NOW YOU'RE POLLING WITH POWER. SUPER POWER. Console Poll, vol. 2 - 4th Generation RESULTS

here's mine - not sure why i included sim ant except to pad out my ballot:

[S] Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
[S] Chrono Trigger
[S] ActRaiser
[S] Super Mario World
[SG] NBA Jam
[b] Tetris
[S] Pilotwings
[S] Donkey Kong Country
[SG] Lost Vikings
[b] Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening
[SG] Super Off-Road
[S] Aladdin
[b] Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3
[S] Secret of Mana
[S] Killer Instinct
[G] Golden Axe
[S] ActRaiser 2
[SG] Earthworm Jim
[G] Sonic the Hedgehog
[S] Sim Ant

lol i only played sim ant on pc but loved it obsessively even tho it was broken. the manual was in two parts: the manual, and then a longer section that was just ant facts. to this day i know a lot about ants.

after each beating it did get easier for whatever that's worth

i would rush through things and by the third time you'd get a nice routine going and just focus on hunting for heart pieces or talking to the right dudes in the right order to help you move along faster

that's in reference to lttp btw

Oh shit, how did I forget to vote for Ecco the Dolphin?!?! Loved that game!

I'll post my ballot as soon as I'm somewhere other than my stupid Gmail-blocking workplace.

also forgot to vote for ecco tho i think i liked the album more <joekz>

ha, my vote got On the Ball in juuuuuust ahead of Mortal Kombat II. no regrets.

games that deserved better:

94 - Gradius 3 - 27 points / 2 Votes (i should have voted for this, given the amount of time i spent playing it...wait a second, WHERE THE FUCK IS SUPER R-TYPE? NO ONE voted for it!?!?! that game is amazing, we have all sinned)
97 - Super Off Road - 24 points / 2 Votes (holds up very well even today, multiplayer esp. but even single-player)
127 - Super Punchout - 10 points / 1 Vote (!!!!!!!! i'm the only person who voted for this? are you all fucking insane??)

my ballot, SNES-exclusive, sorry

1. [S] On the Ball
[S] Secret of Mana
[S] Tetris Attack / Panel de Pon
[SG] Street Fighter II & SFII' Turbo
[SG] Another World/Out Of This World
[S] Final Fantasy VI (III)
[S] Harvest Moon
[S] Super Mario World
[S] Super Mario Kart
[S] Earthbound
[SG] Earthworm Jim
[S] Pilotwings
[S] StarFox
[S] Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
[S] Donkey Kong Country
[S] Super Punchout
[S] Super Metroid
[S] Gradius 3
[SG] Super Off Road
20. [S] Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

KM iirc you were a big marble madness stan too?

wait, i did vote for gradius 3. phew.

but still, super r-type was the superior game, i think. zero votes is terrible.

shooters just not my bag

i'm a huge marble madness fan (in fact, i was slow to this thread the last hour or so because i watching this excellent talk by the creator: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/184925/Video_The_making_of_1984s_Marble_Madness.php), but it didn't come out for SNES and i didn't play the game boy or genesis ports.

127 - Super Punchout - 10 points / 1 Vote (!!!!!!!! i'm the only person who voted for this? are you all fucking insane??)

I would have voted for the NES version for sure. I'm not sure I played the SNES one.

xp i asked bc yr #1 here seems v similar

it's true, i love marble games. nothing gets the heart going faster

[S] Super Mario Kart
[S] Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
[gb] Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
[gb] Tetris
[SG] Street Fighter II & SFII' Turbo
[S] Secret of Mana
[gb] Gargoyle's Quest
[G] Landstalker
[S] Super Castlevania IV
[S] Super Bomberman
[SG] Rock n Roll Racing
[SG] Mortal Kombat 2
[gb] Super Mario Land
[G] Sonic the Hedgehog 2
[S] Contra 3: The Alien Wars
[SG] Earthworm Jim
[G] Gunstar Heroes
[SG] NBA Jam Tournament Edition
[SG] NHL 96
[S] Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts

Bold didn't place.

I could have sworn I voted for Road Rash II. I should have voted for it.

sorry i joined this thing super late and this has probably been covered but

parodius (parodiusu da! shinwa kara owarai e) for the super famicom would've been in my top 10

as would super dodge ball for the super famicom -- kunio-kun no dodgeball da yo zennin shuugou (https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%8F%E3%81%AB%E3%81%8A%E3%81%8F%E3%82%93%E3%81%AE%E3%83%89%E3%83%83%E3%82%B8%E3%83%9C%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%81%A0%E3%82%88%E5%85%A8%E5%93%A1%E9%9B%86%E5%90%88!)

that super dodge ball for the super famicom would probably be in my top 5

a few other japan-only games would make my top 10 probably

so here are some of the games i will be checking out after this poll:

21 - Super Castlevania IV - 121 points / 5 Votes (never got around to playing this one. it is time. probably not the first i'll try out on this list though)
22 - Super Mario Land - 118 points / 5 Votes (music cranked per will m's suggestion)
26 - Legend of the Mystical Ninja - 101 points / 4 Votes
29 - Castlevania: Rondo of Blood - 94 points / 1 First-place votes / 3 Votes
33 - Langrisser II - 81 points / 3 Votes
34 - Crusader of Centy (aka Soleil) - 80 points / 2 First-place votes / 2 Votes
35 - Rock n Roll Racing - 79 points / 4 Votes
41 - Breath of Fire - 69 points / 3 Votes (so the original is better than II? i don't know why i always thought the sequel was better known?)
59 - Secret of Evermore - 50 points / 2 Votes
64 - E.V.O. The Search for Eden - 45 points / 2 Votes
65 - Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins - 44 points / 1 First-place votes / 2 Votes

everyone who hasn't should play actraiser that game was great

you forgot Gargoyle's Quest and Landstalker xp

i'm gonna play yoshi's island (been hearing people call this a masterpiece my entire life) and i guess crusader of centy! and evermore? and secret of mana maybe finally? and

So far as I know BOF II is considered a generally better game than the original breath of fire, but it must be untrue because ILX said so

III is my fave but I couldn't remember enough about II to place it

Karl you MUST add Bahamut Lagoon if you find yourself with enough time to play through another medium-size RPG! if you ever played FF6, and remember those parts where you move your guys on a board and when they run up against another team they do a regular battle, it was kinda like that!

Nice! I will add it to the list for sure. i am unemployed right now so it might be a decent time to take one on.

my list was v canonical (bold didn't place)

1. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
2. Super Castlevania IV
3. Super Mario World
4. Tetris
5. F-Zero
6. Super Mario Kart
7. StarFox
8. Street Fighter II & SFII' Turbo
9. Pilotwings
10. SimCity
11. Sonic the Hedgehog 2
12. Micro Machines
13. Super Mario Land
14. Streets of Rage II
15. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time
16. Earthworm Jim 2
17. Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow
18. Sparkster
19. Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins
20. Desert Strike

can't really remember which was part of which earthworm jim game so i should have been more strategic and thrown those few points to the first, but really it is entirely undeserving of beating pokémon. uh, even tho my own list says so

thanks again will! too bad Haunting just missed out on the top 78, another great very much slept on genesis title along with Beyond Oasis (82 woooo) and of course Crusader of Centy.

Didn't expect Link to the Past to take it all tbh but I expect all of you Zelda voters to give Centy a shot if you've got the time, if Noodle and I haven't convinced you yet I'll do my damndest when I have time to comment on the whole lot

Yoshi's Island is too low. Arguably the best platformer of the generation and certainly one of the most completely-realized in terms of control, art direction, music, level design, etc., just coming together to make something that has a complete feel. Hat is also off to Matsumoto for responding to calls for a more contemporary, polygonal type game, with maybe the most hand-drawn-looking 2D game ever made. Apart from maybe Chrono Trigger I don't think there's a better-looking game on the SNES. More importantly, it's a serious step forward from Super Mario World, which itself is basically a very pretty, perhaps slightly bigger, version of Super Mario Bros. 3.

That's not really a slight on SMW, since SMB3 is one of the most fun games ever made, but SMW's only important design contributions (and they are important) were adding the save slots, and building in the revisiting of levels by offering secret paths out, and the switch palaces to invite you to go way the heck back to stuff much earlier in the game. Yoshi's Island OTOH adds the egg-throwing mechanic (which once you get the knack feels very natural and very satisfying, especially with the bank shots) and, crucially, makes revisiting levels a huge part of gameplay as you try to max out each one and earn the secret levels that way. (Clearly it was part of the same line of thinking that was also generating Mario 64's star system around the same time.) Maybe most enjoyably, it's the first game in the series to actually feature a full complement of unique bosses, which makes you realize in hindsight what a huge lapse it was for SMB3 and SMW to rely so much on the repetitive Koopa kids and Boom Boom/Reznor. Oh, and the levels are great. I think my only real gripe with the game is everybody else's: Baby Mario is pretty annoying, but of course that just makes you want to rescue him all the more. I have to believe that if this had been the pack-in title, and SMW had been released late in the system as "More Classic Mario-Style Fun With Mario!" their positions on this list would be reversed at the least.

Super Metroid is classic obv. I actually played back through it just a few months back during a productivity trough. The great things are the things everyone always praises - the atmosphere, the control, and (ToastyFrog deserves credit for really making the case here) the show-don't-tell approach to storytelling and instruction. The only real minus is that it's not particularly challenging; I did get briefly stuck in a couple places but otherwise it foresages the difficulty curve of its grand, magisterial progeny, Symphony of the Night: with or without RPG elements the game seems to unfold just like a classic JRPG, you gain new attributes and powers just in time to need them, meaning that the increasingly creepy and unsettling depths to which you descend are rarely any harder than the place you just left. If you compare it to basically any random NES game the drop in difficulty is kind of staggering. (In particular there is almost no actual platforming in the classic sense; there are a couple areas in the water zone where a fall will really annoy you because of the long journey back up, but generally all the hand-eye coordination stuff of maneuvering around difficult terrain, dodging gaps in the blocks, all that stuff is gone and on some level it kinda feels like the whole game is walking from place to place. But what places through which to walk!

SFII, I mean what can you even say? I loved the point someone made above about how the different fighters (Ryu and Ken aside) actually do feel differently and play differently. It's the kind of game that almost works like a 'grower' album does - - - characters you initially write off as sucky do have a play style with which they're genuinely dangerous and fun to use. (I admit I never got into Zangief though.) Music and sounds are also very much on point - not just the famous speech blurts, but all the thwacks and punches really do the job. One of the most reliable pick-up-and-play two-player games out there?

FFIII's achievement is not only its staggering bigness but how much of that bigness really does feel filled-out. Most of the huge cast are interesting little 16-bit pixel characters, and nearly all have some kind of interesting play mechanic (though, in a parallel of Zangief, I pretty much wrote off Sabin's blitzes immediately and never bothered much to figure out how the fuck Relm was supposed to really work). The World of Balance twist is dope, the totally optional subquests for badass gear are super satisfying. The only thing I've ever really complained about is that, in comparison with the SoM and Chrono Trigger approach of bright, saturated, colorful art, this one has always felt pretty drab. If those games didn't exist, I would never even think of that though. Similarly, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Amano's character art, while certainly distinctive, seems to belong to a different (considerably weirder and trippier game), and then the in-game character portraits are mostly kinda lame. (Not that I think every game should have Toriyama's distractingly recognizable faces, but something a little more special-seeming than the menu portraits in this game might have been appropriate.) I'm also someone who was never in any way floored by the opera scene (though I was charmed, in the late 90s, by the MIDI 'voice' tones).

Can't say anything at all useful about the top three, but I really like Will M.'s reading of the Chrono Trigger cast. Kinda gives you, over and over, a certain special feeling of identification that I think young adult literature often likes to pay off (examples aren't coming to me just now) of the lonely nerd character discovering a place where they belong, real friends for the first time, and all while on an adventure! I don't know why exactly but I do think you're right, there is something in this game where you just unconsciously accept that these characters come to like and depend on each other as they go through this strange adventure. This is maybe oversold to a melodramatic level with regard to the lengths they go to save Chrono, and tbh somewhat undersold with Magus joining the party - you'd think there would be more chances for dialogue to show this strange alliance developing or deepening. anyway i love this game. just beautiful to be in this world. all the environments are great. and man...talk about paying off on the time-travel gimmick!

Here's my ballot. I put most Nintendo classics at the bottom to get more points towards more obscure games. Unique votes in bold.

1 SG Another World/Out Of This World
2 S Super Metroid
3 S Chrono Trigger
4 T Castlevania: Rondo of Blood
5 S Demon's Crest
6 S Final Fantasy VI (III)
7 S Super Castlevania IV
8 S Mega Man X
9 G Pyramid Magic
10 S Soul Blazer
11 g Tails Adventure
12 SG Street Fighter II & SFII' Turbo
13 SG Lemmings 2: The Tribes
14 S Dragon Quest V
15 S Umihara Kawase
S Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
b Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
S Super Mario World
S Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
S Super Mario Kart
I haven't finished reading the thread yet but I'll make some comments when I do.

S Earthbound
S Final Fantasy VI (III)
S Chrono Trigger
S Donkey Kong Country 2
S Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
S Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island
S Super Mario World
S Final Fantasy IV (II)
S Final Fantasy V
S Secret of Evermore
S Donkey Kong Country
S Super Mario All-Stars
b Tetris
S Dragon Quest V
b Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening
S Lufia II
S Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
S ActRaiser
S Terranigma
S Soul Blazer

This is the era of gaming of of which I have the most fondness and emotional investment

It's weird to me that Link To The Past always tops these kinds of polls, and Zelda polls in general, as Link's Awakening is imho a better Zelda game and prob the best in the series (hardware limitations aside). LTTP is terrific of course but had so many weird lulls (the crystal monologues, Sahashrala tablets, Death Mountain in general), disappointing bosses, it's been the biggest case of diminishing returns upon replay. But it was amazing the first time!

Final Fantasy III is just wonderful on replay, it's the only game I grinded to 9999/9999 for no reason other than I couldn't let it go

Super Metroid is perfect in every way, best SNES game imo

No interest in DKC and generally find Rare (Goldeneye aside) to be the least-interesting developer with the highest rated games, their games just go clunky clunky clunk

Super Castlevania IV only flaw is that I wish it had branching paths or RPG-elements or something, it just is long long long, but every level is solid and every boss is great except for the ballroom dancing ghost duelists who I recall from the manual were named Fred A-Scare and Paula Ab-ghoul which I thought even at age 10 or whatever was a weirdly post-modern pairing. Dracula is a perfect boss. This is the best soundtrack of the era too imo.

Mega Man X is too low imo, it's pretty much a perfect platformer, and I'd see X2 in the top 75 also.

Gradius III was terrific, but had several shitty levels, from this era I preferred Nemesis for Game Boy.

Tetris was good but I prefer the N64 version "The New Tetris", those Delphine games are PC games in my head not SNES games, same for SimCity

Yoshi's Island was beautiful but clunky in control and design and I had to play it with the sound off because of Baby Mario's crying, the final boss was amazing, the Poochie levels made me want to pour water on the console and learn how to skateboard instead

Biggest omission probably because of rarity is Super Aleste/Space Megaforce, definitely emulate that guy it's so good

And the most "too low" on this list is Contra III, which is, for me, tied with Gradius V and Radiant Silvergun as Treasure's best game. It plays out like a ballet, never a repetitious moment and everything that happens is so perfectly tuned mechanically, I never get tired of playing and dying and playing and dying. Not so into the Mode 7 levels.

If I'd voted:

1. Super Metroid
2. Contra 3
3. Link's Awakening
4. Mega Man X2
5. Castlevania: Rondo Of Blood
6. Final Fantasy III
7. Space Megaforce
8. Chrono Trigger
9. Link To The Past
10. Mega Man X

except for the ballroom dancing ghost duelists who I recall from the manual were named Fred A-Scare and Paula Ab-ghoul which I thought even at age 10 or whatever was a weirdly post-modern pairing.

loving this bit so much. booo at yoshi's island control being termed 'clunky' though

agree about rare. they infuriated me in the n64 era. yelled and yelled at banjo-kazooie after getting really hyped for it as a mario64-loving kid looking for methadone. but so inelegant: so many collectibles, so many unlockables, ugh. and i'm not necc a pc snob but frankly real shooters always ruined goldeneye for me. (perfect dark tho me and a friend had a lot of fun playing through for the cinematics as much as anything. pretty good camp. unfort also one of those really late games in a console cycle that doesn't, if it's being honest, run on the console.)

also agree about contra 3 and mega man x, both beautiful games although i've only played a very little of the latter (and no other mega men).

trying out a few games tonight with the attention span that comes from having all the games you want for free.

-- dc otm that you can see the beginnings of mario64 in yoshi's island. was disappointed at first upon being confronted w a flurry of menus and explanatory dialog boxes -- that banjo-kazooie chill! -- but then they seemed to taper off and the game obv has some interesting mechanics. i like that a central one is shitting out your enemies.

-- earthbound: can def see the appeal here, the tone is very weird and neat and i appreciate the mundane setting. love your fantasy-fulfillment parents who just say you're so brave! good luck out there! take the dog! but it is kind of ugly.

-- secret of evermore: this is very interesting! as the tim rogers review says it's v much a western take on the jrpg. tone of its writing is very close to lucasarts (actually it steals a joke from monkey island in the opening five minutes) and the whole interface has clearly been designed by people who are trying hard to have good ideas. not far enough to really know how good the ideas were. very pretty tho and of course i loved its small-town movie-theater opening.

-- sonic the hedgehog 2: whee i guess

-- shining force: ha the little portraits of people you talk to are like ultima 7. bailed when a whole bunch of guys ran up to me at once and introduced themselves and joined the party, just kinda thought, idk if i'm ever gonna care about you.

-- crusader of centy: several points very early on in this (the church, the castle, the castle dungeon) are very lttp, like literally down to the curtains. heart sank when someone told me that if i got the bronze and the silver AND the gold medal at the training grounds the king would give me the magic sword. that is not as cool as a fog-filled forest. but i barely got anywhere, the animal stuff is very intriguing, and who knows maybe i'm being set up for a twist wrt the magic sword.

have tried and failed to love Super Metroid and Earthbound. i get why people like the latter and maybe i just need to get further in but it just drags for me

oh man if you think Earthbound is a slow burn wait til you play the sequel!

of course it's incredible, just like Earthbound is, it might even be better, it's the only game I've ever played that made me tear up a bit at the end

Such a good looking game tho! I just find the format of Mario games to be somewhat unexciting. The Yoshi's Island bonus levels I recall as being REALLY challenging, don't think I ever beat all of them.

Xp, I was talking about Yoshi's Island

Still haven't gotten into Earthbound, waiting for a flu or somethjng

re: Centy, yeah man it's all about the animals. you get a sword from the king sure, but it ain't magic til you get some animal friends, and they just get better and weirder as you find more and then you get friendly with a damn leviathan and it's just so much more satisfying than getting a different color sword

the earthbound combat notifications reminded me of wasteland, of all things. particularly enjoyed the useless kid whose automatic actions every round are things like "cowers sobbing" and "complains to you" and "edges closer to the King Cobra".

yeah such a fantastic, dry humor in Earthbound, I know it was for me at least but I think your experience with Earthbound depends greatly on whether or not you're playing with the "strategy guide" it was packaged with, which was more like the best instruction manual you've ever seen, with all manner of background info and lore and pictures.

AND a handy kind of "checklist" relegated to the margin you could use if you got stuck advancing the story. which didn't spoil anything and was perfect for a game that starts a litle slow

Just a PSA: Earthbound was released on the Wii U (or maybe it was the Wii) in 2013, and again on the 3DS (new 3DS only I think, because boooo Nintendo) in 2015 or 2016. This PSA is if, like me, you want to complete this game but have been burned by A.) the anti-piracy tricks they put in the game to avoid emulation and B.) borrowing the cartridge from friends in both your childhood AND adulthood multiple times, starting but never completing the game because you don't have time and eventually people get very nervous about not seeing their EB cartridge for a little while.

Will, have you tried Mother 2? Not Earthbound 2 because of course it never saw a release outside Japan on GBA but a team of gracious volunteers did a fine translation job and released it via rom a while back and it is just something else.

it isn't really a continuation in story exactly so you don't need to play any of the previous titles, and the music isn't quite as good HOWEVER! they secretly turned the combat system into a kind of rhythm game and I did not even realize how to use it (or more poetically I had not mastered my instrument) until I was mostly done with the game! and for that alone absolutely everyone must play it.

Yoshi's Island was such a masterfully made platforming game (my #2). Super unique and fun feel, amazing visual style. Nothing else on the SNES played or looked like it

Yoshi's Island was beautiful but clunky in control and design and I had to play it with the sound off because of Baby Mario's crying, the final boss was amazing, the Poochie levels made me want to pour water on the console and learn how to skateboard instead

The crying is what forced me to get good at the game, bc I got so sick of hearing it. and the music is so worth listening to too, definitely my favorite Mario soundtrack

Super Metroid was my #3, mostly on the basis that I fucking love watching speed runs of the game. The game has been broken in half by now, half the "essential" items get skipped or collected out-of-intended-order. It's pretty mindblowing

SMB3 with SNES graphics would prob be better than super mario world

― florence foster wallace (difficult listening hour)

you say that but it only charted at #36

i get that zelda and mario are going to always win out because of the nostalgia factor and people's love for the characters, but for me from a design standpoint the snes pinnacles are chrono trigger and yoshi's island. just really fabulously constructed games, though rpg-wise my fondness is for the fourth phantasy star game and lufia ii (and lufia ii is _not_ a fabulously constructed game).

i feel that had i played yoshi's island at the time it would have been a major favourite, but as it was i only played it on emulator quite a few years removed and when my enthusiasm for gaming was waning. all its qualities were evident but obvs couldn't quite strike me like smw did at age 8

What are the anti-piracy tricks in Earthbound ROMs?

The ROM was programmed to discourage piracy by including routines to add additional random enemies and delete save files before crashing near the end of the game if the cartridge was copied: http://starmen.net/mother2/gameinfo/antipiracy/

Earthbound was my favorite game from that generation, btw:

1. earthbound
2. super metroid
3. the legend of zelda: a link to the past
4. chrono trigger
5. final fantasy vi
6. super mario world
7. street fighter 2
8. terranigma
9. the legend of zelda: link's awakening
10. starfox
11. tetris
12. super mario kart
13. ecco the dolphin
14. kirby's dreamland
15. mega man x
16. secret of mana
17. another world
18. shadowrun
19. donkey kong country
20. f-zero

Will, have you tried Mother 2? (...) they secretly turned the combat system into a kind of rhythm game and I did not even realize how to use it (or more poetically I had not mastered my instrument) until I was mostly done with the game! and for that alone absolutely everyone must play it.

― erudite beach boys fan (sheesh), Friday, October 7, 2016 3:41 AM (thirteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I actually did try it when the patch first went out, but there was a lot of control lag on the emu I was usin which turned me off of it. Years later I actually got a cart that let me play GBA games on my DS, but the save file system was broken so I once again gave up early. One of these days I will gt around to Mother 3, and it will be awesome, but... not yet.

What are the anti-piracy tricks in Earthbound ROMs?

― Sharia Laws and Lambchop (The Yellow Kid), Friday, October 7, 2016 3:46 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's been a while so it's hard for me to remember but depending on the ROM and the emulator I think there were a couple of no-progression points, and I heard that in one particular case you can get your save file wiped RIGHT before you beat the game, which scared me off.

xpost or yeh that

here was my list (T)-Turbografx 16 (G)-Genesis (S)-SNES (b)-Gameboy

TOP 20

(T) Castlevania: Rondo of Blood
(G) Revenge of Shinobi
(G) Streets of Rage III
(S) Legend of the Mystical Ninja
(S) Super Mario All-Stars
(S) Super Empire Strikes Back
(G) Shinobi III
(T) Bomberman '94
(G) Castlevania: Bloodlines
(G) Streets of Rage II
(S) F-Zero
(G) Gunstar Heroes
(G) Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium
(S) Secret of Mana
(S) Super Castlevania IV
(b) Tetris
(S) Tetris Attack / Panel de Pon
(S) Contra 3: The Alien Wars
(S) Mega Man X
(S) Super Mario Kart

Terranigma is so cool and funky. I never got very far in it myself (I remember fighting, maybe, a bird?) but it was so fun, in high school comp sci, to periodically go around to my friend Brian's desk and see what bizarre new turns his quest to rebuild the world from scratch had taken. One day he'd be bringing back plants and animals, then you'd go by a week later and he's helping a video game developer get back on its feet.