My Top 25 SNES Games

 

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System went by many names. In Japan, it was the Super Famicom. In Korea, Hundai sold it as the Super Comboy. In the West, it was the Super Nintendo, the Super NES... in our house it was always just the SNES. (That's pronounced “snez” by the way. None of that “ess-enn-ee-ess” here.) When we got our own second-hand SNES in the mid-90s, it was a revelation. Our first home console, with full colour games to play on our terribly modest TV screen. Some will favour the Mega Drive/Genesis, others the PlayStation; but for me, the SNES was the great console of the 1990s. Don't worry, I'll get to those other two.

Settling on a mere twenty-five favourite SNES games was a hard task but I managed it. There were so many truly excellent games on the SNES (often with the word “Super” in the title), I could have made it a list of fifty. Keep in mind that these are just my personal favourites, not a “best of” list. It's platformer heavy because platformers are my thing. No doubt your own lists would look very different.

As before I've included details of where these games can be legally played, although with retro gaming such a huge market nowadays it's quite possible I've missed some options.

September reviews

 I'm roughly 47 years behind on everything I want to write, thanks to many, many real life concerns; however, I have managed to get a few write-ups and reviews done lately. September marked a couple of notable pop culture anniversaries that warranted some attention.

30th September 2025 marks the official 60th anniversary of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's classic series Thunderbirds. I've reviewed the first episode, "Trapped in the Sky," for Television Heaven. Meanwhile on TVH, we've been cracking ahead with season three of classic Doctor Who, with Galaxy 4, The Myth Makers and my beloved The Gunfighters as my latest contributions. I'd written up The Ark previously and Laurence Marcus has also added Mission to the Unknown. I've also reviewed Bookish, the wonderful new murder mystery series from Mark Gatiss.

In other media that gives you square eyes, 13th September was the 40th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. and thus the Super Mario franchise (although, of course, Mario goes back three years earlier, to 1981's Donkey Kong). Head over to Vocal for my two-part play through of every 20th century Super Mario platformer: Part One covers the 1980s (Super Mario Bros. to Super Mario Land) while Part Two takes on the 1990s (Super Mario World to Super Mario 64). Summer also saw two notable Nintendo anniversaries, with Yoshi's Island and Donkey Kong Land both hitting thirty. Just like my TV reviews, I can't help but delve into the history of the games as well as replaying them.