This is something that I have been meaning to do for a while: highlight landmark anniversaries related to the gaming industry. Perhaps it was the date of a milestone console / game release, or maybe it was the day of a major announcement, either way I have wanted to highlight important dates in gaming for a while. Today just happens to be an important one so I figured it would be the perfect time to kick it off. It was on this day, exactly 25 years ago that Nintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in North America on August 23, 1991.
The SNES was Nintendo’s answer to the Sega Genesis and the company’s foray into the 16-bit generation of consoles. Having launched in Japan nearly a year earlier, the system entered U.S retailers with a price tag of $199.99. This was, of course, back in the day when systems included a game with your purchase, and the SNES came with what is arguably one of the best Mario games to date: Super Mario World. The launch lineup consisted of 5 titles: Super Mario World (packed in with system), F-Zero, Pilotwings, Gradius III, and SimCity. The system had a very strong shelf life, remaining in production all of the way until 1999 (2003 in Japan), selling more than 49 million systems worldwide. It would end up being the highest selling system of the fourth console generation. This include competitors such as the Sega Genesis, CD-i, Neo Geo, and the TurboGrafx-16.
I know that, at least for me, the SNES ranks as one of my all time favorite systems. There were so many games that I enjoyed during the console’s lifetime, such as A Link to the Past, Turtles in Time, and the many WWE games from Akklaim. The system also had one of the most memorable commercials in all of gaming, showcasing every kid’s dream of playing video games on a movie screen. In the case of the SNES, there was a kid playing on a drive-in movie screen. Hopefully Nintendo has some plans in the works to release an anniversary edition console, similar to their upcoming NES release in November.
If you have any memories of the SNES or the 16 bit era of gaming, feel free to share them in the comment section below.
