Super Nintendo Entertainment System

The European SNES' design is identical to the Super Famicom.

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Super NES or SNES) is a video game console designed and built by Nintendo in the 1990s. It was the successor to the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America and Europe. It was the major rival of Sega Megadrive/Sega Genesis during the 16-bit era.

For more information on the Japanese version, see: Super Famicom

Market history

Development

In 1988, Nintendo executives showed little interest in developing a rival system when Sega announced that they would release their 16-bit Sega Genesis. However when the Genesis quickly took over the market in North America and Europe due to its superior technology, Nintendo quickly decided to begin development on their own system.

Hiroshi Yamauchi, the Nintendo CEO at the time, had put Masayuki Uemura in charge of designing the console. They had originally planned for the Famicom/NES to be a 16-bit system. However at the time of development those components were too expensive and the system was developed as an 8-bit system. Since the components were cheaper when the SNES was in development, Nintendo did not hesitate to build a more powerful system.

Release and sales

The Super Famicom was released November 21, 1990 in Japan.

Many companies who bought NES licences also purchased SNES licences due to the success of the NES such as Squaresoft, Capcom, Tecmo, Konami and Koei. This gave Nintendo an edge against its competition.

The console was released in the United States in August, 1991 with a starting price of $200. The first SNES set was packaged with Super Mario World and two controllers. The fact that it was not backwards-compatible with previous Nintendo consoles (NES) like some Atari Models, generated some consumer hesitation. In addition, Sega had already released some very popular titles for their Genesis (Mega Drive) console. One example was Sonic the Hedgehog, which proved vital in the marketing of the Genesis because of the character's popularity. The Genesis was also about $50 cheaper than the SNES.

A few months after its initial release, the Power Set, a bare-bones version of the SNES including no games and just one controller, was released in North America selling for $100. Towards the middle of its life it was re-distributed with different accessories. One such set was sold with the Super Game Boy accessory.

The hardware internals were only different depending on the TV standard in the country in which it was sold. Many Australian cartridges came from Europe because both used PAL systems. RPGs needed to be translated into other languages because of their large text content. Most action titles and First-person shooters didn't need much translation as the text load was not nearly as large.

In spite of initial complications and its marginally superior technical capabilities, the SNES was dominant throughout the early 1990s, with the help of its family-friendly image and popular icon game characters like Mario. By the end of the 16-bit era, Nintendo had recorded twice as many sales of its console as Sega had with the Genesis.

The SNES had a large library containing many exclusive titles. It had a number of best-selling RPGs, including Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger. Some SNES games are enhanced remakes of NES games; two examples are Super Mario All-Stars and Ninja Gaiden Trilogy.

The SNES was released in the United Kingdom for 150 pounds in April 1992. The German release took place a few weeks later. The European case design was similar to that of the Super Famicom. However, Nintendo never got much of a footing in Europe due to distribution problems.

Mid-1990s

The redesign of the SNES had rounder corners and buttons than the original to make it look more like a Nintendo 64.

Sales of the SNES in North America declined between 1996 and 1997, with the release of Nintendo's new console, the Nintendo 64. Nintendo discontinued production in North America in 1999. Production continued in Japan until September 2003.

An SNES redesign which was lighter in weight came out in October 1997 for $99.99 in the United States to get the last few sales from people still interested in the 16-bit market. The console was packaged with Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. The RF ports and expansion ports did not come with this version. Nintendo then began development of a successor with the help of Sony. Disagreements between the two companies caused Nintendo to cancel its involvement with Sony and proceed instead with Philips.

Many of the SNES's successful games were ported to the Game Boy Advance which has similar capabilities. The Nintendo 64 was released in 1996 and officially became Nintendo's flagship product.

Emulation

Like its predecessor, the SNES has had a continued interest among its fans. It has continued to thrive on a second-hand market and later through console emulation. Many gamers discovered the SNES after its decline. The SNES has taken the same revival path as the NES.

Emulation projects began in approximately 1996 with projects such as "VSMC" and "Super Pasofami". None of these projects lasted past 1998.

In early 1998 SNES enthusiasts began programming a console emulator named ZSNES. One year later development began on its rival Snes9x.

Nintendo took the same stance against the distribution of SNES ROM image files and emulation as it did with the NES, insisting that they represented nothing but flagrant piracy. A number of arguments to make them legal have been made, citing the discontinued production of the SNES, the frailty of its cartridges, and the lack of certain foreign imports. Now, as part of the 128-bit era, the revival of SNES is to some extent settling down.

Despite their legal threats and attempts to stop such projects and sites, ROM files continue to proliferate on the Internet. Since the console's discontinuation, second-hand market decline, and rapid growth of the Internet, finding the files has become less of a challenge than it had been with the NES. Most general ROM sites offer files for the SNES.

Cowering's Good Tools includes a tool called GoodSNES which allows users to audit, verify & organise their collections of SNES ROMs. The latest version lists 6,766 ROMs.

Some video game critics consider the SNES era "the golden age of video games," citing the many groundbreaking games and classics made for the system. [1] (http://www.nintendoland.com/articles/gold_era.htm) whereas others question this romanticism [2] (http://www.nintendoland.com/home2.htm?articles/gld_era2.htm). See video game player for more detailed information regarding this old school vs new school gamer debate.

Screenshots


F-Zero	Super Mario Kart	Star Fox	Street Fighter 2 Turbo
Nintendo (1991)	Nintendo (1992)	Nintendo (1993)	Capcom (1993)


Super Mario All-Stars	Chrono Trigger	Donkey Kong Country 2	Earthworm Jim 2
Nintendo (1993)	Squaresoft (1995)	Nintendo/Rare (1995)	Playmates/Shiny (1995)

More screenshots can be found in the Screenshot Gallery.

Hardware

Specifications/features

The design of the Super Nintendo/Super Famicom was unusual at its time. It featured a relatively slow low-performance CPU supported by very powerful custom chips for sound and video processing. This approach is common in present-day video game hardware, but then it was new to game developers, and as a result early third-party games were of low technical quality. Developers got accustomed to the system later, though, and were thus able to use it to its full potential. It was the first console capable of applied acoustics in video game audio sold in North America, Europe, and Japan.

CPU
- CPU: WDC 65C816 16 bit processor running at 1.79, 2.68 MHz, or 3.58 MHz (variable), with 128 KB of RAM
Sound

Unlike the SEGA Genesis,the Super NES has a highly advanced sound engine that generates sound similar to Wavetable Synthesis

- Sound Controller Chip: 8-bit Sony SPC700 running at 4.1 MHz, with 64 KB of RAM, PC file name extension: .SPC
- Main Sound Chip: 8-channel Sony S-DSP with hardware decompression ADPCM
- Memory Cycle Time: 279 Minutes
- Low-pass filter for improved quality of low-frequency (bass) tones
- Cartridge Size Specifications: 2 - 64 Mb
- Sound RAM: 512 Kb
- Sound Channels: 8, Uses compressed wave samples
- Pulse Code Modulator: 16-Bit ADPCM (actually,it's 15-bit,which uses compressed 4-bit ADPCM samples,which are expanded to 15-bit resolution,while processed with an additional Gaussian sound interpolation technique to smooth out the sound)
Video
- Picture Processor Unit: 16-Bit
- Palette: 32,768 Colors
- Maximum colors on-screen: 256 (although with a trick which involves lowering the horisontal scan frequency,programmers managed to display up to 4096 colors at once on-screen in the game Donkey Kong Country)
- Texture and map RAM: 64 KB
- Resolution: 256x224 up to 512x448. Most games used 256x224 pixels because the slow main CPU couldn't handle the higher resoulutions without slowdown; the higher resolutions were used mainly in less processor-intensive games and for displaying in-game menus, textboxes and high-res pictures.
- Maximum onscreen sprites: 128 (32 per line)
- Maximum number of sprite pixels on one scanline: 256. The picture generator had a bug such that it would drop the frontmost sprites instead of the rearmost sprites if a scanline exceeded the limit.
- Most common display modes: Pixel-to-pixel text mode 1 (16 colors per tile; 3 scrolling layers) and affine mapped text mode 7 (256 colors per tile; one rotating/scaling layer)
Power-Supply
- Transformer Input: 120V AC, 60 Hz, 17 Watts
- Transformer Output: 10V DC, 850 mA (NTSC), 9V AC (PAL)
Controllers
- Controller Response: 16 Milliseconds
- 2 seven-pin controller ports in the front of the machine

Accessories

A Game Boy converter called the Super Game Boy was released, much to the chagrin of people who owned both systems. Sega never made a Game Gear to Genesis/Megadrive converter although one was supposedly in the works.

Super Scope which was a wireless light gun that looked like a bazooka.

A SNES mouse which was made specifically for the creative game Mario Paint.

Super Multitap - a licensed multiplayer adapter by Hudson similar to the NES' NES Four Score and NES Satellite accessories. It expands the SNES's controller ports to a greater number and thus enables up to 16 players simultaneously for those games that support it (albeit this large number requires that several Multitaps be plugged into each other). There was also a Super Multitap 2 released but it will work on a PAL and US NTSC-console as well (as will the original).

Cheat devices

The third party cheat devices released for the SNES enable players to modify in-game data and enable such things as infinite lives, energy etc. All of the cheat devices were made by third party companies and none were licensed nor endorsed by Nintendo.

External links

The official Nintendo Corp. homepage (http://www.nintendo.com)
N-Sider (Nintendo fansite database) (http://www.n-sider.com)
eLook Super Nintendo Cheats (http://www.elook.org/games/cheats/snes/)
SNES Console Database (http://www.consoledatabase.com/consoleinfo/snes)
Private SNES and Nintendo fanpage (http://www.more-nintendo.com/snes.html)
Chris Yiu's Super Nintendo pages (http://www.yiu.co.uk/games/)

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