A Salute to Nintendo: Part IV: Super Nintendo

Most of you have heard of a Super Nintendo. It's a Nintendo... but super. It was released in 1990, and even though it was released later than the Sega Genesis and Turbo Grafx-16, it outsold both of them. Now, it had stiff competition against Sega in what was called the console wars.

At first, the Sega Genesis competed against the NES, and it had superior sound and better graphics than it. Despite this, the Mega Drive was ignored in Japan. Some positive information came out of magazines, but Sega shipped under one million units in the first year. In order to sell more units, Sega tried some risky moves, including creating an online banking system and answering machine called the Sega Anser and several peripherals and games. The Mega Drive remained a distant third in Japan behind the Super NES and NEC's Turbo Grafx 16 throughout the era.

It was an instant success: Nintendo's initial shipment sold out within hours. With the Super Famicom quickly outselling its rivals, Nintendo reasserted itself as the leader of the console market. Nintendo's success was partially due to its retention of most of its key third-party developers from its earlier system, including Capcom, Konami, and Tecmo.

Sega of America instituted a two-part approach to build sales in that region. The first part involved a marketing campaign to challenge Nintendo head-on and emphasize the more arcade-like experience available on the Genesis, summarized by the slogan "Genesis does what Nintendon't". The second part, since Nintendo owned the console rights to most arcade games of the time, involved creating a library of instantly-recognizable titles by contracting with celebrities and athletes to produce games using their names and likenesses; Joe Montana Football and others stemmed from this initiative. Nevertheless, it had a hard time overcoming Nintendo's presence in the consumer's home.

All versions of the SNES are gray, although the shade may differ. The original North American version has a boxy design with purple sliding switches and a dark gray eject lever. The Japanese and European versions are more rounded, with darker gray accents and buttons. All versions have a top-loading slot for game cartridges, although the shape of the slot differs between regions to match the different shapes of the cartridges.

The SNES controller adds two additional buttons to the design of the NES controller, arranging the four in a diamond shape, and has two shoulder buttons. The Japanese and PAL region versions incorporate the system's logo in the colors of the four action buttons, while the North American version colors them lavender and purple to match the redesigned console and gives the lighter two a concave rather than convex top. Several later consoles have elements of their controller design from the SNES, including the PlayStation, PS2, PS3, Dreamcast, Xbox, Xbox 360, GameCube Game Boy Player, NES 2, and Wii (Classic Controller).

49 million SNES units were sold worldwide, with 23 million of those units sold in the Americas. Although it could not repeat the success of the NES, which sold 61 million units worldwide, the Super NES was the best-selling console of its era. The Genesis came in second with 29 million sold worldwide, and the TurboGrafx-16 was third with 10 million sold worldwide.

Well, even with lots of competition, it was pretty good! You can't mess with Nintendo! :-)

Coming up next, the first Nintendo console with a control stick, the Nintendo 64! Also, it has most of the first 3D games for Zelda, Mario, and other Nintendo series! Stay Tuned!