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.

My Top 25 Game Boy games

 

I've been getting very much back into my games over the last year or so (hooray, hyperfixation!). Not just playing, but reading about, learning about, and, of course, reminiscing about. I've recently been ensconced in Shaun Musgrave's Patreon, and particularly enjoyed his lists of favourite games for various consoles. So I thought to myself, why not have a crack at that myself?

I'm going to kick this off with my favourite system of all time, the Game Boy, Nintendo's classic handheld. The Game Boy was the first proper console we owned as a family, and my brother, sister and I spent way to much time staring at that tiny screen. It was heavy; it was simple; it only displayed four colours and all of them were green. Yet it was an addictive machine, thanks to some absolutely top notch games, as well as the capacity to take it anywhere and play it for hours thanks to its remarkable battery life.

I'm planning to make a list of my top 25 games for each console that I choose to cover, although if I stray onto those I've spent less time with then I may drop in the occasional top ten. Remember, the following lists merely my own personal favourites, which is not the same thing as a list of the best games on the console. Nostalgia has a big part to play in this ranking, but I've replayed all these games recently and they all stand up today. Indeed, some of these I only first played very recently, thanks to emulators. Note that the year given is the original release date, in whichever territory it first came out (so usually Japan). Also, I'm only covering plain old Game Boy releases here, not Game Boy Color games. That's for another day (although some games were released on both.)

I'll also note the current official availability of these games on modern platforms. Of course, if you want to play them unofficially, there are plenty of not-quite-legal means to do so.

Oh, and if you enjoy game reviews and rankings, do check out Shaun's Patreon.

(I originally posted this piece and its follow-ups on Vocal, but now Vocal are being dickheads so I'm going to migrate these over here, in case I have to drop that site altogether.)