The day was August 23,1991 and Nintendo had just released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System for two-hundred dollars. I was only two years old at the time but the older generations of my family were already begging for the new hottest system from Nintendo. Fast forward a bit to middle school where after school I would go over a family friends house until my parents got out of work. One of those days I happened to finish my homework early and as a reward their son handed me a controller and popped in a cartridge. The first glimpse of the big colorful letters spelling out Super Mario World was the moment that made me into the gamer I am today.
I feel like most people my age would choose the Nintendo 64, Playstation, Playstation 2, Sega Genesis or Sega Dreamcast as their favorite system. While those are all good systems, I still feel that the Super Nintendo surpasses them all.
The Super Nintendo was a great system for a few reasons. First off they took the original NES controller and rounded it off, added two face buttons and introduced the shoulder buttons which are now standard on most modern day systems. The controls in the games were super simple also and that made game play much better. The graphics in the games were also so clean and bright and the games only got better as more were released. I also found that the system and cartridges were fairly durable to a certain extent. There’s also just something great about blowing into the cartridge and then slamming it back into the system and hoping that worked.
In a more nostalgic take on this system you could say it’s my favorite for two reasons. The first would be that it was the first system that I ever played and at that time the only system that I knew existed. The second would be because I have so many memories involving this system. I remember spending hours after school playing games like Clayfighters and NBA Jam. Playing Toy Story and Power Rangers with my cousins on countless occasions. But above all else I remember my dad coming home from work and playing Mortal Kombat with me and then at five when my mom got home we had to hand over the controller so she could play Donkey Kong. The system was such a fun, simple way to play games and to interact with others. It will forever hold the place as best system in my eyes.