| price =

| cpu = Ricoh 5A22 @ 3.58MHz

| online_services =

| units_sold =

  • Worldwide: 49.10 million
  • North America: 23.35 million
  • Japan: 17.17 million
  • Other: 8.58 million

| top_game =

| memory =

| graphics = S-PPU1 and S-PPU2

| display = 256 × 224, 512 × 224, 512 × 448

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Super NES or SNES) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released as the in Japan on November 21, 1990, as the Super NES in North America on August 23, 1991, and internationally throughout 1992. It was Nintendo's second programmable home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). A fourth-generation console, the Super NES primarily competed with the Sega Genesis in the console war, a fierce battle for market share in the United States and Europe.

Masayuki Uemura, a Nintendo engineer, designed the 16-bit Super NES in response to the introduction of the Genesis and NEC's TurboGrafx-16. The Super NES had advanced graphical and sound capabilities compared to its competitors, with features such as Mode 7 to simulate 3D perspective and eight-channel ADPCM audio. Its CPU was designed to accommodate ongoing technological innovations by allowing it to interface with enhancement chips, such as Super FX, integrated into game cartridges. Its controller built on the NES's with additional face buttons and two shoulder buttons. Nintendo released many accessories, including the Super Game Boy adapter to play Game Boy games and the Japan-exclusive Satellaview modem peripheral.

Nintendo released the Super NES with Super Mario World (1990) as a pack-in game. It introduced the Super NES relatively late in the fourth generation amidst intense competition with Sega, which positioned the Genesis as the preferable console for adolescents through aggressive youth marketing. Nonetheless, the Super NES quickly became a success, helped by Nintendo's retention of key third-party developers such as Capcom, Enix, Konami, and Square. Over 1,700 Super NES games were released, and Nintendo loosened its previously strict licensing requirements to better compete with Sega. The release of Donkey Kong Country (1994) helped maintain the Super NES's popularity into the 32-bit era. Nintendo sold 49.1 million Super NESs, making it the best selling fourth-generation home console.

Nintendo released the successor, the Nintendo 64, in 1996, but continued to support the Super NES into the 64-bit era. It ceased Super NES production in 1999 and Super Famicom production in 2003. Video game journalists regard it as one of the greatest consoles; its library includes acclaimed games such as The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1991), EarthBound (1994), Final Fantasy VI (1994), Super Metroid (1994), Yoshi's Island (1995), and Kirby Super Star (1996). It remains popular among collectors and retro gamers, and via emulation with applications such as Snes9x and ZSNES. Nintendo has released emulated Super NES games through the Virtual Console and Nintendo Classics services and the Super NES Classic Edition dedicated console.

History

Background

In order to compete with the popular Family Computer in Japan, NEC Home Electronics launched the PC Engine in 1987, and Sega followed suit with the Mega Drive in 1988. The two platforms were later launched in North America in 1989 as the TurboGrafx-16 and the Sega Genesis respectively. Both systems were built on 16-bit architectures and offered improved graphics and sound over the 8-bit NES. It took several years for Sega's system to become successful.

Bill Mensch, the co-creator of the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor and founder of the Western Design Center (WDC), gave Ricoh the exclusive right to supply 8-bit and 16-bit WDC microprocessors for Nintendo's new system. Meanwhile, Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi reached an agreement with Nintendo to design the console's sound chip without notifying his supervisors, who were enraged when they discovered the project; although Kutaragi was nearly fired, then-CEO Norio Ohga intervened in support of the project and gave him permission to complete it.

Development

On September 9, 1987, then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi revealed the development of the Super Famicom in the newspaper Kyoto Shimbun. On August 30, 1988, in an interview with TOUCH Magazine, Yamauchi announced the development of Super Mario Bros. 4, Dragon Quest V, three original games, and he projected sales of 3 million units of the upcoming console. In that same interview, Yamauchi pointed out that sales of the Famicom were slowly dropping ever since it hit its peak about two years earlier, and that if they continued supporting it, players would eventually "get bored" and move on in favor of better-quality games, which would be "a dangerous situation" for them. Famicom Hissyoubon magazine speculated that Yamauchi's early announcement was probably made to forestall Christmas shopping for the PC Engine, and relayed Enix's clarification that it was waiting on sales figures to select either PC Engine or Super Famicom for its next Dragon Quest game. The magazine and Enix both expressed a strong interest in networking as a standard platform feature. The console was demonstrated to the Japanese press on November 21, 1988, and again on July 28, 1989. During the second demonstration, Nintendo also announced that they were forced to delay the release of the Super Famicom to the fall of 1990, as a result of problems such as a distinct lack of software for third-party developers and a global chip shortage – due to a new generation of semiconductor and chip technology that forced manufacturers to split production capacity, which also drove prices up considerably.

The final design of the Super Famicom unveiled at the second Shoshinkai show, which was held between August 28–29, 1990. It gained so much popularity that Nintendo received 1.5 million pre-orders for the Super Famicom from wholesalers, making them worried that launch day would get a little chaotic. To solve this, they encouraged retailers to install a reservation system when selling the console. On November 20, the day before launch, Nintendo loaded 100 trucks with boxes of Super Famicom consoles, alongside cartridges of F-Zero and Super Mario World early in the morning. In that same day, Nintendo executed "Operation: Midnight Shipping" by sending these orders late at night, in the hopes of warding off thieves. It was an instant success. Nintendo's initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out within hours. This gained the attention of the yakuza criminal organizations, so the devices were shipped at night to avoid robbery.

With the Super Famicom quickly outselling its rivals, Nintendo reasserted itself as the leader of the Japanese console market. Nintendo's success was partially due to the retention of most of its key third-party developers, including Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square, Koei, and Enix.

Nintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a redesigned version of the Super Famicom, in North America for . It began shipping in limited quantities on August 23, 1991, with an official nationwide release date of September 9, 1991. The Super NES was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in April 1992 for .

Most of the PAL region versions of the console use the Japanese Super Famicom design, except for labeling and the length of the joypad leads. The Playtronic Super NES in Brazil, although PAL-M, uses the North American design. Both the NES and Super NES were released in Brazil in 1993 by Playtronic, a joint venture between the toy company Estrela and consumer electronics company Gradiente.

The Super NES and Super Famicom launched with few games, but these games were well received. In Japan, only two games were initially available: Super Mario World and F-Zero. Bombuzal was released during the launch week. In North America, Super Mario World was launched as a bundle with the console; other launch games include F-Zero, Pilotwings (both of which demonstrate the console's Mode 7 pseudo-3D rendering), SimCity, and Gradius III.

Console wars

The rivalry between Nintendo and Sega was described as one of the most notable console wars in video game history, in which Sega positioned the Genesis as the "cool" console, with games aimed at older audiences, and aggressive advertisements that occasionally attacked the competition. Nintendo scored an early public-relations advantage by securing the first console conversion of Capcom's arcade hit Street Fighter II for Super NES, which took more than a year to make the transition to the Genesis. Though the Genesis had a two-year lead to launch time, a much larger library of games, and a lower price point, it only represented an estimated 60% of the American 16-bit console market in June 1992, and neither console could maintain a definitive lead for several years. Donkey Kong Country is said to have helped establish the Super NES's market prominence in the latter years of the 16-bit generation, and for a time, maintain against the PlayStation and Saturn. According to Nintendo, the company had sold more than 20 million Super NES units in the U.S. According to a 2014 Wedbush Securities report based on NPD sales data, the Super NES outsold the Genesis in the U.S. market by units and gained its lead in the US/North American 16 bit market.

Changes in policy

During the NES era, Nintendo maintained exclusive control over games released for the system – the company had to approve every game, each third-party developer could only release up to five games per year (but some third parties got around this by using different names, such as Konami's "Ultra Games" brand), those games could not be released on another console within two years, and Nintendo was the exclusive manufacturer and supplier of NES cartridges. Competition from Sega's console brought an end to this practice; in 1991, Acclaim Entertainment began releasing games for both platforms, with most of Nintendo's other licensees following suit over the next several years; Capcom (which licensed some games to Sega instead of producing them directly) and Square were the most notable holdouts.

Nintendo continued to carefully review submitted games, scoring them on a 40-point scale and allocating marketing resources accordingly. Each region performed separate evaluations. Nintendo of America also maintained a policy that, among other things, limited the amount of violence in the games on its systems. The surprise arcade hit Mortal Kombat (1992), a gory fighting game with huge splashes of blood and graphically violent fatality moves, was heavily censored by Nintendo. Because the Genesis version allowed for an uncensored version via cheat code, it outsold the censored Super NES version by a ratio of nearly three to one.

U.S. Senators Herb Kohl and Joe Lieberman convened a Congressional hearing on December 9, 1993, to investigate the marketing of violent video games to children.