The Super Nintendo turns 30 years old today

It is hard to believe that the Super Nintendo is now 30 years old, well in North America at least.

The system was originally released in Japan in 1990 but wasn’t brought to the west until 1991, with Europe finally getting its hands on the console in 1992.

With a lifecycle that lasted all the way until 2003, the Super Nintendo was home to many iconic games and franchises, including games such as Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, A Link To The Past, and Super Metroid.

The SNES sold an impressive 49 million units, although this was down compared to the 62 million NES consoles that were sold.

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One interesting thing about the Super Nintendo that not many people will know, is that it even had online capabilities, with games such as DOOM, Mortal Kombat 3, Super Mario Kart, and Super Street Fighter 2 supporting online play.

A Japanese exclusive feature also saw players be able to connect to the internet and play updated versions of existing games, as well as being able to flash special cartridges with games.

Quite famously, the Super Nintendo also played a part in creating the PlayStation, with Sony set to collaborate with Nintendo to produce the PlayStation add-on for the SNES, which allowed for CDs to be used with the system.

Nintendo ended up doing something similar with the N64 DD the following generation.

The deal fell through and Sony decided to go in alone and create their own 32-bit console called the PlayStation, a console series which is still going strong today, with the PS5 out of stock across the world and the previous console, the PS4, selling over 110 million units to date.

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It is interesting to think that without the Super Nintendo we may never have seen the release of the PlayStation.