50 Fun Facts About Super Nintendo (SNES)

Which rival console grew out of a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES that Nintendo walked away from?

PlayStation began as a CD drive planned for the Super NES. After Nintendo publicly switched partners in 1991, the jilted firm rebuilt the project as a standalone console.

The SNES version of Mortal Kombat swapped the arcade game's red blood for gray drops of what?

Sweat stood in for blood under Nintendo's family-friendly rules, which also toned down the Fatalities. A Game Genie code could turn the gray drops red again.

Why did Nintendo deliver the first SNES consoles to Japanese shops in the middle of the night?

To avoid robbery, Nintendo moved its launch stock after dark, because the shipment had caught the attention of yakuza gangs. All 300,000 consoles sold out within hours.

Which platform game came packed in with the SNES in North America and became the console's best seller?

Super Mario World sold more than 20 million copies, a total helped by its place in the box with the console. No other game on the system reached 11 million.

Which company's Genesis console fought the Super NES in the 16-bit console war of the early 1990s?

Sega pitched the Genesis as the cool console for older players and attacked its rival in aggressive ads. Neither machine kept a clear lead for several years.

The gray plastic casing of many early SNES consoles turns which color as it reacts with air?

Yellow creeps in because the ABS plastic in some early casings oxidizes on contact with air. Fans reverse it with retrobrighting, a chemical treatment set off by UV light.

Which manga artist designed the characters for the SNES role-playing game Chrono Trigger?

Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball, drew the heroes, monsters and vehicles and set the look of each era. He was billed as part of a Dream Team with the makers of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.

Which SNES racing game began a long-running series and introduced the track Rainbow Road?

Super Mario Kart was the first game in its series, with eight playable characters. Rainbow Road, the final track of its Special Cup, became a fixture of the sequels.

Which pair of controls did the SNES controller add to the simpler layout of the NES gamepad?

Shoulder buttons joined a pad that also doubled the face buttons to four, set in a diamond. Dreamcast and Xbox controllers later borrowed elements of the design.

Which arcade fighting hit came to the SNES first and became its best-selling third-party game?

Street Fighter II sold more than 6.3 million SNES cartridges, the most of any game from an outside publisher. Genesis owners waited more than a year for their own version.

Which cartridge-based console replaced the SNES as its maker's flagship home system in 1996?

Nintendo 64 kept game cartridges at a time when rivals were moving to CDs, a choice that proved controversial. Nintendo did not discontinue the SNES until 1999.

Under what name did the SNES first go on sale in Japan in November 1990?

Super Famicom took the shortened nickname of its predecessor, the Family Computer. The Japanese model's four colored face buttons were worked into the system's logo.

The SNES's Mode 7 graphics made racing games feel 3D by doing what to a flat background layer?

Rotating and scaling it line by line gives one flat layer the look of ground stretching to the horizon. Role-playing games used the same effect for their overworld maps.

Which SNES adapter cartridge lets players run Nintendo's monochrome handheld titles on a television?

Super Game Boy maps the handheld's four shades of green to colors on the TV and can frame the picture with a decorative border. It reached shops in 1994.

Which bazooka-shaped wireless light gun did Nintendo release for the SNES in 1992?

Super Scope runs on six AA batteries and aims through an infrared receiver placed on top of the television. Only twelve games were ever compatible with it.

North American SNES pads traded the Japanese version's four button colors for two shades of what?

Purple A and B buttons and lavender X and Y buttons matched the redesigned North American console. Japan and Europe kept four colors, which were also worked into the system's logo.

Which electronics giant supplied the SNES's sound chip before becoming Nintendo's console rival?

Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi agreed to design the chip without telling his supervisors, who were enraged when they found out. He was nearly fired before the chief executive backed the project.

A failed SNES CD-ROM deal let which company put Mario and Zelda games on its CD-i player?

Philips gained licenses to Nintendo characters when the add-on project was cancelled. The CD-i games that followed, including Hotel Mario, were poorly received.

Which game on the 2017 Super NES Classic Edition had never been officially released before?

Star Fox 2 was completed in 1995 but went unreleased for 22 years. It had been due out just as newer 3D consoles were arriving.

Which SNES game was sold with its own mouse and hid a fly-swatting minigame called Gnat Attack?

Mario Paint combined a drawing tool, an animation program and a music composer, all designed around the packaged mouse. Gnat Attack was there to teach players how to use it.

Which futuristic racing game, an SNES launch title, introduced the pilot Captain Falcon?

F-Zero is set in the year 2560, when multi-billionaires bankroll races modeled on Formula One. Each of its four pilots drives a different hovercar.

Which SNES adventure sends Samus Aran to the planet Zebes to recover a stolen alien larva?

Super Metroid begins with the Space Pirate leader Ridley snatching the infant creature. The game is credited, alongside a later Castlevania, with establishing the Metroidvania genre.

Which SNES role-playing game was promoted in North America with foul-smelling scratch-and-sniff ads?

EarthBound, known in Japan as Mother 2, trades the usual fantasy world for a modern setting steeped in Americana. One magazine said the smelly ad drew more reader complaints than any other that year.

Which SNES platformer, drawn in a scribbled crayon style, has dinosaurs carrying Baby Mario?

Yoshi's Island was first rejected by Nintendo's marketers, who wanted computer-rendered graphics. The artists answered by pushing the hand-drawn look even further.

Which SNES action game, set a century after its parent series, introduced the Maverick Hunter Zero?

Mega Man X let players dash along the ground and scale or leap from nearly any wall. Armor attachments grant further special abilities.

Which SNES fighting game came in a black cartridge with a soundtrack CD tucked in the box?

Killer Instinct shipped in a black shell instead of the standard gray one. Early copies also carried Killer Cuts, an arranged CD of the game's music.

Which SNES action role-playing game let three people play at once using the Super Multitap adapter?

Secret of Mana was first planned for the SNES's cancelled CD add-on and had to be cut down to fit a cartridge. Its Ring Command menus pause the action in the middle of a battle.

Which farm-life game, the first of a long-running series, arrived late in the SNES's life?

Harvest Moon is considered one of the first farm life simulation games. It came out in Japan in 1996 and did not reach Europe until 1998.

Which first-person shooter came to the SNES on a red cartridge with a Super FX 2 chip inside?

Doom needed a new engine, written for the port by head programmer Randy Linden. Its red United States shell made it one of the few SNES games sold in a colored cartridge.

Which film trilogy became three SNES run-and-gun games with 'Super' added to each movie's title?

Star Wars reached the SNES in 1992, with The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi following a year apart. Driving a landspeeder and piloting an X-wing break up the shooting.

Which legendary blade made its series debut in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the SNES?

Master Sword rests on a pedestal in the Lost Woods, and Link must collect three pendants to prove himself worthy of claiming it. The blade has appeared in most Zelda games since.

Which demon king awaits Link at the Pyramid of Power in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past?

Ganon bursts from the body of the wizard Agahnim, who spends most of the game looking like the main villain. His evil desires had already transformed the Sacred Realm into the Dark World.

Which clown-like villain wrecks the world halfway through Final Fantasy VI on the SNES?

Kefka upsets three magical statues, destroying most of the world's surface, and then rules the ruins as a self-made god. His design drew on circus clowns and the Joker.

Which vampire hunter swings his whip in eight directions in Super Castlevania IV on the SNES?

Simon Belmont can also latch his whip onto rings and swing across gaps too wide to jump. The game retells his 1691 hunt for Dracula from the first NES Castlevania.

Which leader of the Kremlings steals the banana hoard in Donkey Kong Country on the SNES?

King K. Rool is the game's final boss as well as its thief. In the first sequel he kidnaps Donkey Kong himself and demands the bananas as ransom.

Which Nintendo hero gets launched toward the hole in the SNES mini-golf spin-off Dream Course?

Kirby is fired across isometric courses, picking up power-ups from the enemies he hits on the way. The plot has King Dedede stealing every star from the night sky.

Which British studio built Donkey Kong Country for the SNES using Silicon Graphics workstations?

Rare gambled its NES profits on the machines, which cost £80,000 each, to turn 3D models into sprites. The finished game sold 9.3 million copies.

Nintendo teamed up with which Japanese role-playing specialist to make Super Mario RPG for the SNES?

Square, the studio behind Final Fantasy, developed the game while Nintendo published it. Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, who wanted a role-playing game for his hero, served as producer.

Which future PC gaming giant, then called Silicon & Synapse, made The Lost Vikings for the SNES?

Blizzard made its first self-developed games for consoles, a year before Warcraft arrived. The Lost Vikings, inspired by Lemmings, came out on the Super NES before any other machine.

Which animation studio reportedly sued over the unicycles in the SNES racing game Uniracers?

Pixar claimed the unicycles copied its 1987 short film Red's Dream, the game's developers recall. They say production stopped after a first run of about 300,000 cartridges.

Which composer's score for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past introduced Zelda's Lullaby?

Koji Kondo composed, arranged and produced the score, which set the musical core of the series. Its themes for Hyrule Castle and Kakariko Village also returned in later games.

Which composer wrote the SNES score of Final Fantasy VI, including the aria for its opera scene?

Nobuo Uematsu gave every major character and location a theme of its own. The sound chip could not manage a real vocal track, so a synthesized voice performs the aria.

Which British composer wrote most of the music for Donkey Kong Country on the SNES?

David Wise started as a freelancer who assumed Nintendo would replace his music with an in-house score. He worked apart from the rest of the team in a former cattle shed.

Which sound engineer got to compose Chrono Trigger for the SNES after threatening to quit?

Yasunori Mitsuda told a company vice president he would leave unless he was allowed to compose. He was handed the game and wrote 54 tracks for its final release.

Which composer scored Super Mario RPG on the SNES and later wrote the music of Kingdom Hearts?

Yoko Shimomura wrote the score while also working on Front Mission, a double load she said left her overworked. She has called Kingdom Hearts the turning point of her career.

The SNES version of SimCity added a green-haired adviser named after which game designer?

Will Wright created SimCity, and his cartoon namesake pops up to warn players about problems in their city. The SNES edition also added changing seasons and reward buildings.

Which Nintendo engineer was lead architect of both the NES hardware and its successor, the SNES?

Masayuki Uemura first met the company as a Sharp salesman, selling it solar cells that ended up in a light gun toy. He later headed R&D2, the hardware division that built both consoles.

Which SNES flight game has players earn licenses in light planes, hang gliders and rocket belts?

Pilotwings also teaches skydiving and adds rescue missions flown in an attack helicopter. Each event has its own controls and mechanics.

Which Japan-only SNES modem let players download games and magazines broadcast by St.GIGA?

Satellaview plugged into the expansion port on the underside of the console and needed a broadcast tuner to work. Its user base peaked at more than 100,000 in 1997.

Which British studio designed the Super FX chip that brought 3D polygons to SNES cartridges?

Argonaut first pitched its 3D technology for the older NES before being steered to the newer console. The chip was codenamed MARIO, a name still printed on its face.