From major releases that were graphically ahead of the curve, to underrated titles with unique gameplay elements that were odd for their day, there are some amazing Super Nintendo games that also happen to be ahead of their time.
1. Jurassic Park
Developer: Ocean
Publisher: Ocean
Despite an association with some of the worst licensed games in history, Ocean also turned out shockingly good games like the 1993 SNES tie-in for Jurassic Park that some might say is an early example of a sandbox game.
Okay, so calling this a sandbox game isn’t quite accurate. You can’t run anyone over or defeat some weird dragon, for instance. Even so, with a unique blend of first-person and top-down perspective that simply drops you into the world of this game and leaves you mostly to complete the many tasks found across the island without much guidance at all, nothing in the SNES catalog is quite like this particular version of Jurassic Park.
Your main goal in Jurassic Park is to escape the island as Dr. Grant, but really, as we said before, the game doesn’t keep you on a particularly linear path. Armed with a range of weapons, the gameplay and problem-solving can at times feel a little, and we obviously mean a little, like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. But with killer dinosaurs and atmospheric abandoned buildings. It’s only when you go inside one of these buildings that the game smoothly switches to a surprising action-packed first-person perspective and you gotta activate Frank Reynolds mode.
Jurassic Park isn’t without its flaws, the fact that you’re trundling around with no direction or any idea what you have to do like a Myst prototype being one of them, but it is a surprisingly forward-thinking game for the Super Nintendo.
2. Star Fox
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
While you wrap your tiny mind around the horrifying fact that the 1993 Super Nintendo hit Star Fox is over 30 years old, remember that even at the time, Star Fox was hailed as revolutionary, and not just because it put a fox in drip long before Zootopia came along. Part of the game’s reason for even existing was simply to prove the Super Nintendo could handle something as relatively complex as polygonal graphics.
And yeah, it does, although Star Fox naturally looks a little rougher today than it did 30+ years ago. But you would expect that, because you too probably don’t look quite as good as you did not even that long ago and everything screams when you stand up and everything sometimes gets quite blurry for no reasons, guys am I dying, and all things considered, Star Fox still looks fantastic and plays quite well. The game is a sheer force of ambition that didn’t forget to be a lot of fun to play, as well. If there’s any secret to this game’s relative immortality, it would be that.
Playing as Fox McCloud, Star Fox has you and your team flying to different locations in the Lylat System in a bid to destroy the evil scientist Andross once and for all. The game’s story and evolving narrative aren’t particularly deep, but the cast is likeable and only add to the rich atmosphere of Star Fox that remains exceptional to this day.
It’s so nice, that Nintendo has basically rebooted it twice. Thrice. Do it one more time.
3. Super Metroid
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
The Super Nintendo hit even greater heights in 1994 with a number of critical releases, including Super Metroid, which today is widely considered one of the greatest video games of all time by pretty much everyone who’s ever picked up a controller.
A visually beautiful, infuriatingly difficult, and utterly captivating game in 1994, the game today with no changes wouldn’t be too out of place amongst the very best indie games, especially if we’re talking about the Metroidvania genre that this game directly continues to inspire to this day. The other game, of course, being FIFA 96.
Super Metroid partially works so well because it requires so many different elements of strategy. Not only do you have to explore and unlock the game’s many, many secrets, using things like your Grappling Beam to reach new areas, utilising physics rarely seen before in games, while the Morph Ball is honestly such a genius idea that we’re still seeing versions of it in today’s games. All of this points to a game that is still absolutely exhilarating, particularly when you finish the final, enormously difficult and some might say bullshit boss battle.
Super Metroid, like a lot of Metroid games, that are good, doesn’t spend a ton of time on its story, but what we do get over the course of Samus’ frightening journey into the planet of Zebes presents a tough-as-nails hero who controls like a dream, no matter which decade you might be playing this game in.
Super Metroid hasn’t lost a step, and it deserves every bit of the near-universal high regard it continues to receive.
4. Harvest Moon
Developer: Amccus
Publisher: Natsume
From Animal Crossing to Stardew Valley, the list of games that owe a debt to the 1996 late SNES release Harvest Moon is long. The first in the Story of Seasons franchise, which continues to this day, albeit with different developers and a lot of confusion, Harvest Moon is still a lot of fun to pick up and play. You can pick up the pace of everything quite easily, and you’ll be amazed at just how much the original game packed into its Super Nintendo cartridge.
While comparatively a little simplistic compared to modern sandbox games, Harvest Moon nevertheless has you clearing land, planting and caring for your crops, and harvesting. You’ll need to raise livestock, occasionally forage, and even build important relationships with the other people in your town. If that sounds familiar, it’s because we’re getting new games that wouldn’t exist without Harvest Moon every day.
The original Harvest Moon for the SNES remains fantastic because the simple facts that the game is just a lot of fun, even if it is obviously lacking a couple quality of life things. The graphics are bright and charming, offering a surprising amount of depth and detail as menial tasks are simple to learn and satisfying to complete. Harvest Moon on SNES is pretty close to timeless, and we’re probably going to be getting games like it for the rest of time.
5. Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen
Developer: Quest Corporation
Publisher: Enix
If you’re interested in more games along the very specific lines of Final Fantasy Tactics, you absolutely need to check out the underrated 1993 SNES classic Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen.
A tactical RPG with great graphics that hold up better than you’d think, the story of a band of rebels going after the evil, reigning Zetegenian empire is also more than enough to fully immerse you in a game that recently passed its 30th anniversary. With deep inventory management and careful, multifaceted combat strategy as the heart and soul of The March of the Black Queen, the influence of this game’s appeal isn’t hard to spot in games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Unicorn Overlord.
Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen derives its name from no less than two Queen songs, but whereas Queen is always destined to be played at any congregation of more than like twenty people, everything in Ogre Battle is a lot less predictable. The game uses a pretty novel for the time alignment system, which is basically like karma mechanics for seventh generation fans. As well as affecting gameplay with things like evil characters being stronger at night, your characters’ alignment also dictates which one of 13 endings you will unlock.
It’s absolutely crazy ambitious for 1993, but unfortunately that ambition has never been met with a tonne of sales, and there hasn’t been a brand new installment in the series since Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis on the GBA in 2001, nuts.
6. Donkey Kong Country
Developer: Rare
Publisher: Nintendo
Donkey Kong Country is a selection that should surprise exactly no one, especially if you remember the overwhelming praise this game received even in its time.
Donkey Kong Country reignited a dormant franchise with a platformer that looked as good as almost anything you could find on the 32-bit consoles like the Saturn in 1994, with DKC being one of the first console games to feature pre-rendered graphics. If you ask people which SNES games they could still pick up and play today, there’s a high chance this will be their first answer.
Armed with distinctive, extremely likable characters like Donkey and Diddy Kong, who was of course ahead of his time in owning 2000 bottles of baby oil, Donkey Kong Country sets you off to some of the hardest platformer levels you will ever encounter. The gameplay is simple enough as a platformer, but what makes Donkey Kong Country ahead of its time is that it really does look like it could have been released on the follow-up generation.
For constantly breaking the fourth wall, having more collectibles than a guy who’s definitely totally okay with turning 30, and featuring multiple modes so your friends can get in on the monkey business, Donkey Kong Country and its two rage-inducing, brilliant SNES sequels changed the game forever.
7. Rendering Ranger: R2
Developer: Rainbow Arts
Publisher: Virgin
The presence of pre-rendered graphics in Donkey Kong Country may have been pivotal, but a 1995 side scrolling action game for the Super Nintendo game having them too is nothing short of impressive.
That’s exactly what developer Rainbow Arts achieved relatively late into the life of the console with a furiously paced combination of run-and-gun and rail shooter styles that unfortunately didn’t get an official western release until just recently. Originally the game was released in Japan with just 10,000 copies available. The original Famicom edition of Rendering Ranger: R2 still commands a pretty high price among collectors, so Super Famicom completionists may want to keep that in mind.
Rendering Ranger: R2 visually belongs in the same category as Donkey Kong Country, which isn’t something a lot of SNES/Super Famicom games can claim. The graphics alone will bring to mind an early PS1 aesthetic, and then you have simple gameplay married to sadistically difficult stages filled with unrelenting, powerful bosses, all at 60 frames per second.
Rendering Ranger: R2 is supremely underrated as Super Nintendo games go, and considering how groundbreaking it was in the mid-90s, that’s too bad. If you’re a fan of either genre represented here, or even got a kick out of the supremely underrated Velocity 2X, you need to play this.
8. ActRaiser
Developer: Quintet
Publisher: Enix
ActRaiser was an early indication of the graphics, sound, and overall scale the Super Nintendo offered in comparison to its NES predecessor. While you may not be able to see it quite so strongly today, the leap was profound back in the day.
A combination of platformer and the sort of game that today would be called sandbox, with some shooter elements thrown in because why the hell not, ActRaiser was one of the most unique home console games released up to that point. While the western version of the game made some changes to the names of characters, the Japanese version is very clear that you are God, and it’s up to you to kick Satan’s ass, build a cool world, and tell that Jesus kid to stay out of Rome for a while. At least until Season 2.
Okay, the last part doesn’t come up, but Tomoyoshi Miyazaki and ActRaiser anticipated a lot in 1990, which makes sense given the ambition developer Quintet threw behind this, with you able to build stuff in an overworld in-between the more traditional action platformer sections.
Games with multiple gameplay formats was nothing new in 1990, but ActRaiser tried for a stranger blend of styles for the time, and that’s something we would see later in games like the 2000 PS2 must-have Dark Cloud, which was and still remains an absolute whipper.
There’s also games like the 2019 release SolSeraph, a frustratingly uneven tribute to all things ActRaiser. You may just want to stick with the two original games and the very good 2021 remake.
9. Terranigma
Developer: Quintet
Publisher: Enix
If there’s one thing in particular you should take from all this, it’s that Enix and Quintet back in the day were far more innovative as a whole than they’ve often gotten credit for. Terranigma, an action RPG that looks absolutely stunning and ended one of the most underappreciated unofficial trilogies by following Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia, is another remarkable example from everyone involved. What frustrates us to no end is that this enormously clever, narratively-ahead-of-its-time game has never received an official North American release.
Why? In simplest terms, it comes down to a rights issue and inability to find former Quintet president Tomoyoshi Miyazaki, who also wrote ActRaiser, but people are working on it. Don’t hold your breath on a remaster anytime soon, as that story was from three years ago, but luckily there’s a translation from the UK/Australia release that brings home the game’s profound, surprisingly complex themes. Which can be best explained with this insane concept by director Miyazaki, who once described Terranigma as being a game that shows humanity from “the perspective of the Earth, and how it views human activity.”
Gameplay-wise, Terranigma was pretty novel for the time for being an action RPG, floating numbers and all, in which the way you’re moving dictates the kind of actions you can pull off, but it’s the game’s sprawling, emotionally complex narrative that really establishes Terranigma as being ahead of its time. Chuck in some stunning visuals, absolute bopping soundtrack, and huge scale for exploration, and you’ve got a game that our foreign ambassadors should be knocking on doors about.
10. Uncharted Waters: New Horizons
Developer: KOEI
Publisher: KOEI
Released across an impressive array of home consoles and PCs between 1993 and 1997, Uncharted Waters: New Horizons is packed with plenty of strategic top-down combat, but there’s a lot more to the game than battling explorers, naval officers, pirates, and others. Uncharted Waters: New Horizons is a simulation game, the second in the series and first for the SNES, and a highly unique one at that.
Choosing one of six distinct characters with their own narratives, The Uncharted Waters: New Horizons has you planning things down to the trade routes across the seven seas that will go a long way towards determining not only your success in the game, but also the story you experience. By building relationships as you develop your routes and build up your fortunes, you have a game that was unlike anything the SNES had at the time.
Its complexities are still highly enjoyable today, and you’ll likely marvel at how The Uncharted Waters: New Horizons gave players an almost unheard-of degree of freedom and exploration in 1993, so it’s a real shame that it itself is largely unheard of, but the IP itself has had a whole host of games, including a 2023 version called Uncharted Waters Origin which is apparently a microtransaction filled MMO, boo.
Games like Uncharted Waters: New Horizons were proving just how deep a simulation could go, and in the present, we’re seeing just how hard it is for developers to follow its lead.
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