What made the SNES special to you?

It was the first game console that I had and I used to play it all the time with my brother. We would play Super Mario World and Mario Kart and Super Mario All Stars and it was probably one of the only times that we actually got along. Then he got a playstation and moved on and I got a 64 and started to play both consoles. I always favored Nintendo over other game consoles. I think it is because the SNES and Mario holds a special place in our hearts. (I will admit that I do own an X-box and I must say I enjoy it immensely.)
 
The thing that has made any game special to me really is the people I play with. SNES was a system I played with my cousin. I was 7 and I really didn't understand why he was in a wheelchair and I really didn't know how to play with him. He was also in high school and who wants a little kid messing around them. However, my aunt babysat me and I was there and we found a common ground. Zelda Link to the past was just awesome. We played together we talked and laughed and we found this common ground that was like "Oh hey we can have a relationship." It made his wheel chair just kind of disappear for me. I always wanted to go play with him and hang out. So perhaps it wasn't so much the system as much as the memories that came with it.
 
The truth is that seems to be something Nintendo has always had going for it: Great games to play with others (not online but in person) developing great memories of the games & the systems. That's really how I think they've been able to stay in the game (pun unintended but welcome) by pulling heartstrings & creating great content for their consoles themselves.
 
What first hooked me to Super Nintendo was Super Mario World. That game is fun and is a great way to kill some extra time. Trying to find all the secret ways out of all the stages was a fun challenge that never gets tiring. I also loved the colored Yoshis, having all the different abilities. The extra bonus stage where you try and match random blocks that travel around a block that already has a determined power-up. Power-ups include Super Mushrooms, Fire Flowers, and Stars. Mario or Luigi can only hit blocks while they are at the bottom, and hit blocks continue to travel around the center. Not to mention all the 1-ups you could acquire. :)
 
The truth is that seems to be something Nintendo has always had going for it: Great games to play with others (not online but in person) developing great memories of the games & the systems. That's really how I think they've been able to stay in the game (pun unintended but welcome) by pulling heartstrings & creating great content for their consoles themselves.

This entirely. I feel things have went too far into Online Gaming, and it's became impersonal at a certain stage. Nintendo was best for bringing people together.

My fondest memories were playing RPGs as a kid with my friends, each taking turns fighting different bosses and helping each other explore dungeons and rationalize puzzles - all at the age of 8+

Nintendo is not only an "Entertainment System" but it was a social media networking device back before we had Twitter or Facebook.

Shame everything is phasing away from that.
 
The SNES was a very well-rounded console with a nice variety of games. As you put it, the SNES had no "niche" is a fairly apt description. However, it did enjoy a healthy dose of JRPGs, particularly from Square, Enix and Atlus. I've always enjoyed the SNES and always thought it was a good contender in the 16-bit wars. It didn't just compete against the Sega Genesis but also the NEC TurboGrafx-16. The games library on the Genesis was more focused on arcade titles and the TurboGrafx-16 was more for 2D shooters.
 
My general experience with SNES revolved around emulators, so I could say that the amount of games I played, and the long hours I spent with each game was an attraction that made me buy a computer gamepad and invite relatives/friends over my house to play. God, I even played Bomberman 3 with 3 people, 2 on the keyboard and one on the gamepad.

Also SNES was my first contact with the RPG genre, with classics like Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy 4 and 6 and Super Mario RPG. That was the first step into the addictiveness I would find later wih MMORPGs of any genre lol.

Much of the a gamer I turned out to be was due to SNES.
 
I think a big part of what made the Super Nintendo special to me is how old I was when it came out.

When the Super Nintendo was released, I was 10-11 years old and had already been playing the Atari, PC and the NES for years, but this console was different. My mind was blown with the Super NES graphics! It was 16-bit (I didn't know what that meant, but it seemed impressive at the time). The controller had all of these extra buttons!

Nintendo released a bunch of awesome games (which have all been mentioned in this thread) and the rest is history. It's probably my favourite console, mostly due to nostalgia. :)
 
It was the console I really got into gaming on. I first played the NES, but the SNES was my main thing. It had Super Mario World and A Link To The Past and Diddy's Kong Quest and...just so many good games. I wound up staying up late into the night playing them often times. (Later than my parents wanted me to :p)
 
I think a big part of what made the Super Nintendo special to me is how old I was when it came out.

When the Super Nintendo was released, I was 10-11 years old and had already been playing the Atari, PC and the NES for years, but this console was different. My mind was blown with the Super NES graphics! It was 16-bit (I didn't know what that meant, but it seemed impressive at the time). The controller had all of these extra buttons!

Nintendo released a bunch of awesome games (which have all been mentioned in this thread) and the rest is history. It's probably my favourite console, mostly due to nostalgia. :)
As someone that grew up playing games during the 8-bit era, I was amazed by the advances of the 16-bit systems such as the SNES. It was definitely a huge leap, particularly in the graphics and sound departments. The SNES but also the NEC PC-Engine, Sega Mega Drive and home computers such as Atari ST and Commodore Amiga completely amazed me. This is the era where I truly appreciated gaming, as arcade-quality aesthetics were finally available at home.
 
That's a good point @Damien Lee, where gaming at home finally caught up (and eventually surpassed) the arcades. I specifically remember Super Mario World, the level that you're in the haunted mansion, looking at the background and thinking that these graphics were unlike anything I had ever seen. The background was so detailed and would kind of stay static while your character moved. It was amazing at the time.
 
Before we received the SNES for Christmas (1992!), I know we had an NES and a ColecoVision in the house, although I was too young to play them. The SNES came into our lives when I was 6, the perfect time to really enjoy the system. We had Madden, Mario World, and Street Fighter II. A short while later we had NCAA basketball. While I didn't really care for sports games, I spent most of my playing Mario and Street Fighter. My L and R buttons are SO loose because of how I abused the hard kicks and punches in SFII.
 
I loved the NES. It was great and even though i wasnt even born when it came out, i still got one at a garage sale and played it for weeks. My first game i played on it was Earthbound. Still one of my favorite games even though then I thought that Ness moved so slow. I remembered pokemon was like that accept that you could get the running shoes and the bicycle to make you go faster. Overall its not one of my favorites but it was good.
 
Super Mario RPG :D definitely made that system for me.
 
The SNES was special to me for several reasons:

It was such a monumental advancement from the original 8-bit NES in nearly every way! Even taking what we had already seen with the Sega Genesis into consideration: it was jaw dropping at the time!

It had a solid library of incredible games, beating out the Sega Genesis' library in my opinion!

It came out just in time to be the console of choice in my peak junior high gaming years between the NES and Sony's PlayStation. How could it not have a special place in my heart as such?
 
I still say part of the reason was games were stretched across only 2 serious consoles and not 3. It allowed for more and better games on each console.
 
The SNES had it's charms in the wide variety of games, as others have said. You can find totally zany weird japanese games, or something mundane like golfing. But I especially lved how many games attemted to impress us and making amazing pixel art. The SNES had games that tried to make you invested. My friends and I have a youtube channel that we play all our favorite games on, and almost all of them are SNES or NES games, because that era had so many more games made with PASSION.
 
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When the SNES first came out, what attracted it to me was simply the fact that it was the upgrade that we'd been waiting for from Nintendo, and that was all. If you had a NES, then when a new console was unveiled, it didn't matter if the reviews said it wasn't very good, you'd still want to buy one simply because all your friends were getting one.

I know that I wasn't going to be the only one with an outdated NES, when everyone else I knew was on the SNES anyway.
 

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