Star Fox 2 may be arriving decades after the glory days of the SNES, but (depending on your perspective) it's on course to become the console's 19th million-selling game.
Sure, it's not a "proper" release as it comes pre-loaded on the SNES Classic Mini alongside 20 other titles (some of which, it should be noted, will also pass the one million sold marker due to their inclusion), but it's not too much of a stretch to make the claim - assuming of course than the new micro-console clears a million units sold, something which we'd say is pretty much assured.
Industry analyst Daniel Ahmed is the man who made the observation:
Selling a million was a much bigger deal back in the '90s than it is now, as you can see from that list of games. Still, it's quite an interesting little fact (or non-fact, depending on your personal view) and it's even more remarkable when you consider that Star Fox 2 very nearly didn't get a proper release at all.
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Not bad though, considering the time frame.
Super Mario RPG only sold 2.14 million copies?? That's one of the best games ever made!
That doesn't really count. Star Fox 2 , the original Star Fox and Kirby's Dream Course are 3 games I most certainly didn't buy the SNES Classic Mini for.
Hard mode is brutal. I like the game but I see why it was shelved. Once I’m done with it, I’m putting my SNES Classic Edition away.
I echo @SLIGEACH_EIRE - how many people bought the SNES Mini specifically to play Star Fox 2? I suspect it's significantly below the 1m mark.
@Krull Obviously we'll never know without polling a sizeable portion of buyers. Although I imagine a good number of retro gamers will have as they may own the other twenty titles physically already. In contrast, this is the first time a completed version of the Starfox 2 game has been made available to the general public.
Incorrect observation by the analyst! Star Fox 2 won’t be the 19th million seller.
ALL the other games on the SNES Mini that have yet to reach 1 million but have already sold some copies will beat it to the punch.
Wouldnt that technically mean ALL the 21 games would pass that milestone too?
Don't forget the secret game, "Legal Notice" as well! A text adventure game where the goal is to read it all without failing asleep. Makes for great speed running! XD
Hopefully I'll be able to get an SNES Mini sometime eventually. I'd love a chance to play it.
@flapjack-ashley Only game on that list not released in Europe.
@flapjack-ashley we never got it in Europe or it would have sold more
Can you count a game "sold" that's part of a collection? If so, you'd have to double-count every game included in every collection so far.
Really, though, counts only matter to the accounting department who needs to determine ROI. In a case like this, SF2 would account for 1/20th of the ROI on the SNES Classic Mini. They could then apply roughly 1/20th of the total profit from the SNES Mini to the cost of completion for Star Fox 2 to determine whether or not the internal development time had been well-spent. (They also have to have predicted whether or not its inclusion might have influenced total unit sales.)
Head-spinning stuff with lots of math. Something I'm wholly unsuited for.
I shrug when I see pack-in games make top-sellers lists. I mean yeah, a game moved from the factory to someone's house. But even if someone doesn't even want the game, like me with Wii Sports and Super Mario 3D World, it still counts on official stats. So what can you do?
I say it counts just as Wii Sports, bundled with the Wii, also counts.
@flapjack-ashley the opposite is also true. Millions of copies of sports games with roster changes sell every year without fail.
I had a copy of Super Mario RPG though. Pretty good game!
I know the article is about Star Fox 2, but I didn't realize Super Scope 6 was that popular. 1.6 million? Really!?
This list also makes me want to look at a list with 3rd party publishers included (Final Fantasy 2/3, Street Fighter 2/Turbo/Super, etc.).
@Angelic_Lapras_King I agree. If any other game on the SNES mini have sold at least 1 copy before, then Star fox 2 can only be 21st game to hit the one million mark. And based on the statistics 7 games that already sold more than one million units was not even included on the SNES mini, so Star Fox 2 at best could only be 28th.
Eh I'd call it a fact. It's a Nintendo game. It was made and completed in 1996 for the SNES. Ultimately a SNES cart is a board, some chips, and some plastic in the end. The SNES Classic is still some chips, a board, and some plastic. Different shell, same function, and it's a legit licensed and published SNES title by Nintendo. The only ones who would really deeply care to deny this are collectard completionists going all aggro over their wall of games as it's a very late but new entry.
@Krull I did. Other than owning SF2 instead of SF2 Turbo I have every single one of those carts in my solid but smaller collection of games. It was the big reason, second would be just the design and value of the system to me.
@MegaTen I agree completely and still can't get over how many genres of gaming have been lost due to the "evolution" of gaming. I really thought we'd see some high power, suped up beat em ups but, somehow that's been relegated to the likes of FPS gaming and Indie studios "bringing genres back". Gimme a break. The 8-bit through the 64-bit eras, were gaming gold.
@LiberatedAnimal The Xbox One, PS4, and Switch are 64-bit consoles.
@Krull I haven't purchased one yet, but the only reason that I'm interested in a. SNES classic is Starfox 2. I've played and or own most of the rest on virtual console. Frankly, I wish they would have just released Starfox 2 on virtual console.
Can't this argument be used for any game on the SNES Classic? Like Earthbound?
Would also hold the unwelcome honour of being by far the worst game on that list.
@NinNin Yeah I know. I meant graphically. Ending N64 and GCN, PS2, Xbox and Dreamcast were all 128-bit. Ending that graphical era.
@JamesR I had the same thought. Using this logic there are now 22 million sellers. Star Fox 2, Earthbound, Kirby's Dream Course, and Super Punch-Out have each joined the ranks.
@mjharper Let's see, according to Wikipedia there were 48 million sellers. The only games on the SNES Classic that aren't on the list:
Contra 3 (WUT!?!)
Earthbound
Kirby's Dream Course
Super Castlevania (again WUT!?!)
I was shocked to see that Konami didn't have a single million seller. Not even TMNT 4? Really? Methinks this Wikipedia article is incomplete.
Star Fox only sold 3 million. Aw
silliness
@LiberatedAnimal The Xbox, GameCube, and Dreamcast are 32-bit consoles. The Nintendo 64 is a 64-bit console. The PS2 is a 32-bit/64-bit console that can process 128-bit values.
I can’t believe Super Punch Out didn’t cross the million mark originally. But by the logic used here, it has now!!!
@NinNin Yeah that's pretty much what I meant without needing the technicalities. The other cat I was talking too got what I meant the first time. Lol Thanks for the tech specs though. Solid knowledge to keep in your banks.
Dodgy reporting. “19th title PUBLISHED BY NINTENDO to sell 1 million units on the SNES”. There’s another 30 SNES games by Capcom / Square / Virgin that broke the 1m mark.
Also it’s not sold 1m units on the SNES. It’s sold 1m units on the SNES Classic Mini (or whatever the regionally varying name is).
@LiberatedAnimal I understood what you meant, but I thought you might think that the sixth-generation consoles are 64-bit consoles.
@tanookisuit you can’t physically play Star Fox 2 on a SNES / Super Famicom, so surely it can’t be considered a SNES / Super Famicom game?
@NinNin really?!? The generation after the N64 are only 32-bit, not 128+? I’m surprised, though I know so little about console architecture that I shouldn’t be really...
@flapjack-ashley Considering no one in the West cared about JRPGs back then, I'd say that's an impressive number. I'm more surprised that Super Metroid sold only 1.42 million.
@gaga64 The Xbox, GameCube, Dreamcast, Wii, and Wii U use 32-bit CPUs. AFAIK, the PS2 is a 64-bit console that can process 128-bit values, but it uses a 32-bit FPU (floating-point unit).
@NinNin interesting, I had no idea (genuine reaction, not sarcasm, post-N64 the technical jargon of the relative consoles lost me completely, I just blindly assumed each gen was roughly double the previous, as per the so-called 8/16/32-bit eras, though I know it was never actually that simple).
Copies of SMW and SMAS sold as a pack in with the original SNES count towards their numbers... Gotta count pack in copies of SF2...
@gaga64 In theory you can, if someone rewired a FX based cart. I've got the old final-ish beta of it on a cart for years now. And depending on how one defines a SNES, it is on one, just a mini one with a few games but it still is ever so as much a SNES game as any of the others. Just because it wasn't slapped on a board 20 years ago doesn't make it a fraud.
If I would buy the SNES Mini then it would be just for Star Fox 2. It's the only game on the collection that I don't have.
However, only 18 SNES million sellers? That must be wrong. Street Fighter II has sold 6.3 million on the SNES alone. Super Soccer was also included in a bundle that sold more than a million.
Edit: Oh, I see, it's only Nintendo published games on that list. The text in this news is misleading.
Wow, they made that many Minis....
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