Now You're Playing With Power #4-Super Nintendo

My fourth entry in my Facebook blog posts was themed after the SNES. This was when I finally settled on the name "Now You're Playing With Power," a name I would keep until I gave up on writing. It was the 20th anniversary of one of the best consoles of all time and nothing I wrote really could do the system justice, but I sure did try. Seeing my old room when I was living with my parents and seeing my very small collection brings back a lot of memories. Not only that, but the SNES brings a lot of memories as well. Like I mention, this was the first console I ever owned (I still have it after 15 years or so and it still works!) and my childhood rushes back to my face every time I plug it back in and play a game. But before that, here is a commercial for the SNES and Super Mario World. Rarely does a commercial sum up a game well, but this one did. 

In honor of another anniversary this week's topic is the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES).

My SNES with 3 of the launch games: Super Mario World, PilotWings, and the Mode 7-alicious F-Zero.

History

In the late '80s Nintendo's first home console the NES continued to dominate the video game market. To counter this, companies like Sega and NEC launched their 16-bit Genesis and TurboGraphx-16 respectively to compete with the 8-bit NES. Even though the Genesis was more powerful than the NES, Sega didn't start seeing success until years after their 16-bit console was released. Once Nintendo saw that the Genesis was becoming popular they decided to step up their game and release their own Super Nintendo on August 23rd, 1991. The Super Nintendo became instantly popular and it and the Genesis were in steady competition to win over fans. This began what is now known as the Console Wars. Eventually the SNES won the competition, but that is a story for another day.

Now You're Playing With Power, Super Power

So what did it take for a console to be 'super'? Was it an incredible library of games? Was it new technology? Prettier graphics and sound? Whatever the answer was the Super Nintendo had it. At the time, people were used to games only looking as good as the NES could make them. Then came along the SNES and blew everyone away. The SNES had the capacity to show more colors, more detailed sprites could be on the screen at once, the sound was better, games could be bigger, etc. It was an incredible step-up from its predecessor and what many people consider one of the greatest if not THE greatest console ever released.

A Bit More of What You Want

Of course you can't have a great console without great games. Luckily, SNES had them. Right at the start SNES had games that presented what this new console was all about. Super Mario World and Gradius III showed games what their old NES favorites could look like. F-Zero and PilotWings displayed one of the biggest technical step-ups from previous consoles: "Mode 7". "Mode 7" refers to a graphic-rendering technique that made games look more realistic by letting developers rotate and pan environments and sprites. At the time this was groundbreaking and incredibly innovative.

Over the SNES' life cycle many great games were released that still show up in top games of all time lists today. The SNES brought new franchises that would eventually become fan favorites like the aforementioned F-Zero and PilotWings, Donkey Kong Country, Star Fox and many more. It also upgraded classic NES franchises like Super Mario, Metroid and The Legend of Zelda. 

My pretty small collection of SNES games include some of the best the system had to offer.

Cool Peripherals

 The SNES had a few really cool peripherals like the Super Game Boy, which allowed you to play Game Boy games on your TV, the Mario Paint mouse that let you play...well...Mario Paint. The super gigantic Super Scope let you play games like Super Scope 6 and Yoshi's Safari. Unfortunately, these were only used with a handful of games each and didn't get too much of a chance to shine.

The Super Game Boy (right) let you play your Game Boy games on your TV and the Mario Paint mouse let you play Mario Paint.Playing games with guns is for wimps. Winners play them with ginormous bazookas!Why play Pokemon on a tiny black-and-white screen when you can play them in color on your TV...also comes with custom edges depending on what game you are playing.

FUN FACTS

• Super Mario Kart was the very first racing game with weapons.
• Star Fox was originally just a tech demo to showcase the Super FX chip, but later became a full game.
• The SNES controller was the first to have 4 face buttons-something that is still used today.
• The SNES controller was also the first to have left (L) and right (R) shoulder buttons. Something which is also still used today.
• Mortal Kombat II was released for the SNES and Sega Genesis and it pretty much started the ESRB.
• Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto strongly disliked the 3d-rendered graphics of Donkey Kong Country, but then later went on to make Yoshi's Story with the same kind of graphics.
• The US, Europe and Japan all have different SNES models.
• The SNES plastic is inflammable. The material used to do this causes many SNES consoles to turn yellow.
• The SNES is often considered to be one of the best if not THE best console ever released!
• The SNES was the first console I owned. I've had it for 12 years and it still works like a charm and refused to turn yellow!