The Super Nintendo Entertainment System,
or SNES for short, is arguably one of the best consoles ever released.
To this day it has remained a cornerstone of gaming for well over two
decades, living on through emulation (despite Nintendo’s persistent
fight against ROM sites) and most recently Nintendo’s own Virtual Console releases and SNES Mini
plug-n-play console.
It not only carried on classic franchises from the 8-bit NES era, such
as Metroid, Zelda and Super Mario, but improved upon these classic games
in ways that cemented their status in pop culture forever. It even gave
birth to new franchises such as Star Fox and F-Zero, that still live on
today in some form.
Personally the SNES was part of my introduction into the world of
video games. In addition to playing classic DOS games on my dad’s PC,
the SNES was my mother’s foray into video gaming and one of the perks of
growing up with separated parents was that I got exposed to both things
at once. I would play DOS games while at my father’s place and while at
home the SNES was my go-to source of interactive electronic
entertainment.
So as a nostalgic celebration of this legendary console, I will be
listing my personal top 10 games for the SNES. Keep in mind that if your
favorite game is not on this list, it does not in any way mean that
game is bad, it simply means the game is not one of my favorites. The
SNES has one of the best game libraries in the world and with so many
great titles to choose from, no matter what you do a lot is going to be
left out. So without further ado, let’s get to the meat. Here are my top
10 best SNES games of all time.
10 X-ZONE
If you own a Super Scope, and have grown tired of the pack-in “Super
Scope 6” cartridge, I highly recommend giving X-Zone from Kemco a try.
At heart it’s pretty much a straight up light gun railshooter, where the
entire goal is to make it to the end of the game in one piece.
A unique feature of the game is that it uses the Super Scope’s cursor
button to display a cursor on screen as opposed to using the Super
Scope’s actual scope. This means you don’t necessarily need to hold the
Super Scope on your shoulder, but can hold it more like a rifle and aim
with the on-screen cursor. The on-screen cursor is necessary in either
case for firing your secondary weapon. A key feature of the game is that
you can target enemies’ weakpoints and fire missiles at them when you
let go of the fire button. Mastering this game mechanic is pretty much
key to winning the game on Hard mode, which is what you need to do in
order to get the best ending.
The game sports some pretty impressive graphics for the console, with
an airdiving stage opening the game and utilizing the SNES’ great Mode 7
graphics to an impressive effect, similar to Pilotwings. It also
features a pretty rocking soundtrack. If anything is holding it back in
particular I would say it’s a bit short, but being more of an arcade
game, it can be forgiven and is pretty fun to play through once in a
while.
What I like the most about the game is that while playing it I sort
of go into a trance-like zen state of just killing everything on screen,
and it feels strangely satisfying. The game throws a constant barrage
of enemies at you, with your survival dependent on how quickly you can
shoot everything flying at you before it hits you and takes away
precious shield energy. Enemies will drop frequent P symbols though,
which you can shoot to recharge your shield a bit.
9 THE MAGICAL QUEST STARRING MICKEY MOUSE
Disney was an absolutely massive part of my childhood. As a child of
the 90’s I grew up right in the middle of the Disney renaissance, with
great movie after great movie coming out and the Disney TV shows airing
on Saturday mornings. So it goes without saying there was a fair bit of
Disney on the video game market as well. Capcom was mostly in charge of
these games, as they had been during the 8bit era as well, and their
pedigree for quality was practically unmatched at the time. Disney chose
their developers wisely during this era and it shows.
There are a ton of great Disney games on the SNES, with movie tie-ins
such as Aladdin and The Lion King being particularly memorable. But one
of the Disney games that I played the most growing up was The Magical
Quest, starring the one and only Mickey Mouse.
The premise of the game is that Pluto has been taken by the evil
emperor Pete to his castle, and Mickey must go to rescue him. He’s not
alone however, and aided by a magician and his trusty friends Goofy and
Donald, Mickey soon gains an arsenal of costumes that give him different
abilities to overcome the challenges ahead of him.
The game features a lot of different gameplay elements that keeps it
constantly fresh and challenging. It’s not a massive game and can be
completed in one sitting, but it has some of the best music, graphics
and level design of its era and all with the distinct Capcom style that
their games had during this era.
The game doesn’t really follow any specific Disney IP but it feels
very inspired by the short films with Mickey and Pete, and feels more
like its own original story, which I like since it puts it on its own
compared to tie-in games. I definitely recommend giving it a try if
you’re a Disney fan like me and need something to play that’s a bit
different than Aladdin or The Lion King.
8 STAR FOX
During the SNES era, most games on the console were 2D and while the
SNES was capable of delivering pseudo-3D effects such as Mode 7 which
was used to great effect in games like F-Zero, Pilotwings, Super Mario
Kart and the SNES port of Doom, it was widely believed that true
real-time 3D rendering was impossible on the console. That’s until the
folks at Argonaut came up with a brilliant idea. The idea was to instead
of relying on the SNES’ CPU to do the 3D, they would create a
specialized co-processor that would do the actual 3D graphics,
essentially making the Super FX chip the first industry standard GPU. It
allowed the creation of what initially started as a tech demo for this
new chip, Star Fox.
Star Fox eventually grew into a game of its own, utilizing the Super
FX chip to create graphics that up until this point had never been seen
on the SNES, using shaded polygons to create 3D shapes that would make
up the game’s world and creatures. It achieved this while maintaining a
mostly acceptable framerate and the game itself is a pretty good game
all things considered and not just a tech demo.
It follows the exploits of the Star Fox crew, a team of ace pilots
consisting of Fox McCloud (the main character), Falco Lombardi, Peppy
Hare and Slippy Toad, lead by general Pepper. All of the characters are
anthropomorphic animals who speak in a sort of gibberish language due to
the SNES’ limited audio capabilities (although the game does feature
actual speech samples at several points). The game is a straight up rail
shooter, where you go through levels while avoiding obstacles, shoot
enemies and do your best to stay alive until you face the level boss and
head on to the next level, until you reach the final boss, Andross.
Back in the day, whenever I wanted to show off what the SNES could
do, this was always the game I would show to friends, rather proudly as I
didn’t have any more advanced consoles at the time. To this day I am
still amazed by what this game pulled off on a console that shouldn’t be
able to do what it did, and the Star Fox series is now one of my
favorite Nintendo franchises, and possibly a major reason why I later
became a part of the furry fandom (I also blame Sonic SatAm for this).
7 SUPER MARIO KART
Before 1993’s Star Fox amazed us with its true 3D rendering wizardry
thanks to its Super FX chip, there were a few other games that equally
impressed gamers with more pseudo-3D effects. Mode 7 was a central part
of several SNES titles, most notably F-Zero, Pilotwings and this one,
which is the one I’ve played the most and have the strongest personal
relationship with.
It was a game my mother picked up on a road trip, and it quickly
became one of the most played games on our console, thanks in large part
due to the fact we didn’t really have any racing games on it. I spent
so much time with this game that I eventually beat it on the 150cc mode,
a feat I remain somewhat proud of to this day and even playing it for
this list, I managed to beat the 100cc mode easily. That is until I got
to the special cup and its expert-level tracks that I felt a bit too
rusty to deal with. At least I got a sweet screenshot from the first
Rainbow Road track in the series in all its Mode 7 glory.
If you have never played Mario Kart, or only
recently got into it,
then this is probably a good game to check out since it was the very
beginning of the franchise. As such it has very different gameplay
compared to later titles, but several fun multiplayer modes, and a lot
of unique elements that would never show up in the series for a long
time, such as the feather powerup and gathering coins. In my opinion it
remains extremely playable today, and is probably the most accessible
racing game on the SNES.
6 TERRANIGMA
The SNES is probably one of the best consoles for the RPG genre, with
games such as Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI being some of the
biggest classics on the console that remain widely enjoyed today. My
personal favorite action RPG on the SNES however is a little game called
Terranigma. It shares similar themes to a couple other games, Soul
Blazer and Illusion Of Gaia. All of these games were developed by the
same team, Quintet, and are widely considered part of a spiritual
trilogy.
That being said, if you are going to play one of these games I highly
recommend Terranigma as it is the one that has grabbed my attention the
most. It’s arguably one of the biggest and deepest games on the SNES,
with an epic story that spans space and time and history itself, telling
an alternate Earth history unlike any I’ve experienced before. You play
as Ark, a young boy and a bit of a troublemaker who lives in the
underworld, one day finds a box hidden away in his Elder’s basement.
Upon opening the box, he sets in motion the awakening of the surface
world, which at this point is an uninhabitable wasteland.
The story is told extremely well through its dialogue and grabbed me
unlike most games of this era ever has. The game has some of the best
music and visuals of its era, using sometimes digitized real photographs
for its artwork. It’s honestly one of the most engrossing games I’ve
ever played and while I have yet to beat it, I can honestly say it’s one
of my favorite games on the SNES and if you’re at all a fan of 16-bit
action RPG’s, then please give this game a try. I can promise you won’t
regret it. Sadly the game was never released in the US, only Japan and
Europe, so finding a copy might be a bit difficult if you live in the
US, but no matter how you choose to play it, it’s worth playing for
sure.
5 WARIO’S WOODS
Growing up, Wario’s Woods was my mother’s game of choice, which is
understandable given her taste in gaming has always been on the casual
side (she’s pretty much exclusively a mobile gamer nowadays) which is a
massive difference from myself. But this game is something both she and I
enjoyed immensely growing up, and one we’ve both gotten really good at.
It’s basically a puzzle game where you have to match 3 or more
monsters of the same color then use a bomb of the same color to blow
them up until all the monsters are destroyed, while trying to keep a
massive Thwomp from crushing you as it moves lower and lower the more
monsters are on the level. Some monsters will require special tricks to
destroy such as non-standard patterns or destroying twice. While you’re
playing, two different creatures will be shown on top of the screen. A
fairy and some kind of insect (a fly maybe). The fairy will spawn bombs
for you to use but the fly will spawn more monsters to destroy. In the
“Round Game” mode, the fairy belongs to Birdo who cheers you on, while
the fly belongs to Wario who kind of just wants to screw your day over.
The game features several modes, both for multiplayer and single player.
The “VS Com” mode where you have to clear your screen before the
computer opponent does. You face increasingly difficult levels and
increasingly skilled players until you eventually face off with Wario
himself, who serves as the final opponent, after which you beat the
game.
The “VS 2P” mode is similar to “VS Com” except you play against a
human opponent, choosing a skill level, amount of monsters and so forth
before seeing who can clear their screen first.
The “Round Game” is a mode where you finish increasingly difficult levels with nothing to worry about save for screwing it up.
“Time Race” is a mode where you simply try to finish levels as fast as possible, and get graded based on how fast you are.
Finally there’s a “Lesson” mode where you can learn the game’s
mechanics through different challenges which is great to introduce
beginners to the game.
If you’re a fan of classic puzzle games such as Tetris and Dr. Mario,
definitely give Wario’s Woods a try. I can’t tell you how many hours I
have spent playing it but it’s incredibly addictive. Unfortunately I
haven’t seen the SNES version on the Virtual Console, only the NES
version, which I find strange as it is inferior to the SNES version in
every way, but has the distinction of being the last official NES game
ever released, for whatever it’s worth.
4 TMNT IV – TURTLES IN TIME
It’s probably as difficult imagining the early 90’s without the
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as it is imagining the 80’s without Duran
Duran. They were pop culture icons, omnipresent in our collective youth
to the point where I don’t think anyone I knew hadn’t either watched the
animated series, bought the toys or played the games. And TMNT IV is
probably the one we all played the most, not just among my friends but
in general.
To this day it remains one of the best arcade ports ever, to the
point where it even surpassed it, adding new mechanics, new stages and
being just all around a superior experience. This was the era that to a
lot of gamers cemented Konami as one of the best developers of their
era, with titles like this, TMNT Tournament Fighters and Super
Castlevania IV. And I probably don’t need to go into what Konami is to
gamers nowadays…
Regardless, if you’re looking for a fun 2 player co-op brawler, you
really REALLY can’t go wrong with TMNT IV. It features some of the best
music on the SNES, some of the most fun gameplay, the best stages and of
course, some of the most iconic characters of its decade. It’s not
without reason this game has remained a popular cult classic, to the
point it received a rather disappointing remake not too long ago. So
instead of playing that, just grab some pizza, a friend or two and pop
this cartridge in for some good times. Cowabunga!
3 B.O.B.
I will admit, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a top 10 list with this
game and probably for a good reason. A lot of my love for this game is
tied to my own nostalgia and memories of playing the absolute crap out
of this game back in the day.
Before the days of the internet and access to pretty much every game
ever made for a system, you were often stuck with what you had, and
you’d get good at what you had because it was all you had. B.O.B. is
such a game for me. It was included with the system my mother bought and
of course, having already played Duke Nukem on my dad’s DOS PC, I
really fell for its sci-fi aesthetic and run’n’gun gameplay.
Story-wise the game is dead simple and almost hilarious in how
arbitrary it feels. It’s about a teenage robot going on a date. He takes
his dad’s car, crashes on an alien planet, has to make his way to find
another ride using an arsenal of powerful weapons and gadgets he picks
up on the way, and that’s the entire setup for the game. I swear I’m not
making it up. And the story has practically no impact on the gameplay
itself, it’s just an excuse for the character to do this stuff. Though I
find it hilarious that this character is doing mass genocide of alien
creatures in order to go on a date with another robot. Can robots
procreate? Is this turning into Blade Runner? Eh, let’s just not read
too deeply into this…
2 SUPER MARIO ALL-STARS
The concept of HD remakes is pretty common today but the concept
itself is hardly new to gaming as a whole. Already back in the early
90’s, Nintendo released probably the most famous example of an early HD
remake, Super Mario All-Stars, a 16-bit collection of the first 3 Super
Mario Bros. titles, including both the international and Japan versions
of Super Mario Bros. 2, all remade with 16 bit graphics and sound. Later
copies even included the 4th game, Super Mario World, making it one of
the most substantial game packages of its time.
It’s probably needless to say how big Mario was at the time. He was
practically the face of console gaming itself, having saved the US from a
home console video game crash in the 80’s. And all of his titles are
some of the most solid platformers ever released. The Mario games have a
unique quality to them, an almost kinetic connection with your
controller and Mario on the screen. Super Mario World in particular is
the game I probably played the most growing up, and to this day it
remains my absolute favorite in the franchise. But in my opinion all 4
of these games are absolute classics that everyone should play at some
point.
1 SUPER METROID
My first experience playing Super Metroid was ironically not growing
up. It came much later, when I was in my teens and had just started
getting into emulation and exploring games that I had never had the
chance to play growing up. And Super Metroid became the strongest
experience I had coming from this time in my life.
The only enduring image I had of Super Metroid was from an ad poster
that came with one of our games growing up, and it was the image above,
the statue of the four bosses. This image evoked a lot in me when I
looked at it, most of all it envoked a deep curiousity. What type of
game was this, who were these creatures, what was it about? All of these
questions became answered much later when I finally sat down to play
Super Metroid after a decade of waiting.
I had probably never felt so deeply engrossed in a 16 bit game
before. I mean, sure, I had played the crap out of other SNES games
before this, but Metroid was something else.
The atmosphere. The story that was told exclusively through visual
cues, without a single word of dialogue. The amazing soundtrack filled
with industrial sounds and haunting melodies. Foreboding levels that
seemed daunting yet inviting. The unforgettable boss fights that had all
kinds of hidden strategies in them.
And that moment when you’re about to die at the hands of Mother
Brain, when the titular Super Metroid sacrifices its life to save you…
All of this added up to make what in my eyes is the best Super Nintendo
game ever made.
I’ve played a lot of SNES games, but none feel as complete, cohesive
and all around solid as Super Metroid does. It feels purposeful, like
nothing is wasted. It creates such a massive vast world within itself
that feels alive and real despite using only 2D art and 16 bit sound.
It’s a testament to how a strong vision can often be more important than
hardware, when the vision dictates the hardware and uses it to its
absolute fullest potential. It didn’t rely on a Super FX chip, it didn’t
rely on Mode 7. It was all done in 2D with the SNES’ best strengths in
mind. It shows off what was really possible on the system, and for that,
I consider it the best.
