Retronauts Celebrates a Quarter-Century of the Super Nintendo

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In case you haven't noticed, we members of the games press are just the tiniest bit obsessed with anniversaries.

Sure, the march of time means some game or game-related thing is always turning an age divisible by five, making our job of finding relevant things to write about much, much easier. (That's a trade secret.) But checking in every half-decade or decade gives us the opportunity to see if we've learned from the past, or if we're doomed to repeat it.

With this episode of Retronauts, I'm falling into the latter category—even if "doomed" seems like a particularly strong word for the situation. Five years ago, I made my hosting debut on Retronauts with a celebration of the SNES' 20th anniversary. In our industry, five years is practically a geological age, and an unbelievable amount of things have come and gone in that relatively short span of time—why, in 2011 we had several magazines instead of just the two! And I coulda sworn motion controls were an intrinsic part of our brave, new world...

In any case, Retronauts is a good milestone for me to know when I finally got comfortable with my full-time role in an incredibly unstable industry that just happens to be centrally located in the most expensive city in America. So it's been especially nice for me to return to old topics with the confidence that comes with saying things about video games into microphones for this long. And if you enjoy the Super Nintendo, we certainly covered all the bases in this episode: the great library, its stellar sound chip, the bitter console wars, and how it accidentally spawned the Sony PlayStation. (Certainly enough content to keep us from revisiting this topic for at least another five years.)

Joining us on this one is Capcom's Tim Turi (formerly of Game Informer), as well as returning Retronaut Ray Barnholt. And our cover art comes courtesy of Nick Daniel. As always, you can keep up with the latest Retronauts news via our Twitter and Facebook accounts, and check out some of our video content over on our YouTube page. And, in case you forgot, Retronauts is fully funded by our Patreon campaign, so if you can afford to donate even a dollar a month, please consider it! Every little bit really helps our cause.

Download Links

Libsyn (1:33:14 | MP3 Download | SoundCloud)

Musical Selections

• 19:48 - Pilotwings - "Hang Glider"
• 35:50 - Gradius III - "Fire Scramble"
• 52:20 - F-Zero - "Mute City"
• 1:12:34 - HyperZone - "Grass Land"
• 1:22:56 - ActRaiser - "Fillmore"
• 1:31:00 - F-Zero - "Ending Theme 2"