History:

Where were you on the 21st of November 1990?

Looking back that was an important day, though it may not have seemed like it at the time. I remember lying in bed at 1:30pm happy in the knowledge that I hadn't bothered going to school. What I had meant to do was get up at 8am and get myself ready for a day of History and Geography exams. But what I actually did was stay in bed, and dream about Japan, and, in particular, the brand new Super Famicoms I knew had hit the shops of Tokyo just 12 hours before.

In my dreams, I remember picking my way through the busy streets of Shibuya district. 25000 Yen (about $160) burning a hole in my pocket. I spotted the Laox Computer Center. It looked like a good bet, so I rushed in and slapped my money on the counter.

"Ohayo gozaimasu, Super Famicom Kudasai..."
This is where my dream fell apart. For a start, the answer I got was incomprehensible, but a combination of body language and faltering Japanese finally got the message across. I could tell the sales staff found it very amusing - this dumb foreigner turning up so ridiculously late. They'd sold out of machines in the first few hours of sales, you see - hundreds of Japanese game freaks had camped out on the streets the night before to make damn sure they got hold of one.

Back in the real world, I didn't actually get my first Super Famicom until a few months later, from an import company in London, and it cost $500 not 25000 Yen. I can tell you it was well worth the wait, as after all, the Super Famicom was, and still is, the GREATEST games machine in the world.

 

The Super Famicom

News first broke about the Super Famicom, 3 years before it's release in Japan, as industry journals and games magazines speculated on the potential of a 16-Bit Nintendo.

Original intended design for the Super Famicom, Released to Japanese games press by Nintendo in April 1990. (a headphone socket and volume control are visible)

Another image of a prototype SFC. This one looks looks identical to the one above and was taken from the UK Multi format magazine "Zone" issue June 1990  

Still most of it was guesswork- the details and specifications only began to filter out slowly, as Nintendo was keeping the project tight lipped. Eventually demos of games like Pilotwings (then called flight club) were displayed as early as Christmas 1989, but the big N was still giving no concrete details about the SFC or a release date, after all it didn't was to kill off the HUGE 8-Bit sales market that was still healthy.
One thing all this hype and waiting did mange to ensure was that, by the time of the Super famicom's release, public awareness for the machine was enormous.
November the 21st 1990 finally came and although only two games (Super Mario World and F-Zero) were available at the launch, every shop in Japan sold out of the machine (not including the masses of pre-orders) within a few hours. Top releases like Final Fight, Pilotwings and Actraiser helped build the machines reputation for great software and as 100's of thousands SFC units sold, more and more game companies began to produce and by April 1991 (only 5 months after the SFC was released) there was more than 130 different titles in the shops with dozens more being released every week.
Over the next few years (until the release of the next gen consoles) the SFC ruled the roost and became the biggest selling home games machine ever with over a BILLION pieces of software being sold worldwide. It even outsold (and killed off) Sega's Saturn 32-Bit CD machine and continued to have games produced for it until 2000 even though Sega's 128-Bit Dreamcast was already out and Sony's PSX2 release was immanent.
1990-95 will always be remembered as the GOLDEN age of video games and one machine will be forever remembered as the king among pretenders and that machine?....YES you guessed it, Nintendo's Super Famicom.

By August 1990 the machines design had changed to this, much closer to final release. Note the different coloured buttons and the positions of the joypad ports.

September 1990 (only 2 months before official release) the design changed again. Still keeping the official shape the joypad ports moved again and an extra peripheral port was added to the front (later to be completely removed from final design)