Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 73: Super Nintendo Entertainment System

Episode Date: August 29, 2016

Five years after making his hosting debut in Retronauts Live episode 17, Bob returns to the topic of the Super Nintendo to find out if there's anything new to say. Thankfully, a half-decade later, we're all a little older, and a little wiser--but mostly a little older. On this celebration of the SNES' 25th birthday, Jeremy Parish, Ray Barnholt, and Capcom's Tim Turi tag along to sing the praises of Nintendo's wonderful 16-bit console. Be sure to visit our blog at Retronauts.com, and check out our partner site, USgamer, for more great stuff. And if you'd like to send a few bucks our way, head on over to our Patreon page!

This week on Retronauts, Now you're playing with power, super power. Hello, everybody. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another brand new episode of Retronauts. I am your host, Bob Mackie, for this one, and today's topic is the Super Nintendo's 25th anniversary. Before I start, let's go around the table and see who else is here. Let's start right here.

Hey, it's me, Jeremy Parrish, doing nothing whatsoever to dispel the notion that Retronauts is incredibly Nintendo biased. Hey, look at history. We'll prove you wrong. Actually, don't do that. Who else is here today? Hey, this is Tim Turi. How's it going, guys? Tim, this is his first time on Retronuts.

Who the hell is Tim Turi? Yes. Can you tell us who you are, Tim. I mean, everyone knows who we are. People might not know who you are. Sure. Well, one, you guys need to get better locks in your doors. That's true.

Yeah, I'm coming over from Capcom. I just moved to San Francisco. I was formerly an editor at Game Informer over in Minnesota and made the jump over to the publisher developer side. And working on the Resident Evil series specifically doing some social media community stuff, all sorts of different things. But, yeah, I obviously love video games and I'm coming to you guys with a slightly different entry point. to the Super Nintendo. That's what I want to hear. Yeah.

We are, if you couldn't tell, we are kind of, we were baptized into the church of Nintendo, I guess, in a way. Coming from the European side. So, well, if I was, I'd say I was coming from the Mega Drive side. But I grew up in a firmly Sega household. I see. Yes. Before we get to that, though, who else is here today? It's Ray Barnhold, also a video game company employee.

Well, since, yes. Since Cab Bailey isn't here, I guess Tim is our, is our. or Minnesotan for this episode. And I've asked Tim one thing. There's an RPG series out there. It's very popular in Japan. It's not Final Fantasy. Can you name that RPG series?

Are you talking about Dragon Quest? Exactly. That's what I wanted to hear. Dragon Quest. I'm sorry. I wanted to pick on a Minnesota accent. Dragon, yes, yes. Okay, I've heard that it's not pronounced Magum or Bag.

But is it Mario or Mario? Well, it's Mario. I'm not a monster. Yes. Sorry, I didn't mean to pick on you, Tim. I just wanted to do like the sort of like the blood test and the thing to see how Minnesota you really. really were.

That's right. And you passed. Is that why I am tied down to this couch right now? Yes, yes. You're not, your bloodline ends here. We're against Minnesotans. But, yes, so I wanted to point out something interesting to me, at least today. My voice was squeaking because I'm so excited, is that a little over five years after this

episode post, before this episode post, I started on retronauts. Jeremy approached me in a dark alley, and he shoved the briefcase at me. He's like, you're in charge now. And he fled. But that's not actually what happened. I wish. That would be cool. Yeah, it would have been cool.

Come on, Jeremy. But I actually started at Retronauts over five years ago doing an episode on the S&S back when it was the 20th anniversary. And now I'm back doing the 25th anniversary. And I started on Retronauts over 10 years ago when Jeremy also pulled me into a dark alley. Oh, man. And we did episode zero of Retronauts, which included a discussion about the Super NES's 15th anniversary. Wow. I wanted to be known that I had nothing to do with this.

the development of this episode and, in fact, said, I'm not doing a super in a yes. Actually, Jeremy, you asked, what I said was, there is no way in hell that I'm doing a super needs episode. But that's why you wanted me to do it, right? Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to say, like, I'm at the point of my career in which maybe Jeremy can reflect on this.

Like, what do you do? Like, you've written all your retrospectives and then the next milestone comes along. What do you do do with your life then? Do you just start repeating yourself? Because I think I'm going to start doing that. I start making, like, very detailed videos about the libraries of these games. It's a bad idea. No, don't do it.

Maybe it's Ray's turn to lead retronauts. What do you think, Ray? Sure, how much you pay? We'll get to you later on that. We're still waiting for paychecks. You get a free meal occasionally. So sorry for all the inside stuff, Tim. I just wanted to bring that up, and I love doing retronauts.

I'm happy to have been doing it this long, and hopefully we can do it for another five years. And until I find some protege to meet in a dark alley and give him all the responsibility. It's great you guys could never, ever stop. No, no. I found out this is the one thing that I do that people actually like in mass quantities, so I can't stop. doing it basically once you figure that out once you crack that night i need to i need to make a confession here though i have no memory of either of those episodes you were on uh you were on i don't i remember talking about metro two on episode zero yeah jeremy jeremy and i were just talking about the

resident evil episode which you were on and i because i obviously loved i was like i don't think i was there for that one well you were when it was you were on that richmond outs uh episode that i started with i think it was live 17 and i went back to listen to it and it's not as um awkward as i seemed it would be. I think we'd all just seem very tired. We all sound like Simpson's season one almost. Like, hey boy, we're going to talk about the Super Nintendo. That's a perfect analogy. And the one I was on just disappeared, so. Yeah, Retronaut Zero is hidden. I got the luck of the draw. It's hidden in the one-up vault somewhere. We have to crack it open and we'll ask Guy June about that later. But tried to look. Jeremy, I couldn't find it. But today's topic

is not my fifth anniversary of Retronauts. It's a Super Nintendo's 25th anniversary. And it's actually a little bit older than that in Japan. It launched November 21st, 1990 in Japan, and we didn't get it until almost a year later, August 23rd, 1991 in America, and this episode should be launching around that 25th anniversary. And I think, I mean, we were always used to a huge golf in time between Japanese and American releases, but I think in this case, it was really because the Super Nintendo was not ready to launch in Japan. There were two games at launch. They just needed something to fight the Mega Drive, which was not hugely successful, but still it was like the bleeding edge of the console gaming, right?

Yeah, I mean, that was, it was kind of a precursor to the Dreamcast Japanese launch where I was just like, why did you release it already? You should have waited. Yeah, I mean, our launch lineup was still very small, but all Japan got was Super Mario World and F0. Surprisingly, not a Mahjong game or like a version of Othello, which isn't that what you, I mean.

Yeah, Gomoku. Aren't there a lot of those usually for Japanese systems? Like, okay, here's your go. Pretty early. Yeah, starting with the Famicom, like the fourth and fifth games released for Famicom. I was just writing about this this morning, were Gomoku, Renju and Mahjong. So I assume there was some, like, celebrity license go game before we got the Super Nintendo. But what's important to note, we'll get into the system in the specifics and whatever later.

But as far as the launch goes, ours was pretty good, I think, in terms of showing off what the system could do. And we got Super Mario World, of course. We did an entire episode on that. Please look it up. F-Zero. and Pilot Wings, SimCity, and Gradius 3. That was our launch lineup. Gradius 3 maybe not so good at showing off what the system could do,

or maybe not good at showing what the system could do well. It could show it. Showing out the weaknesses of the system. Yeah, if anything, it helped me play Gradius because I was like, oh, this slowdown is a feature, right? This game runs at half speed. I can play this. I can do this.

I don't need a slow-mo controller. And from the beginning, I think, the Super Nintendo was really showing how different it was from the Genesis and it was showing the direction Nintendo was going Sega was still focused on arcade hardware too and I think the Genesis a lot of it was like we're going to give you arcade experiences

and the Super Nintendo I think was like we'll give you experiences you can only have here or maybe on the PC so I feel like things like Pilot Wings and SimC they were very PC oriented experiences but kind of simplified made a little more easier to handle for a console

do people agree with me on this? I feel like They were going for a different kind of approach and just arcade. Yeah, I mean, how much do we really want to talk about what was inside these systems? I think that that's pretty telling. That's our next topic. I just kind of wanted to go over just the general launch first. Okay. Yeah.

But, I mean, in terms of sales, I don't want to cover that. It's funny when you look at these Nintendo systems where the NES had 61. I'm sorry, no, the NES had 61.91 million. The Super Nintendo had 49.1 million, and then I jumped ahead to the Wii just to see the difference, and the Wii had 101.52 million. Well, Nintendo sales for consoles, like install bases were on a progressive thing. He gradually shrunk, yeah.

Each system sold about two-thirds as much as the previous one until we suddenly, like, sold, what, three or four times what the GameCube did? Yes. The GameCube was probably like $30 million, I'm guessing, something like that. And then actually, if you look at Wii-use install base, it actually follows that curve. like Wii is this bizarre anomaly sticking out in the middle, but

it's actually like that downward slope just continued. So the Wii wasn't anomaly, but I thought it was interesting to see like just how how people were gradually backing away from games as they became more complicated. But we can't talk about the hardware. I don't think that's true. I think there was just more competition for Nintendo.

That could be it too. I mean, the NES sold 60 million units and it was like 90% of the install base in Japan and in America. It wasn't as strong in Europe, but, like, that was pretty much the, like, that sales, that sales figure was basically what the U.S. and Japanese markets could bear at that point.

Right, yeah. Whereas if you look at the 16-bit market, you had a pretty even split between Super NES and Genesis. So you have, at least in the U.S. and also in Europe. So, you know, you have like 60 million game systems installed in the 8-bit era, like 65 million maybe. And then in the 8-bit era, it's more like 80 or 90 million. So games were actually growing. It's just that Nintendo didn't own nearly the same slice of the pie as they had in the 8-bit era. I was kind of using anecdotal events because I feel like growing up as a kid,

and we talked about this on the Zelda episode where Zelda was, in my perspective, the dad game. It was like all the dads were playing Zelda. And I felt like everyone's parents were playing the NES, but when the S&S, But when the S&S came out, I feel like that's when parents of my generation, or my parents, and other people's parents, really just stopped playing video games. I don't know if it was the controller that was too intimidating. I think that was a huge part of it for my mom. Like, she played NES games.

But when you're confronted with this thing with, like, two times a number of buttons, you could be like, okay, I'm done. Plus shoulder things. Yeah, yeah. The shoulder buttons were maybe like those even. They're their most underutilized buttons, I think, in like all video game history. No one knew what to do with those until Final Fantasy 6, I want to say, where, like, people were like, oh, toggle between characters and menus.

That makes sense. Not even Final Fantasy 4 figured that out. But we'll talk about the hardware now. It's a good, it's a good segue. So this is designed by Masayuki Uemara. Yes. Jeremy, you talked to him. I did.

What did you talk to him about, just the NES? The NES. Okay, right. I wish I had had time to talk to about Super NES because that's much less of an explored area of his history. Yeah. But I was like specifically there to talk about the NES as 30th anniversary. So I didn't have the opportunity. But, yeah.

Yeah, he was Nintendo R&D3, one of the development, like hardware development people. He had worked with Sharp before he came to Nintendo, and his relationship with Sharp and I want to say Mitsubishi, I can't remember exactly, or Hitachi. I don't know. Anyway, his relationship was really instrumental in making the NES happen, the Famicom hardware. Right. And do you know if, did he design the American versions of the NES and Super N.S? I didn't think so. Those were industrial designers.

He was an engineer. He designed the interior, the insides. And, you know, it's someone else's job to put together the cases, the exteriors. I think the NES was, like the case design was, and maybe for the Super Nios, was done in America. I know it was a, you might know the names of the person who designed. Lance Bar was the designer. That's right. He drew up the designs for both of those.

He was at NOA, yeah. Looking back aesthetically, like, do you guys think that the NES or the S-NES was, which one do you think was more like aesthetically pleasing? I would say S-N-E-S for sure. The Super N-E-S? No, I hate the design of that console. I think it's garbage. I like the N-EAS.

You have to step back and say, I love them both equally. Sorry, you can't really answer that. My children, yeah. I mean, I loved the Super NES hardware and the game experiences, but, I mean, from the very beginning, I was like, this console looks really gross. I thought that, like, the purple on gray was like a really cool contrast I hadn't considered before. The colors were fine.

I like the colors a lot, yeah. There's something about like the NES and the mystery of opening up, you know, a little trap door and your game goes away in there. And that's like, is it a treasure or is it a mimic? Yeah. Or will it turn on? I'm glad you brought that up because the Famicom, as we all know, was top loading. The NES was more of a VCR type thing to fool people into thinking it wasn't a video game system. But unfortunately, it also fooled people into thinking.

thinking it was a safe surface to set their drinks. Yeah. And that's, yeah. Yeah, I can see a lot of problems happening there. But, I mean, there were a lot of problems with NES models because of the, I forget what would happen. Zero insertion force. Exactly. The hens would get bent.

So luckily, they went for the American version of the Super Famicom. They stuck with the top loading. But they didn't just keep the Japanese and European design, which was very clean and element. I love the Super Famicom. It's one of my favorite consoles. It's a really nice looking system. And the American version is just like, it's just like, it's just. just overdesigned. It looks awkward. It looks like a transformer character or something. It's

going to turn to a car. Yeah, but like from the bad part of Transformers after they stopped using diecast metal. It's like it's like a shark decon. I loved all like the pre-release sort of chatter about that. It's like everybody sort of expected them to redesign it for America. It's like it wasn't, it would just seem like such a, such a foreground conclusion to like the media and stuff. It's like, well, when Nintendo announces the new version, the new redesign of it. And then we'll see when it also comes out. And America's like, what? So, no. I do want to kind of step back a minute to where we were talking about

Masauki Urimura, Masayuki Uemura because I think the decisions they made in terms of what's inside the Super NES. You were talking earlier about what the Genesis aspired to do, what the Super NES aspired to do. I think looking at the chips and the

underpinnings, like just the basic hardware inside, is really telling for Sega and Nintendo's different respective approach Yeah, I mean, the Genesis chip was sort of like an off-the-shelf kind of like all-purpose chip. The Genesis chip was a 6800, a Motorola. It was the same thing that powered the Amiga.

It was the same thing that powered the Macintosh. And most importantly, it was the same thing that powered a lot of arcade boards. So it was a natural conversion, like from arcades to Genesis. Sega said, let's make a, like, basically an arcade machine for our homes. I didn't do a lot of research into the actual chips within the machine. or were they proprietary designed by Nintendo? I know the sound chip was designed by Sony. So the Super NES chip is actually sort of like the next evolution of the chip inside the Famicom, the AES.

I can't remember what the name of the chip is. It's like a risk, whatever, are you? No, it's not a risk. It's the 6502. Okay. And then the Famicom. Right, yeah, in the Famicom. But then the Super NES is like the next evolution of that.

It's another like... It's basically proprietary. It was based on a thing, but it was had... Right, it's modified. They took some things out that kind of hampered it, but it was their design. But basically they went... I've read that they went with that specific chip because it did have backward compatibility with the...

Okay, yeah, that was planned. A big part of the plan was to make, you know, the system backward compatible, but then they dropped it because Nintendo always looks at hardware and says, how can we make this inexpensive for the consumers? and they said maybe supporting an old system is not essential. And they would figure out how to make backward compatibility possible later, like with the DS, you know, to make it, you know, not an added expense to the system. Boy, did they get good at that.

Yeah. I mean, like the Wii giving us GameCube compatibility felt like a luxury or like a little gift. Well, I mean, they use the same philosophy there. You know, the GameCube processor, like, you know, the joke was that there was two, Two GameCube processors duct tape together. No, that's untrue. It was. And the same thing for the Wii U. It's like, it's these same family who's just expanded.

Like the PS2 sound chip was emulating PS1 or something crazy like that, right? The I.O. controller was it was a PS1 processor. It wasn't emulating. It was like the same chip. Exactly. Nintendo tried to do that with the Super NES, but I think they decided that having like an extra console port, you know, for a cartridge, was a needless expense. They could do that with Wii and with Wii U

because you're using disks. Like you put a disc into the disk drive and the disc drive takes it and there's no worry about pinouts or anything like that. It's very weird. They didn't seem to really figure it out so they just kind of abandoned it because in like 1988 they showed the Super Famicom

and they also said this is what we're going to do with the Famicom as well. We're going to make a redesign Famicom that it's also going to be like an adapter for the Super Famicom to play the old games. But that was a band, and then, you know, two years later. It's so weird because a lot of these things that are going to be talking about are taking place in the late 80s. It feels so strange that this is a product of the late 80s instead of – I associate this so much with the 90s.

Of course, it was in development before them, but this is such the 90s console for me that it's weird that it goes back to 88, you know. Yeah, so I think, you know, the choice to go with kind of like a system, a chip in the sort of the NES lineage had a big part in the super-farm. MECOM, Super NES hardware being clocked really slowly. And that was a big drawback, especially for initial software, was that the chip was actually running at like half the speed of the Genesis chip. But that also began sort of the argument that it's not pure processor speeds that makes the difference. They added a lot of extra functions and a lot of built-in capabilities to the superneum. More video RAM and things like that.

Yeah, well, I mean, like the hardware mode functions and things like that, there were just lots of things like expanded color capabilities. The Genesis can have, what, 64 colors on screen and the Super NES is thousands. It's pallet as thousands. It's pallet as thousands, but it can have hundreds of times. $256, I believe.

Yeah, as opposed to it's 64 in the Genesis, something like that. Right, there's 64 on screen with Genesis, and I think it had a color palette of, I want to say, it might have been 256. It might have been like 120,000, 24. But anyway, it was like a much more, a much expanded, a greatly expanded palette of colors.

It had, you know, the hardware modes. It had a lot of extra features that the Genesis didn't. So, you know, right out of the gate, it could do things that the Genesis couldn't, but the Genesis could also do things that the Super NES couldn't. And so you had, you know, like you were saying, like two systems that really spoke to different aspirations. And Tindu was not about arcade experiences and the super NES hardware reflects that. It can do really cool things, but super fast-paced games is really not one of them. You don't see a lot of, like, really intense action games.

There were some, but you don't see a lot of them in Super Nias. I mean, Contra 3 was an early one, but it wasn't like... Yeah, but I mean, even that's a pretty methodically paced game. Compared to some, like, some of the treasure games that came out in Genesis, which felt like they were really frantic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. ...you know, ...and...

...you... ...and... ...the... ...and... ...you... ...and... ...and... ...you...

Not all S-NES music is good. There's a lot of really bad farty stuff as farty as Genesis music could get. This is an eight-channel AD PCM audio chip designed by Ken Kuduragi of Sony fame. And what happened here was Kuduragi developed the chip because his daughter took a liking to the Famicom. And he's like, oh, these video games could be going somewhere. And his superiors at Sony wanted nothing to do with it. But I guess his mentor, who was the guy who helped make CDs happen, make them, you know, a thing that we all use or used to, he allowed him to develop this Super Famicom Soundship. And that's essentially where the partnership began in 1988 with Sony and Nintendo.

That would eventually dissolve in a terrible way and eventually would create the PlayStation. We'll get to that later. But that's where the soundship comes from Ken Kuduragi. And it, I mean, some of the best music and console gaming pre-readbook audio was produced on SNES. And it's so great to open an emulator. and you can turn all those channels on and off individually and hear every instrument and just see how rich things like the Final Fantasy

3 music is. So much slap base. Yeah. So much slap base. Yeah. But the Super NES chip, the audio chip is crazy because the Super NES didn't have like wave synthesis. It didn't create bleeps and boops. Right.

It couldn't do that. I mean, you could probably program the system to make those sounds, but that's not how the sound chip worked. Is it all samples? It is samples. It is sound fonts. And you can either, I don't know if the system had them built in. I don't think it did.

I think Nintendo would provide you with like a generic font library. Like that had to be part of your cartridge. It didn't have that built in. But that was what the chip could do was it could play those samples and create like sound fonts. That's why like I think eight megs of Earthbound's 24 megs is just the audio data because it's all the things that it's sampling. Yeah. That soundtrack is huge too. I didn't, you know, I didn't grow up with a Super Nintendo.

I actually played Earthbound for the first time just started it earlier this year. Oh, awesome. And it's rad, but that soundtrack is massive. It's got to hold all those Beatles clips, you know. That's right, yes. It's super funky, too. But it's also, one thing I love about Super Nintendo games, like, I love video game music in general, but it's just every game, like, the Super Nintendo doesn't feel like it has,

like, a unified sound, I think, because of that sampling compared to the Genesis, which is... It's more an atmosphere that unifies. There is this kind of, like, scratchy, slightly distorted, you know, low, low-speed sampling quality to it, so everything's a little bit fuzzy. It's like a kind of a muffled reverb-y kind of, I don't know music and terminology. The developers that did use Nintendo's sort of, you know,

they're just their like sample libraries. You do hear a lot of that slap bass. Like, it's like Seinfeld the video game. But then, you know, other... Which would be awesome on Super Enance because of it. Yeah, exactly. Well, Jerry did have a copy of SNES SimCity in his living

room. That's been discovered. But, you know, developers who took the time to create their own sound images for the system could have games that sounded like nothing else. Like, you know, Earthbound is the obvious example, but...

Wra, La, La, La, La, In Final Fantasy 6. Dogs barking jingle bells, you could do that on the S&ES. No one did, though. I feel like the Genesis is, like, the ACDC concert. The Genesis is ACDC and, like, the Super NES is like the weird art installation at the museum you go to see, and you put

on the headphones, it's just like a... A Philip Glass exhibit or something. Yeah, it's like weird tweaks of orchestrated music. Oh, sorry, Timmy, did you have something to say? Well, you said it was, it was eight out of 24 Megs for Earthbound soundtrack? Yeah, it was like a third of the cartridge space.

How much of the cartridge space in Turtles and Time was dedicated to just orchestra hits? I'm curious. It was probably just the same hit, but man, orchestra hits were all over, early 90s stuff, yeah. It was beautiful. Mario Payne, you can just make a song out of all orchestra hits. Yes. Take down CNC Music Factory. Because

they love that stuff. Yeah, that's the thing. It's all on display in Mario Payne, too. Oh, yeah, yeah. You have the full... You could make your dogs barking jingle bells, of course, finally. So let's go to the controller. We mentioned it briefly. Four more buttons on the NES, and this is a very important, like, revolution in controllerdom in that it was a lot more ergonomic than what we were used to holding, like, just like a rectangular slab. Yes.

And I feel like the labeling of the buttons, X, Y, L, and R, they were there for, like, you know, obviously, you know, the X and Y axes and whatever. But I feel like they were there to suggest the idea of, like, 3Dness and, like, suggest the idea of futurism or whatever. And they used to be ABCD. Oh, that's right. Okay, yeah. And what I really love is the Super Famicom, the splash of color, where it's red, blue, green, and yellow. And you'll see that motif in a lot of games, but it's not reflected on the controller that you're holding at home with the muted purples. But I love that.

And I also love how the A&B buttons are rounded and the X and Y buttons have little divots in them, which the Wii did not do with their classic controller. And they don't do with any of their controllers, which I hate. Pretty much just the American Super Panicom one did not have that feature. That's right. I had an askey pad that did not do that. But what did you guys think of the controller when you first saw? Because I was only, I was nine, to be fair, but I was like, oh, my God, all these buttons. Like, what can I do with these buttons? Even though they didn't use most of the buttons for the most part in the beginning.

I mean, somebody jumped in here. I want to know what you think. I was like, oh, yeah, finally, you know, we're in the future, more buttons. Because there were a lot of NES games that really needed more buttons. What was it, Batman, Sunsoft Spadman. Like, there were some weapons, there was weapons that were mapped to the select button. That's not fun. I mean, I love Mike Tyson's punchout, but hitting start to throw an uppercut always felt weird to me.

It's kind of gross. Like similarly, about hitting start, you know, in fighting games on Genesis, you know, for Street Fighter to switch between, you know, punches and kicks. And having those shoulder buttons, I think, on the Super Nintendo always made me really jealous growing up of my friends. I had those extra buttons. I think... Well, at least you weren't playing the PC intervention. That's fair. But, you know, one thing I loved specifically growing up playing a lot of platformers is the,

The Super Nintendo controller is just so much more compact. I feel like the D-pad is less muddy than the Genesis D-Pad, even though the Genesis controller was, like, big and comfy. It was like a Cadillac, especially those first ones. Yeah, but I don't like driving Cadillac. It's too big. And I think that's why, you know, it's a beautiful world we live in where you can, you know, play Sonic with a Super Nintendo controller if you want, you know.

It feels sacrilegious, but it is the better controller. To be honest, I do a lot of emulation stuff, and regardless of what old console I'm emulating, I use my S-NES USB controller because I love how it feels. It's got the divvets in the buttons and I can play NES games on that fine without having to freak out over

oh, there's no A&B or whatever, you know, but at least not in the place where it should be. The Super NES controller has always been my favorite classic controller. I feel like it is kind of the gold standard of game controllers.

Because even Nintendo went back and recreated the NES controller, right, with a variant that was around it. The dog bone kind of looked too. Yeah. I think, you know, they obviously realize this is way better than having, you know, sharp corners dig into your palms. And they finally made it a top loader after, like, I think that was like a 1994 release or

something like that, 1983, yeah, really late. And I mean, I don't want to go over every tiny bit of detail, but the S&ES would eventually be modified and re-released. And the final version looks a lot like a Super Famicom. It has the same colors as the S&ES, but it's not as boxy. Yeah, not the shape in Japan. It doesn't have, like, the rectangular protrusions that the original S&ES dip one did, yeah. Or the weird, like.

the wavy skirt design of the bar? That's weird. That's actually the one that I know. The tiny little one, right? Were those in short supply or hard to find?

I kind of want one, but... I remember it was packaged with Link to the Pass, and it was $50. Yeah, they bundled it like eight times. Wow, okay. They still sell for like $40, $50 just for the system. And they're worth getting

because if you get the one that has the single chip, like you have to open it up and see, but that one is capable of being modded to do RGB output. So it's like the best possible video signal you can get from your Super NES. So, yeah, those are, that's what I use for doing my, like, Game Boy caption and stuff. Oh, so you have one of those. Cool. Okay.

Yeah, it's RGB modded and someone put a little purple light in it, which is pointless. But, like, it outputs great video, like, is beautiful. So, I guess you could conceivably, could you conceivably play a Famicom game in an NES if you, like, took it apart and shoved the ROM into the S&S? Or did they not fit? Wait, EniS? Famicam, no. They have different pinouts. Okay, I thought so. There's a different number of pins on the chips, so you have to get an adapter. So conceivably, you can play Super Famicom games on your Super Nintendo.

The copy protection in this case is two hard plastic tabs that are inside the little slot, and it will prevent a Super Famicom game from hitting the connectors. Yeah, the cards are slightly differently shaped. NES is kind of like a rectangle if you look at it from the top, and then the edges are rounded. but Famicom is more... It's like a fingernail shape. Yeah, it's got kind of like a half-moon element to it. So it can fit easily into the Super Ineus slot and vice versa.

But it has these little tabs that are not just cut out in one system and not the other. But all you have to do is open up the flap on the Super Ineus hardware, the cartridge port, and take a needle-nose plier and just wrench them out of there. I remember doing that because I got a copy of Rockman and Forte. Yeah, yeah. And it's just like, well, I don't need to know Japanese to play this. Because it was Mega Man and bass is what it was. And just wrenching those.

Feeling terrible. Feeling terrible. Like I was committing some crime against my Super Nintendo. I'm like, please work. A Dremel is more efficient. I recommend if you have one of those around the house. Use that. I was like 11.

Yeah. Fancy. It's like you're pulling out wisdom teeth or something. Yeah, yeah. I'm just lazy. So we're going to get into some minutia here. And one thing I noticed is that the older cartridges are a lot fatter. They were designed so the S&EAS would lock

them in. When you hit the power, when you slid it on, it would like lock the cartridge in. But I feel like there was a danger in pulling a cartridge out that was being played because you're pulling on the guts of the system. So eventually they got rid of that and they made the system gently, sorry, the cartridges gently slope inward. There was not that rectangular protrusion that the system would grab. I haven't noticed that. Did Nintendo not give us a lot of credit in the U.S.? Because, I mean, the Game Boy locked in the cartridge when you turn on power. That kind of makes sense because you don't want your system to lose your game. I mean, that's true. But the Nintendo.

And that's also the Japanese, the Japanese Game Boy has that too. It does. Okay, fair enough. You'll probably remember this, Jeremy. S&S games used to come with these little, like, cartridge condoms. I've got a bunch of those just floating around. Yeah, they stopped doing that when they redesign the cartridges. Well, they're useless because you can't just, like, line your games up because you have these little bases for them.

So everything is, like, awkward and wobbly. They're not practical, but I do think they're cute. They're, like, little shoes for your cartridge. You can have all aware. But you guys all put those on your favorite games. Oh, of course. Yeah, it was like EarthBel. No, you put them in a truceball.

drawer. I never touched them. I was like, Earthbound, you didn't ship with one, but you deserve one. Those were like gold stars for my games, basically. I remember the, yeah, that happened around 93, and I remember the first game I got the hat. That was Bubsy. Oh, wow. It's like, oh, they changed the cartridge. Did it deserve a boom?

What could possibly go wrong? I'm done. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So, I did want to dispel a myth that I think has been pretty well dispelled, but a lot of people still believe in it. They assume that if their S&ES turns yellow, the SNAS came out when a lot more people were smoking in America, and I think the general myth.

as like, oh, the smoking turned it yellow, but it was actually a type of fire retardant plastic that was made... ABS plastic, yeah. What's that ABS plastic? So that yellowed at a faster rate at oxidizer, something like that, I believe. So they didn't have the mixture right. So they added a chemical for the flame retardant stuff to the ABS plastic, but they didn't get the ratio right.

So a lot of these early systems will yellow faster than some of the later. Exactly. I mean, having worked at a GameStop, I realize things can turn yellow if people smoke too much and it's disgusting, but this is a different thing. It's possible your zeal because your parents smoked or whatever. But in most cases, it is that ABS plastic that's been yellowing over time. Yeah, and people have figured out like a formula you can use to apply to whiten up your system. But apparently it makes the plastic really brittle, so I don't know that it's a good idea.

Yeah, retrovite is what you're talking about. Yeah, it's basically, it's extremely caustic. It's eating away layers of the plastic, which is, yeah, not what you really want in the end. So we talked about the backwards compatibility being on the table, And I feel like consumers had a real crisis about this because, I mean, in Japan and kind of in America as well by this point, we did have sequel systems. But this was the first, I feel like, real explicit sequel console where Master Drive to Genesis, you could be a consumer and be like, those are unrelated. Super Nintendo to Nintendo. Yeah, but the thing is, Genesis had an adapter you could buy to put the Mega Drive into.

That's true. I mean, I think that was... The Mega Drive, or the, sorry, Master System games in there. And the Genesis actually used the Master System's controller as like its sound chip. chip. Right. So... So weird.

It's bizarre. And I think... They kind of did the same thing that Nintendo tried to do and did it more successfully. There was precedent for that, Jeremy. I agree with you. But the market share of the master system was so small that no one cared. And yes, everyone had one.

And I think it was assumed that like, oh, I'll play my old games on this. And if you watch and we did this on our Nintendo Mania episode that caused some scandal on Retronauts three years ago, I will not talk about that. John Stalsh, the devil. Also, but I do want to say that, yeah, there was a lot of consumer anxiety over this. Like, oh, the Japanese are ripping us off. Like, why can't I play my old games in this? Like, come on, Nintendo.

This is a rip-off. But I feel like we weren't used to this cycle yet. It was so crazy to me. I think we're going to need some people older than us to chime in. Because, like, I'm wondering, like, was there as much of a firestorm about it over, like, Atari 5,800 or 5200, excuse me? Yeah, I mean, Tim, do you have any experience with this sort of, this sort of response to Super Nintendo? I did see it a lot amongst parents. Luckily, my parents were, I don't know if they were just wanted to spoil me, or they

I mean, even more tech savvy, or my dad played video game so he knew, like, oh, this is a better looking thing. But, like, what was your experience? Yeah, just anecdotally, I've done a lot of trying to go back and unpack my childhood to find out why I ended up with the Genesis and Master System instead of a Nintendo and Super Nintendo. Yeah. Talking to my mom about her, you know, Christmas shopping decisions and all that. What were you thinking? Yeah, it's just like, look at these images. Look at Mega Man X.

Look at, there's this bot. There's mid-bosses in this one. Like, Mega, X. I thought it was Mega Man 10. Yeah, exactly. But trying to figure that out, a huge selling point in talking to my mom about this was that, yeah, you get this adapter. You can play the old games that we bought you, and they won't just collect dust somewhere, so you can still play your Alx kids and your Shinobi and stuff. I do remember those childhood sales pitches.

You pull your parents into it around, like, listen up, guys. I got a deal for you. Right. And so it was, you know, I didn't choose that. I didn't choose a Genesis over Super Nintendo. I was too young to make those decisions. But that I know that having some sort of backwards compatibility, you know, sold to my mom was a big. value for the family, you know?

This is a good time to get into where we first met the Super Nintendo and when we fell in love with it. For me, I think I brought up in the past a few times that I went with the TurboGraphic 16 first because their marketing was just really effective. They were literally sending cassette tapes to my house and showing off like, oh, this system is so great and it was also relatively affordable. It came with a few free games. It came with Bonks Revenge.

And I got that for my 10th birthday. But by the next Christmas, I really wanted a Super Nintendo. And thankfully, my parents were, I guess, interested in spoiling me. and I did, and I kind of just shoved my turbographic 16 away forever. I think it was actually not functioning at that point. It didn't last very long. Jeremy, where did you encounter the Super Nintendo? Were you on board from the beginning from like fuzzy pictures of Mario World and EGM?

I mean, I, well, I encountered it from the beginning in Nintendo power. Oh, you're right. Of course, I followed the hype and was like, yeah. The first time I ever actually played the system was in a Play Choice 5, which was the 16-bit Super NES version of the Play Choice 10. I don't know. That's the Super System. Oh, Super System.

Yes. But it had five games, right? Yeah. Just didn't. It wasn't called Play-Choice. Yeah, okay. So I played Super Mario World and was like, oh, it's amazing. I know I've talked about this on an episode before.

Right. But, yeah, I was totally on board. It took me... It took me... oversized game pads. Sorry. It took me like a year to save up enough money for it, but the first thing I bought with my first summer job's first paycheck was a super NES, and I rented a whole lot of games after that. I think all it took to convince me was playing the kiosk at a JCPenny or whatever and seeing Mario One One, the Big Bullet Bill, that's it. It's over. This is what I want in my life right now, and that's all basically all it took. I call it the shot hurt around the world, I guess, in terms of the console war, that giant bullet bill.

Ray, where did you encounter the S&S? Were you immediately in love with it? Yeah, like Jeremy said, Nintendo Power had like a little news bit that showed like the second early version of it with red buttons and everything. And then for the rest of 1990, all the other magazines were covering the import edition and just like, yeah, showing all the screens and stuff. It's like, oh, God, why can't I have like $300 to import this? Until finally like a year later, yeah, I finally got it pretty much at the launch period. Yeah, that late summer, fall. And then was cool in third grade for like a week.

And that what happened, Ray? Right back to bullying. Oh, sorry, Ray. But now you're on top. Yeah, well, I was the video game kid in school for all that year. So, yeah, no, it was great. So it's time to talk about chips now. And much like the Nintendo, sorry, much like the Nintendo and the Famicom,

instead of investing in add-ons, which they almost did, we'll get to that soon, but instead of investing in add-ons and other expensive accessories, Nintendo did the same thing they did with the NES, and they were like, let's just put chips on that will, you know, aid in certain processes. They will make certain things happen. And for the most part, this is a very smart strategy, even though it made some games kind of expensive. And I think the most famous chips of these are these Super FX and the Super FX2, mainly Star Fox and Yoshi's Island. And, I mean, say what you want about that original source. Star Fox, but it was a very head-turning experience. That was considered inconceivable on a console, I think. Even if there were flight simulators and there were 3D games on PCs, that was a different world that we weren't necessarily in touch with. But seeing this happen, as primitive as it was, was an important move for Nintendo, that they would double down on with Donkey Kong country. Super FX games, guys, what do you think about them?

Were you excited when you saw Star Fox's paper airplane flying across the screen and among a bunch of rectangles, I guess. I think so. I participated in the Super Star Fox Weekend, which was sort of like their, well, after launch period, there was like a tournament. They'd go to a store and they'd have this competition cartridge and you'd sign up and see who's the best scorer in the world or country.

And, yeah, I don't think I really beat the game originally, though. But it was fun. It's definitely exciting. I mean, the big comparison point in magazines were making was like SILFeed on Sega CD. Oh, you're right, yeah. And like, I couldn't afford that at the time. So, it's like, well, I'll stick with this then.

I mean, I think Argonaut software, it could have been a much more basic game, but I think they played enough with the idea of a 3D shooter that it wasn't just you in a blank space moving around. I love when they would make you zoom through these, like, these spaceships, sort of like much like, I mean, it was ripping off Star Wars a lot, but that was so cool just like zooming through spaceships and things like that. And that one boss where you're fighting the core of the ship and you fly out. out of it after explodes. Like, little touches like that.

It looks hideous now, but I think it was very important for the Super Nintendo to flex its muscles when the Genesis was gaining ground on it. Jeremy, I feel like you had a lot of PC or Mac experience prior to this. This might have not been as visually interesting or as mind-blowing as it was for us. What did you think about Star Fox? No, I mean, I didn't really have a lot of computer experience at that point. I got a computer a little after that and played Mist and Specter and stuff like that. But Star Fox, I hadn't really seen anything like that before.

It was really impressive. I hadn't played PC flight sims, and they wouldn't be interesting to me anyway. So, yeah, to me, it was cool. I picked up the game as soon as I saw it on sale at Best Buy and enjoyed it for a while. I was kind of fading on my interest in video games at that point. Kind of went through like a little bit of a lull in my interest from time to time. so yeah it kind of caught my attention

and then I stopped playing it bullet dodge there on the losing interest yeah the super FX chip was really impressive I remember being you know having my mind blown by Star Fox so it really got me was I feel like you know platformers

like side-scrolling platformers are like this common language that we've known since like the 8 bit era and you can point to certain consoles and what they bring to that formula with every generation. But, like, Super Castlevania 4, for example, and, like, having, you know, rotating levels

and, like, sort of flipping certain conventions on their head or on their side. Literally. Yeah, exactly. Whoa. Strap in, kids. Yeah, I mean, things like that were all functions the hardware could do natively, but you're right, Tim, I feel like it was important for them

to put those out there, you know, up front, even if a little, so even if the Castlevania level is gimmicky. Right. Even if, you know, the Kupa Sprite flying at the screen for no reason is gimmicky. It was like, here's a matter. magic trick that won't interfere with gameplay too much. Right. Yeah.

And we would see more stuff like that with the Super FX, too, which I feel like Yoshi's Island, allow me to go on my Yoshi's Island rant for like 40 minutes, but it is a crime, a national tragedy that this game is not available, has never been made available since its original release. I do not count the Game Boy Advance port. It's okay. It's not great. And I think we are being robbed as a people by not being able to play Oshies Island because

just the way this game looks, moves, plays. I feel like it is the logical conclusion to all of Nintendo's to. 2D platforming up to that point. And the things that FX2 chips, sorry, the FX2 chip does with things that aren't 3D are amazing. Like touch fuzzy, get dizzy, obviously. But even the runimentary 3D graphics in the game, they fit in kind of seamlessly with a 2D world because they don't go for things that are that ambitious.

Those are mainly the two games, I think, that show off the chip. What am I thinking of? Ambitions or capabilities? I think, I think Yoshi's Island is a better example for what I was trying to get to there. Yeah. You know, maybe you guys have this amazing knowledge of the hardware and, like, the chip sets and stuff. And I am in awe of your computer brains. But I have a lot of notes, by the way.

It's great. But, you know, the Bowser Jr. fight at the very end of Yoshi's Island? Oh, yeah. You know how much that relied on that chip and just being able to pull off the scale of that? I mean, I don't know specifically, but I think it would be impossible without it. I mean, the boss fights especially are just a showcase of technology. and they very rarely go to the Wow, Wowsers, this is 3D. It's more like, this sprite's going to get huge, or I'm thinking of the Raphael, the Raven fight,

where it's like shades of Mario Galaxy 10 years earlier, where it's like you're going to be running around this moon and the sprites are scaling appropriately based on where you are. Yeah, I feel like every boss, they approach every boss, like, what trick can we do? Like, what magic trick? Like, one is like it's going to split into a ton of enemies. Like another one is like using transparencies in a fun way. I feel like they really gave it their all for this game. And it's so sad that my conspiracy theory is that Argonaut software has some kind of patent on Super FX chip and its sequel. And they might have to pay money to re-release games that use that chip or a program to use the chip.

That's just my conspiracy theory. According to Dylan Cuthbert, in response to me on Twitter, and that's not the case. He said there's no, he's not aware of any sort of licensing restrictions. That's weird. Okay. It was just, you know, like a Twitter exchange. I'm not calling him a liar, but it's very conspicuous. Would you say it's very conspicuous that this game?

has never been re-released on virtual console. It could just be something that's too difficult and expensive to properly emulate. I don't buy that either, but... It's not, like, coming up with emulation for something like that is not a trivial matter. I agree, but I mean, teenagers figure it out. It's not like they can just do it for free. I know, but I mean, teenagers figured it out like 15 years ago. Yeah, but they have time and they're not paid.

That's true. Hire those teenagers. They're adults now. Nintendo doesn't do, like, emulation stuff unless it meets their exacting standards. I don't understand why those standards include making, you know, NES games on Wii you look really dark and muddy. Yes. But for the most part, when Nintendo releases something, you know,

on virtual console or whatever, or whatever, it's pretty much impeccable. It's really, really good. Let's get M2 on a Yoshi's Island port. Yeah, I think they're tied up with Sega, though. But I mean, I don't know. I really feel like it's just a resource issue. Yeah.

Nintendo doesn't want to just, you know, half-ass it. It's possible, But you're right, Jeremy. I think it could be like this would cost more money than we would take in reselling Oshu's Island. But it's such... There's like a dozen games that use FX technology. Yeah. And let me name drop one game.

Don't race FX. All right. Yes, yes. I'm, okay. Vortex. It does run a 10 frames per second. But I loved it. In 40% of the screen.

Yeah. But that game has great music, great. A lot of character based on just the faces of cars, the weird, like, faces of cars they make. And I feel like that could have been a, made a sequel on an N64 or something. But that was like a last ditch final use of the FX2 chip, I think. No, it was FX1.

Oh, that was still FX1. It was like, how many games actually had the FX2 chip in them? Two, three? Which one of one, one of which only came out in Europe, which is like an Olympics game. Oh, yeah? Winter games.

I didn't even know about that one. So was that in Doom. Yeah, okay, Doom was FX2. I actually, I own all the FX chips, chip games that were released in America, but they're just like in a pile. I haven't really messed with them. I just wanted to get them because they'll never be, like, on virtual console.

So I was like, I want to be able to play these games, even if they're not any good, just, you know, for archival purposes. There's something very cool about that blood red doom cartridge. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sticking out. The doom cartridge, like, yeah, that in maximum carnage. I was going to see, it's the one good red cartridge that you can have. Is Killer Instinct a black cartridge? I'm trying to think of the very many variants, yeah.

Maximum Carnage was red also. Killer Instinct, speaking of video game music before, like, woof. Killer combos? Yeah. Was that the name of the Killer Cuts? Killer Cuts. I just released that on vinyl. I didn't buy a copy.

Wow. Yeah, I'm sure there was a lot of orchestra hits in that one as well. So let's move on to other chips. This gets very arcane and granular, but we have the DSP chip, which I think assists with scaling and moving graphics around in a way the S&ES can't natively. There are four different versions. Two, three, and four are used for one game each, I believe. So there are very specific chips that are only used for just one game, which I find

amazing. and a lot of these are just Japanese release. Yeah, I have here, DSP-1 was used for scaling and rotation, so that's how we got Mario Kart for S&S. I believe F-Zero was not using this chip, but Mario Kart had more racers, more things happening on the screen, and generally, and it actually had that rearview mirror mode, too, so there's a lot to keep track of in Mario Kart.

And I just listed some more chips, are just actually games that use chips, so some examples of games used chips are Mental Kombat, Falcons Revenge, F1, ROC2, Race of Champions, and Mega Man X2 and X3. So there aren't like a huge amount of games to use the chips. I believe Mega Man X2 and X3 have like these weird rudimentary polygon enemies. Yeah, they have, yeah.

Like the chips basically just allow some like very simplistic polygonal graphics to happen. And what's really strange is that Capcom took the time to do virtual console emulation on those. That's true, yeah. And also, I never expected those games to come out. And thank God they did because X3, like just a cartridge now sells for like $300. I'm sure the chip. I mean, I'm sure the chip made it so they didn't produce as many, you know,

because they had to pay for the production of the cards. The Japanese version is still pretty cheap, though. Yeah. 40 bucks. But I mean, DSP Nintendo did bring out Mario Card on virtual console, so obviously they know how to emulate the DSP chip. Is there anything else I'm neglecting to mention in terms of chips? I think I hit them all.

There's nothing that big, really. Yeah. I think you hit it all. Yeah. Yeah, the only, yeah, the next impressive one to the Super Effects was the Capcom ones, yeah. I think the Super Effects does stand out, though, because it was the one that it was actually marketed to consumers, like the Super FX, games are going to change, and here's how. And I feel like it wasn't just called the Mario chip originally, I think. Yeah, so it's printed on it.

It's good for something. It was like the O and Mario was a zero. Okay, so instead of giving it like the DSP, they gave it like a market this kind of names, and I think that was important in selling the technology. or at least, like, giving people to be interested in technology, at least. It's just real blast processing. Yes, actual, yeah, something that really existed. The thing about add-on chips is that for Super NES, they didn't play the essential role that they had on NES. Like, NES, pretty much any game worth playing after 1986

relies on some sort of special memory map. Yeah, like any game with a status bar needs like Mario 3 with a static section of the screen that's not moving that has its own graphics. The fundamental hardware for the NES was so. limited that in order to have anything more complicated than Super Mario Bros. You needed to have a special ad-on chip. Whereas

Super NES didn't have that limitation. You didn't need an advanced memory mapper chip to trick the processor into thinking oh, this is actually multiple games in one or something. They weren't dicking around with memory at the system level

the way you had to with NES. So, yeah, there are some kind of cool chips on on Super NES, the FX2, and so forth. But not nearly as many arcane fascinating chips, I think, is the NES, or actually the Famicom especially. Like, to me, that is just amazing. I love learning and reading about those

because they did so much beyond what the hardware was ever intended to do. And certainly the FX chip enabled something that the Super NES could not have done on its own. I mean, with like a 3 megahertz processor doing 3D graphics, no, that's impossible. possible. But, yeah, I don't know. Like, they just served a different function. It was more like crazy high level enhancements as opposed to like low level essentials. Yeah, I believe the Tales of Fantasia and Star Ocean, some of the last huge RPGs for the system that were not released here, had special chips in order to increase memory. I think at least Star Ocean had an entire opening song in Japanese.

Yeah. They also like Star Ocean, I know, had super compressed data. so it had like a real-time decoder in it. It took people a long time to translate it because of the... I think Street Fighter Alpha 2 also had all kinds of compression going on because it was just like, you know, here's a game that people are playing on Saturn and let's make a pretty decent version of it on Super Nias. What? That's crazy. The game amazed me.

Which one? Street Fighter Alpha 2, the Nias, Super Nias version. I was really surprised. A roommate of mine bought it, and I was like, wow, I'd, I didn't realize the system could do that. A rare cartridge game with loading. Yes. Okay, we are back, and I hope you enjoyed that little announcement I threw in there.

And I was going to talk about accessories, but then I realized that Ray did an entire episode about SNES accessories. So you can go listen to that. That's at Retron's Pocket No, 9 from 2013. I assume it still holds up. I assume so. You haven't made any new accessories. No, not yet. There's the HD RetroVision.

Yeah. Sure. But maybe we can talk about, does anyone have a favorite? I think mine just, this is weird, but I do like the mouse a lot, even though I used it only for one game. It made me feel like a young professional. Like, I've got a mouse for my gaming system. Like, ooh, la, la, I'm going to clean my mouse now. And I used that mouse cleaner until mice became laser mice, and then I got rid of it.

So up until, like, maybe the early 2000s, I was using that Nintendo mouse cleaner. It was so perfect. You can still clean the grooves on the scroll wheel. Even just being empowered with the knowledge that you can clean a mouse is important because, boy, I remember the first time I discovered that. And Nintendo gave you the power. That's right. Ray or Tim, how about you? Do you have a favorite accessory?

Because, again, we covered everything, the Super Game Boy included, I believe. Yeah. I mean, Super Game Boy is it. I feel like it's kind of a cop-out answer, but it was just, it was perfect for what I wanted out of that system. You know, we were talking about backwards compatibility, and I think I kind of forgot about the Super Game Boy, but I played so many Game Boy games. I didn't need to. Even though I didn't need to. It just was such a novelty that I loved it. Yeah. So, Jeremy, would that be yours as well? I mean, Super Game Boy is the most important accessory in the history of video games. I say this as a person who does a weekly

video series involving video capture directly from a Super Game Boy. So yeah. I, like, that's made my life better. It's amazing. And I owned one back in the day. I didn't have a Game Boy, but I did get a Super Game Boy. So that let me play stuff like a link to the past. Or, sorry, Link's Awakening, Metroid 2, Final Fantasy Adventure, like all these great games that I would have missed otherwise. So, yeah, that's just a fantastic accessory.

And Ray, how about you? Yeah, Super Game Boy, I suppose. I was hyped for that almost as much as the Super Indian. Mine is secretly Super Game Boy as well. I mean, that mouse, I did have a lot of fun with it, but I mean... The mouse has a lot of charm, but the real killer app, Mario and Wario, did not come out here.

Exactly. God damn it. I mean, it was a game freak game. Come on, they make good stuff. It's true. So our next topic is the S&SCD, and Ray seemed to take a special certain liking to this topic. Yeah.

So, like everyone in the 90s, Nintendo wanted to jump on the multimedia bandwagon, but their attempts led to a lot of drama. And we talked about how Ken Kuduragi designed the sound chip. So in 1988, that happened, and that kind of sealed the deal between Sony and Nintendo. Like, we want to work together. Let's sign a contract to produce a CD-based add-on.

So this contract apparently was signed in 1988, according to my research, which I find strange again. I feel like Super Nintendo is such a 90s thing, but they were, you know, spearheading this thing in the late 80s. So, CES 1991, and Ray, if there are more details, please jump in. This is just sort of like the broad overview, because there was a lot of drama. There's a lot of inflating.

But at CES 1991, which is the Consumer Electronics Show, Sony introduces... Seen one, you've seen them all. Yes, exactly. Sony introduces a standalone console called the PlayStation, two words, PlayStation, which would play standard S&ES games as well as a new CD-ROM formats. So essentially, licensing issues sunk the PlayStation.

Sony would control the means of SNES CD licensing and production, not Nintendo. And they would have the power of licensing rights. Nintendo made a mint in the NES era, of course, by being in charge of the means of production. Like, you had to pay Nintendo to make cartridges. You're very, like, getting kind of communist there. What? Very Marxist. No, no, I mean.

The means of production. I mean, that is literally the means production. Take it back, proletarians. Yes. Cast off your chains and make those carts yourself. But no, essentially, I mean, like, Nintendo at the behest of Yamauchi, the president at the time, they were cut through a business people. I mean, there was a reason why they were on top, not just because of the quality of their games, but because of their ruthless business practices.

And one of those, of course, was like, if you make games, you make them through us. And if you don't, we will find you and kill you, Tengen. I'm looking at you. And they wanted to keep this deal up. And that is sort of why I think a lot of the reason why they stuck with the N64. not just because of the tech advantages, there were few, but because, again, we want that cartridge money. We want to make the cartridges.

Yeah, you can get a dollar plus out of those. Exactly. So, literally, literally a day after the PlayStation is revealed at CS-1991, there are some backdoor shenanigans, and Nintendo announces a new partnership with Phillips. Minoru, sorry, Minoru Arrakawa. His voice is like a tongue-toster for me. He pulled some strings quickly with, like, European friends

in order to make this happen. So literally a day after they announced the PlayStation, the Sony branded Nintendo ad-on console that would play SNES titles. Literally the day after Sony announced that. Exactly, exactly, exactly. Exactly. So a day after Nintendo's like, n-uh, we're going to partner with Philips.

And this obviously caused a huge split. I guess, oh, Ray, go ahead. I mean, there's got to be more to this. It was a big hardware split, yes. But Sony ImageSoft, which was their game company at the time, still existed. And they still made Super Nias games. Yeah. Yeah, Sony's divisions, like, their hands have no idea what the other hand is doing.

Exactly, yeah. And it's, it's a weird little business. It's, I think it's important to note that Phillips is the other company besides Sony that was responsible for the creation of the CD format. So Nintendo went for basically like one Papa to the other Papa. Exactly, exactly. One that would give them, or let them make more money. Yeah, basically. And I want to live in that timeline where the PlayStation actually came out.

It's probably not too far from our own planet. Yes, exactly. I want to jump to that. I want a quantum leap into somebody's body and experience that. But so what happened was there was still like a contract signed on paper. Like, oh, we came back out of this. So they had to negotiate a deal. And Sony was allowed to produce Nintendo compatible hardware.

But Sony was like, no, we're going to hold on to this for the next generation. And that's essentially how the PlayStation was born. I mean, this is a very, I think the story is very well known by now, but I'm sure that some people who don't know it. The main problem was lots of games were in development for the SNESCD at the time the deal had ended, and they had to be altered as a result. Some notable examples I wrote down here are Secret of Mana. We don't know what was cut from that game, I don't think, but obviously the way the game flows, there are some things missing.

It feels very, very glitchy. Yes. Like they didn't, I don't know, just like things were taken out and left holes and gaps. And, yeah, it just feels. kind of incomplete. It's a great game, but it definitely suffered somehow. Were there going to be more controller inputs on, you know,

the final hardware? Probably not. I don't think so. I don't think so. Okay. Yeah. No, I mean, the, I've touched a Sony PlayStation, and it's pretty much the same thing as a super NES, but with like the hardware, you know, the discette, or

the CDROMBay underneath. And it's funny, this caused a lot of delays with some games. One I could find, and it's one game I enjoy Marvelous Another Treasure Island, which is an S&ES action Zelda E. Game came out in 1996, directed by A.J. A. A.J. Aluma. Thank you. This game apparently was in development as early as the early 90s. It was meant to have anime cutscenes starring a different character, but it was eventually we reworked, put on the back burner, and in 1996 it eventually released in its current form, which is great. I recommend you play that.

There were several games, like, you know, ports of PCCD-ROM games that were shown off and announced, was it 7th guest? Yes, and Nintendo Power, they were like, get ready for multimedia, this shit's happening, bro. Blood happening. Exactly. Those were just cut all together.

Yes, exactly. Was Nosferatu supposed to be a CD-ROM game, or was that one just delayed for some other reason? Yeah, that was in the back of... That was going to be, like, a launch game. Whatever that SNES guide that Nintendo Power put out alongside the launch was essentially like a sales brochure slash strategy guide, Nosephratu was in the back.

When did that game come out eventually? 95. 95. Wow. It was really late. God, it was like a Prince of Persia-ish kind of thing. Okay, I thought so. So even if Nintendo promised an S-NES CD in the pages of Nintendo Power, it never came to pass. But unfortunately, fortunately for us in the future, we can laugh at it. Phillips had the right to produce their own games for the CDI based on Nintendo characters. And we are all still laughing at those Zelda cutscenes, which are all available on the Internet. Please look them up if you haven't.

Don't for your Hotel Mario either. Yes, exactly. If you need help on playing the game, check the instructions. Man. Wow, Ray. Were you getting voice work 20 years ago? I studied him well.

Awesome. I was understudy. Yes. These games would not tarnish the brand of Zelda or Mario. I feel like the CDI was such an overpriced, strange, weird, edutainment-y, a bizarre thing that it didn't reach enough people to have people be put off by Zelda and Mario in these formats. No. And that's essentially the story of the S&ESCD. It became the PlayStation, and then the PlayStation would eventually gain dominance

for like a decade before the Wii kind of sunk Sony for a bit. Did I miss anything here? Do you guys have any commentary on this? I find it's so fascinating. I just think it's such an incredibly speedy timeline. I don't think, you know, none of the significant stuff really got made until the 90s,

regardless of what you say about 88 and stuff. So, like, we're talking about a period of, like, three or four years until the real PlayStation showed up. And it's like, that's not a lot of time to, like, develop and plan and then manufacture a whole new game console. So for like that switchover from like Nintendo to like Sony going on their own, it's like crazy to me.

And I mean, it's just, it's also like at the same time, multimedia is booming relatively. I mean, and we have new players like 3DO also jumping in and becoming like a new game console as well. So it's like it's just crazy to me that all that happened is such a compressed period of time and then Nintendo just kind of like bailed. Maybe Sony being spurned is what made them put their full force behind. behind this because I feel like... I don't doubt it.

Yeah, it's just crazy. I feel like with more with Japanese businesses could be a stereotype. I'm sorry if you think it is or if it actually is. But I feel like there's more of a more like honor at stake. And the move they made felt like a very cutthroat like American kind of thing. Even though they were very, they were very cutthroat in Japan as well. But I feel like there was a certain kind of honor loss there between Sony and Nintendo. Japanese businesses revolve very heavily around relations.

Yeah. Anytime that I've made connections in Japan, it's always, not always. But generally because someone I know or someone I work with, like, you know, whoever, PR or whatever, has taken the trouble to kind of introduce me to the Japanese side of people and, like, to familiarize them with me. So that then they're like, okay, this person is, you know, part of our circle and we trust this person. So we'll let them, you know, have access or whatever. Yeah. Like that is just very much, like relationships, handshakes, getting to know people. That's really key to Japanese business.

If it's not a stereotype, it's a fact. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, what Nintendo did with Phillips was very much in defiance of that, which is really strange because Nintendo is in so many ways, such a traditional Japanese company. Yes. Much more so than I would say any other company in the game's business. But NOA had a lot of power because, you know,

that's why apparently Arakawa and Lincoln led this Phillips thing because, you know, they sell a lot of power. And also they got Tetris for one thing before that. Yeah, that's true. So, I mean, and, and, you know, the Mario and Zelda games on CDI are basically, like, offshoots of the cartoons. Like, they're using that as their model. So that's why they're kind of crappy. And those were American-led things.

I think, like, you know, they had a bit more power back then. So, Tim, what was your take on the S&S CD when it was being previewed? I mean, were you, did you have an S&S by this point? Were you, like, I'll have my Sega CD, thank you. It can play Sewer Shark and I can make a music video. Like, I'm just curious. That's the thing is, like, in retrospect, I would love to live through a timeline where this did happen and see how it. it shook out, but

I'm happy that it didn't because I remember being, you know, a Genesis kid and not like being interested in the 32X, being interested in the Sega CD and being so fundamentally confused about how these things tied into the systems I already had. I understood an adapter to let me play master system games.

It's plugs on the top. I can put this in. It's like putting a different nozzle on a garden hose or something. For some reason, that made sense to me. But then these add-ons and what they brought to the table was so confusing as a younger consumer that I'm glad that those

that the Nintendo waters didn't really get muddied by that add-on part of it because Nintendo, to me, something I love about it. And, you know, as an example of this, is like the more recently, you know, announced mini-NES classic, I think is what it's called

where it has like the 30 games in it. It's just like this little tailored, you know, curated device that is simple and accessible. And I think that adding on an add-on would have just been a confusing mess. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it already was. Right.

I don't think consumers are necessarily stupid or ignorant, but they want to be comfortable with a purchase. They don't want there to be confusion. So I feel like, even naming something a Wii U is too confusing for a consumer, when it seems relatively straightforward, or even like adding a number to something is confusing to a consumer. So yes, having the SNES CD, the Sega CD, the Sega 32X, like, those do not help a consumer be like, I'm making a good purchase.

I mean, we talk about that parental uproar about their job. just being a Super Nintendo. Imagine if, you know, they had the choice of the add-on CD drive or the dedicated CD console that also played Super NES games. It's actually, you know, it's interesting. I wonder if we're going to be getting into that now, you know, with the new Xbox and stuff like that. It might be a, it's like a different version of those conversations.

But I think that people are way more adept at describing advantages now. I may have written an editorial making that comparison. Oh, really? I'm going to have to hunt that down. I should. It's great. It's on usgamer.net. Not everyone has the motivation to do this,

but I feel like the information is out there. You can just do a search on Google. Like, what is this? You couldn't do that in a store. You could ask a guy, but he could just be trying to sell you something. You know, you can't really trust the salesperson at all times. So I feel sure.

Yeah. Let's talk about the fact that the CD, you know, resurfaced recently. Yes, I did want to mention that. There were prototype things that sort of floated around in circles. And you can see photos of like really weird controllers and stuff that were sort of like that were vacillating between the Super NES in the real PlayStation. But then, you know, recently we got something that seemed to be more closer to the final system.

It was all because some guy found it in an attic. Apparently there were, this could be traced back to Olaf Olofson. Yes, so Olaf Olson. The guy with the coolest name in the universe, by the way, yeah. He was the head of Sony ImageSoft, which was the game company. And then later, Sony Computer Entertainment, when PlayStation's stuff's going on. And then he, you know, after that all ended, he was, you know, going around building this career. He ended up at a place called Advanta, which was like a financial company, I think.

And then they went bankrupt, basically. And they had like a company auction of some assets and stuff. And apparently Olaf Olson had a prototype, a Super Nintendo PlayStation, fairly functional, but didn't take it with them when the company went under. And so it ended up in this auction. And then in the hands of a guy who used to work at the company, like a maintenance man, Terry Dybold. And then he just kept it up an attic for, you know, six or seven years, and then his son comes over for the holiday or whatever, finds in the attic,

and then just shows it off on Reddit, basically. This guy's a little bit younger than us, so he doesn't fully know what this thing is, but everybody else on the internet is like, oh, freaking out. Upvote, upvote, up vote, upvote. Yeah, upvote, and then sell, sell, sell, sell. Of course you should sell this. But yeah, it apparently, and it was a fully functional, not fully functional, excuse me, partially functional because it did, it does, it did play super,

running S games. It does boot those up. And it also comes with a BIOS cartridge for the CD drive, much like, uh, you would, uh, no, never mind. But kind of like the PC engine system cards. I was thinking Sega, excuse me, yeah, so like that. There was no software uncovered for this, correct? No real, no actual games. But, uh, the boot, the boot cartridge was a dumb thing. You can kind of see a prototype, um, BIOS boot out. Of the UI or just the, just like the, just like some, some options and stuff. Yeah, it's like a text based, you. Y, but it, yeah. Yeah, and I actually was...

You've touched it. Yeah, I was going to say... I touched it. No, back at... Never washed those hands again. That's right. Kind of stinky. Back at...

By the way, it was yellowed. It was yellow? Yes. Oh, wow. What the hell was Milwaukee? Yeah. Midwest Gaming Classic. Yeah.

Gaming Classic. Yes. I kind of emceived for a public presentation of that. And I think the system was a little worse. for the wear because it wouldn't actually output video. Apparently they just had I haven't had a chance to watch the video yet

but Ben Heckendor and the guy who does all those amazing like modded systems and hacks and things like that took it apart and I think got it working again and talked about the workings of it like what's inside and really kind of broke it down so I'm looking forward to watching the I skim through it silently I didn't have audio on it

but there was like a specs comparison and you can see like in terms of raw numbers as things like megahertz and RAM size and stuff, it probably would have outdone the Sega CD. Of course, it's like the actual systems themselves. It does some things better and something's worse, but I think, yeah, it probably would have done some cool things

that the Sega CD couldn't have done. Who knows what? I mean, I assume there has to be software for it somewhere out there, maybe in someone else's attic. God knows if that one prototype could play it, but there should be in other prototypes. I mean, it has to exist somewhere. Am I just crazy?

I wouldn't doubt it. I mean, like I said, there was at least, there was some other weird prototype that didn't look anything like this one. It was like a big gray charcoal gray brick thing. But the thing about this newer one is that there was photographic evidence of it. It had shown up in like a book about Sony industrial design or something like that. So that's why people recognize it and we're like, holy shit, you need this.

But yeah, but functionally the machine is basically like a super Famicom mounted to, you know, like. It looks like a washer dryer unit kind of. Yeah, you would see, you know, a good comparison would be the Famicom Disc System. Yeah, for sure. Or even better than Nintendo 64D, which we'll talk about in the 64. They did not. In 64 episode. Yeah.

But, yeah, that's like kind of an all-in-one. It uses standard Super NES controllers. The controllers that came with it say, like, PlayStation on it. But they are Super Famicom controllers, and it's interchangeable. You can use, like, regular Super Famicom controllers. What is it, you know, boots up regular Super Famiccom Games. And again, it's just, it blows my mind how close it got. We could have had.

Apparently, they produced 200 of those units. Yeah. Yeah. And they were all recalled and destroyed, but Olaf Olavson, I guess, was just like, no, it's my desk accessory. That's sneaky double. Thank God. Yes.

So, you know, something like that happens all the time. He hasn't shown up at all since. I haven't heard of peeve from him. He's been silenced. Apparently, the Diebolds reached out to him, and he just hasn't said anything. Yeah. That's awfully suspicious. Yes, perhaps ominous.

Yes. Yamuchi isn't that? He's an assassin now. Oh, my goodness, yeah. So we need to move on to console wars, covered in the book, console wars, of course, but also the real thing that happened in the 90s. And what happened was, I think, Nick Nintendo, being a very Japanese company, was not prepared for the brazen assault against

them launched mainly by Sega of America, which Sega of Japan was not very happy with. I mean, if you read the book and there's a lot of great information in the book, even if you don't like how the story is told, there's still a lot of great information in the book, by the way. But, like, they directly attacked Nintendo, and that was something that, like, oh, I can't believe you did that. And on the other hand, Nintendo had a policy of never acknowledging their competition. Like, if you listen to our Nintendo Mania episode from three years ago, we listened to a, I believe, a 2020 piece about the NES, you'll notice that there is no mention of any other system. The Genesis existed.

So I feel like Nintendo was like, if we're going to work with you, we are the only thing that exists. And we did episodes on GamePro TV and Nick Arcade and on those. There are Nintendo games, but Nintendo published games are not on those shows. So I feel that, like, we will only work with you if we are the only. only game in town, and that was their sort of strategy in terms of dealing with the media. But they were not used to having to actually respond to competitors saying, you know, screw these people, like, we're better. And that's essentially what started the console wars in general, just Sega being like,

you're the Giants, we're taking you down. We're first to the market with a 16-bed console, and we developed this guy named Sonic the Hedgehog, which is way better than Mario, not really. But it's still impressive if you're a kid in 1991 and think Mario's kind of fat and lame. Sonic is totally badass. I mean, it worked on me. Like, Sonic the Hedgehog is the reason I'm sitting here. It almost worked on me, to be fair.

Like, I had a TurboGraphic 16, and I got an S&S for the summer, for the December of 1991 Christmas, or 1992, rather, and I was really eyeing Sonic. I'm like, could he be cooler than Mario? I mean, like, what was your take on it, Tim? Like, how did you view Sonic the Hedgehog? I mean, it was, it was mind-blowing. At the time, it was, you know, our family got Genesis when it was, it was, it was repackaged with Sonic in 91, right? And

then that was what drew me in, you know, it was as colorful as, you know, Super Mario World in my eyes. Like, it was rivaling those that feel. But it did, it definitely had like a different edge to it, I feel like, just slightly. I mean,

Sonic's idle animation, right? Like, this guy's got, he has an attitude. You know, Mario, as much as I love him, like, he's kind of a, he was kind of a cipher at think time. The graphics are hipper. The music is hyper. Oh, yeah. It's great. For as much as I love Mario World, it is kind of a, it's a game that I like how it looks, but it is sort of a plain looking game in terms of what they could have done with Mario's animations and with

like things moving in the background and things like that. Like, Sonic is just a very beautiful game to look at. I don't like how it plays nearly as much, but it is very upfront, like, very pretty. Yeah, I, you know, ended up buying a Super NES. I was well aware of Sonic at that point. I'd borrowed a friend's Genesis. He had Sonic. And I loved the way Sonic looked and sounded. I liked, you know, the gameplay, but it didn't have enough substance for me. Like, Super Mario World really hit the spot that I wanted. Like, I, that's my, you know, I like that

better than Super Mario Brothers 3. Let the debate rage forever. But I was kind of embarrassed to like Mario. Like, the marketing definitely had its hooks. And I was like, oh, Mario's kind of lame and boring, but I like this

game. It's really good. I can't stop playing it. I want to find all 96 exits. So, you know, eventually, you know, the play of the thing trumped out for me over the visuals and the sound. But yeah, I can't deny Sonic's appeal. Yeah.

Ultimately, like, I felt like if I was going to spend money, I wanted something that I could really sink my teeth into, and I just knew from history that Super NES would give me that experience. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't convinced by Sonic because I played a lot of it at a friend's house. I was like, oh, I can play through this game in like half an hour, and you don't go back to levels. and I love Super Mario World a lot more.

So that kind of came to me. She got to get all the chaos emeralds. That was too hard, right? I could get all the exits in Mario World. It's not as hard as 96 exits. For some reason, that's not hard for me. Getting all the Chaos Emeralds in two is way harder than it won't. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's true.

Especially if you're playing with tails. He's a mess. I mean, like, the Genesis definitely had more grit, I feel like, at least aesthetically, you know, you had streets of rage and altered beast and stuff, and these just felt darker. I think they were literally darker than, you know, stuff like Mario World,

but also it had that, tone to it. I don't know, growing up, looking back, and the way people remember console wars, and I feel like I grew up in an era that would have been, you know, ripe for that. But I just always had the attitude, and I think this has followed me until today

is just like, well, why don't, let's just have all these things. Let's just play everything. This is great. It's wonderful that these things have totally different libraries and sort of, you know, even similar games you guys talked about. Aladdin recently and the differences

between, you know, the Genesis and the cap, and the Super Nintendo one that was made by Capcom. I just loved that you could have it all. So the sort of opposition, the clash, it never really resonated with it. Yeah, I mean, I don't think I ever internalized it and made it into this tribal sort of thing where it's like, you've got a Genesis, I hate you. It was more like I prefer the Super Nintendo. I like how these games look and sound and play better, but my friend has a Genesis. I'll go over to his house, play all the games I can't play, and they're fine.

I'm not going to ask my parents for this. I'd rather have more SNES games, but these things can coexist. And that was my attitude. I mean... We should have gotten Kohler on this episode because he still has that console war internalized. He was giving kids swirlies in fifth grade, like, say Mario's better. Jeremy, what you said actually just made me think of, like, the idea of going from Super Mario World and, you know, having that be sort of your core platformer for the series on Super Nintendo and going over and checking out Sonic and playing around with it, like, I think that that leap would be way harder than, you know, for me growing up and playing a lot of Sonic. And then, like, looking at Mario being like, oh, but this is platforming.

You know what I mean? Like, it would be harder to go back, I think. For sure. Because Super Mario World is, like, the best side-scrolling platform that's ever been made. Wow. I thought I had good things to say more hammers dropped. So Sega, really, I mean, part of the only way I took this personally was when Sega would openly insult you if you like Game Boy or openly insult you if you like Super Nintendo

games. Like, why would you want to play Mario Card when you can play, what were they comparing it to? I forget. Really? I think. Yeah, yeah. I mean... Not another racing game.

There was a lot of disingenuous advertising. I mean, that's the point of advertising. But in this case, it was like, we've got blast processing, which really doesn't exist. Of course, we've talked about that before. But they were just convinced with showing you, like, we are cool. We are cutting edge. The SNES is slow and dorky, full of these colorful games for losers. And we're totally badass and ready for the go-go-90s.

And Nintendo eventually tried to combat the Nintendo of America, at least. They're like, you think you've got to going, buddy. We're going to do this. our own way. And they launched the playoff. It's Island makes fat people explode. Exactly.

The Play-A-Loud campaign, which has some great commercials, and it's like, Nintendo really wanted to be as edgy as Sega, but couldn't quite do it, and didn't really fit their image.

I feel like there is a commercial out there with the butthole surfer song in it, advertising Nintendo games. That was the one. Nintendo's 90s ads are the epitome of, uh, what's up,

fellow kids? Yes. I sure love those damn video games. From my perspective, I think they worked for that first year they did it, which was, you know, Mortal Kombat 2 and Donkey Kong Country,

that stopped, that hit a wall once Kirby Superstar came out. And they had to apply that crap to a Kirby game. Yeah, like Jeremy said, there was a lot of tone deafness with how their ads were treated like,

Yoshi's Island, one of the cutest cuddliest, beautiful, like, whimsical games ever advertised in like something that would be on Renan Stimpy or something like that. If someone jumps into the guitar. Yeah.

Like they wanted to be gross out, badass, They wanted to be true butthole surfers of the console world. Get your Dutch angles. Yes, exactly. I mean, everything looked like a 90s music video, like stock footage of, like, the bridge shaking and, like, the guy getting hit with a cannon bomb.

Like, I mean, that wasn't every music video. It was in all the Nintendo ads. Just like that overuse of stock footage. Green jelly, the console. Yes, exactly. Hey, Maximum Carnage pops up again in this episode. Exactly. So, I mean, it doesn't need to be told here, but I will tell it.

And Sega was eventually outdone by Nintendo because Sega had to try harder, and Nintendo really didn't, and they actually tried smarter. And instead of developing the SNES CD, other add-ons, they're like, we're going to fake it. We're going to fake it. And this is something Nintendo has done a lot over their history. They convinced us that the SNES had the power of SGI workstations, when really they created graphics on one of those and made them into animated gifts that they turned into Donkey Kong Country.

And that's essentially what Donkey Kong Country is, right? I mean, it's just like, I made a giff of this 3D model and I stuck it in an SNES game, and that's essentially it. But that was enough to convince people like, Let's hold off on this tech, guys. We're going to keep our S-NES. So Donkey Kong Country was the original Tumblr shitpost? Yes, exactly.

Especially the awful cartoon. Which I think I needed an episode about that. So, yeah. Can you make a whole game out of a Tumblr? Let's find out. But again, Jeremy, we talk about Nintendo. Nintendo looking for cheaper solutions to address technology possibly moving on before they're ready. And we're going to talk about that with a punchout episode soon.

But that is how Nintendo wins by being cheaper and smarter. For the most part, I mean, obviously they've had a few losses recently, but the Wii was a huge win, and it was a cheaper, smarter idea. So the SNS is nothing without its games. I whipped up a very brief list of original games that I feel are the 10 best. Maybe you guys can just pile on if you think I'm missing anything. And I did have to exclude some games because it's like, can't have like five Squarespace

RPGs on this thing. So you could. Yeah, I could but that would be unfair. So in short, my improper list is, my first cheat is Mario All-Stars plus Mario World, which was only a pack-in. But God damn it, how great is that? Chrono Trigger, Super

Metroid, Yoshi's Island, like to the past, Earthbound, Mega Man X, Super Mario Card, Secret of Mana, and Super Punch-Out. I admit Super Punch-Out is a personal favorite of mine. Yeah. That is my top 10 original SNES games. What is your favorite SNES game? I mentioned or didn't mention, and why do you think it belongs in the S-NES pantheon to be remembered

for all time? Maybe we'll start with Tim. You're the guest, the special guest, at least, and our new guest. So what S-NES game is your personal favorite, and why should people play it? You know, Sega Boy. Come on, Sega, boy. Oh, boy. I'm getting flash-pass. My favorite. The favorite N-ES game is Somari, right? I mean, it always comes back to Super Mario World for me. Yes, okay. That is it. I mean, I have such vivid memories of, you know, like, I was always looking over the fence at the greener grass of the Super Nintendo, and cousin's not letting me play it for like five minutes, and then I couldn't play it anymore.

And it was until I finally, like, sat down in a hotel room. And my parents bought me the hour of like, you know, hey, you can play a little bit of link to the past, a little bit of Super Mario World. That's what $8 a minute. Yeah, exactly. And Super Mario World was like absolutely it. But like other favorites that really come to mind, like Blackthorne was actually on that. Oh, right. Blizzard collection.

Yeah, Blizzard or... That was after the Silicon and Synapse name Switch, right? Because it happened during this console. Didn't it? I think so. I think it might have been in the era. But anyway, that Contra 3 is way up there for me. And then, of course, Turtles in Time,

which is like another one of those great examples of, like, growing up playing Hyperstone Heist and being like, it's pretty much Turtles in Time, right? I got it, guys. Like, oh, well, there's no time traveling in this game. Which makes it way better. Yeah, I bet my list is very. very safe. I try to make the safest list possible

so your picks can be slightly different. Those are great. Yeah. And I will roll with Mario World. We did a whole episode about it. It's one of my favorite ones we've done, and there's just so much going on in that game. Even though it doesn't look like the most impressive thing they could have made, I feel like it does so much. There's so much to play with, so many different items and tools and tricks

and secrets. It's just so great. Ray, how about you? What would you add to this list? Or maybe what would you pick from this list? That could be one of your favorites. Well, Earthbound is up there. I also really like the Goymon games. Mystical Ninja. Oh, yeah. And Goaemon, too, especially, which is only only only in Japan, but... Those Goaumon games are really pretty.

They're really good two-player games, and what they are. And I think, you know, you should definitely check those out as well. And just the other sorts of cuttier games that don't get a lot of love, like Pocky and Rocky, that series, Spike McFang, things like that. You know, I didn't play a lot of, like, the heavy hitters that everyone else had, like Turtles in Time, even though I should have loved. You wrote a magazine about... all the turtles

games. I'm talking about back then. Okay. Now I dare you do improper research, right? Yes, as an eight-year-old.

How dare I? But yeah, so like, uh, I think now I appreciate things, uh, like actor-raiser more. Oh,

man. Even actor-raiser, too, I think. It's like, it's a gorgeous game. Um, I really, back then I also really enjoyed Final Fantasy

3, 6. Uh, that was like the key RPG for me and what really, I think, got me into Funnel Final Fantasy the most, even though I played it before, the original games and stuff.

Like, that really dovetailed nicely into being, like, teenage, super Final Fantasy slash anime fan and getting hype for Final Fantasy 7 and stuff. Yeah, I mean, it hit me at the right age, too, like, oh, there's death and sadness in the world is a dark place now. Also, Lemines. It was, like, a good rental, because, like, my friend and I would play the versus mode until, like, 4 a.m. That's awesome.

I forgot there was a versus mode. Yeah. Yeah, it's brilliant. So, yeah, Lemines is really good for that, too. So, Jeremy, what would you pick that either is on the list or maybe something you thought that would be, like, a better edition? Your list is great. I would add, for me personally, the Final Fantasy trilogy. I can't pick one of those because all of them, all three are amazing.

It's true. Like, I really rolled with Chrome Tricker because I feel like it is sort of like if you were going to play something, I would choose that one just because it feels like the most put together, you know, in terms of design. But I would definitely put all the Final Fantasy's on here. Dragon Quest 5, which I didn't play back in the day. is a brilliant game. Soulblazer, which was the best Zelda clone. And then it's a personal favorite that I realize is kind of an outside perspective. But I've really grown to love Brandish.

Really? The solipsist game. Didn't use to hate it? I did. Well, no. I was recruited by the Gaming Intelligence Agency to write about it for their gauntlet of pain fundraiser. The idea being that it's a terrible game that would be painful for me to play. We were all young months.

Yeah, but I mean, I played it and I was like, this is actually interesting and not bad. And as I've gotten older, I've grown to like dungeon crawlers a lot more. So there's a lot I really like about it. It's awkward, and I like the remake on PSP much better. You should play it, The Dark Revenant. But it's a good game.

And also, it didn't come to the U.S., but Sharon the Wanderer is still brilliant when they ported it to DS in like 2010. Oh, that's right. That happened. Man, that game's so good, and I'm so stoked for the upcoming Vita version or Vita sequel, basically.

You know, you mentioned not putting like mentioning way too many Squarespace RPGs, but like the Super Mario RPG and like tracing back not only is it like I think a really fun game, really colorful, you know, a cool gameplay perspective, you know, for where you look at the game for an RPG at that time.

But also I think I have a hard, I would have a hard time tracing back like a lot of the personality that's been injected into the Mario series over the years with like Mario and Luigi and Paper Mario and stuff. Like I feel like I trace it back to that game. It does feel like the first time they were able to use a lot of text within the context of

the Mario universe and maybe we never saw Bowser being a sad sack before. That was a new angle to him and I guess Luigi was sort of like forced out and that kind of underlined Luigi's loserness and things like that. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, no, I think Super Mario RPG is getting a lot more respect now

as people who grew up with it are writing about it. Yeah, I think, yeah, it connects more with people who are like a few years younger than us and but for me, Yeah, it was great. And, like, defined the summer before the N64 came out for me, basically. And I also feel it was Yoko Shimomura's first defining soundtrack that really, that really, her first sound. Yes?

No. Street Fighter, too, man. That does not sound like a Yoko Shimamura soundtrack, though. I mean, that... Bob's kind of right. I am right. What does Yoko Shimamura sound like? She's so diverse and so broad in her ability.

I feel like the bouncy playfulness of her signature sound. I know that's not all she does, but I, I have. I hear this in Kingdom Hearts and Mario and Luigi and things like that. Like, how is that not the Chinleet theme? I mean, yes, but this was her doubling down. I will not budge from this position, Jeremy. Retronauts listeners, tell me, am I right? Because I think I am.

Stop bullying Bob. Yes. Leave Bob Mackey alone. So we're... I believe we have to wrap up now, unfortunately. But this has been a great discussion. I feel like it's probably better than the one I did five years ago. I'm more confident.

Probably too confident. I'm kind of an asshole. but thanks for sticking with me over these five years I'm just kidding guys I believe in myself I'd be offended if I remember at that episode we did five years ago we all sound very sleepy and I sound very reluctant about everything I say but I feel like I think a better grasp on this stuff now

and I feel like it's great that the SNESCD has come into being you know and we could have at least touch it now before five years ago that was not possible so yes thank you so much for listening and as for me you can find me on Twitter as Bob Serbo, I also write for usgamer.net and something awful.com. And you can listen to my other podcast, Talking Simpsons. It's a chronological exploration of The Simpsons.

Comes out every Tuesday on Lasertimepodcast.com. If you like The Simpsons, you should like the show. It's that simple. Jeremy, where can we find you? Oh, God. I'm in North Carolina, so come on by. You can find me at usgamer.net on Twitter as GameSpite. And at Gameboy.

dot world. How about you, Tim? Yeah, I'm on Twitter as well. It's just at Tim Turrey all in word. It's T-U-R-I. Otherwise, if you swing over, Capcomunity.com is Capcom-Hifen Unity.com. I am hanging out over there. We're doing cool stuff like trying to get some more streaming going

and other coolest things like that. And right, I'm on Twitter, R-D-B-A-A-A-A. I do a podcast that needs to record more frequently called No More Whoppers. And that's about it. Cool. Well, we'll see you next week with a brand new mini episode. See you then.

Thank you.