I grew up with the SNES. I don’t remember the day that we got our Super Nintendo, but I do remember that my brother and I played that thing until it was dead. I remember being four years old and watching my brother play on it, and waiting patiently for my turn. We would sit together and try to figure out the secrets of our favorite games, and how to get the secrets we would see in our Uncle’s Nintendo Power magazines, or looking up cheat-codes in the early days of the internet (most of which were fake, btw).
A recent hernia surgery left me couch-ridden for a week, which led to me playing some SNES games and nostalgia for my old favorites. I’ve been further inspired by a few YouTube channels (Angry Video Game Nerd and SNES Drunk) to talk about them.
Keep in mind, this isn’t a list of the best games for the system; it’s a list of the games that I had access to and that left a lasting impact on me.
10. Mario Paint
This game has some very vivid memories for me: I remember pulling the tacky, grey-plastic mouse pad out of the box and not knowing quite what it was. My Dad pointed to the mouse and explained how it worked to me. I discovered my first easter-eggs in this game (The title screen is PACKED with them).
My older brother and I aren’t exactly artists, so we mostly messed with the music-maker and the coffee-break game, or scribbled until we could use the eraser function (which was fun in its own right).
9. Aladdin
This was my favorite Disney movie growing up (and if you get a chance to see it performed live, I HIGHLY recommend it), and it was a really great game! Playing as Aladdin and fighting Jafar was about the coolest thing ever. The “Genie” levels in the game were surreal, and the way Abu would run around on screen was something special.
Confession: I always had to give the controller to my brother to beat the magic carpet ride through the Cave of Wonder. It was a serious moment in my career to be able to beat that without help.
Note: I’ve been disappointed to learn that the Sega Genesis version was better, although it was an entirely different game.
8. Zombies Ate My Neighbors
Probably the greatest co-op shooter ever to exist (I’m willing to wage a three-front war to defend this, don’t @ me). We watched a lot of horror movies growing up, so a game about killing zombies was a natural fit. Filled with scary movie tropes, gags, and cliches, and awesome weaponry — this game had everything from our favorite movies! This was the original Call of Duty Zombies.
I still haven’t finished this game, but I have every intention of doing so… but I’m probably going to have to cheat.
7. Goof Troop
This is a kid’s game that I have come back to as an adult and spent a good 10-15 minutes on individual puzzles/levels. It’s such a great game, and if you have the change you should pick this up; it’s usually a cheap cartridge to find and it’s not exactly rare (probably for it’s notable awesomeness). This is a fantastic casual-play puzzle game, and if you grew up in a time where after-school Disney cartoons were big there’s a huge dose of nostalgia that comes with it.
6. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
We didn’t get this game until the N64 Console was out, and SNES games became regular fare for garage sales. This was a game that our oldest brother was more familiar with (he was allowed to play Mortal Kombat a long time before us); hence regular beatings were issued to us. Needless to say the day that one of us beat him was the day that he moved on to physical pranks to maintain the advantage. 
I always played as Sub-Zero, my older brother playing as Scorpion, and our oldest brother would play as Smoke or Ermac (whichever was available).
5. Donkey Kong Country
This may be the first video game I ever played. The opening scene with Cranky-kong using the victorola and being replaced by Donkey Kong was so fresh, and it reminded me of all the cool-guy archetypes that I saw on TV. Between the awesome music and sweet graphics, this game had levels that would stick with you. I’m very glad this game turned into a series — We played through the second and third game. I have a hard time figuring out which game in the series was my favorite, but I know that the original DKC was the one that I think had the greatest effect.
4. Super Mario World
I’ve played through this game to the point where it repeats and lets you play through it with weird effects. This game is so big it makes sense to call it “Super Mario World.“ The rest of the Super Mario series is huge, but I have yet to find a Mario game that’s as expansive or as much fun as this one. I’m 100% sure that I haven’t found all the secrets in this game. I’d bet $100 that this is going to be one of those games that they find the last easter-egg in 20 years from now.
3. Chrono Trigger
It’s at this point that I’ll have to remind you that this list isn’t in the order of greatness, but in the order of how much it influence it had in shaping my sense of taste. Chrono Trigger is easily one of the best games on the system, and definitely one of the greatest of all time. If you like games with dynamic characters, great story, perfect music, and fantastic gameplay, this is the game for you.
We rented this game almost every weekend; which is a really hard way to beat a game that uses on-cartridge save files. Somehow my Dad managed to find a copy on Ebay, and he gave it to my older brother for Christmas. As the angels descended from heaven to give him the game cartridge, it became apparent that we’d finally be able to beat the game, and set to work playing it.
I have to point out that not only is this game awesome, it also created new concepts. “New Game+” was invented here; this is the first game that you could beat and then play again with the items/levels you had acquired in your last playthrough. This was outrageously valuable when you were trying to see all 12 of the endings in this game. Yeah, frickin’ twelve.
2. Megaman X
Just when you thought Megaman games couldn’t get cooler, they did. This is another game with unforgettable characters and music. When I was a kid I wanted to BE Megaman X (which is a really hard job to get into apparently). This game is simple in the gameplay (move, shoot. Don’t die. Repeat), but the whole dynamic of killing bosses and taking their special attacks was a very neat way to acquire new moves… but that was normal in the original Megaman series. What made Megaman X any different?
Megaman X took all the slow-moving frustration of Megaman and amped that up with Capsule upgrades. You could get into hidden capsules and unlock special abilities including (spoiler alert) the Hadouken Fireball from Street Fighter.
1. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Oh, man. No other game rocked my world like Zelda. I mean, first things first: you get a friggin’ sword? Yup, sold. Between getting to be the legendary hero and wielding a sword I was totally hooked. I loved the music in this game, and I really loved the enemies. The bosses in this game are freaky, well designed, and just hard enough to beat to make the game fun.
Confession: When I was around 4 years old, I would run out of the room scared when my brother would fight the bosses in this game. The music alone would scare me!
Final Thoughts
This list isn’t supposed to be a catalog of the best games on the system. That would be a different list altogether. Bear in mind that while I do like these games (and play a lot of them still), they aren’t for everyone. I mean, some of them wouldn’t even play well today — or do you really want to sit down and play Mario Paint?
To my main point though, these games forever shaped my taste in video games. It wouldn’t be too far to say that they shaped my taste in any art form (outside of culinary). From the way that the music would change the atmosphere, to the way that good pixel-art could make or break a game, to the fact that I still can’t play a game with a bad story, these games built the foundation of my taste, and probably did much to shape it as well.
Is there a game that I should’ve listed? Leave a note in the comments!
Jaymason Gallien 