Mike's 2015 Boxed SNES Collection

My brother and I received our Super Nintendo for Christmas of 1992 (which of course included Super Mario World) along with The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Street Fighter II: The World Warrior.  Before I that I had only played the Super Nintendo once at a friend-of-a-friend's house (it was Super Mario World, as I recall).  I also did not know about the SNES before it was released.  I didn't have a Nintendo Power subscription at that time and I don't remember any kids at school talking about the system.

I still have the original system and only the bottom half has turned yellow.  I think the yellowing varies based on the year the system was produced.  I've noticed that launch systems tend to be yellow almost all over.  But my system runs great.  Super Nintendos are built like brick shithouses.

I picked up the system organizer from the Super Power Supplies Catalog from Nintendo Power magazine in the mid '90s.  The SNES version is different from the N64 version in that the drawer is divided into three section.  Other than that, it's pretty much the same as the N64 version.

I store my additional games in a 24-game organizer that I picked up fairly recently off eBay.  It keeps the dust off the games and prevents sun bleaching on the labels.  I still have some of my original cartridges including Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, Super Mario Kart, Tetris Attack, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Killer Instinct.  I replaced my brother's Final Fantasy II with a complete copy a few years ago.  I also sold some games I used to own such as the first Street Fighter II (Turbo makes it irrelevant), The Addams Family, and Bass Masters Classic.

I still have the original two controllers that came with the system.  For some reason, the R buttons broke their hinges early on, so when you clicked the buttons, both the inside and outside of the button would depress.  It was weird.  A few years ago I managed to secure some replacement R buttons from a used game store online, so that fixed the shoulder button issue.

One of my close friends had an Asciipad when I was growing up, so that's how I became aware of that controller.  I think I picked up my own Asciipad around the mid/late '90s.  I also picked up my own Super Advantage joystick around the same time.  I loved the NES Advantage, so I had to get the Super Nintendo version.  I sold my original one a few years ago and purchased a brand new off eBay for a fairly decent price.  Also, I actually own two Asciipads because one of them has a D-pad that doesn't work at times.  Strangely, the cords are different lengths on each controller.  Certain Asciipads have really short cords while others have long ones.

Some people don't know this, but Asciiware actually made the NES Advantage and simply licensed it to Nintendo.  This was mentioned in a controller feature in Volume 49 (June 1993) of Nintendo Power magazine.  So it's no wonder that Asciiware released a Super Advantage themselves.

My same friend who owned an Asciipad also owned a Super Scope, and I managed to borrow it around the mid/late '90s along with Super Scope 6.  I thought it was really cool, so I got myself a used but complete in box Super Scope off eBay around 2011.  The thing is in excellent condition.


I got the Super NES Mouse off eBay a few years ago brand new for a really good price.  I don't remember using one of these back in the day, but I was certainly aware of it.  I originally picked up a Super Multitap in the late '90s when I became interested in retro four-player games, but I replaced it with a complete in box Super Bomberman Party Pack a few years ago.

The Konami Justifier light guns were picked up very recently.  You can use both at the same time for Lethal Enforcers, which is really cool.  You can have to connect the pink gun to the blue one through a daisy chain, similar to Panasonic 3DO controllers.

Unfortunately, the SNES is the only system where I didn't manage to keep the system box.  My parents must have thrown it out either the day we got it or the next day.  However, I did manage to find a replacement box a few years ago off eBay, and it's the exact same type that my system came in. 

The official S-video cable has the Japanese packaging because the U.S. packaging is almost impossible to find due to it coming in a type of bubble/blister pack with cardboard backing, which people obviously threw away.  Plus the cable wasn't popular.  Not many people ever used S-video, and you had to order the cable from Nintendo directly.  There was an order form in the back of the SNES instruction manual.

I have always liked different controllers and accessories, so that's why I have multiple big box versions of games.  I have the boxes for both Konami Justifier light guns.  The box for the pink gun is hard to find.

Like with my NES, I only have a few original boxes from my childhood, and that's because they were mid/late 16-bit era releases.  I started hanging onto game boxes by then.  Super Mario Kart, Yoshi's Island, Tetris Attack and Killer Instinct are my only original boxes.  Everything else is a replacement or something I picked up complete in box later on.

Overall, the SNES is my second favorite Nintendo console.  It is, quite literally, a "Super" NES because of how it continued a lot of popular series that started on the NES and simply beefed up the graphics and sound.  However, I tend to find the NES games to be higher quality, although it's a tough call in some cases.  But the NES tends to have more games in my favorite series (3 Mario games on NES vs. 1 on SNES, 2 Zelda games on NES vs. 1 SNES, 3 Castlevania games on NES vs. 2 on SNES, etc.), so I favor the NES.  Still, the SNES is a damn good console.