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The Super Famicom Super Also-Ran Super Sequel's Super Sequel

Well, we're back with Part 3. I could just create the one big Super Also-Rans list - featuring and discussing every Super Famicom and SNES game I've added to the Giant Bomb Wiki, almost all of which weren't worthy enough to exist already - and set it to unordered, but that would mess up my whole sarcastic "Mahjong game #infinity" tagging system. I'd rather play a hundred mahjong, shogi and pachinko games than sacrifice that attitude. Oh wait, I already have.

At any rate, be sure to check out the first two lists in this series and watch the madness gradually unfold: Super Famicom's Super Also-Rans and The Super Famicom Super Also-Ran Super Sequel.

List items

  • Go game #7. I haven't checked to make sure, but I'm fairly positive the box art for every SFC Go game has just been Japanese characters on a boring background.

  • Capcom's Tenchi o Kurau games - based on a flashy manga about the Chinese Three Kingdoms conflict of "Romance of" fame - actually saw a number of localizations in North America and Europe: Destiny of an Emperor, Dynasty Wars, and Warriors of Fate. With this one, Capcom decided to just go full Koei Romance of the Three Kingdoms and make it a strategy sim, which might explain why it didn't get localized with the rest.

  • Quiz game #4. Another one of these psychologically probing quiz games, this one having a fortune-telling theme. It's the last core game for the Super Famicom, but Visit would make another seven for PlayStation. I don't envy anyone undertaking *that* wiki project...

  • Another board game adaptation based on the Japanese version of Milton Bradley's The Game of Life. Roll around the board in your convertible, hitting positive and negative life events in a game that's entirely too random to be fun.

  • Mahjong game #28 (that didn't take long). Learn how to cheat with tiles the same way shadowy underground figures like Shouichi Sakurai do in this grittier mahjong game.

  • Pachi-slot sim #7. Get it, 7? This is the only time I can make a big deal about lucky sevens until we hit "pachi-slot sim #77" (and don't think we won't).

  • Shogi game #15. Despite the gigantic title, it's still more shogi. This one is sponsored by a national newspaper. Can you think of anything more thrilling?!

  • Mahjong Solitaire, with a new twist. Evidently every variation of Mahjong Solitaire is required to be named after a different region of China.

  • Shogi game #16. You better believe this was released on the same day as the above shogi game. Welcome to the Super Famicom in 1995, mothereffers. We done gave up.

  • Horseracing sim #12. Sorry McElroy brothers, but I think I hate horses now.

  • Pachinko sim #6. More Heiwa machine facsimiles for the obsessive gamblers that crave them.

  • An RPG based on the Japanese folklore hero that Naoto's persona is based on. It's seemingly based on the Toho kaiju movie Orochi the Eight-Headed Dragon, but it took a whole lot of digging to find that out.

  • Apparently this is one of those SFC wrestling games with a good reputation among those who care about that sort of thing. It's not a Fire Pro Wrestling game, but it has almost as many customization options and many different types of mixed martial arts rules.

  • It's more or less Arkanoid, but you're only aiming for specific targets (the yellow shades guys all over the cover) to clear levels. Some neat ideas with a springy paddle that lets you add more power to shots, but still fairly basic. Probably not what you'd imagine from that title.

  • It's a mahjong solitaire game, but it gives you several variations on top of "classic" Shanghai, including the variant outlined in "Chinhai", above. There's also this really tough Sokoban type variant too. Seems like a good deal, at least.

  • Far as I know, this is the last pure hanafuda game for Super Famicom (there's a compilation mahjong/shogi/hanafuda game in 1996). These card game adaptations got briefly popular and then kinda vanished, huh?

  • That's some pretty incredible Saturn-era polygonal model work for what is actually just another 2D Joshi wrestling game. Create your own feisty female wrestling talent and help her try to make it big in the titular White Ring.

  • Baseball sim #20. Third game in this Japan-only baseball spin-off series of the "Baseball Simulator 1.000" games. Since the big draw for the Jitsumeiban (which literally translates as "real name edition") was the license to include the real-life stars of the Nippon Professional Baseball league, I guess it'd be a hard sell overseas. Those are caricatures of real players on the box art, by the way.

  • Quiz game #5. So soon after the last Shinri Game, we get this spin-off that appears to be based on a real-life geographical TV quiz show. If I could understand what the questions say, I could tell you whether they're really all about different regions of Japan or are just using that as a framing device for more personal questions about morality and psychology - what The Shinri ("Psychology") Game series is usually all about.

  • The Zero-4 Champ games are distinctive because they're all about 400m drag races. That means no corners, no turning, no worries about handling, just driving in a straight line for a few seconds. Drag races are the heart of the illegal street racing scene though, as Fast & Furious has regularly shown us, so it's odd more games like this aren't common. I guess it's more technical than most racing games prefer.

  • A European PAL exclusive, this is a graphically-enhanced remake of the 1980s Arcade game Dropzone. To set itself apart, the game cleverly combines Defender and Choplifter, with the multidirectional civilian rescue of the former with the ferrying survivors back to base of the latter. The game was formerly part of the Dropzone page, but I figured with the new name and new gameplay additions, it was more like a sequel and gave it its own page.

  • I'd never heard of this North American-only turn-based war strategy game, but there's distinct shades of the Famicom/Advance Wars series represented here, right up to how it uses a diagonal screen split for its animated skirmish cutaways. I'm not sure about those graphics, though.

  • Talking of odd military turn-based strategy games, this attempts to recreate the fun of paintball with a heavy tactical element, including an XCOM-style fog of war that requires an extra level of cautious preparation. You can build your own team of office drones on their weekend teambuilding retreat and tackle its missions in any order.

  • Multiplayer competitive pinball. It's as weird as it sounds. It's also pretty awkward to play, but when you have four human players I imagine that's less of an issue.

  • This a compilation that sticks all three of the EMIT "audio-enhanced" visual novel games in one box. Apparently it's one of the rarest Super Famicom games on the market (or not on the market, as the case might be). Hence the lack of any good box art images out there, I guess.

  • Pachinko game #7. Oddly enough, the wiki already had the first and third game from this series, but not the second. That is literally the most interesting thing I can say about this game.

  • Another JRPG with a dense amount of Japanese text and very little in the way of documentation on English-speaking sites. I did like that it's isometric, though. I wish more games went for that visual style.

  • I was more interested in the origin of this game's name (a pun based on what is essentially the regional motto for the island of Hokkaido) than I was in the game itself, which seems like one of those Jinsei Game "The Game of Life" profit-gathering board games with a nautical trading theme.

  • A game featuring a Battle Submarine, that battles other submarines but mostly warships. It might be good, but I can't get past how literal it is.

  • A visual novel set in space. Another one that borrows Chunsoft's "sound novel" formula to tell a spooky adventure through sound effects and static backdrops. It's wall-to-wall Japanese text, so good luck with this one.

  • Another Sengoku-era strategy sim. I forget how many we're up to now.

  • Shogi game #17. Sanmai refers to concentration through meditation, so I guess they know what type of audience to expect.

  • We've had the Premium version of this game on the wiki for a while, but no-one thought to add the original. It's more Fire Pro, if you're into that.

  • Literally the third horror-themed visual novel in a month. This one has some neat determinant gameplay, leading to a different conclusive act contingent on how you answered some questions during the opening scenes before shit goes down.

  • It's another game in this series of The Game of Life spin-offs. Each one has a different focus, and for this one you're a bunch of office workers finding love and career success.

  • Shogi game #18. Nothing super about this one either.

  • Go game #8. The follow-up to that Taikyoku Igo: Goliath game. No idea if "Idaten" is different Go-playing AI software, but I'd bet on it.

  • Horseracing sim #13. This is another in the "gambling aid" category of data input horse racing games, as opposed to the racehorse raising simulators.

  • Shogi game #19. Three comely Japanese lasses and Hokusai's Great Wave in the background. Sure. That's the sort of imagination I tend to expect from shogi games.

  • This is a weird one. Madara Saga's some anime about a bunch of teens taking down a yokai tyrant, but this game imagines them as kindergartners and the game mostly involves changing signposts around to get them where you want them to go.

  • Shogi game #20. Yeah, I added the first one too. Almost like no-one outside of Asia gives a damn about shogi, huh.

  • Baseball sim #21. Always surprising when I have to add a Famista. Namco's series is probably the best known Japanese baseball sim franchise.

  • Anime license game. This one combines space opera with Sengoku era samurai battles, so I bet that sold well.

  • Horseracing sim #14. Always a bad sign when they start putting years in the title.

  • A touge racing sim, I think that's a first for these lists. That specifically Japanese type of racing where there's a winding mountain road and you have to overtake your opponent with drifts to win. That's essentially half of Initial D.

  • A board game where you play casino games after every roll. Sure, why not. Everything's a board game now.

  • Go game #9. This one bothered to get a celebrity endorsement. I guess you need an edge when everyone keeps putting out identical Go games.

  • Pachinko sim #8. It's the sequel to the other Heiwa Pachinko World game above. Different machines though. I mean, I assume; it's all just dumb pegs glued onto a backboard from where I'm sitting.

  • Gambling on motorboat racing. That's something you can build a game around. Twice, even.

  • This Lemmings/Tetris hybrid series started as an Arcade game, but as far as I know this sequel was unique to the Super Famicom.

  • More fishing. Koushien refers to a baseball stadium, so I dunno why anyone would be fishing there.

  • A sequel to Supapoon, above. It's really more like a remaster though.

  • Not so much a golf game but a golfer raising sim. The whole "raise a person by working on their stats through incremental exercises" approach was getting big around this time, it seems.

  • One of two Ultraman-themed games Bandai created for their Sufami Turbo device. It's a fighting game like King of the Monsters.

  • The other Ultraman-themed game Bandai created for the Sufami Turbo. Also a fighting game. You could import characters between the two carts.

  • I'm going to avoid the obvious political jokes and just say that this is a bunch of card games.

  • A mecha turn-based strategy game. Looks like it's supposed to be based on an anime, but it's not. AFAIK at least.

  • Just a whole bunch of board games. Koi-koi, shogi, mahjong, you name it. "Chutes and Ladders"? What the hell are you talking about?

  • Baseball sim #22. That would be four for four with Human's baseball series. Added almost all the TG-16 ones too. Man, has this completely unremarkable baseball series kept me busy.

  • Baseball sim #23. This baseball game has a famous name attached. It's not just the US that does that.

  • Japan had little to no involvement in the European front. I wonder if that made it easier or harder to sell games based on that particular theater of WW2?

  • A puzzle game sequel and another Sufami Turbo game to add to the wiki.

  • Another Sufami Turbo game where the irreverent toddler splashes his clones by jumping in puddles. Kind of a weird idea for a Bomberman-style multiplayer game, but it works well enough.

  • Mahjong sim #29. Nichibutsu's salacious mahjong series now hits the schoolyard for some legally dubious antics.

  • The last 1996 game I had to add, this is the sequel to the above strategy game War 2410. This has a lot more spaceships and mechs in it, giving it a Gundam kind of feel.

  • Baseball sim #24. The one rad thing about Culture Brain's "Ultra Baseball" series is that you could play a superhuman league with DBZ style batting and pitching powers. They removed all that for this one, making it just like every other baseball sim. Progress!

  • Mahjong sim #30. The box art for this one looks like a collage of mugshots taken after a major white-collar banking embezzlement scheme got busted.

  • It's... baseball Puyo Puyo. And its happy cartoon mascots are the actual mascots of Japanese baseball teams. Weird, but it has some novel mechanics for a baseball-themed Puyo game at least.

  • A rare missing SNES page, this is a bowling sim as perhaps is obvious from all the Brunswick endorsements. Did I imagine Giant Bomb playing one of these with dorky FMV introductions for its pro bowlers? Because I think a lot of them are also in this game.

  • More fishing. This is the slightly rarer "Ocean Fishing" variant, starring some snot-nosed kid as he tries to hook enormous 1500lb tuna and marlin from the deck of a boat. Good luck with that, champ.

  • B-Daman was in Big Demand around this time, as the marble-blasting toys were the third hottest schoolyard trend of the late 90s after Tamagotchi and Pokemon. This one has characters drawn from the TV show, I think.

  • OK, here we are at the Nintendo Power period of the Super Famicom, where people basically went up to a SNES buffet for whatever didn't look awful. Namco dragged out their "Family" sports series one last time for this skiing game.

  • This game seemed kind of neat. It's Advance Wars but with monster units, and you had to capture crystals to summon more. Of course, as a Nintendo Power exclusive game, it didn't get much recognition. I mean, if it's on this list...

  • Mahjong game #31. The final mahjong game on this list, this has - you might be surprised to learn - an animal theme.

  • Horseracing sim #15. The last of these interminable horseracing sims. It's another Nintendo Power-only entry in a series where you grow the best future glue factory fuel.

  • Sokoban's that ubiquitous box-pushing game that gets super difficult quickly, so the developers of this gave you fireballs to cheat with. I'm not complaining.

  • The absolute last Super Famicom game to be added to the wiki was this graphically updated remaster of the first three Wizardry CRPGs. Sure, whatever. It can be a game about slapping yourself in the balls with a tennis racket, as long as it's the last one.

    Time to haul ass to Lollapalooza! See you later, suckers!
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