No way I crack 10 on this one, but my roommate in the mid-'90s had an old SNES that we played on a lot.
What are yours?
This will be my easiest list. Because while the PS2 arguably has the widest list of great games, this has some of my favorites
I could easily go 20.
Secret of Mana, Super Mario RPG, Donkey Kong Country, Final Fantasy IV, Super Empire, Yoshi’s Island, Kirby, F-Zero, Castlevania. To say nothing of cross platform games like NBA Jam, Earthworm Jim, Street Fighter, all of which I am saving for the Sega Genesis (because that’s where I played them.
If pressed, and I had to choose PS2 or SNES? I’d tab the SNES
Yeah, this is the easiest one to get to 10. Let’s go with:
I could go another 20 deep pretty easily… this is pretty easily my favorite library for any console, whether or not it’s actually the best (and it may be that, as well).
Lufia 2 is an underrated gem, and probably would have made my list if I could have remembered it a little better.
SNES was my time waster of choice in college, so this is pretty easy:
And that’s it - I had more games but I really only needed those five.
Y’all need some Kirby in your lives (except Craig, you’re good people).
Crap. I got to 10 and somehow spaced on Super Mario RPG, so had to drop Kirby Super Star.
Amen. I mean, it certainly helped that my next console was a Nintendo 64 and then I went PC for a couple generations but even going back now the SNES library holds up amazingly well.
This was the era, for me, where PC gaming just looked and sounded so much better. We were in a post-Star Control 2 era here on the PC, where music and sound effects got so much better than the midi-music you got on the SNES. That’s not to say that the compositions in these games weren’t great. Modern symphony orchestra versions of these tunes prove that the underlying music was brilliant, but hampered by the technology that was blip-blopping them out of the speakers.
Plus I always hated the d-pad, compared to the joystick on the PC, as well as joysticks in arcades. Graphics and sound were also much better in arcades and on PC.
Now, with all that said, I did go back and play some SNES games on an emulator on a modded Xbox years later.
I played all the way through ChronoTrigger, which was excellent. I got part of the way through Final Fantasy 6, which was also really good. I also started Super Metroid, which seemed really boring to me, as did the Super Mario World games.
During the era of the SNES itself though, there was one game that captured my attention despite loving Star Control 2 and others on the PC, and that game was Star Fox. It played and sounded more like an arcade game. I just wish I didn’t have to play it on a damn d-pad.
Well, keep in mind I played it years later on an emulator in 2003. Plus it wasn’t until a few years later when Braid came out that I finally saw the appeal of 2D platformers. And I didn’t start loving them until even later when Rayman Origins came out and showed me the error of my ways, and the recent release of Ori and the Blind Forest reaffirmed that.
Ha, well I’ll give you some slack. It’s just that if I were to make a list of my 10 favorite games of all time, Metroid would have at least two entries (including the #2 slot), so they’re really my thing.
I also didn’t play Super Metroid, or most of the SNES catalogue, until years later myself. Aside from the Super Star Wars and Mario games, most of the games I listed I played in college or later. I had a Genesis at the time, and only 1 friend with a SNES. I think, of my list, the only ones I played when the system was a going concern were Super Mario World, Super Return of the Jedi, Mega Man X, and Star Fox. I played some of my ‘honorable mentions’ like Donkey Kong, Kirby and Yoshi. But the RPGs especially were much later.
Put it this way, when I played a Metroid game for the first time in 2003, a game from that series would hold my top game of all time for a decade, until EU IV came out.
I recommend you give Super Metroid another try then. It still holds up. I’m also writing you a prescription for Shovel Knight, which could have been released in the SNES era, and probably would be close to a top 10 game.
Totally forgot about the Super Star Wars series, those were great fun. But I’ve got to get something off my chest - while I loved Super Empire Strikes Back, it’s always kind of bugged me that Luke spends the entire game running around in his orange flight suit, even fights Vader in Cloud City while wearing it. And that’s just wrong, man.
Also forgot Chrono Trigger! But to be honest I love my DS version even more, great to play on the go.
I still own my SNES and 6 of these carts! Wish I hadn’t gotten rid of the others.
I guess I could add Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6 and Final Fantasy 5 but I didn’t play those until a few years later on the PSOne. And the DS versions were better.
The SNES had an incredible library all along but Super Metroid just blew my mind. It was, at that point, the most atmospheric game I had played. The graphics were sharp, control was on the money, and the gameplay was so enthralling. And the music was amazing (I also loved the original Metroid’s soundtrack). I really liked the two GBA Metroid games, Fusion and the remake of the first, but they were nowhere as memorable as Super Metroid.
Keeping in mind that my cousin was the one with an SNES (I was a Genesis kid), and thus I only ever got to play it while visiting family in Louisiana, and even then, only when he’d let me. . .
I somehow never played any of the SNES Zeldas, Fantasies Final, or Metroids, believe it or not. He didn’t like those games, so I didn’t know they existed :(
SNES? It’s all about Plok! Strange platformer with fantastic music.
I had Genesis instead of SNES so this is what I played at my friend’s houses
Zelda: A Link to the Past - the reigning franchise champ for me (note: I have never played the newest Zelda).
Final Fantasy VI
Chrono Trigger - the console’s two best RPGs. It was in the SNES era that I started to grow out of liking JRPGs. There were plenty of them to play, certainly. But I got sick of all the bland mechanics and frankly bland stories. Neither of these is a great game mechanically, although VI is decent. But they both scored with stories and with having strong open-ended sections. With VI it’s in a classically western RPG sense. After you destroy the floating island, and get through the wake-up vignette, the world is basically open to you. Tehre’s rumors about where some of your former companions might be, not to mention all the horrors that have been unleashed on a now broken world. It’s up to you to start putting it back together. As for Trigger, the time travel worked out surprisingly well. The lack of console traditional “pop up” battles also helped a lot. Great story. I don’t think Square has ever been better than these games.
Lufia II - another RPG that had some interesting ideas. I can’t recall if there was some randomness the properties of some found items or not. But it felt like it at the time. And often the equipment decisions were actually interesting, since you could use a lesser item because of some enchantment it had that provided a key boost (like fire damage on a sword, but there was a lot more). I also really enjoyed both the puzzles and the fact that enemies were wandering around in the dungeon maps and you could avoid them.
Seventh Saga - super difficult, but arguably one of the most innovative titles on the system. You select one of seven recruits who were searching the world for seven runes, in an attempt to save the world from foozle. What made the game interesting was the fact that (1) a traitor is chosen from among 5 of the companions at the start (less if you play someone on the sublist) who hires a bounty hunter to pursue the others. (2) You have to compete with the other searches at times. And in a move that was similar to Wizardry 7, you could show up at the original locations of the runes and find they had already been obtained by other characters. The runes themsleves gave you stat boosts and powers as I recall. It’s unfortunate that the game required a shitload of grinding, even for an rpg.
Act Raiser - ok, this is on my top games list but I think it’s time we talked about the fact that it’s arguably a mediocre game. It has an super-light city building layer. That layer does feed into the platforming sections slightly but it’s nothing amazing. The platforming is decent, nothing great. But it’s not like citybuilding was a big thing on consoles at the time, and the genre-blending is still interesting and pretty ground breaking for the two genres. This is the sort of formula I wish more Indies would jump into on PC. There’s so much room here.
Evermore - I liked this more than Secret of Mana, a game it closely resembles. I cannot recall why.
Super Soccer - an amazing, arcade-leaning soccer game. I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed a soccer game as much as this. It had great actions where you could really bend balls and do lots of interesting things on set pieces. The star players were real weapons who could evade tackles (although you wanted to be careful pressing your luck). The implementation of certain formations in the game made for unexpected, but interesting, challenges (e.g. 5-back sweeper formations had the sweeper playing VERY deep and basically saving balls the keeper would miss). And the beating the secret team (a classic Nintendo trope in some sports games) was so hard, but felt so good when you did it. The Madden games never translated well to SNES but it had other worthwhile sports games. this was the best.
Super Metroid - the first game, times a thousand.
Super Mario World - actually this was also the system where I stopped caring about Pure Platformers. Although I would enjoy some later (e.g. Mario 64, Banjoe 64), this was my favorite. Quite the launch title.
Ogre Battle - I loved so much about this game. the intricate class promotion system. The decisions on how to build units. Parceling out item drops as needed. Solving each map’s new tactical challenge. The alignment system was all wonky. Who cares. This is a game that needs both a modern re-birthing as well as an interesting strategic layer. Someone get on that, please.
Soul Blazer - I was so hopeful this would be a proper followup to Act Raiser but it wasn’t, exactly. But I liked the mechanic of having to free villagers from inside the dungeons, and this gated some of your progression (e.g. gear). And I still wound up enjoying it tremendously. Although I suspect it could have used some Zelda like mechanics. Or it had some and I’m not remembering.
NCAA Basketball - it was one of the systems’ weird “blue background” sports games. But it was really fun. A friend and I had such epic games with it. And you could basically make out a lot of real world stars looking at Rosters even through the stats didn’t fully align. E…g this was Mark Randal led-Kansas. That was Todd Day lead Arkansas. Blades of Steel wound up sucking but this game was amazing.
My list is a little weird. the ones I played emulated have an asterisk. I had weird taste in my mid early teens:
Super Metroid
Super Mario World
Zelda LttP
Wing Commander
Lemmings
Sim City
Wonder Project J *
Cybernator
Shin Megami Tensei II *
Clock Tower *
I will admit that Bomberman and MK2 are featured because I played them SO MUCH in my college dorm room with other people on my floor.
