Super NES Works

Hey kids, let's celebrate 25 Super NES by kicking off a (very infrequently updated) new video series: Mode Seven. Like Good Nintentions, it'll be a chronological survey of U.S. releases for Super NES, sequenced according to Nintendo's official launch dates. This first episode, fittingly, dives into a game built entirely around this series' namesake: F-Zero, the futuristic racing game designed as a showcase for the Super NES Mode 7 feature. Convenient!

If F-Zero was Nintendo's Super NES tech showcase, Super Mario World showed how their developers could expand on existing game concepts with the new hardware. This first half of Mode Seven's Super Mario World retrospective looks at the history of the game, where it sits in Nintendo's c.v., and the enormous impact on the adventure's design of a little green dinosaur.

The second part of this rather overlong examination of the Super NES's key launch title looks at the importance of the mighty Cape power-up, and how Super Mario World embodies the concept of "Nintendo-esque." Look for the final part in this retrospective next week! (I hope.)

And that about wraps it up for Super Mario World. Thanks and good night, everyone. I promise I won't do another multi-parter ever, ever again. Well, campaign promise. Which is to say: Expect a multi-parter for Final Fantasy II in a few months.

Nintendo's third creation for their 16-bit console took an atypical approach for the company at the time, presenting players with a highly technical flight sim that demanded consistent, precision mastery of its varied mechanics. There's not really all that much game here, as the developers strained to exceed the boundaries of their new console, but good luck seeing this brief flight school course through to the end!

We resume a retrospective journey through the Super NES's 1991 U.S. lineup with this wonderful adaptation of the Maxis PC classic SimCity. Developed by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems, SimCity showed off a different side of the Super NES. Also in this episode: An explanation of the change in name from Mode Seven to Super NES Works.

Konami makes its Super NES debut (and so soon on this channel after their first NES game!) with the third Gradius game, and the second to make its way to the U.S.: Gradius III, a verrrrry sloooow adaptaaaation of a murderous arcade game. While it doesn't show off Nintendo's shiny new Super NES hardware to the most flattering effect, the constant, all-consuming slowdown actually does have its share of beneficial side effects....

Capcom arrives half-heartedly on Super NES with a deeply flawed conversion of arcade smash Final Fight. Missing stages, characters, and play options, this 16-bit debut looked nice in magazines, but it didn't play nearly as impressively as Nintendo's own releases.

The Super NES gets its very first RPG, borrowed from the European PC scene, and it's pretty weird! Intriguingly weird, but weird all the same. For example: it's a 3D RPG that uses a flat scrolling visual effect but doesn't make use of Mode 7. What a strange little adventure.

Irem's classic shooter series makes its debut on a Nintendo home console at last with a remixed conversion of R-Type II. And it's… OK. Riddled with slowdown and hilariously unfair, Super R-Type really has quite a lot in common with Gradius III. Not a terrible game, but a little bit of a letdown.

It's Space Harrier action in an F-Zero wrapper with this forgotten shoot-em-up by Nintendo mainstays HAL. A slight game, it's nevertheless memorable for its trippy visuals… and notable for its secret true-3D mode.

The creme de la creme of the chess world? Well, maybe so far as Super NES chess games go; it's easy to come out on top when you're the only one in the running. But The Chessmaster doesn't leave much of an impression. There are better chess simulations, and more satisfying chapters in this particular series, on other platforms. This is like the board game equivalent of a vintage franchise sports game: It probably sold well to a general audience at the time, but it offers very little return for anyone today to return to it.

Finally, a great-as-heck third-party Super NES game. Capcom's U.N. Squadron marks a welcome turnaround from the bumpy unpleasantness of Final Fight, with smoother gameplay, fewer conversion compromises, and smart gameplay tweaks to improve replayability. It's a high-water mark for Super NES shooters, and a game worth hunting down all these years later.

Another HAL creation: Hole In One Golf follows up on the company's landmark MSX take on the sport, adds in a Japanese golf legend, removes the golf legend for good measure, and allows players to explore a single course with exhaustive detail (via an isometric perspective that just might have served as the basis for Kirby's Dream Course).

A look at Nintendo's very own console conversion of Peter Molyneux's god-sim, Populous. Wedged in between the superlative SimCity and the excellent ActRaiser, Populous admittedly struggles a bit to hold its own among its peers. But all credit goes to developer Infinity, who did a bang-up job with the conversion and used this as the cornerstone of a brief but well-intended career transforming Western PC games into forms suitable for Japanese gamers.

The Super NES gets its first sports game in the form of an entry in Jaleco's Bases Loaded baseball series, which doesn't offer a whole lot that you couldn't find in Jaleco's simultaneous release for NES, Bases Loaded 3. All this 16-bit iteration really offers over its 8-bit counterpart is a questionable race not for the pennant but rather for a "perfect" game, a task best left to masochists drowning in free time.

Another game licensed from a Japanese media property hits Super NES, but this one isn't quite as good as U.N. Squadron. In fact, it's really quite poor: A clumsy fighting game based on Ultraman's short-lived push into the U.S. television market. It might not be all bad if not for the unspeakably boneheaded victory condition requirement, which turns this into a jarring example of a faithful video game adaptation that suffers for its accuracy to the source material…

An in-depth look at one of the most unique games ever to appear on Super NES: The god-sim/RPG/platformer ActRaiser. With its incredible soundtrack, challenging action, and low-calorie simulation mode, ActRaiser manages to be far more than the sum of its decent individual components. It stands as a classic for the ages, and this retrospective attempts to explain why.

Nintendo's lone first-party straggler for Super NES's 1991 post-launch period lands in the form of a game by TOSE and Tonkin House that hews so closely to Tennis for NES and Game Boy that it really does deserve the name "Super Tennis." A fast-paced if visually unexciting take on the sport, Super Tennis finally rectifies the shortcomings of its predecessors by incorporating a full array of single- and multiplayer options, as well as a complete, long-term, bracket-based tournament mode. You might say it's… smashing.

Tengen scored a hit with its home rendition of Atari Games' arcade classic Paperboy, so naturally they wasted no time following up on it. But was this sequel really necessary? Did Tengen improve on a masterpiece, or merely spin their wheels? Find out by watching this video... next time you drop by my apartment unannounced to raid my pantry for cereal.

One of gaming's greatest legacies gets its kickoff here... but it's not quite a slam dunk. More like a weak fly to left field. Um. Football? Yes.

A fascinating bit of Super NES technology fails to match its one-of-a-kind visual approach with equally unique gameplay. There are probably worse racers on the system, but R.P.M. Racing feels particularly disappointing given the unconventional graphical approach it takes and the impressive legacy that lay ahead for developer Silicon & Synapse. It one-of-a-kind bit of tech for Super NES, and it includes the system's first custom level creator complete with battery back-up, but it just isn't fun.

This first of a multi-part look back at the original U.S. release of Final Fantasy IV explores the history behind the game and the significance of its innovative combat engine, the Active-Time Battle System.

The middle chapter of this in-depth Final Fantasy II retrospective leaps from the game's innovative play mechanics to its equally striking approach to storytelling. By using all aspects of the game to relay its narrative, Final Fantasy II changed the way RPGs (and games!) integrated plots and characters into their design.

And here at last we reach the end of this retrospective saga with a look at how Final Fantasy's fourth installment reworked the raw materials of its 8-bit predecessor to present a new and completely holistic take on the role-playing genre.

The Makaimura/Ghosts ’N Goblins series makes its debut on a third Nintendo console, and yeah, it's every bit as harsh as you'd expect. But is the beauty of the game's visuals and the intense satisfaction of finally reaching the next checkpoint enough to make it worth the suffering?

Taito arrives on Super NES with a splash. Well, it should be a splash... you know, because of all the fish bosses. But they're actually in outer space? Darius is weird. But that's OK, because this Darius balances its quirkiness with the silkiest, smoothest action yet seen on the console. It's the cure for the common slowdown, and all it took was... not using any of the console's unique hardware features. Oh well!

A pair of bog-standard sports titles awaits us as the Super NES library makes the transition from November to December 1991. We've already seen takes on these sports (golf and baseball) in very similar formats. What do T&E Soft and Culture Brain have to offer that HAL and Jaleco didn't? If anything!?

Another double-header of sports-themed games, but this time the works under the microscope don't adhere quite so rigidly to genre standards. Instead, both Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball and Super Off-Road take more inventive approaches to their subjects in pursuit of fun... though one of these is definitely more successful in that objective than the other.

Last week we looked at the original Castlevania for NES; now here is its Super NES remake. Sort of. Super Castlevania IV is kind of like a remix of Castlevania 1 and 3 (which does add up to IV!), but it makes some pretty big changes to the core mechanics of controlling Simon Belmont. On the other hand, it carries over a lot of elements from the NES, too. It's an odd duck in the Castlevania series that doesn't always work but has so much loving detail invested into it that it holds up regardless of its flaws.

Young Kevin McAllister had it rough being stuck all by himself with a house full of crooks for Christmas, but really that was nothing compared to the suffering experienced by anyone who played his game. Home Alone leads into the final run of 1991 Super NES games, and... they aren't great.

While I'd love to wrap Super NES 1991 on a high note, the games actually seem to be getting worse as we approach the end of the year. D-Force is easily the lousiest Super NES game of 1991, and it's a strong contender for worst-of-all-time, too. A dull, clumsy shooter that would have been embarrassing on an 8-bit console, D-Force only throws its awfulness into sharp relief by including a Super NES-specific gimmick that somehow makes the game even less fun to play. Truly, we've punch through the barrel's bottom here.

Super NES Works 1991 limps weakly over the finish line with the third dud in a row. Lagoon makes a pitiful capstone for an otherwise strong opening period for Nintendo's 16-bit beast, a hobbled conversion of a fairly respectable PC game that suffers horribly from a single ill-considered new design choice. Oh well! At least we have 1992 to look forward to...