 Internally a regional lockout chip CIC within the console and in each cartridge prevents the PAL region games from being played on Japanese or North American consoles and vice versa The Japanese and North American machines have the same region chip This can be overcome through the use of adapters typically by inserting the imported cartridge in one slot and a cartridge with the correct region chip in a second slot Alternatively disconnecting one pin of the console s lockout chip will prevent it from locking the console hardware in later games can detect this situation so it became common to install a switch to reconnect the lockout chip as needed 78 PAL consoles face another incompatibility when playing out of region cartridges the NTSC video standard specifies video at 60 Hz but PAL operates at 50 Hz resulting in an approximately 16 7 slower framerate PAL s higher resolution results in letterboxing of the output image 76 Some commercial PAL region releases exhibit this same problem and therefore can be played in NTSC systems without issue but other games will face a 20 speedup if played in an NTSC console To mostly correct this issue a switch can be added to place the Super NES PPU into a 60 Hz mode supported by most newer PAL televisions Later games will detect this setting and refuse to run requiring the switch to be thrown only after the check completes 79 Casing Edit Super Nintendo Entertainment System cases Japanese SHVC 001 model 1990 1998 North American SNS 001 model 1991 1997 PAL region SNSP 001A model 1992 1998 New Style Super NES SNS 101 1997 1999 Japanese SHVC 101 model 1998 2003 South Korean SNSN 001 model Nintendo Super System controller All models of the Super NES control deck are predominantly gray of slightly different shades The original North American version designed by Nintendo of America industrial designer Lance Barr 80 who previously redesigned the Famicom to become the NES 81 has a boxy design with purple sliding switches and a dark gray eject lever The loading bay surface is curved both to invite interaction and to prevent food or drinks from being placed on the console and spilling as with the flat surfaced NES 80 The Japanese and European versions are more rounded with darker gray accents and buttons The North American New Style Super NES model SNS 101 and the Japanese Super Famicom Jr model SHVC 101 all designed by Barr are both smaller with a rounded contour however the SNS 101 buttons are purple where the Super Famicom Jr buttons are gray The European and American versions of the Super NES controllers have much longer cables compared to the Japanese Super Famicom controllers All versions incorporate a top loading slot for game cartridges although the shape of the slot differs between regions to match the different shapes of the cartridges The MULTI OUT connector later used on the Nintendo 64 and GameCube can output composite video S Video and RGB signals as well as RF with an external RF modulator 82 83 Original versions additionally include a 28 pin expansion port under a small cover on the bottom of the unit and a standard RF output with channel selection switch on the back 84 the redesigned models output composite video only requiring an external modulator for RF 85 The Nintendo Super System NSS is an arcade system for retail preview of 11 particular Super NES games in the United States similar to the PlayChoice 10 for NES games It consists of slightly modified Super NES hardware with a menu interface and 25 inch monitor that allows gameplay for a certain amount of time depending on game credits 86 87 Manufacturing of this model was discontinued in 1992 88 89 Yellowing Edit The plastic can yellow with age The ABS plastic used in the casing of some older Super NES and Super Famicom consoles is particularly susceptible to oxidization with exposure to air This along with the particularly light color of the original plastic causes affected consoles to quickly become yellow if the sections of the casing came from different batches of plastic a two tone effect results 90 This issue may be reversed with a method called Retrobrighting where a mixture of chemicals is applied to the case and exposed to UV light 91 Game cartridge Edit Main article Super Nintendo Entertainment System Game Pak Super NES games are distributed on ROM cartridges officially referred to as Game Pak in most Western regions 92 and as Cassette カセット Kasetto in Japan and parts of Latin America 93 Though the Super NES can address 128 Mbit h only 117 75 Mbit are actually available for cartridge use A fairly normal mapping could easily address up to 95 Mbit of ROM data 48 Mbit at FastROM speed with 8 Mbit of battery backed RAM However most available memory access controllers only support mappings of up to 32 Mbit The largest games released Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean contain 48 Mbit of ROM data 94 95 and the smallest games contain only 2 Mbit Cartridges may also contain battery backed SRAM to save the game state extra working RAM custom coprocessors or any other hardware that will not exceed the maximum current rating of the console Games EditMain article List of Super Nintendo Entertainment System games See also List of best selling Super Nintendo Entertainment System video games and List of cancelled Super NES and Super Famicom games 1757 Super NES games were officially released 717 in North America plus 4 championship cartridges 521 in Europe 1 448 in Japan 231 on Satellaview and 13 on Sufami Turbo Many Super NES games have been called some of the greatest video games of all time such as Super Mario World 1990 The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past 1991 Donkey Kong Country 1994 EarthBound 1994 Super Metroid 1994 and Yoshi s Island 1995 Many Super NES games have been rereleased several times including on the Virtual Console Super NES Classic Edition and the classic games service on Nintendo Switch Online All Game Boy games are playable with the Super Game Boy add on Many Super NES emulators have been produced Mode 7 is a graphics mode that can simulate simple 3D effects Peripherals EditMain article List of Super Nintendo Entertainment System accessories North American Super NES controller The Super NES controller design expands on that of the NES with A B X and Y face buttons in a diamond arrangement and two shoulder buttons Lance Barr created its ergonomic design and he later adapted it in 1993 for the NES 039 dogbone controller 80 81 The Japanese and PAL region versions incorporate the four colors of the face buttons into the system s logo The North American version s buttons are colored to match the redesigned console the X and Y buttons are lavender with concave faces and the A and B buttons are purple with convex faces Several later controller designs have elements from the Super NES controller including the PlayStation Dreamcast Xbox and Wii Classic Controller 96 97 98 This face button layout is on future Nintendo systems since the Nintendo DS Several peripherals add to the functionality of the Super NES Some are required by certain games such as the Super Scope light gun and the Super NES Mouse for a point and click interface Various third parties under license from Nintendo released multitap adapters connecting up to five controllers into a single console starting with the Super Multitap by Hudson Soft in conjunction with the Super Bomberman series Specialized third party controllers such as the AsciiPad and Super Advantage the successor to the NES Advantage by Asciiware and the Capcom Fighter Power Stick an arcade like joystick controller by Capcom designed specifically for Street Fighter II Unusual controllers include the BatterUP baseball bat the Life Fitness Entertainment System an exercise bike controller with built in monitoring software 99 the TeeV Golf golf club 100 101 and the Justifier a revolver shaped light gun made by Konami for Lethal Enforcers The Super Game Boy cartridge adapts Game Boy games to the Super NES Though Nintendo never released an adapter for playing NES games on the Super NES the Super Game Boy adapter cartridge allows games designed for Nintendo s portable Game Boy system to be played on the Super NES The Super Game Boy touts several feature enhancements over the Game Boy including palette substitution custom screen borders and access to the Super NES console s features by specially enhanced Game Boy games 102 Japan also saw the release of the Super Game Boy 2 which adds a communication port to enable a second Game Boy to connect for multiplayer games Like the NES before it the Super NES has unlicensed third party peripherals including a new version of the Game Genie cheat cartridge designed for use with Super NES games Soon after the release of the Super NES companies began marketing backup devices such as the Super Wildcard Super Pro Fighter Q and Game Doctor 103 These devices create a backup of a cartridge and can be used to play illicit ROM images or to copy games violating copyright laws in many jurisdictions Satellaview with Super Famicom The Japan only Satellaview is a satellite modem attached to the Super Famicom s expansion port and connected to the St GIGA satellite radio station from April 23 1995 to June 30 2000 Satellaview subscribers could download gaming news and specially designed games which were frequently either remakes of or sequels to older Famicom games and released in installments 104 In the United States the relatively short lived XBAND allowed users to connect to a network via a dial up modem to compete against other players around the country Nintendo attempted partnerships with Sony and then Philips to develop CD ROM based peripheral prototypes for the console to compete with the Sega CD Sony produced a Nintendo Play Station prototype which was canceled diverting this inertia into its own PlayStation console The Philips project was canceled without a prototype but Philips retained the contractual right to develop games based on Nintendo franchises which it published for its CD i multimedia console 105 106 Enhancement chips EditMain article List of Super NES enhancement chips Star Fox is the first Super FX game based on 3D polygons As part of the overall plan for the Super NES rather than include an expensive CPU that would still become obsolete in a few years the hardware designers made it easy to interface special coprocessor chips to the console just like the MMC chips used for most NES games This is most often characterized by 16 additional pins on the cartridge card edge 107 The Super FX is a RISC CPU designed to perform functions that the main CPU can not feasibly do The chip is primarily used to create 3D game worlds made with polygons texture mapping and light source shading The chip can also be used to enhance 2D games 108 The Nintendo fixed point digital signal processor DSP chip allowed for fast vector based calculations bitmap conversions both 2D and 3D coordinate transformations and other functions 109 Four revisions of the chip exist each physically identical but with different microcode The DSP 1 version including the later 1A and 1B bug fix revisions is used most often the DSP 2 DSP 3 and DSP 4 are used in only one game each 110 Similar to the 5A22 CPU in the console the SA 1 chip contains a 65C816 processor core clocked at 10 MHz a memory mapper DMA decompression and bitplane conversion circuitry several programmable timers and CIC region lockout functionality 108 In Japan games could be downloaded cheaper than standard cartridges from Nintendo Power kiosks onto special cartridges containing flash memory and a MegaChips MX15001TFC chip The chip manages communication with the kiosks to download ROM images and has an initial menu to select a game Some were published both in cartridge and download form and others were download only The service closed on February 8 2007 111 Many cartridges contain other enhancement chips most of which were created for use by a single company in a few games 110 Reception and legacy Edit European version of the Super NES control deck at the Computer and Video Game Console Museum of Helsinki in 2012 Approximately 49 1 million Super NES consoles were sold worldwide with 23 35 million of those units sold in the Americas and 17 17 million in Japan 7 Although it could not quite repeat the success of the NES which sold 61 91 million units worldwide 7 the Super NES was the best selling console of its era In a 1997 year end review a team of five Electronic Gaming Monthly editors gave the Super NES scores of 5 5 8 0 7 0 7 0 and 8 0 Though they criticized how few new games were coming out for the system and how dated its graphics were compared to current generation consoles they regarded its selection of must have games to be still unsurpassed Additionally noting that used Super NES games were readily available in bargain bins most of them still recommended buying a Super NES 112 In 2007 GameTrailers named the Super NES as the second best console of all time in their list of top ten consoles that left their mark on the history of gaming citing its graphics sound and library of top quality games 113 In 2015 they also named it the best Nintendo console of all time saying The list of games we love from this console completely annihilates any other roster from the Big N 114 Technology columnist Don Reisinger proclaimed The SNES is the greatest console of all time in January 2008 citing the quality of the games and the console s dramatic improvement over its predecessor 115 fellow technology columnist Will Greenwald replied with a more nuanced view giving the Super NES top marks with his heart the NES with his head and the PlayStation for its controller with his hands 116 GamingExcellence also gave the Super NES first place in 2008 declaring it simply the most timeless system ever created with many games that stand the test of time and citing its innovation in controller design graphics capabilities and game storytelling 117 At the same time GameDaily rated it fifth of the ten greatest consoles for its graphics audio controllers and games 118 In 2009 IGN named the Super NES the fourth best video game console complimenting its audio and number of AAA games 96 Emulation Edit See also List of SNES emulators Super NES emulation began with VSMC in 1994 and Super Pasofami became the first working Super NES emulator in 1996 119 During that time two competing emulation projects Snes96 and Snes97 merged to form Snes9x 108 In 1997 ZSNES development began 120 In 2004 Bsnes development began with the goal of preservation through maximal accuracy and compatibility and was renamed to Higan Nintendo of America maintained its stance against the distribution of Super NES ROM image files and the use of emulators as it does with the NES insisting that these things represent flagrant copyright infringement 121 Emulation proponents assert that the discontinued hardware production constitutes abandonware status the owners right to make a personal backup space shifting for private use the development of homebrew games the frailty of ROM cartridges and consoles and the lack of certain foreign imports Nintendo designed a hobbyist development system for the Super NES but never released it 122 Unofficial Super NES emulation is available on virtually all platforms such as Android 123 iOS 124 125 game consoles and PDAs 126 Individual games have been bundled with official dedicated emulators on some GameCube discs and Nintendo s Virtual Console service for the Wii introduced diverse and officially licensed Super NES emulation The Super NES Classic Edition was released in September 2017 following the NES Classic Edition This emulation based mini console which is physically modeled after the North American and European versions of the Super NES is bundled with two Super NES style controllers and 21 games including the previously unreleased Star Fox 2 127 Notes Edit a b Kent says that September 1 was planned but later rescheduled to September 9 29 Newspaper and magazine articles from late 1991 report that the first shipments were in stores in some regions on August 23 30 31 and it arrived in other regions at a later date 32 August 23 is also the release date officially recognized by Nintendo of America 33 The name SNES can be pronounced by English speakers as an acronym one word like NATO with various pronunciations an initialism a string of letters like IBM or as a hybrid like JPEG In written English the choice of indefinite article a or an is therefore problematic 13 Though the use of Super Nintendo is common in colloquial speech and Nintendo of Europe s website 14 Nintendo of America s official guidelines discourage it preferring instead the shorthand Super NES as written on many of its products such as Super NES Control Deck Super NES Controller Super NES Mouse and Super NES Multi Player Adapter 15 Japanese スーパーファミコン Hepburn Supa Famikon officially adopting the abbreviated name of its predecessor the Famicom Korean 슈퍼 컴보이 RR Syupeo Keomboi In both The Ultimate History of Video Games and Purple Reign 15 Years of the SNES the disparity in sales is directly attributed to the Super NES version lacking the excessive blood which was recolored grey and described as sweat and lacking some of the more gruesome finishing moves See the Talk page for details Some contend that Nintendo orchestrated the Congressional hearings of 1993 but Senator Lieberman and NOA s Senior Vice President later Chairman Howard Lincoln both refute these allegations 56 Unless otherwise specified kilobyte KB megabyte MB and megabit Mbit are used in the binary sense in this article referring to quantities of 1024 or 1 048 576 References Edit Retro Diary 08 November 05 December Retro Gamer No 122 December 13 2013 p 11 a b c Super Nintendo Entertainment System Platform Giant Bomb Archived from the original on March 30 2019 Retrieved August 16 2019 History Corporate Nintendo Archived from the original on September 4 2012 Retrieved February 24 2013 C Portilla November 21 2015 Los juegos mas recordados a 25 anos del lanzamiento de la Super Nintendo La Tercera Retrieved January 20 2022 Nintendo chega hoje ao mercado O Estado de S Paulo August 30 1993 Archived from the original on February 27 2014 Retrieved May 6 2018 Soglashenie Steepler i Nintendo November 1994 a b c d Consolidated Sales Transition by Region PDF Nintendo Co Ltd Archived PDF from the original on June 13 2018 Retrieved October 25 2017 a b Reisinger Don January 21 2009 Does the Xbox 360 s Lack of Longevity Matter CNET Archived from the original on December 8 2015 Retrieved October 23 2015 Wolf Mark J P November 21 2018 The Routledge Companion to Media Technology and Obsolescence Routledge ISBN 9781315442662 Archived from the original on August 1 2020 Retrieved August 16 2019 a b Niizumi Hirohiko May 30 2003 Nintendo to end Famicom and Super Famicom production GameSpot Archived from the original on January 22 2012 Retrieved July 15 2007 The Nintendo Years 1990 Edge June 25 2007 p 2 Archived from the original on August 20 2012 Retrieved June 27 2007 Platinum Titles Capcom Archived from the original on June 5 2011 Retrieved August 21 2010 Do you say NES or N E S Nintendo NSider Forums Archived from the original on May 5 2008 Retrieved September 23 2007 Additional archived pages 2 3 4 5 8 9 Pronouncing NES amp SNES GameSpot forums Archived from the original on February 14 2012 Retrieved May 16 2007 Nintendo of Europe Super Nintendo nintendo co uk Retrieved March 3 2019 SNES Development Manual PDF Archived PDF from the original on February 6 2016 Retrieved February 5 2016 a b Brian Byrne Brian 2017 History of the Super Nintendo SNES Ultimate Guide to the SNES Games amp Hardware Console Gamer Magazine p 4 ISBN 978 1549899560 Brian Byrne Brian 2017 History of the Super Nintendo SNES Ultimate Guide to the SNES Games amp Hardware Console Gamer Magazine p 5 ISBN 978 1549899560 Coelho Victor November 24 2014 Super Nintendo completa 24 anos Super Nintendo turned 24 years old Exame in Portuguese Archived from the original on November 6 2018 Retrieved June 3 2018 Sheff 1993 pp 353 356 The Genesis continued to flounder through its first couple of years on the market although Sega showed Sisyphean resolve By mid 1991 Sega had established itself as the market leader of the next generation Kent 2001 pp 413 414 Covell Chris Super Famicom August 1988 Archived from the original on May 1 2021 Retrieved March 13 2021 スーパーファミコン発売前夜 Niconico in Japanese August 1 2013 Archived from the original on July 9 2021 Retrieved March 13 2021 Covell Chris The First Super Famicom Demonstration Archived from the original on April 21 2021 Retrieved March 13 2021 Covell Chris The Second SFC Demonstration Archived from the original on February 24 2021 Retrieved March 13 2021 Kent 2001 pp 422 431 Sheff 1993 pp 360 361 Kent 2001 pp 431 433 Japan remained loyal to Nintendo ignoring both Sega s Genesis and NEC s PC Engine the Japanese name for TurboGrafx Unlike the Japanese launch in which Super Famicom had outsold both competitors combined in presales alone Super NES would debut against an established product Kristan Reed January 19 2007 Virtual Console SNES Eurogamer Archived from the original on March 4 2016 Retrieved February 12 2009 Kent 2001 p 432 Campbell Ron August 27 1991 Super Nintendo sells quickly at OC outlets The Orange County Register Last weekend months after video game addicts started calling Dave Adams finally was able to sell them what they craved Super Nintendo Adams the manager of Babbages in South Coast Plaza got 32 of the 199 95 systems Friday Based on the publication date the Friday mentioned would be August 23 1991 Super Nintendo It s Here Electronic Gaming Monthly No 28 Sendai Publishing Group November 1991 p 162 The long awaited SNES is finally available to the U S gaming public The first few pieces of this fantastic unit hit the store shelves on August 23 1991 Nintendo however released the first production run without any heavy fanfare or spectacular announcements New products put more zip into the video game market Chicago Sun Times August 27 1991 Archived from the original abstract on November 3 2012 Retrieved March 5 2010 On Friday area Toys R Us stores were expecting SNES with a suggested retail price of 199 95 any day said Brad Grafton assistant inventory control manager for Toys R Us Based on the publication date the Friday mentioned would be August 23 1991 Nintendo of America NintendoAmerica August 23 2021 On this day 30 years ago the Super Tweet via Twitter Campbell Ron August 27 1991 Super Nintendo sells quickly at OC outlets The Orange County Register Super Nintendo began showing up in Southern California stores Wednesday nearly three weeks before the official Sept 9 release date Until the official nationwide release Sept 9 availability will be limited COMPANY NEWS Super Nintendo Now Nationwide The New York Times September 10 1991 Archived from the original on August 28 2016 Retrieved August 23 2016 Phillips Tom April 11 2012 SNES celebrates 20th birthday in UK Eurogamer Archived from the original on May 14 2019 Retrieved September 13 2020 Playtronic SNES Games SNES Central Archived from the original on August 9 2014 Retrieved February 9 2015 Nintendo Brasil in Portuguese Nintendo Archived from the original on July 17 2007 Retrieved August 2 2007 Sheff 1993 p 361 Big in Japan Nintendo 64 Launches at Last Next Generation No 21 September 1996 pp 14 16 Jeremy Parish November 14 2006 Out to Launch Wii 1UP com Archived from the original on August 4 2011 Retrieved July 3 2007 Kent 2001 p 431 Sonic was an immediate hit and many consumers who had been loyally waiting for Super NES to arrive now decided to purchase Genesis The fiercest competition in the history of video games was about to begin Kent 2001 pp 448 449 Kent 2001 p 433 Hisey Pete June 1 1992 16 bit games take a bite out of sales computer games Discount Store News Kent 2001 p 496 497 The late November release of Donkey Kong Country stood in stark contrast to the gloom and doom faced by the rest of the video game industry After three holiday seasons of coming in second to Sega Nintendo had the biggest game of the year Sega still outperformed Nintendo in overall holiday sales but the 500 000 copies of Donkey Kong Country that Nintendo sent out in its initial shipment were mostly sold in preorder and the rest sold out in less than one week It Donkey Kong Country established the SNES as the better 16 bit console and paved the way for Nintendo to win the waning years of the 16 bit generation Game System Sales Newsweek January 14 1996 Archived from the original on May 13 2013 Retrieved January 21 2012 Greenstein Jane 1997 Don t expect flood of 16 bit games Video Business 1 4 million units sold during 1996 Sega farms out Genesis Television Digest March 2 1998 Sega of America sold about 400 000 16 bit consoles in N America last year based on estimates extrapolated from NPD Group s Toy Retail Statistical Tracking Service That compares with just over one million Super Nintendo Entertainment Systems SNES sold by Nintendo of America Danny Allen December 22 2006 A Brief History of Game Consoles as Seen in Old TV Ads PC World Archived from the original on May 8 2008 Retrieved July 15 2007 Classic Systems SNES Nintendo Archived from the original on December 9 2003 Retrieved January 21 2012 Pachter Michael McKay Nick Citrin Nick February 11 2014 Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc Why the Next Generation Will Be as Big as Ever Wedbush Equity Research p 36 Archived from the original on March 4 2016 Retrieved November 9 2015 Kent 2001 pp 308 372 440 441 Reeder Sara November 1992 Why Edutainment Doesn t Make It In A Videogame World Computer Gaming World p 128 Archived from the original on January 10 2020 Retrieved July 5 2014 a b Ray Barnholt August 4 2006 Purple Reign 15 Years of the SNES 1UP com p 4 Archived from the original on November 2 2012 Retrieved July 13 2007 a b c d Kent 2001 pp 461 480 nearly three to one Kent 2001 pp 491 493 496 497 Doug Trueman GameSpot Presents The History of Donkey Kong GameSpot p 4 Archived from the original on May 15 2012 Retrieved July 13 2007 Nintendo Boosts N64 Production Electronic Gaming Monthly No 93 Ziff Davis April 1997 p 22 Chris Johnston October 29 1997 Super NES Lives GameSpot Archived from the original on January 24 2012 Retrieved June 14 2007 a b Classic System Gets New Shell Electronic Gaming Monthly No 102 Ziff Davis January 1998 p 22 Yutaka Ohbuchi January 16 1998 Super Fami Gets Face Lift GameSpot Archived from the original on January 18 2012 Retrieved June 14 2007 スーパーファミコン Super Famicom in Japanese Nintendo Japan Archived from the original on August 28 2019 Retrieved May 19 2007 E3 2005 Nintendo s E3 2005 Press Conference IGN May 17 2005 Archived from the original on February 14 2012 Retrieved April 14 2007 Nintendo s classic Famicom faces end of road AFP October 31 2007 Archived from the original Reprint on May 27 2013 Retrieved November 9 2007 Gwaltney Javy Super Nintendo Games Are Coming To New Nintendo 3DS Game Informer Game Informer Archived from the original on October 18 2018 Retrieved January 21 2019 Nintendo Direct 09 04 2019 www nintendo com Archived from the original on September 4 2019 Retrieved September 10 2019 NES and Super NES Nintendo Switch Online Nintendo Switch Official site www nintendo com Archived from the original on September 9 2019 Retrieved September 10 2019 a b Fullsnes Nocash SNES Specs Archived from the original on January 2 2015 Retrieved February 6 2015 Jeremy Parish September 6 2005 PS1 10th Anniversary retrospective 1UP com Archived from the original on May 23 2011 Retrieved May 27 2007 a b Nintendo 1993 SNES Development Manual Book I Section 4 Super NES CPU Data Nintendo Archived from the original on November 28 2018 Retrieved September 11 2018 NA Need help SNES Gen 1 Video Repair more than 50 units Archived from the original on March 31 2019 Retrieved March 31 2019 Is the SNES a realible console Archived from the original on August 17 2018 Retrieved September 13 2020 Hayward Andrew March 12 2017 The Nintendo PlayStation is the coolest console never released TechRadar Archived from the original on September 12 2018 Retrieved September 12 2018 Nintendo and Sony first linked up for the Super Nintendo itself as Sony produced the S SMP sound chip for the iconic 16 bit console Nintendo 1993 SNES Development Manual Section 3 Super NES Sound Nintendo Archived from the original on November 28 2018 Retrieved September 11 2018 a b Nintendo Life July 6 2013 Soapbox Why Region Locking Is A Total Non Issue Nintendo Life Archived from the original on September 5 2015 Retrieved October 24 2015 The Ultimate Retro Console Collectors Guide Eurogamer net May 6 2012 Archived from the original on August 22 2015 Retrieved October 24 2015 Mark Knibbs December 27 1997 Disabling the SNES Super Famicom Lockout Chip Archived from the original on January 21 2003 Retrieved April 14 2007 Mark Knibbs January 25 1998 Super NES Super Famicom 50 60 Hz Switch Modification Archived from the original on May 2 2001 Retrieved April 14 2007 a b c Super Nintendo Entertainment System Nintendo Power Vol 25 Redmond Washington Nintendo of America June 1991 pp 45 46 a b Chad Margetts amp M Noah Ward May 31 2005 Lance Barr Interview Nintendojo Archived from the original on July 22 2016 Retrieved March 2 2013 Nintendo Customer Service Super Nintendo AV to TV nintendo com Archived from the original on August 5 2016 Retrieved July 22 2016 Nintendo Customer Service New Style Super NES RF to TV Hookup nintendo com Archived from the original on August 5 2016 Retrieved July 22 2016 Nintendo Support Original Style Super NES RF to TV Hookup Nintendo Archived from the original on March 10 2010 Retrieved February 28 2010 Nintendo Support New Style Super NES RF to TV Hookup Nintendo Archived from the original on May 20 2010 Retrieved June 30 2010 Nintendo Super System The Future Takes Shape Arcade Flyers Archive Archived from the original on December 3 2019 Retrieved April 19 2008 Nintendo Super System on SNES Central Archived from the original on December 3 2019 Retrieved December 3 2019 Nintendo Will No Longer Produce Coin Op Equipment Cashbox September 5 1992 Retrieved December 8 2019 Nintendo Stops Games Manufacturing But Will Continue Supplying Software Cashbox September 12 1992 Retrieved December 8 2019 Edwards Benj January 12 2007 Why Super Nintendos Lose Their Color Plastic Discoloration in Classic Machines Vintagecomputing com Archived from the original on January 1 2012 Retrieved August 19 2009 Dziezynski James October 24 2013 Retrobright Restoration Project www mountainouswords com Archived from the original on October 24 2019 Retrieved October 24 2019 Game Pak Troubleshooting Customer Service Nintendo of America Inc Archived from the original on August 14 2010 Retrieved August 23 2010 ゼルダの伝説 神々のトライフォース 取扱説明書 Nintendo Co Ltd November 21 1991 p 1 Ogasawara Nob November 1995 Future Fantasies from overseas GamePro Vol 7 no 11 San Mateo CA Infotainment World p 126 ISSN 1042 8658 Star Ocean Nintendo Power No 86 Redmond WA Nintendo of America July 1996 pp 60 61 ISSN 1041 9551 a b Top 25 Videogame Consoles of All Time IGN September 4 2009 Archived from the original on March 4 2010 Retrieved October 24 2010 Sud Koushik January 30 2006 Evolution of Controllers Advanced Media Network Archived from the original on February 7 2009 Retrieved May 25 2007 Chris Kohler September 13 2005 Controller s History Dynamite 1UP com p 4 Archived from the original on September 29 2012 Retrieved May 25 2007 Use Your Super Nintendo to Play Your Way to Perfect Health Electronic Gaming Monthly No 67 Ziff Davis February 1995 p 54 Super Nintendo SNES Controller TeeV Golf by Sports Sciences August 22 2015 via YouTube Popular Mechanics google com Hearst Magazines March 1995 Archived from the original on May 5 2016 Retrieved October 24 2015 Eric Levenson April 21 2014 Feature Remembering the Super Game Boy The Atlantic Archived from the original on October 25 2017 Retrieved July 13 2017 SNES Backup Units RED 9 Archived from the original on June 26 2007 Retrieved September 17 2007 Bivens Danny October 27 2011 Nintendo s Expansion Ports Satellaview Archived from the original on January 27 2016 Retrieved January 22 2016 Edge staff April 24 2009 The Making Of PlayStation Edge Future Publishing Archived from the original on May 16 2012 Retrieved March 7 2012 History of the PlayStation IGN August 27 1998 Archived from the original on February 18 2012 Retrieved March 8 2012 SNES Development Schematics Ports and Pinouts Archived May 4 2015 at the Wayback Machine Many carts connect only to pins 5 27 and 36 58 as the remaining pins are mainly useful only if the cart contains special chips a b c 2007 05 01 Snes9x readme txt v1 51 Snes9x Snes9x Retrieved on July 3 2007 Overload May 29 2006 Digital Signal Processing Overload s Puzzle Sheet Archived from the original on March 11 2007 Retrieved May 9 2007 Refer to the command summaries for all four DSP versions a b Nach Moe Lord Nightmare SNES Add on Chip information Archived from the original on July 8 2007 Retrieved May 9 2007 Robinson Andy February 8 2007 Nintendo Closes Nintendo Power Computer and Video Games Archived from the original on May 9 2013 Retrieved May 9 2015 EGM s Special Report Which System Is Best 1998 Video Game Buyer s Guide Ziff Davis March 1998 pp 54 55 Top Ten Consoles GameTrailers April 19 2007 Event occurs at 9 00 Archived from the original Flash video on October 1 2021 Retrieved September 14 2017 Top Ten Nintendo Systems Flash video Gametrailers March 28 2015 Event occurs at 10 48 Retrieved March 29 2015 Reisinger Don January 25 2008 The SNES is the greatest console of all time CNET Blog Network Archived from the original on February 19 2012 Retrieved October 24 2010 Greenwald Will January 28 2008 The greatest game console of all time CNET Blog Network Archived from the original on February 19 2012 Retrieved October 24 2010 Sztein Andrew March 28 2008 The Top Ten Consoles of All Time GamingExcellence Archived from the original on May 10 2012 Retrieved October 24 2010 Buffa Chris March 5 2008 Top 10 Greatest Consoles GameDaily Archived from the original on March 9 2008 Retrieved October 24 2010 Altice Nathan May 2015 I Am Error ISBN 9780262028776 Archived from the original on April 28 2016 Retrieved October 24 2015 ZSNES v1 51 Documentation ZSNES ZSNES Archived from the original on January 19 2016 Retrieved July 16 2007 Legal Information Copyrights Emulators ROMs etc Nintendo of America Archived from the original on June 18 2016 Retrieved June 14 2007 What Does This Have to Do with This Electronic Gaming Monthly No 94 Ziff Davis May 1997 p 22 Head Chris August 12 2010 Android A Gamer s Guide PCWorld Archived from the original on March 9 2012 Retrieved August 22 2010 Sorrel Charlie January 23 2008 SNES Emulator for iPhone Wired Archived from the original on March 17 2012 Retrieved August 22 2010 Sorrel Charlie June 9 2010 Video SNES for iPad Controlled by iPhone Wired Archived from the original on January 13 2012 Retrieved August 22 2010 Werner Ruotsalainen May 10 2007 The definitive guide to playing SNES games on Windows Mobile and Symbian Expert Blogs Smartphone amp Pocket PC Magazine Archived from the original on January 11 2012 Retrieved February 12 2009 Nintendo Announces SNES Mini and it ll Include Star Fox 2 Kotaku UK Archived from the original on June 27 2017 Retrieved June 26 2017 Bibliography EditKent Steven L 2001 The Ultimate History of Video Games The Story Behind the Craze that Touched our Lives and Changed the World Roseville California Prima Publishing ISBN 0 7615 3643 4 Sheff David 1993 Game Over How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry Captured Your Dollars and Enslaved Your Children First ed New York Random House ISBN 0 679 40469 4 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Super Famicom and variants Super NES Programming at Wikibooks Portals Video games Electronics 1990s Japan Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Super Nintendo Entertainment System amp oldid 1134475961, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.