Ah, the SNES. Stately in thy countenance, worldly in thy repertoire. I definitely consider the SNES to be one of the finest gaming systems ever created.

System: I must’ve traded in my Genesis for the Super Nintendo, because I can’t remember owning the Genesis after I got the Super Nintendo. Clearly this was the right call. The SNES has so many of my all-time favorite games, it’s crazy.

Favorite Games: My obsession with Squaresoft, while rooted in Final Fantasy on the NES, really takes off here. They put out so many great titles for the SNES. My absolute favorite game was Secret of Mana, which I don’t think I ever even owned. I just borrowed it for extended lengths of time from friends. Secret of Mana tapped into a lot of great nerdy joys, like all kinds of different weapons and upgrading equipment and riding dragons, but the real reason it was so great is that it was multiplayer. EVEN if you were solo. Something about having two computer controlled characters helping you fight was very satisfying. And then if your friend came over, BAM, now you were both wailing on whatever the heck it was you fought in Secret of Mana. All I know is that I think I played this game through like three times.

Chrono Trigger was the other big one that I played the living bejeesus out of. It combines two of my favorite things: Japanese rpgs and TIME TRAVEL. Those that know me know of my serious love of all things time travel. Chrono Trigger has you leaping all over the timeline, fighting dinosaurs, robots and sorcerors alike. What is there not to like? Also, like Secret of Mana, killer soundtrack.

I also need to mention a game I played the first third of probably four or five times, Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen. Easily the best game ever named after a Queen song. Some genius who handled the US localization of the game picked up on this and added ANOTHER Queen song to the title, for which he deserves a commendation and medal for service to both Queen and awesome video games. This game was difficult, but it was even more difficult to maintain a positive reputation and get the “good” ending. If your units became too powerful, beating back enemy units was easy but then your reputation would drop because you had become a bully. Come on, game! I’m trying to liberate people, here.

Least Favorite: There’s definitely games for the SNES that were bad, but I didn’t own many. I do remember renting the brawler based on The Tick (a favorite show of mine), and being sorely disappointed by its limp, repetitive gameplay and complete disconnection with anything that happens on the show. Video game tie-ins were not yet a priority for Saturday morning cartoons.

Personal Quirks: I owned the Multitap! I bought it for like $13 at a K-Mart that was going out of business, specifically to use it for playing three player Secret of Mana. It was worth it. We played the whole damn thing through over a series of weekends with three people. You do some serious damage in that game when you’ve got three people playing instead of 1 or 2 and a computer.

Next up: the Sony PlayStation.