Super = better
What better way to emphasize how much of an improvement something makes over its predecessor than adding "Super" to the beginning of its name? We knew that the NES was great when we played Super Mario Bros. for the first time and saw how much better it was than Mario Bros. When we played Super C, we knew it was better than Contra because of the "Super" prefix. When we played Pitfall on the Atari 2600 and saw how mediocre it was, then we played Super Pitfall on the NES and saw how much worse it was, then...bad example.
The Super Famicom was launched in Japan on November 21, 1990. Its launch titles were F-Zero and Super Mario World. By August 23, 1991, Nintendo had three more games ready for the North American release, those being Gradius III, Pilotwings, and SimCity. It was superior to the NES, as it had a total of eight audio channels, as opposed to the NES's three, as well as the obvious visual difference, having a 16-bit graphical processor, as opposed to the NES's 8-bit graphical processor.
|
The reason this console even exists in the first place was to rival Sega's Genesis, which was a problem at first, but then came the Sega CDs and 32Xs, making it more of a joke. The console actually stayed as a legitimate competitor to the consoles of the 32-bit era due to its FX chip, designed by Argonaut Games. The chip is actually named "Mathematical, Argonaut, Rotation, & Input/Output", or "M.A.R.I.O." for short. This kept the system going strong while Nintendo was working on their next console, at the time nicknamed "Project Reality".