SNES is now 25 years old in North America
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 9 Comments
The Super Famicom – where we know of it here as the SNES – celebrated its 25th anniversary last year. But in North America, the console has today reached the same milestone. It’s worth taking a moment to remember the SNES and it’s many standout games – Super Mario World, Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Super Metroid just to name a few.
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Nintendo Minute – Super Nintendo vs. NES debate
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos | 4 Comments
This week’s episode of Nintendo Minute has gone live. In today’s video, Kit and Krysta hold a debate argue about which is the better console: the Super Nintendo or original NES. Watch the full episode below.
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Video: SNES PlayStation prototype teardown
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos | 3 Comments
Update (7/22): Here’s part two, showing the repair:
Original (7/15): We’ve heard a lot about the SNES PlayStation prototype over the past year. Now thanks to The Ben Heck Show, we have a closer look at the item through a teardown. Check it out below.
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Video: A look at the SNES Counter Tester
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos | 1 Comment
Back in the day, if you experienced issues with your SNES, a Counter Tester would be needed to determine issues with specific components in the console. Similar hardware was made for the NES as well. You can get a close look at the SNES Counter Tester in the video below.
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SNES is now 25 years old, amiibo is a year old
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 13 Comments
It’s another dose of Nintendo birthdays today! The SNES and amiibo are now a year old.
In Japan, the SNES launched on November 21, 1990. Meanwhile, the first amiibo figures came out one year ago today.
Like I said a few days ago, November is a very busy month for birthdays. The Wii U and Wii, and even Shigeru Miyamoto had their special days earlier this week.
Video shows off the SNES PlayStation prototype once more
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos | 2 Comments
Engadget has another video up showing the SNES PlayStation prototype. The system is turned on, and you can even see games running. Watch the full video below, and check out Engadget’s full article at the source link.
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Tidbits about the development of the SNES
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 1 Comment
German website Nintendo-Online has conducted some research about the development of the SNES. Through their investigation, they were able to find a discover interesting facts. You can find a summary of what Nintendo-Online passed along below.
– The SNES was developed by Nintendo’s Research & Development 2 department under Masayuki Uemura, which had already been responsible for the NES.
– The buttons on the controller were originally named A, B, C and D, while the shoulder buttons were supposed to be called E and F.
– In 1988, the SNES was supposed to have 8 KB RAM. This was increased to 32 KB in mid-1989. The final console comes with 128 KB RAM.
– The main advantages the SNES had over its rivals TurboGrafx-16 and Sega Genesis were the high amount of colors displayable and Mode 7. The console’s bottleneck was its 5A22 processor, which, as already the NES’s processor, was based on the 6502 chip.
– The reason for using a modified NES processor was most likely the goal to make the SNES backward compatible. But as this feature would have increased the console’s price, Nintendo had to drop those plans.
– Instead, backward compatibility should have been made possible by the Famicom Adapter, which was basically a stripped down Famicom that you were supposed to plug into the new console to play the old 8 bit games. Although the Famicom Adapter had been publicly shown, it was never released, rendering the SNES absolutely incompatible to NES games.
– The SNES was first announced on September 9, 1987 by local newspaper Kyoto Shimbun. Announced were the consoles name, the 16 bit architecture and the planned backward compatibility. The console was supposed to retail for less than 20.000 Yen, but was finally released for 25.000 Yen.
– On November 21, 1988 Nintendo first presented the Super Famicom to the Japanese press. Instead of fully featured games, Nintendo showed mere tech demos, but also announced that Super Mario Bros. 4 and The Legend of Zelda 3 were in the making for the new console. Both games were sheduled as launch games at that time.
– The Super Famicom was supposed to launch in Juli 1989, but although the console was next to finished at this time, it was delayed to November 21, 1990.
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Someone found a prototype SNES PlayStation / CD-ROM drive
Posted on 9 years ago by Matt(@OnePunchMaz) in General Nintendo, News | 11 Comments
As you might know, in the early 90s Sony worked together with Nintendo to create a CD-ROM drive add-on for the Super Nintendo – however, this device never made it to store shelves as Nintendo made a similar deal with Phillips behind Sony’s back. Nintendo and Sony went their separate ways with Sony creating their own consoles, a rivalry that defined the video game business for over 2 decades now.
Yesterday, someone on the r/gaming subreddit (currently inaccessible) posted of an SNES-CD prototype – notable because reportedly only about 200 of those were ever created. Check out the images in our gallery below – quite strange to see both the Sony and PlayStation trademarks on an SNES controller, right?
It is currently not known what is on the cartridge shown in the picture, or if the prototype still works.
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SNES prototype Sound Factory resurfaces
Posted on 9 years ago by Kirara Koneko(@KiraraKoneko) in News, Videos | 5 Comments
Toshio Iwai most notably known for the 2005 DS title Electroplankton, worked on a game in the early 90’s that never saw the light of day. The game was said to be a music composition tool that was to be released along with the SNES mouse, named Sound Factory.
Recently on Ebay someone going by the name KiroBomber bought the prototype and has now released it to the public.
Check out the video below to see for yourself.
More: Electroplankton, SNES, Sound Factory, Toshio Iwai
Rumor: SNES games planned for the 3DS VC
Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, Rumors | 10 Comments
Nintendo may have plans to bring SNES games to the Virtual Console on 3DS. While there isn’t any sort of concrete proof, accessing Miiverse from the handheld and checking out the Contra III: The Alien Wars community shows the game running on a 3DS XL in the header. No SNES titles are currently available on 3DS (including Contra III), so this is an interesting finding for sure.
