We stand poised on the edge of a new epoch - marked by the release of a brand new Nintendo machine. In just a few weeks, Nintendo launches the Switch - a device that it hopes will be as warmly embraced as some of its earlier home consoles.
Given that the Wii U was basically the same console as the Wii, but with a unique selling point - actively discouraging people from wanting to buy one - the Switch is essentially the first brand new Nintendo system since 2006. That's a gap of 11 earth years. Mental, bruv.
Like many of us, the SNES is the Nintendo console I embrace most firmly to my pale English bosom (note: I don't have bosoms). Indeed, to this day I raise it aloft as my favourite games machine of all time.
I hold out hope that I'll like the Switch, while accepting that I'm a toothless old man sustained almost exclusively by a diet of tepid nostalgia. It's doubtful that any new console could ever cause me to fall in love with it the way I fell for the SNES.
Given that the Wii U was basically the same console as the Wii, but with a unique selling point - actively discouraging people from wanting to buy one - the Switch is essentially the first brand new Nintendo system since 2006. That's a gap of 11 earth years. Mental, bruv.
Like many of us, the SNES is the Nintendo console I embrace most firmly to my pale English bosom (note: I don't have bosoms). Indeed, to this day I raise it aloft as my favourite games machine of all time.
I hold out hope that I'll like the Switch, while accepting that I'm a toothless old man sustained almost exclusively by a diet of tepid nostalgia. It's doubtful that any new console could ever cause me to fall in love with it the way I fell for the SNES.
STUFF
Having missed out on the NES - a machine so poorly distributed into the UK that it was only available in one corner shop on the Scottish borders - I was desperate for a Super NES. Reading the reports of it in the magazines, it was the first time that not owning a console felt like I was missing out.
I was poor at the time, working on the scoreboard at Wembley Stadium, earning around £10k a year. I had a two year-old daughter, and we were living in a council flat behind some bins.
On one side of us was an old people's home. On the other a woman and five dogs that barked constantly. Above us, a flat owned by the local Social Service, inhabited by teenagers who had just been released from care, and would celebrate this fact by starting a party at midnight every night for nine months. My then-wife was on unemployment benefit - the only way to ensure we'd manage to pay the rent every month.
It wasn't the happiest of times, and the SNES, with its optimistic colour scheme and rounded edges, seemed to offer hope.
The problem was... it cost £150 - a big chunk of my income, at a time when I was borrowing money off my parents most months, and could still only afford pasta or beans for dinner most nights. There was no way to justify it. Indeed, there was no way to buy one without triggering a massive argument. I had to bide my time and wait for my wife to feel sufficiently guilty about something that she'd agree to the purchase.
It didn't take too long.
Having missed out on the NES - a machine so poorly distributed into the UK that it was only available in one corner shop on the Scottish borders - I was desperate for a Super NES. Reading the reports of it in the magazines, it was the first time that not owning a console felt like I was missing out.
I was poor at the time, working on the scoreboard at Wembley Stadium, earning around £10k a year. I had a two year-old daughter, and we were living in a council flat behind some bins.
On one side of us was an old people's home. On the other a woman and five dogs that barked constantly. Above us, a flat owned by the local Social Service, inhabited by teenagers who had just been released from care, and would celebrate this fact by starting a party at midnight every night for nine months. My then-wife was on unemployment benefit - the only way to ensure we'd manage to pay the rent every month.
It wasn't the happiest of times, and the SNES, with its optimistic colour scheme and rounded edges, seemed to offer hope.
The problem was... it cost £150 - a big chunk of my income, at a time when I was borrowing money off my parents most months, and could still only afford pasta or beans for dinner most nights. There was no way to justify it. Indeed, there was no way to buy one without triggering a massive argument. I had to bide my time and wait for my wife to feel sufficiently guilty about something that she'd agree to the purchase.
It didn't take too long.
PRIMARY
Everything about the SNES felt different to every other machine I'd ever owned.
From the primary colours of the joypad buttons - we definitely got the best SNES - to how the thing felt in my hand, it seemed considered.
It felt as if its designers had really thought about what would make it feel like the best console.
The SNES (although, again, not the US version, with its muted purples and sharp corners) seemed friendly and welcoming. By comparison, The Mega Drive seemed somehow hollow and cheap, a beta male in a leather jacket, propping up a bar. The SNES was confident enough as the alpha never to display a need to show off.
Even the stark difference between the pack-in game I got with my Mega Drive - the godawful Altered Beast - compared to Nintendo's choice - the peerless Super Mario World - highlighted that the SNES was in a different league. Heck, it didn't even seem to bother competing with the Mega Drive. While Sega appeared desperate to beat the SNES, Nintendo was oblivious, merely doing its own thing with an unflappable poise.
Super Mario World sold the power of the SNES beautifully. The graphics were crisp and colourful - not the muted sprites of Sega's rival. It used Nintendo's Mode 7 capabilities in subtle ways that offered graphical spectacle never before seen outside of an arcade.
Oddly, though, the sound was the thing which really drove home that the Super NES was way ahead of its rival - the moment when Mario first enters a cavern, and the music drops, and begins to echo... I remember having to pause the game just so that I could roll around on the floor going "Whaaaaa?!".
The following month's paycheque bought me F-Zero and Super Tennis. Neither disappointed. My planned regular Tuesday night role-playing session was cancelled that week so that I could show these new games off to my mates.
Everything about the SNES felt different to every other machine I'd ever owned.
From the primary colours of the joypad buttons - we definitely got the best SNES - to how the thing felt in my hand, it seemed considered.
It felt as if its designers had really thought about what would make it feel like the best console.
The SNES (although, again, not the US version, with its muted purples and sharp corners) seemed friendly and welcoming. By comparison, The Mega Drive seemed somehow hollow and cheap, a beta male in a leather jacket, propping up a bar. The SNES was confident enough as the alpha never to display a need to show off.
Even the stark difference between the pack-in game I got with my Mega Drive - the godawful Altered Beast - compared to Nintendo's choice - the peerless Super Mario World - highlighted that the SNES was in a different league. Heck, it didn't even seem to bother competing with the Mega Drive. While Sega appeared desperate to beat the SNES, Nintendo was oblivious, merely doing its own thing with an unflappable poise.
Super Mario World sold the power of the SNES beautifully. The graphics were crisp and colourful - not the muted sprites of Sega's rival. It used Nintendo's Mode 7 capabilities in subtle ways that offered graphical spectacle never before seen outside of an arcade.
Oddly, though, the sound was the thing which really drove home that the Super NES was way ahead of its rival - the moment when Mario first enters a cavern, and the music drops, and begins to echo... I remember having to pause the game just so that I could roll around on the floor going "Whaaaaa?!".
The following month's paycheque bought me F-Zero and Super Tennis. Neither disappointed. My planned regular Tuesday night role-playing session was cancelled that week so that I could show these new games off to my mates.
SUPER FAN
The SNES also marked the first time I ever played import games. At a games fair I picked up Smash TV and a converter, which allowed me to play NTSC titles; it sat between the game cartridge and the SNES. Somehow, on my first use of it I managed to damage my SNES cartridge slot pins, and had to send the SNES away to be fixed - a very long month.
Games continued to push the machine's capabilities, firing a shot which holed the traditional arcade market below the waterline. Mario Paint. Starwing/Starfox. Zelda. Street Fighter 2. Yoshi's Island. Yet even with the crappiest Super NES games - and, inevitably, there were plenty of really crap Super NES games - would demonstrate that the machine was more powerful than its most direct rival.
I'd always enjoyed video games, but the Super NES turned me into something more. That was when I became a fan, when I really understood the potential of games.
When I really fell in love with them.
The SNES also marked the first time I ever played import games. At a games fair I picked up Smash TV and a converter, which allowed me to play NTSC titles; it sat between the game cartridge and the SNES. Somehow, on my first use of it I managed to damage my SNES cartridge slot pins, and had to send the SNES away to be fixed - a very long month.
Games continued to push the machine's capabilities, firing a shot which holed the traditional arcade market below the waterline. Mario Paint. Starwing/Starfox. Zelda. Street Fighter 2. Yoshi's Island. Yet even with the crappiest Super NES games - and, inevitably, there were plenty of really crap Super NES games - would demonstrate that the machine was more powerful than its most direct rival.
I'd always enjoyed video games, but the Super NES turned me into something more. That was when I became a fan, when I really understood the potential of games.
When I really fell in love with them.
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