Published on December 6th, 2016 | by Brando Quiring
0The Super Nintendo Classic Mini
In the wake of the release of the mini Classic NES Console, Brando wonders, why not do the same thing for the classic Super Nintendo?
Every year, there is that one item that makes its way onto every kid’s Christmas list, and they become very difficult to find. This year, I think it’s some kind of strange stuffed robot that hatches from an egg and learns to walk and talk and steal your parents’ credit card information so it can be beamed back to the mothership. But there is another item that has been released that is on the wish lists of people who may only be kids on the inside: The NES Classic Console. The NES Classic is a mini-sized Nintendo with 30 built in classic games to help us all return to those bygone days when we all sat too close to the TV and stayed up too late, trying to get past that stupid giant fish in Mario 3 or get a high score in Pac-Man.
I am not here to talk about nostalgia or give a review of a piece of hardware, however. I am here to look to the future. What could be better than an all-in-one game machine that takes you back to your childhood and the golden age of modern gaming? The era where Nintendo established market dominance over all its competitors (and put the two major ones out of business), creating a massive wave that allowed them to ride through the severe beatings they have been taking through the last couple of years. I am of course talking about the era of the Super Nintendo (SNES).
What would be cooler than an all-in-one SNES that featured all of the classic games? Games that influenced modern gaming before it became the pay-to-play shit show that it has become?
Answer: nothing.
In this author’s opinion, Nintendo is money grubbing enough that they will jump on a chance to cash in on whatever they can and a sweet SNES console would be a goldmine.
“But Brando,” you might be asking, “I can’t even think of one game that would go on this magical dream machine.” Well, Dear Reader, I am here to give you a quick rundown of what I think Nintendo should include in what would go down in history as the greatest gift to gaming since the television.
1 – Super Mario World: Automatic inclusion. It is the next step in the evolution of Nintendo’s mascot before he started driving go-karts and teaching kids how to spell.
2 – Super Metroid: Another auto include, from graphics to gameplay to soundtrack it is one of the best games ever made.
3 – Super Castlevania: Same story as Metroid. This also allows me to have three games with the word super in the title. Awesome!
4 – Super Mario Kart: Not the greatest racing game on the system, but it is a Nintendo property and it inspired some of the best party games ever.
5 – Kirby Superstar: Another Nintendo property, and easily the best Kirby game ever. Also includes the word super so, bonus points.
6 – Super Double Dragon: One of the better side-scrolling beat ’em ups out there and the pinnacle of Double Dragon. Way better than that Battletoads bullshit.
7 – Starfox: Not only a cool first party Nintendo title but also the first game on the system to use the Super FX chip that allowed for the rendering of polygons which made the games look 3D. Super awesome, minus Slippy the Frog. That guy was an asshole.
8 – Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Easily the best game in the franchise and this is a legendary effing franchise. People who haven’t played this have a real void in their lives.
9 – Donkey Kong Country: Another great Nintendo mainstay and one of the greatest platformers ever. Featuring a killer soundtrack and it being the only game in the series to actually have DK as a playable character, makes this another solid inclusion.
10 – Super Punch-Out: I have gone a few minutes without using the word super, so here we are. The first Punch-Out was legendary, and this took it to the next level.
11 – F-Zero: The best racing game on the system and the grandfather of insane, upside down 1,000 mile per hour racing games. Big, colourful and really conveyed a feeling of speed.
12 – Pilotwings: A cool little flight simulator that also showcased the SNES’ graphical muscles. Not really well known but an early title that really hooked a lot of gamers.
13 – Illusion of Gaia: One of my personal favourite games of all time and it also happens to be a great adventure game along the lines of Zelda. It features a host of real world locals and it came with a mini Nintendo Power walkthrough in order to increase magazine sales. Tricky Nintendo!
14 – Secret of Mana: This game paved the way for consol RPGs. Super bright, fun and very replayable. There are people who say it could be the greatest RPG of all time. Those people are wrong, but they still say it.
15 – Final Fantasy 3: The above game popularized RPGs. This one perfected them. An epic story combined with great graphics, memorable characters and the greatest soundtrack in the history of the universe make this an auto-include.
16 – Mega Man X2: Mega Man is the greatest hero in history, so to not include him would be a crime. This particular instalment in the franchise was action heavy and was another game that utilized some of the SNES’ hardware to render some cool scaling 3D effects. Also, one of the bosses is a robotic snail!
17 – Super Bomberman: 6 entries without the word super? Eff that! Bomberman is a great little party game that just so happens to be an awesome drinking game and would give Nintendo a chance to hose consumers down for a multi-tap expansion and 3 extra controllers.
18 – Harvest Moon: A farming simulator. Also a very cool game that flew under the radar and inspired a whole bunch of sequels.
19 – Super Street Fighter 2: The best version of the big daddy of fighting games. The best home version of it and something that had young Brando and friends swearing at each other long into the night.
20 – Final Fight 3: Not the best entry in the series, but it offered more by way of variety than Double Dragon, and featured some big, colourful graphics. It was also an SNES exclusive which helped it edge out the classic first instalment in the series.
21 – Earthbound: A game I don’t personally care for, but its impact on its genre cannot be ignored. Besides, beating up giant, sentient globs of snot with a baseball bat is pretty fun.
22 – Zombies Ate My Neighbors: A cool action shooter that flew under a lot of people’s radar, but not a title to be overlooked and its inclusion here will insure that. It was a huge game with lots of character and had a fun multiplayer mode.
23 – Super R-Type: R-Type is one of the coolest franchises in all of gaming. It features a very deep story for a space shooter and has some giant, creative bosses that will leave an impression and encourage players to explore the deeper depths of the terror that is the Bydo Empire.
24 – ActRaiser: Another unique game, this one combined some action platforming, with city construction to create an overall fun experience that hasn’t ever really been duplicated.
25 – Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts: A game that had me bouncing my controller off the floor, walls and TV. The difficulty was total bullshit, but it was an overall upgrade to a cherished classic…which also drove me into nerd rages.
26 – Yoshi’s Cookie: We delve back into first party Nintendo games with this quirky little puzzle game. It is a cross between Tetris and Columns and was lots of fun to play.
27 – Super Turrican 2: Sort of a cross between Metroid and R-Type, Turrican is a side-scrolling shooter that was easy to pick up and play and was another overlooked classic.
28 – Yoshi’s Island: I was reticent to add this to the list as the sound of crying baby Mario was the worst thing ever. I would rather watch Salo than listen to that sound…and I have actually watched Salo. But at the end of the day Yoshi’s Island is a unique game that was well made and should really be played.
29 – Terranigma: A total vanity pick, Terranigma is a great adventure game that follows a young man as he travels a scorched Earth and returns it to life. The fact it never saw an English language release outside of Europe is a crime that could be remedied with my fantasy console.
30 – Tales of Phantasia: My last pick is another one that I am including because it is a crime no one in North America originally got to play it. It is a huge game that features gorgeous, hand-drawn graphics, an intricate storyline, and even a few lines of fully voiced dialogue! This game represents the absolute maximum that the SNES was technically capable of doing and while it might not be in everyone’s preferred genre, it is worth trying for the technical achievements alone and its inclusion here would make that possible.
There you have it. 30 sweet SNES titles that shaped the face of gaming as we know it, that would all combine to create the greatest all-in-one video game console known to humankind, and would instantly make Nintendo hundreds of billions of dollars and make everyone on the Earth happy. This is clearly also the definitive list which will be released in the inevitable creation of this wonder machine, and I will expect a quarter for every unit sold as I have done all of the heavy lifting. This list really exemplifies most of the stuff that made the SNES the video game juggernaut that it was and even if the SNES Classic Console never actually becomes a reality, it might be worth your time to go out check some of these games once you are finished reading this article.
Happy Christmas shopping everyone! Please feel free to leave your own lists in the comments if you think I missed anything that deserves to be included.