The Launch of the Super Nintendo (1991)

Episode 38 – The North American launch of the Super Nintendo. Although the 16-bit generation started in the late summer of 1989 with the near-simultaneous launch of the Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx-16, the release of the Super Nintendo in August of 1991 signaled the real start of the 16-bit console war. The system came bundled with Super Mario World as the pack-in game, and on launch day two additional games were available; F-Zero and Pilotwings. Many believe that Gradius III and SimCity were also launch titles, but these games were actually released the following week, just missing being part of the launch line-up.

Special thanks for the following people for their support making this episode:

Chris Covell (http://www.chrismcovell.com)
Matt Henzel (http://www.videogameobsession.com)
DigitalNeohuman (http://www.youtube.com/user/digitalneohuman)

Show Notes:

– At around 7:07 in the video, I accidentally refer to Actraiser as “Axelay” Unfortunately, there is no way to fix this without deleting this video and re-uploading. I put an annotation in the video, but people watching on non-desktop platforms aren’t going to see it.

– Production of this video began the same day that the Sega Saturn launch episode was released; December 25, 2015. This episode therefore took 7 months to complete, although I took breaks to make the History of NHL ’94 and DieHard Gamefan videos.

– The footage of Uemura, the guys working at Nintendo EAD, Miyamoto in his cubicle, and Miyamoto drawing mario (during the end credits) all came from an early 90’s French documentary called “Otaku”. You can check it out here but it isn’t in english, unfortunately: https://youtu.be/JWiAEThmnGk

– All of the gameplay footage for this episode was recoded using an RGB-modded SNES mini, as it produces a sharper image than an older “original” SNES.

– Graduis III and SimCity WERE NOT LAUNCH TITLES. I can’t stress this enough times. The three games featured in this episode were the only three that were available on launch day. Period.

– This was the fifth episode covering the launch of a console.

– I had to re-record the F-Zero footage 4 times because the beta version of the Elgato software that I was using kept dropping the audio.

– I mentioned in the outro to the show that I get my box art from Matt Henzel of VideoGameObsession.com. I should have said “much of this comes from…” because he is not my only source. He has however given me permission to use any material on his site, and asked only for credit in my videos. As has always been the case, the bulk of the box art seen on this show comes from The Cover Project.

– I did not play through the complete game when recording Super Mario World footage. I have beaten the games multiple times in the past, but have received negative comments from viewers for showing too much of some games. If you haven’t beaten SMW, you should do it for yourself instead of watching someone else do it.

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