Super Nes Works Volume I: 1991

by Jeremy Parish

Nintendo’s Sweet 16

Following the worldwide success of the Nintendo Entertainment System and the home video game industry’s overall shift toward a new generation of more powerful hardware, a successor to the NES seemed inevitable.
In August 1991, Nintendo brought that successor—the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or Super NES—to America, an in the process launched one of the most beloved consoles of all time.

Super NES Works Vol. I looks back at the early days of the Super NES in the U.S., with comprehensive retrospectives of both the console and all 31 games to ship for it through the end of the year. Each entry is accompanied with sidebars, supplementary features, photos of U.S. packaging, and crisp high-resolution direct-feed screenshots.

Super NES Works Vol.I also includes an overview of Japanese releases for Super Famicom through the end of 1991, a comprehensive timeline of events leading up to the system’s launch, and more! It’s the definitive 30th anniversary retrospective of how one of the greatest consoles ever got its start.

Genres: Nonfiction

285 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2021

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeremy is great, and his videos and podcasts are always informative. This is the first I've read of any of his nonfiction retro-gaming works, and it was a treat to read about some of the early SNES games I wasn't as familiar with. I knocked off a star because there were some sections, especially near the end, that appear to have not been copy-edited. The intro paragraph to the D-Force chapter seems to be misplaced, and there were some obvious misspellings throughout. Jeremy spends a lot more times on the more important games (F-Zero, Mario World, Sim City, Final Fantasy II (IV), etc.) than on the ones that were mostly uninteresting, and if you've heard any of Jeremy's podcasts you know that he's going to spend a lot of time extolling the virtues of ActRaiser. All in all a good survey of the first five months of the SNES, and I'm wondering if Volume II will either split 1992 in half or be twice as long?

[James Kirby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I fully intended to skim through this and only read the detailed discussions of the games I played and loved dearly, but Jeremy Parish puts just enough humor and personality into his well-researched and detailed discussions to make me read the book cover-to-cover. I've learned so much about some of the early SNES bombs I totally missed and also enjoyed nostalgic retellings of the well-known classics. For a detailed non-fiction read, this one's light, breezy, and entertaining!

And the author is right: the soundtrack to Lagoon (a game I never played) rips!

[Erik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the Works books! I always add too many games to my wishlist.

The most valuable writing in here is all about context: what inspired the games, where they come from, and how they hit at the time.

Highly recommended!