Page 50 - OSG Presents Classic Gamer Magazine #5

SNES - The system I love to hate
SNES - The system I love to hate

I rendition of Tetris. It wasn't quite the same, but
could have been very good had in not been for the
often think back to how I used to look necessity of using the SNES's horrible Super-
forward to the introduction of new video Scope. Eventually, the SNES came out with a
game systems. This changed with the in- Tetris/Dr. Mario on one cartridge. With it
troduction of the Super Nintendo Entertain- came something that the official Nintendo
ment System (SNES). That was when the version of Tetris for the NES didn't have–
"classic" spirit jumped up inside of me and a two-player feature. While this was a
said, "Newer isn't necessarily better!" great addition, it was missing my favorite
Things haven’t been the same since. feature of the NES version– the level 9
My story starts the month the SNES height 1-5 "endings." I had made it one of my
came out. life goals to be able to beat those levels and get
My family only had so much money. those "endings." When I succeeded on the NES,
To be blunt, we were poor. Our NES and all the characters began singing and dancing; I did it
all its games were in the pawn shop, and we had to make on the Gameboy and got a space shuttle blasting off; I did
a choice: Buy the SNES or get the NES out of pawn. it on the SNES and got the message- "Congratulations,
We chose the SNES. We chose wrong, dead wrong. you beat Level 9 Height 5" or something equally bland. It
The SNES came with one game: Super Mario World. was really quite disappointing.
We knew when we spent the money that we The other SNES game that was disap-
would only have that one game for months. pointing was Final Fight. On the plus side, it
I figured that if Super Mario World (SMW) had character sprites much larger than the
was even BETTER than Super Mario Broth- NES could offer. On the minus side, good
ers 3 (SMB3), I would easily be entertained “The SNES is the NES programming had given me the feeling
for months. Unfortunately, SMW was horri- that brawling games needed a good two-
bly inferior to SMB3. first system where I player mode. Specifically, Double Dragon 3
To begin, there were fewer power-ups. really saw the (for NES) was much better. There were a
There were no "real" bricks. The Firey total of four characters (although two were
Mario did not look as cool as in SMB3. In attitude ‘Good identical, making a total of three unique char-
SMW, he had the same old outfit from Super graphics make up for acters), and two players could play simultane-
Mario Brothers 1, while in SMB3, he had this ously. In Final Fight (for SNES) there were
cool glowing-orange-as-if-glowing-from-fire a bad game’ in only two characters, and worse, only one
look. The Cape Mario in SMW replaced the game-design.” player could play. Final Fight 2 and 3 fixed
Raccoon Mario of SMB3. The Cape Mario this problem, I understand, but by then I was
had more powers, however the Raccoon already bored with SNES brawling.
Mario simply had more charm. A friend of There are plenty more examples of bad
mine pointed out that the Cape "made more games- too numerous to mention them all.
sense." However, we agreed that the Cape wasn't as Almost all of the games released within the first year or
cool. As I said, "Mushrooms make you grow, and flowers two seemed totally incompetent. And even though they
make you shoot fireballs- Mario isn't supposed to make eventually started to shape up, it was, for me, too little- too
sense.” late. Go to almost any SNES owner's library and you will
Needless to say, it wasn't long before we grew nostal- see that really good SNES games remain few and far be-
gic for the NES. We even started to wish we had the old tween. The SNES was the first system where I really saw
Atari 2600 that we never-knew-where-it-had-gone. At the attitude "good graphics make up for a bad game" in
one point, we actually unhooked the SNES to hook up an game-design. This is the attitude which has come to de-
Aquarius. (And I don't care what you say, Aquarius was stroy almost all of the "classic spirit" in the common
bad, really bad.) But back to the point; SMW wasn't the gamer. But the companies who monopolize on this atti-
only reason SNES was inferior to NES. tude will, ironically, be the ones who bring it back. Even
One of the all-important games on our NES had been now, gamers everywhere are raising their voices against
Tetris. I remember that we had borrowed my uncle's Tet- “bad games with good graphics.” For every hundred peo-
ris so many times that he finally bought us our own copy. ple who BUY a bad game, at least one will see it
No Tetris = no fun. Well, not quite, but it was probably on for what it really is. One more Classic Gamer
everyone's favorite game list. For a while the closest voice. WE ARE that voice.
thing to come out for the SNES was Blastris, a light-gun

Classic Gamer Magazine December 2000 50