Project Scope

My goal for this project was to review every 16-bit cartridge-based game released in North America for the major consoles, namely:

• Super Nintendo Entertainment System
• Sega Genesis
• NEC TurboGrafx-16

Excluded (for now) were all CD-based consoles (Sega CD, TurboGrafx CD, and Philips CD-i), the arcade-at-home NeoGeo, all handhelds (Game Boy, Sega Game Gear, Atari Lynx, etc.), and all PCs (DOS, Amiga, NEC, et al).

It’s also worth noting that many unlicensed and homebrew games have been released for these consoles. None of these games were included. Also excluded were official releases made in recent years that aren’t officially playable on original hardware, such as StarFox 2, Nightmare Busters, Trials of Mana, Ultracore, and Pier Solar. Finally, I omitted the hundreds of fan-made rom hacks and translations, many which rival the quality of those official licensed titles.

Breakdown by console

Super Nintendo

I reviewed a total of 716 SNES games. According to Wikipedia, 723 officially-licensed titles were released in North America.

Eight games were not reviewed:

• Chavez
• Chavez II
• The Miracle Piano Teaching System
• M.A.C.S. Basic Rifle Marksmanship
• Donkey Kong Country: Blockbuster World Video Game Championship II
• Nintendo Campus Challenge 1992
• Nintendo PowerFest '94
• Star Fox: Super Weekend

The Chavez titles were released only in Mexico and are reskinned versions of Riddick Bowe Boxing and Boxing Legends of the Ring, respectively. M.A.C.S. and Miracle Piano, aren’t “games” by any stretch of the imagination and also can’t be played without the dedicated rifle or keyboard peripherals. Forgive me for not hunting down that hardware to review those titles. That was not...going...to happen.

The four Championship carts are also not "games" but are instead compilations of cut-down versions of one or more full SNES titles.

One game was added - the (spoiler) amazing Terranigma, since it was 1) fully translated into English, 2) released as a Europe-exclusive with a full English translation, 3) part of Enix’s Quintet “Gaia Trilogy” (along with Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia), and 4) awesome. Again, sorry for the spoiler. Terranigma absolutely, positively, should have been released in the US, so I included it.

Sega Genesis

I reviewed a total of 704 Genesis games. According to Wikipedia, 702 titles were released in North America.

I accidentally included two Europe-only titles (Hurricanes and Mr. Nutz) and I don’t have the heart to remove them. I intentionally included one EU-only title for the SNES (Terranigma) so I think it’s fair to keep these two. The 704 number includes all nine titles which released only on the Sega Channel service but excludes the nine crappy unlicensed titles from Wisdom Tree and Realtec.

I also left out collections like the 6-Pak, Sonic Classics, Triple Score, and The Disney Collection, since they are simple compilations without any changes to the included games.

NEC TurboGrafx-16

I reviewed a total of 95 TG-16 HuCard titles. According to According to Wikipedia there were only 94 games released in North America.

I added the Japan-only release of Street Fighter II since it was the rare example of a game released for all fourth generation consoles. For perspective, there were over 600 games released for the TG-16 in Japan, where it found far more success than it did in the West.