Best of ND 2013: Versus! SNES or N64?

Again, you speak the truth Andy. I can’t deny the greatness of the Super Nintendo. It set the standard of excellence. Nintendo 64 just improved upon that. N64 gets a bad rep for losing third party support, and that’s a shame. However, this proved that Nintendo could totally stand on its own. I’d say Nintendo 64 was completely dependent on its first party games, and it still sold pretty well. It proved that all you need to succeed are great games, nothing more.

You rub salt in the wound by mentioning Super Metroid though. N64 deserved a Metroid! But I do need to interject that there was Mother game meant for Nintendo 64, but it just got delayed and made into Mother 3.

All of the games you brought up for SNES were fantastic and wildly influential, but like I said before, N64 games were some of the most influential of all time. Three N64 games completely revolutionized their respective genres: Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and GoldenEye 007. I’d say that’s the most important legacy of the Nintendo 64.

I would also like to posit that the hardware of the N64 console was more aesthetically pleasing than SNES (both its American and European forms). SNES looked like a boring grey box, a toy even. Nintendo 64
looked like it could fit right in with late ’90s entertainment devices with its dark figure. Its rounded edges gave it an awesome footprint.

You’re right, N64 succeeded because Nintendo showed it could single handily support a console on nothing more than the strength and creativity of its games. But I think we all wish that wasn’t something that needed proving. Who here wouldn’t be happier if Nintendo had been receiving the same treatment as its competitors over the last 15 years? If you only had Nintendo products you played some amazing games, but you also missed out on countless other games.

And please don’t talk about Mother 3, that’s a sore spot for me. Not only did the N64 version get canned, but when it did finally appear as a GBA game, everyone outside of Japan was denied the pleasure of experiencing it. Unless of course if you could read Japanese or downloaded the fan translated ROM, but that is illegal and we would never condone that…

If only…

Moving on, I must call you out as being totally wrong about something. SNES was not a “boring gray box” because it had purple in it too, and purple is never boring!

Did it look like a toy? You know, yes it did and I’m okay with that because it was a toy. SNES provided me with more hours of enjoyment than the army of action figures and buckets of LEGO bricks I had growing up. I had played video games before but SNES is what made me a gamer, a devotee of the Church of Saint Miyamoto who holds the same reverence for his original copies of Chrono Trigger and Super Mario World as others might reserve for the Shroud of Turin or a pair of Elvis’s rhinestone encrusted pants.

N64 of course holds a special place in my heart as well, after all I’ve probably spent just as much time writing and talking about how much I love Ocarina of Time as I have actually playing the game. But for me SNES was where it all began, it was Genesis… not of course to be confused with Sega Genesis, which was totally lame by comparison.

Of course, SNES was purple too! I hadn’t meant calling the SNES a toy as an insult. I still play with LEGO myself. N64 just seems a bit more sophisticated. However, you make a good point about the third parties. I was always rather peeved about the cool PlayStation games that never made it to the Nintendo 64 because of Nintendo’s stubbornness.

We’ve had a great discussion here, but I do believe we must draw it to a close. Honestly, there’s room for both the Nintendo 64 and the Super Nintendo on any gamer’s shelf. We can both agree that the consoles were great in their own ways. Debating about Nintendo systems usually comes down to this, as they are all quite awesome. Except for Virtual Boy. Never that one.

Readers, now that you’ve seen Andy and myself square off, what do you think? Which console is your favorite? SNES or N64? Which one do you keep coming back to? Until next time, this has been Versus!

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