Super Nintendo Entertainment System

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), referred to as Super Famicom in Japan and Super Comboy in the Koreas is a 16-bit video game console developed by Nintendo for competition with the TurboGrafx-16 and Sega Genesis. Revitalizing the video game industry after the recent video game crash of 1983, the SNES was released in November 1990 in Japan; August 1991 in North America; and Europe in April of 1992. The SNES would come to sell over 49 million systems worldwide. Each version is essentially the same, but also has several forms of regional lockout, preventing some versions from being compatible with one another.

Super Famicom
The Super Family Computer, or Super Famicom, costed ¥32,000 upon release in 1990, and came with 2 controllers and Super Mario World. The first 300,000 units of the Super Famicom were sold out immediately after launch, prompting Nintendo to ship units at night to avoid robbery by Yazuka gangs, who had their attention focused on the Super Famicom.

History
The NES/Famicom sales declined in early 1991, prompting Nintendo to start development on the SNES, or NES 2 during development. Masayuki Uemura was tasked as head architect with the development, since he was head architect with the original NES. President of Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauchi, asked Uemura if he could explore the option of making a new 16-bit system compatible with the millions of cartridges that sold for the 8-bit NES. Uemura's primary goal was to keep production costs down as much as possible, though found that in order to make the new system compatible with NES cartridges, a minimum of $75 dollars would have to be added to the cost of each unit. Yamauchi planned to make an NES cartridge adapter at a later date, but was later abandoned.

Launch
Nintendo released the Super Famicom in Japan in 1990, which quickly sold over 4 million units by the time the SNES was released in the United States in 1991.



In Japan, the launch price was ¥32,000, but Nintendo was having trouble keeping the Super Famicom in stock in Japanese stores. In the United States, the launch price was $199.99.