Author: Masamune
Humans seem to have this knack for wanting to rank things, other people, and even themselves. So it should be no surprise then that SNES Hub would want to rank what Super Nintendo games are best. Sure, lots of other sites have done a best-of list for the Super NES before, so what would make this one any different? Well as far as I know, no one else has attempted to rank the top 200 SNES games. Furthermore, I guarantee the top 3 games won’t be the obligatory Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, and Chrono Trigger.
Though the title says top 200 games, please don’t take this as a definitive list. There are far too many fantastic games for the Super Nintendo/ Super Famicom to accurately pinpoint the best 200 of them. Even now I’m still finding out about superb titles I never knew existed. The Super NES is truly is an “endless ocean of quality” as one special person so elegantly put it. Instead, consider this ranking as a road map to finding games that may suit your preferences.
The idea for this sprang up a little over three years ago in our forum by one of the staff writers. Perhaps he was inspired by the 150 Must-Play SNES Experiences thread. Next a poll was created and people from SNES Hub, DigitalPress, NintendoAge, GameFaqs, Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook were invited to vote and then discuss the games in the forum. Poll participation was very good with 4,479 total votes and 238 individual voters. Consequently, 305 games were represented.
Now that we collected the games for contention, how on earth were we to rank them? I didn’t want the rankings to be a straight up popularity contest with the usual suspects at the top. Looking at the poll, I could see Super Mario World, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Chrono Trigger and Donkey Kong Country were the top 4. Not only is that highly predictable, but are those really the very best games on the system? Therefore the poll would only be one component of the final score.
In total I created 4 weighted components to determine the rankings:
- The Poll -Represents 50% of the final score. This ranking is about what us gamers with all our varied taste and experiences believe are the best games. It’s only right this portion represents the most weight.
- SNES Hub Rating – Represents 15% of the final score. It’s called the SNES Hub top 200, so it’s fitting reviews for the site are put into the equation. The writers here are well versed on the system, so it’s almost like they are putting their gaming knowledge into the results when their reviews are taken in account. I also penalized any games in the poll that received a one star review.
- My Top Games – Represents 15% of the final score. I ordered all the games I have played from the poll listing into my own top games list. These would be tabulated into the final score.
- Japanese / European exclusive – Represents 20% of the final score. This is the trump card. A lot of the better games were either Japanese or European only, and might not make it very far in a ranking like this. Therefore I decided to give them a boost by adding this criteria to the equation. This also ensures some solid obscure titles gets some limelight.
Once the final scores were meted out, any games that were tied were decided by Gamefaqs ratings. If the titles were still tied after that, I used the SNES Hub reader rating to break the tie. And if games were still tied, then they remained tied.
So without further ado, drumroll please! ( You can click on the title for a gameplay video)
And here are some honorable mentions:
The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang
Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen
New Horizons: Uncharted Waters
Romance of the Three Kingdoms 4: Wall of Fire
So there you have it! Agree or disagree? Post your comment below or in the forum post! Youtube video coming soon!
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It is nice to see a list that has a different top 5 from every other list. Great job. I am new to the site, but I really like it!
Thank you MADskillz. Welcome to the site.