This perfectly scaled-down replica gets all the details right, yet fits snugly in your hand. The Nintendo Classic Mini SNES is a charming little relic of a distant time – with the emphasis on little. Now many of these seminal titles can be easily rediscovered in one sublime package. The great artists and designers of the veteran Japanese video game houses – Nintendo, Capcom, Konami, Square Soft – reached the peak of their powers with sprite-based graphics, while in the west, developers such as Rare and Argonaut helped push the limits of the hardware via technical powerhouses such as Donkey Kong Country and StarFox. While the Mega Drive traded on its attitude, the SNES competed on the sheer epic scope and quality of its software. After a thundering start in Japan (the initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out in a matter of hours), it took a while for the console to gain ground elsewhere in the world, but slowly, steadily the mega hits kept coming.

Photograph: Alamyīut finally when the SNES launched in 1990, it was clear this was a technical marvel, with a rich colour palette, sophisticated audio and upgradeable graphics processor. Industry watchers were panicking while then Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi kept his cards close to his chest.ġ990 The Super Nintendo Entertainment System was Nintendo’s second home games console. With a two-year head start, the machine greedily chomped into Nintendo’s 95% market share, then augmented its supremacy with the launch of Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991. Sega’s machine, designed with a powerful 16-bit processor capable of handling the company’s brilliant late-80s arcade titles, was marketed with verve and aplomb, lighting up the teen demographic with coin-op hits like Golden Axe and Altered Beast. The SNES got off to a slow start against the scorchingly confident Mega Drive. This boom and bust model goes back further, though – it began with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The Wii U was a sales disaster, its Toy Town tablet controller failing to entice developers or consumers – but now the Switch is killing it with a much better implementation of the same concept.

The chunky Game Cube failed in the PlayStation era and everyone thought that was it – until the Wii came out and revitalised casual gaming. O ver the last decade we have become used to seeing Nintendo written off, then returning to the fray with an astonishing piece of hardware.

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