The Super Nintendo began as the Super Famicom in Japan in 1990, followed by North America in 1991 and Europe in 1992. The move from the NES was noticeable in the graphics, music…

The Super Nintendo began as the Super Famicom in Japan in 1990, followed by North America in 1991 and Europe in 1992. The move from the NES was noticeable in the graphics, music, and the amount of detail developers could put into their games. Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, and Super Metroid all took familiar series into more elaborate environments. The controller also added more face buttons and shoulder buttons, giving developers more controls to work with. A lot of what people now expect from a traditional controller was becoming familiar during this period. There were different ways developers pushed the system, too. Mode 7 let games rotate and scale a background, which helped create the sense of depth in F-Zero and Super Mario Kart. Star Fox used extra hardware in the cartridge to handle its polygon graphics. Donkey Kong Country took another approach with its pre-rendered artwork. Then there were games like Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger, where the characters, music, and length of the adventure were a big part of the experience. You can go through that library and find very different answers to what developers wanted a 16-bit game to do, even when the games were running on the same console.