Sam's video game collection essentials

Here’s one of Nintendo’s most obscure great games.  In Japan, there was an accessory released for the Super Famicom called the “Satellaview” rather late in the console’s lifespan. I’m not going to go into a large amount of detail about it because I don’t own one and it’s kinda off-topic, but it’s a pretty neat piece of technology. From what I understand, the main unit attaches to the bottom of a Super Famicom console, plus it always has its own cartridge for the cartridge slot. It allowed owners to download games and content from satellite broadcasts! Sutte Hakkun started out as a game for this service, and its own history is a little complicated. With it being a level-based game, it started out with a few dozen levels for the initial Satellaview version. Then Nintendo decided to make an expanded version for their “Nintendo Power” service (not to be confused with the popular magazine). That’s another thing I have to explain: in Japan, there were these writable Super Famicom cartridges

Here’s another instance of “How the heck was this game only released in Japan??” Not only is this a great version of a game beloved around the world, but the entire game is already in English!! No clue what the heck happened here. I’ve talked about Tetris before. You already know what it is, so I’m not gonna delve into those details. This game has the modes from previous Tetris games that you’d want and expect, but more. One of these is “Sparkliss”, a mode where some squares are replaced with “sparks”. If you clear a row with a spark, it will go off and clear nearby squares in its row and column. The key in this mode is the BIG sparks, which form automatically when you get a square made up of four sparks. This mode has its own set of single-player puzzles to solve.  But the mode that I think is really cool here is “Magicaliss”. In this mode, colors of the pieces matter a lot. There are four main colors in this mode: red, blue, green and silver. You can change a block’s color on the way

Naturally they had to complete the trilogy! With the release of this game, all three of the classic Star Wars movies had a video game adaptation on SNES. And this game very much was made in the same style as Empire Strikes Back, with more or less the same basic gameplay mechanics carried over, featuring mostly side-scrolling action platformer levels with occasional vehicle-piloting levels to mix it up. Here’s my post about that game for more info. Empire Strikes Back featured three playable characters: Luke, Han and Chewie, who had their own levels. The most notable thing about Return of the Jedi is that it ups the number to five, adding Leia and Wicket the Ewok (more in a way because Leia has a few different forms), and it also gives you the option to choose your character before a stage. Certain characters are only selected in certain levels, as you can’t play as a character for a scene that they weren’t present for in the movie. So, for example, only Luke is selectable for the showd

Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! (later released with Mike Tyson removed) was a big hit on the NES, so a SNES sequel isn’t too surprising. The title makes the names of games in the series quite confusing, though. You see, this series originated with two arcade games in the early ‘80s, “Punch-Out!!” and then “Super Punch-Out!!” Then, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out on the NES was really it’s own thing and not just a port of the original game, and some of the characters from both the arcade games were brought back. And now, this SNES sequel called “Super Punch-Out!!” is once again its own thing and completely different from the arcade game of the same name, though once again it brings back some characters from those games. Like the games before it, Super Punch-Out!! is a rather cartoony and unrealistic boxing game, not meant to accurately simulate the real-life sport. There are no real-life boxers this time, but honestly I think they would have felt out of place. Once again, the enemy boxers can be rathe

The original Metroid was a popular and significant game on the NES, helping to establish a type of 2D platformer/action game where the player is basically in one huge interconnected level. There was a Metroid sequel on Game Boy, a system of roughly equal power. And then Metroid arrived in the following console generation. And perhaps no series saw a greater leap from NES to SNES than Metroid did. The original Metroid is viewed as a game that was great for its time but tends to feel outdated and clunky when played now. Super Metroid, however, is considered a masterpiece and one of the greatest games of all time. Story-wise, the game is a direct sequel to the first two, recapping events from those games in the opening scene. After Samus’s campaign to destroy the alien Metroids in the last game, only one specimen remains, and it is turned over for scientific study. But upon turning it over and leaving, Samus gets a distress call asking her to return, and finds that the lab has been ravage

As previously mentioned, Super Mario World at the launch of the SNES introduced Mario’s dinosaur-like friend Yoshi and his species of the same name. Yoshi instantly proved to be a popular character, spawning spinoff games right away such as the puzzle games “Yoshi” and “Yoshi’s Cookie”. Eventually Nintendo decided it was time for a full-fledged Yoshi adventure. Thus, Yoshi’s Island was born. Yoshi’s Island is caught in kind of an awkward ambiguous space. The title starts with “Super Mario World 2”, but the game plays very differently from the Mario games despite also being a platformer. And after this game, Yoshi would go on to star in games that Mario didn’t even appear in, and this game is seen as sort of the first “true” Yoshi game. So which series does it belong to? Super Mario? Yoshi? Both? There’s no definitive answer.  Anyways, Yoshi’s Island is a prequel to the Mario series. The story starts out with a stork carrying baby Mario and baby Luigi en route to their parents. But the

Squaresoft had an impressive pedigree on the Super Nintendo, with a few Final Fantasy games, Chrono Trigger, and even more games that only got released in Japan. And so, late in the console’s lifespan, Nintendo decided to join forces with them to produce an RPG starring their man, Mario.  The game starts out with what seems like a basic Mario plot. Princess Toadstool (later known as Peach) gets kidnapped by Bowser first thing, and Mario goes to try and save her. But when he confronts Bowser, an absolutely enormous sword with a face falls from the sky and plants itself in Bowser’s castle, sending everybody flying non-lethally. When Mario quickly returns to the castle, it turns out the giant sword is sentient. He tells Mario that the “Smithy Gang” has taken over the castle and aims to conquer the whole world, and then he destroys the bridge to the castle so Mario can’t return. And so, a journey begins as Mario seeks to thwart this new evil, find the princess, and before long he sets the

And now for another hugely influential game that started a series that you probably know about even if you’re not a gamer. It’s Mario Kart! Go karts were a great idea for a mascot racing game, since the characters are all plainly visible during the race, so that immediately helped this game’s appeal. Different characters have different attributes too for things like acceleration and handling. But Nintendo figured that this game ought to have more than just likable mascots to stand out in the racing genre. So they threw in something that would spice up the gameplay bigtime: items! It’s the big thing Mario Kart is known for. When you drive over an item box (which in this case are a series of yellow squares on the track itself), a roulette occurs in the window of your screen that winds up giving you a random item. These items may help you, like the mushroom which gives you a brief burst of speed, but most of them have to do with messing up your opponents. The best examples are the turtle

Nowadays it is quite common to see “compilation” releases which contain several games in a given series. Back in the early ‘90s, however, when cartridge space was so limited, you almost never saw it. So when Nintendo released Super Mario All-Stars in 1993, it was a great release that really stood out. This game is a compilation of four previous Super Mario Bros. titles, giving great bang for your buck. But they aren’t simply the NES games slapped onto one SNES cart. No, the games have all been updated! The graphics are redone to make them look like proper SNES games, the music is redone, and best of all is the ability to save your game! In the original games, there was no way to save your progress, and every time you powered on the console you had to start from scratch. This wasn’t the worst thing in the world, as the games provided ways to “warp” further into the game. But it was definitely better and more convenient this way. Not only can you save, but you can go back and replay any

Time for a big one. It’s not only the most iconic SNES game, but also what is most likely the first video game I ever played, ever. The original cartridge that I played still exists, but lives at my parents house. There are two instruction manuals here, the one on the right with the cover and pages missing being the manual that came with the original cartridge I played. Super Mario Bros. was the real catalyst for the success of the NES, releasing shortly after the system’s American launch. And so, Nintendo wisely deduced that having a brand new Mario adventure to release alongside their next console would be the right move.  Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES was a huge success and considered a practically perfect game by many fans. They perhaps could have made a game with all the same basic gameplay fundamentals, just with new levels. But that’s not what happened. Super Mario World does its own thing, evolving some elements from Super Mario Bros. 3 and also leaving out a bunch of stuff fr

Here we have an “arcade-style” American football game from Midway, a company that specialized in that sort of thing, and would become more famous for a more successful arcade football series later in the decade. As a reminder, “arcade style” refers to less emphasis on realism than an average sports game, and more on fast intuitive gameplay that anyone can pick up and play, often with an appealing or even over-the-top presentation. With regard to that last thing, Super High Impact has a lot of cheesy, high-amusing voice clips between plays, such as the players trash talking each other saying things like “You mama’s boy!” There’s not a whole lot of meat on the bones with this particular game, as it’s light on modes. Its biggest strength is, not surprisingly, multiplayer, as it’s a good solid choice when you have a friend over and you both want some quick amusing sportsy fun. A good game for sure, though that doesn’t quite push it up to essential status. What puts this game over the top i

Game Boy, as I’ve talked about, was a huge hit. But what if you were really into a Game Boy game and wanted to play it at home? It might feel wasteful to use up batteries playing a portable console when you’re not even on the go. You could get something called an AC adapter, which let you plug the Game Boy into a wall rather than use battery power. That was certainly a good option. But Nintendo had a better idea: what if you could play Game Boy games on your TV? With the power of the SNES, this possibility was made reality!  Why would someone want to play Game Boy games on a TV screen? There are a variety of reasons. When you’re playing on the original Game Boy, the screen is not backlit, so you had to worry about how much lighting was in the room, and that could sometimes be annoying. Kids who used their Game Boys a lot could wind up with screens that were scuffed or even cracked, making the viewing experience less appealing. Not to mention the fact that viewing the games on a televis

Add another nostalgic early childhood title to the list. Super Empire Strikes Back was one of the games my dad (being a fan of the Star Wars movies) bought during the SNES’s heyday when I was too young to even remember, so it was one of the first games I ever played and I’m not even old enough to remember the first time I did.  I'm pretty sure my childhood copy lives at my parents' house and this one shown here is one I acquired in adulthood. I want to point out that the first Star Wars SNES game, based on the first movie, will not be making the list. I didn’t own it growing up so it has less nostalgia value with me, and I think it is a vastly inferior game to the ones that came after. I do still own it and probably won’t get rid of it, but I don’t love it enough to give it a post. What we have here is primarily a side-scrolling action game. You start out playing as Luke, who is armed with his blaster and his lightsaber, which the player can switch between. There’s a good amoun