The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) was released nationwide back in 1991. It was Nintendo’s successor to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and was a significant upgrade in terms of graphics and audio.
The release of the Super Nintendo led to what many refer to as the console wars, a battle between Nintendo and Sega to capture the most market share with their consoles. Nintendo went for a more family friendly approach with Sega coming in hot with more aggressive marketing and more mature themes.
The 32 bit era was defining for gaming as a whole. Both Nintendo and Sega began to develop fandoms surrounding their products. The SNES beat the Genesis in sales, with the Super Nintendo selling over 49 million systems over the course of its console generation and the Genesis selling roughly 29 million.
Nintendo’s victory was in large part thanks to the heavy hitting titles that released for the SNES. Games such as Donkey Kong Country sold 6 million units, Super Mario Kart sold 8 million units, Street Fighter II sold 6 million, and Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past sold nearly 5 million.
The Super Nintendo continued to remain on store shelves and sell until 2003 after the Nintendo 64 had already arrived onto the scene.
How To Emulate The SNES
Without a doubt, the best SNES emulator available is the Snes9x emulator for Windows PC, Mac, and Linux machines. It’s interface is user friendly and it isn’t too overly complicated. It’s also easy to setup and get running within minutes.
It has tons of features that you can take advantage of if you wish, but also will run SNES games right out the gate with no additional configurations required. In terms of Super Nintendo game compatibility, Snes9x is top notch and most popular games will run very well.
It also has the ability to play online with friends using the emulator’s Netplay feature. For those interested, we have this Snes9x Netplay tutorial which will get playing online with your friends in minutes.
Snes9x is also the leading SNES emulation core that is used in most other emulation platforms. RetroArch uses it as one of their main SNES cores and so do many other multi-system emulation frontends.
