These are some of the earliest known pictures and articles on the Super Famicom from late 1988 when it was announced, to 1989 when it was still prototype and EGM began reporting on Nintendo's 16-Bit Super Nintendo console that summer.
Super Famicom: December 1988
The First Super Famicom Demonstration
The Super Famicom was demonstrated to the Japanese press on November 21, 1988 (precisely 2 years before its proper release),
and so Famicom Tsushin Magazine published a special report in their December 23, 1988 issue.
"Finally, an appearance!!"
The SFC is announced before over 200 members of the press. Its capabilities are compared with those of the PC-Engine and Megadrive.
"Super Famicom, the ultimate machine!!"
The SFC uses a special multi-out connector for its video, and also the Famicom video when the "Famicom" switch is set to the left
"The Famicom Adaptor, for Famicom games only!!"
This redesigned Famicom uses the SFC controllers.
Scaling, rotation are shown. "Because it is done by the hardware, it moves fast, fast, fast!!"
A close up of a (surely addled) Shigeru Miyamoto explaining the SFC hardware.
And here's a close-up of the early controller. Interestingly, the buttons are labeled A,B,C,D (and concave); and the shoulder buttons E and F. A,B are also rotated clockwise 90° from the release version. The E,F shoulder buttons appear far more rounded than in the released controller.
Other interesting things from this report:
The SFC's Work RAM was set at a puny 8 Kilobytes! (To be upped before release, of course.) The sound hardware is said to be "2 Custom LSI chips" Perhaps this meant the sampled audio unit as well as the DSP.
The "Famicom Adaptor" that went unreleased in its current form was still labeled "Family Computer", so it is not by any means an adaptor that sits on top of the SFC.
The legendary picture of a "16-bit Adventure of Link" is shown here. It's likely just a still showing the SFC's graphics tile addressing capabilities, alongside the digitization and colour demonstration still pictures on the same page.
Other photos from another Japanese magazine article
Hi LastResort (named after the very great Neo-Geo game I presume? ), and welcome! Sure a thing to keep alive and important I think. Made this thread couple of years ago too. Love prototype consoles and early designs!
I should've added the SEGA Pluto by now, but I am not bothered.
Glad there are more people interested in lost things like this.
If you look right at bottom of the last picture, the Win-A-Game Competition, you can see "Great NES carts like Star Soldier, Mappyland, Mystery Quest, and Fist of the North Star"
It's an ad from the US publisher of all those games. Of course FotNS is a "great" game.
Mappyland didn't seem all that great either, and maybe Mystery Quest would've been better if they could have kept the save feature from the Famicom Disk System version (and I think it also had an intro that got cut, possibly to reduce the cart memory size.)
Hi LastResort (named after the very great Neo-Geo game I presume? ), and welcome! Sure a thing to keep alive and important I think. Made this thread couple of years ago too. Love prototype consoles and early designs!
I should've added the SEGA Pluto by now, but I am not bothered.
Glad there are more people interested in lost things like this.
Hi JGMR, indeed , after the Neo-Geo shmup.
I looked at that thread, it's fantastic. I do think it's important to keep this stuff alive, if not just for the fun of it.
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Topic: Super Famicom | SNES - Earliest images & articles from 1988 & 1989
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