SUPER FAMICOM
By now perhaps most people know the news that the Super Famicom will
be released in Japan in limited quantity on November 21. I know that
EGM mentioned this, in their usual self-promoting way ("from our
secret sources"...namely the Japanese magazines) although they got
some information wrong as usual. Very few games will be available at
first: only three will be released 11/21 (Super Mario 4, a racing game
and a flight game), and only a couple more by the end of the year.
But many more are due to come out in the next year, and expectations
are high. As soon as the Japanese magazines learned the release date
they got into motion; Family Computer Magazine beat everybody by
releasing the first issue of "Super Famicom Magazine" as an insert,
with info about the new releases. Their latest issue (that I got just
before leaving Japan) also had the first ad for Super Famicom games,
from Capcom (it also had the Super Famicom logo, which looks pretty
cool). Famicom Tsushin also had some long articles and even a cover
with Necky the Fox shouting "I need my Super Famicom!" in English.
But still there is little information available, and mostly everyone
is showing the same old screen shots of Super Mario 4. Also my
magazines are all on a ship somewhere in the Pacific, so I can't say
much more now either.
As for the games, of course Super Mario 4 (which apparently will be
the title, without "Bros.") looks like it will be great; not a
revolutionary game like SMB3 was, but rather evolutionary to take
advantage of the features of the Super Famicom. According to a
friend, one magazine article said the Super Famicom was worth buying
for this game alone, and I believe them. Very little seems to
be known about either the flight game (which previously was called
Dragonfly although it may have changed significantly) or the racing
game, and I've seen no screen shots. Nintendo will also be bringing
out Zelda 3 sometime next year, and I have high hopes for that as
well. And they will be doing a translation of the computer game Sim
City.
Lots of 3rd party support; Nintendo has something like 20-40 companies
already signed up. Konami will be releasing Gradius III (and
hopefully later "Parodius da!", our new favorite shooting game), Irem
will come out with R-Type 2 (unfortunately perhaps that means they'll
never do R-Type), and a version of Populous will come out. Of course
Enix and Square will be doing role-playing games, although these look
to be far in the future. Capcom will be releasing Final Fight and
Choumakaimura ["Super-duper Evil-world village"; we laughed when we
first heard the title], the latest in the Makaimura series.
(Makaimura [Evil-world village] came out in the US as "Ghosts and
Goblins" (for NES); "Daimakaimura" [Big Evil-world village] as "Ghouls
and Ghosts" (for Genesis); and "Red Areemer--Makaimura Gaiden"
[Evil-world village legend] as "Gargoyle's Quest" (for Gameboy).)
There are many other titles already announced, and I'll post a list
later. But unfortunately not many seem very interesting, so I'm not
all that excited about the Super Famicom yet. Although I can't wait to
play Super Mario 4, I'll probably just wait to pick up a Super Famicom
next summer, when I go back to Japan. The bad news is that the Super
Famicom will apparently not play Famicom software after all, which is
annoying. But in any case I certainly don't see the Super Famicom
replacing the Famicom at least for some time; it will take a while for
a lot of quality games to come out.
.