SNES Reviews, Super Nintendo Reviews

Augusta this 'ain't

Kirby, being a lovable if slightly non-descript pink ball, can lend his hands — or flappy arms, whatever — to lots of things. Being shaped like a ball and all, he's indulged in pinball, for example, and when participating in his named spin-offs generally performs as the ball, rather than going all Mario and playing the sports...

Marks the spot

By the time Mega Man X was released for the SNES, gamers and critics were already expressing concern about the classic series feeling stale. Mega Man had become formulaic and predictable, and while the NES games were still a lot of fun, there was no denying that they didn't evolve much from title to title. Mega Man X felt like a firm...

Third time's the charming

Kirby’s Dream Land 3 is the epitome of a lovable gaming experience. Carefree and popping with irresistible charm, this SNES platformer builds off the two previous Game Boy entries in the series and fulfills the potential they introduced. That doesn’t mean the core mechanics have suddenly become nuanced or up to par with...

Dedede-lightful

Kirby Super Star is a smorgasbord of creativity, as if the developers at HAL Laboratory had a game jam for two weeks straight and came out on the other side with a beautifully disheveled collection of Kirby’s best. Nine sub-games, ranging from one-button tests of reflex to multi-hour adventures, are stuffed onto the SNES with no...

Bring fresh underwear

There’s a school of thought which argues that modern gamers have it too easy, and that this generation of players has grown soft thanks to the fact that developers are all too happy to provide helpful tutorials and short-cuts intended to reduce frustration. You only need to spend a few painful minutes in the company of Super...

Superior Metroid

It’s undeniable that 1994 was an extremely memorable year of videogame releases. Sonic 3, Earthworm Jim, Doom II, and the original Donkey Kong Country were just a few of the critically acclaimed games that had us chatting profusely on the playground. However, there was one game in particular that terrified and mesmerized us so...

The in-game tutorial, the greatest puzzle

The early batch of Wii U Virtual Console games have followed a bit of a trend, in that they serve up familiar retro goodies with a few Wii U specific extras. For Europeans there's been the extra treat of getting these classics in their 60Hz variety, but in the case of Mario's Super Picross the treat is...

Everybody wants to rule the World

Right from the six-note melody that opens the first stage, you can tell there's something special about Super Mario World. This is the Super Nintendo launch title that set the bar impossibly high for day-one releases, created the magic that games such as Super Mario 64, Sonic Adventure, and Luigi's Mansion have...

Forever blowing bubbles

Capcom is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2013. Since the company formed in 1983, it has published a host of classic titles from the Resident Evil series, countless Street Fighter games and many timeless iterations of Mega Man. One of its lesser known titles is Super Pang (known as Super Buster Bros. in North America), an...

The race of a lifetime

Looking at it today, it’s genuinely hard to believe that F-Zero was a SNES launch title. For a game that is now over two decades old, it remains remarkably impressive from a purely visual standpoint. The Mode 7 rotational and scaling effects — which were relatively new to console players back in 1990 — still look...

Still mega

When Capcom created Mega Man X, it had clearly done something right. Many fans loved finally getting a refreshing take on the series, rather than what was essentially the same thing over and over, and it became quite popular. While the Classic Mega Man series went on a break for a few years, Capcom churned out a few more X games,...

Worthy of the throne

Most gamers are familiar with the original Prince of Persia. Its incredibly realistic animations, created by Jordan Mechner from hours of video footage of his brother running and jumping around, made it an instant hit, and it's still one of the most well-known western game franchises today. Most people, however, are only...

Adventure Island: Wonder Boy Edition

Most people are aware that the original Adventure Island was in fact a slightly modified NES port of Wonder Boy for the Master System. Immediately after this, Wonder Boy became more of an action RPG-like series, while Adventure Island stayed a platforming series. That is, until the release of Adventure Island IV,...

One of the truly greatest RPG experiences ever created

Soon after Chrono Trigger appeared on the Super Nintendo in 1995, it quickly became regarded as one of the most unique and impressive RPG releases to hit the system. Not only was it developed by a who's who of some of the greatest role-playing designers in the industry, the finished product...

Back to basics

The Adventure Island series started out with an almost exact clone of Wonder Boy, but as Wonder Boy became more of an action RPG rather than an action platformer, Adventure Island sequels stuck with the same formula as the first game and built upon it slightly with each release. In Adventure Island II and the later Adventure Island III, this meant the inclusion of the dinosaurs and..

It burns, but it doesn't crash

Ask anybody to name some firefighting games and you'll be lucky if they name one. Despite the games about the profession generally being quite good, there's not many of them, and they're not very widely known either. The Ignition Factor is one of only two on the SNES, the other one being the more well-known The Firemen, which, funnily enough, was originally released..

X-ceptional

Spinoffs in popular franchises have delivered historically mixed results over the years, but when Capcom spun the X series off of Mega Man, not only did they create a new line every bit as intense and engaging as the originals, but arguably even more polished and fun to a certain degree. And now, after a rather lengthy wait, Capcom have...

A marked improvement

Jaleco released several beat 'em ups on the SNES, although you may not know that three of them are actually related. Exclusively in Japan, the games Rival Turf!, Brawl Brothers and The Peace Keepers were all part of one series called Rushing Beat, but for their North American releases they were retitled, and the story and character names were all changed. The second game in the..

Road to joy?

On rare occasion, a game so revolutionary will appear that not only will it receive the usual much deserved critical acclaim, it’ll become responsible for the creation of an entirely new genre. Take Super Mario Kart for instance — the title single-handedly responsible for the birth of the console kart racer. Following its huge overnight success back in 1992, it doesn’t come as..