Gaming History 101

We all love our retro consoles, but in many cases the consoles we are buying are because they are cheap enough or we have enough money to purchase what we never were able to in our youth.  Unfortunately the business of making used retro items available to the masses can at times be a money grubbing market where consumers are deceived by people they will never meet in real life.  As an individual who has spent the last decade scouring the local area, conventions, eBay, and the internet as a whole I have learned many valuable lessons.  For that reason I present my buying guide series, which is a handy quick guide to knowing what to purchase and what will cost an arm and a leg to replace.

There’s really no denying the popularity of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES for short).  Despite Sega taking a temporary lead over Nintendo in the early 90s, there’s no denying that the SNES was the champion of the 16-bit console generation.  This simple machine managed to introduce us to hardcore JRPGs, mode 7 graphics, early polygonal 3D (Starfox), and even faked 3D environments (Donkey Kong Country), all without the multiple add-ons and disc-based media of other consoles at the time.  If you’re discouraged in the least by yellowing of the plastic casing for the console, don’t be, it’s a mere chemical reaction with age and actually speaks to the durability of the product.  On that same note it’s pretty doubtful that you would need a buyers guide for the SNES as just like most other Nintendo consoles there are few parts, but all the same here’s what you will definitely need:

Read the rest of this entry »