Chances are if you grew up in the 90s, weren’t living in a 3rd world country, and aren’t one of the Bali Nine (…?) you will have at least played Super Mario on the Super Nintendo (SNES). The SNES was one of the few great inventions of man, and at the forefront of all it has done for the gaming world was the SNES Role Playing Game (RPG). To the modern day RPG there has never been anything as game changing (ha-ha!) as the development during this time (there’s something about floating blocks of colour spouting epic nonsense that’s strangely compelling). So many titles were released in this period, so many game changing (>_<) developments were made that I will attempt to abridge the list to the absolute best and most defining titles.
Disclaimer: Before I continue I feel obliged to warn you that this article is a steaming mass of self satisfying nostalgia, extreme(ly bad) writing skillz, and nonsensical fangirl whining.
Final Fantasy IV
In my opinion this was the first truly awesome Final Fantasy title ever released. It is what shaped the ‘formula’ of the average RPG and secured Final Fantasy a place in history forever. This was actually the 3rd RPG I ever played and it cast a pretty big shadow over any future FF releases for me.
Note: Jumping around with Dragoon Kain was the best part of the game.
Tales of Phantasia
Without a doubt one of the greatest titles of the SNES. It featured a revolutionary 2D ‘real time’ battle system that would later become the base of the Star Ocean battle system. You can track many of the modern day ‘real time’ battle systems back to this point in gaming history. A great part of this game is the humor, the writers really weren’t afraid to push the boundaries of the time. Perhaps that’s just what comes from being Japanese though. 
Note: Dhaos is a big fat hippy.
Final Fantasy V
This game actually didn’t have that great a storyline, it had no revolutionary battle system, and no amazing character development, so why is it here? Simple! It had the best ‘Jobs/Skill’ system I’ve ever seen. It allowed you to allocate characters a job (ie: white mage, black mage, theif) and level them in that profession. Want to change job? Sure! Just change jobs and level your new job’s attributes up. You can change and change back whenever you like depending on your parties requirements.
Note: Butz is a stupid name.
Chrono Trigger
Most RPG gamers will tell you this is one of their all time favourites. The main selling point of the game is the epic storyline and character development. I can’t actually remember too much about it, which doesn’t strike me as a good thing; perhaps at the time we were all just sick of captured princesses and crying emos.
Note: I always thought Lucca was hot.
Secret of Evermore
This game was probably the best game to come out on the SNES. It was so complete, the story was great, the character development was awesome, for the time the graphics were outstanding, the items system was fun and the battle system rocked. Instead of transporting you to a designated battle screen, battles actually took place real time in a similar fashion to many adventure games of the time. It also featured an alchemy system where you could make items with recipes, as far as I know this was the first game to do that (correct me if I’m wrong).
Note: Your dog is fuckin awesome
If you haven’t played any one of these titles you need to get off your ass and procure a copy of them somehow.
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3 Comments
Oh my lord. I love this article. Need more coverage on the SNES. Recently re-bought one and I LOVE it.
Nice! How do you find getting games for it? Mostly online?
Well ebay obviously is a great place but I myself have a flea market who sells tons of them and actually my Mall near me has a store that sells TONS of Nintendo 64, SNES, NES, Genesis, Dreamcast, and other old systems and the games for it. It’s pretty cool