When it comes to choosing my favorite console, it gets pretty hard to decide. I have so many memories with all of them both good and bad. In terms of a system that changed my life, well, it has to be the Super Nintendo. I can still remember coming home from Kindergarten and opening up this as my Birthday present. It came with Super Mario World and a mail-in coupon to get Super Mario All-Stars, which my parents✱ were savvy enough to do before I opened up the console. This was the first🏅 system I could call my own and it was a fantastic feeling.
While I think there have been some great strides in graphics since, obviously, to me, the SNES was the pinnacle of pixel art. That’s why so many games still hold up on a visual level. Not all games were created equally though. I sat down and thought hard about these games on both sides of the line and it was a lot harder than I thought especially since I tried to limit myself to selecting only one game from a series. I didn’t want to talk about Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy III for example. That said Mario did make it on here a lot so I’m not perfect. Point is some of my favorite games look pretty cruddy nowadays, ꦚwhich was a difficult truth to swallow. So follow me on this journey through the best and worst graphics found on the good old Super Nintendo.
30 Amazing: Yoshi’s Island
Super Mario World still looks fantastic and is probably my favorite game in the franchise, but its sequel, Yoshi’s Island, definitely has a more distinct visual style. It holds up incredibly well. You wouldn’t think a crayon aesthetic could work after a game like Donkey Kong Country came out. Actually, funny story, this was planned to adopt that graphical faux 3D style, which you can still see remnants of in the beginning cutscene. Thankfully t🍒he tea🅠m negated that push and went whimsical instead.
29 Bad: Pilotwings
Pilotwings? What even is that? I know it is kind of a forgotten series that barely got off the ground, ha, at Nintendo. It was meant to showcase the Super Nintendo’s graphical capabilities. I still remember being amazed by my cousin playing it, jumping out of a plane into what ꦦI thought was the most realistic 3D😼 landscape a 2D console could render. Going back to it now, well, let’s just say I feel pretty silly for thinking those things now.
28 Amazing: Chrono Trigger
Pixel for pixel, I don’t think there is a better game on the Super Nintendo. It is the pinnacle of sprite art for the system and one that Squaresoft perfected to a fine point. Sure, Final Fantasy III also looks great, but compared to this it looks less amazing. I mean it doesn’t hurt that everything about the game is perfect from the story to the characters to the music to the gameplay and I could segue on and on. The point is Chrono Trigger is a masterpiece.
27 Bad: Star Fox
Another game that was celebrated at the time for pushing the graphical capabilities of the 16-Bit era was Star Fox. Here is the thing with that thou🎶gh. I never thought it looked good. Sure, call me a hipster child, but it is true. I had no concept of what a frame rate was at the time, but I knew it ran a bit choppy. Not to mention the ugly aesthetic of a bunch of triangles flying around each other. I couldn’t have been less wowed.
26 Amazing: Kirby's Dream Land 3
Kirby Super Star was my jam back in the day. While I still think it is great now, there is something about the visuals I don’t like. They kind of look like plastic if that makes sense. That’s why even though I think it’s a better game I went with Kirby’s Dream Land 3, which shares that crayon styl♏e found in Yoshi’s Island. It’s a lot less challenging, but it does have tons of adorable pets Kirby can befriend and who doesn’t want that?
25 Bad: Ninja Gaiden Trilogy
For the most part, remakes, or remasters are supposed to better than the orဣiginal games, right? In the case of the Ninja Gaiden Trilogy, you could say they are better on an ease of use standpoint since they balanced the games a bit. Unfortunately, I think it looks less enticing than the NES originals. The music is also not as good. It’s a weird package all around. Now granted I do like being able to actually beat these games for a change.
24 Amazing: Super Street Fighter II
Speaking of Super Street Fighter II, well good buddy, let me apologize to you. I thought I wanted my fighting games to be visually superior and bloodier, but I was wrong. Of all the fighting games of this generation, this is the one I can easily go back to and have a good time with no matter what editi🐠on we’re talking about. For all intents and purposes this was the game that opened up the door for competitors. There were fighting games before this, but this was the one that perfected it.
23 Bad: Mortal Kombat
Let’s keep this fighting game train going for another eye opening experience in the form of Mortal Kombat. What was better to me than 3D graphics? Real life models were put into my games. Yes, I, and collectively my generation, were fooled into thinking digitizing actors was the wave of the future. Oh how wrong we were. It is beyond ugly now. On a side note I would love to see Mortal Kombat XI pay hꦬomage to this style🌳. That would be a baller move for DLC.
22 Amazing: Super Metroid
Hey Nintendo, I have an idea for you. Why don’t you make another 2D style Metroid game akin to Super Metroid? Why try and outdo yourselves? I know you think you hit perfection with this, which is true, and sure sales might not reflect reviews, but listen to us. Super Metroid is a gorgeous piece of art through and through. Personally I think the original’s remake is slightly better on GBA, but that’s only because it had the benefit in being able to take DNA out of Super Metroid to retroactively make itself better.
21 Bad: Donkey Kong Country
This is an example of a title that holds up with its gameplay, but not so much with its graphics. Yes, I’m talking about you Donkey Kong Country. It is truly a mesmerizing experience to recall playing this game as a kid, thinking it looked real and then to play it now. The results are obvious. It looks rough. Again, this is coming from someone who still likes the core, but the visuals are just nightmarish blobs of pixel 🌳trash 🍨pretending to be realistic.