Remembering the Super Nintendo: The Greatest Video Game Console Ever

Video games have been a part of our lives for almost forty years. Starting with the primitive yet endearing "Pong" right up through the modern age of massive games such as "Modern Warfare 2." While video games got their start in the arcades and have been part of home computer ownership almost from the beginning they have been best known on home consoles. Atari was the first console to see major success, but many others would enter the race and we now have the three way struggle between Nintendo's Wii, Sony's Playstation 3 and Microsoft's X-Box 360. However the greatest console ever made is not of the current generation. It dates back to 1990 and was called the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (or SNES for short.)

Nintendo had brought back the home video game industry from the brink of extinction with it's first home system in the early 1980s. The SNES doubled the processing power, allowing for 16-bit games vs. the NES and it's 8-bit system. This console didn't see a major leap in technology: 3D gaming wouldn't come about until the next generation of games and motion gaming was even further off. However what made the SNES special was that it saw the perfect refinement of what the NES had started, and it yielded many true classics as well as the first entries in many gaming staples.

The SNES brought games from the previous generation to new heights with games like "Super Mario World," "The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past," and "Super Metroid." In these and many other cases the ideas that these games had in their NES versions were greatly expanded and presented in a way that was far more visually appealing. Modern gamers may think that super-realistic 3D graphics are the only way to go but there was a unique artistic quality to the games graphics of the SNES that was far more artistic and memorable than anything that has yet been spawned in 3D. Since the games couldn't hope to look realistic the developers instead focused on creating a visual look and artistic style to the games, something rarely seen anymore.

While there weren't many genres that appeared for the first time on the SNES there were a few that made a major leap forward. Role Playing Games stopped being simplistic dungeon crawls and started to become sweeping epics with grand characters and amazing stories. Many of what are considered the best RPGs ever made were SNES exclusives, such as "Final Fantasy IV," "Secret of Mana," and "Chrono Trigger." Racing games also made a major leap. Gone were the dull turns and no true sense of speed. With it's style of graphics called "Mode 7" the SNES could create tracks for racing that truly gave the genre it's first legs. "Mario Kart" and "F-Zero" both had their first entry on this system.

Part of what truly made the SNES special was how far the technology was pushed. It was originally created to be a 16-bit system, however "Super Metroid" was able to cram 24-bits into it's gaming cartridge. A few years later the first "Donkey Kong Country" came in at a whopping 32-bits, double the capacity of what the machine was designed for. And all this was accomplished without the use of expensive adapters or add-ons. Players could simply buy the games, play them and feel like they've just taken a huge leap forward in gaming on the same system they'd enjoyed for years.

Anybody who thinks that this is just nostalgia need look no farther than the current resurgence of 2D gaming brought on by down-loadable games. Hits such as "Castle Crashers" and "Braid" have their roots very firmly in the 16-bit era of gaming. These games and many others like them have proven to be big business for modern consoles, even with gamers who weren't old enough to be playing when the SNES was king. Many of the best games from this era have been re-released on new (mostly handheld) consoles, proving the staying power of these games. And all of it is thanks to the SNES: the greatest console ever made.