Super Nintendo Entertainment System Review

The SNES won its generation on software, and the software still plays. Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI arrived on one console over five years, each of them a genre's best work for a decade afterwards, and they sit alongside Donkey Kong Country, Yoshi's Island and a Street Fighter II port that made the machine a fixture in every apartment.

The hardware itself was modest on raw speed and made up for it with a graphics chip that could rotate and scale a background, which Mode 7 turned into F-Zero and Pilotwings, and a sound chip that let composers write actual music. The controller introduced shoulder buttons. It is slower than a Genesis, and Sega's marketing never let anyone forget it, but the games are why people still own one.