10 Classic Game Series That Started on the SNES

Image: Capcom

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First released: 1993

The ‘90s were all about living life loudly. Nintendo even used “play it loud” as an ad slogan at the time. Mega Man X took that policy to the extreme. The kind, almost cuddly version of Mega Man that existed up to that point was replaced by X, a robot living still further in the future who faced the nefarious Sigma and his army of reploids. X could dash, climb walls, ride in mechs, and even charge his special weapons. The environments he explored had more secrets than ever, and the new series continued for another seven installments, many of them memorable in the right ways. Capcom has set the series aside in more recent years, but for a good long while, it was an action gamer’s dream.

6

Ogre Battle

Image: Quest/Enix

First released: 1993

Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen kicked off a short series of games with big impact. It let players lead a revolution against the Sacred Zetaginian Empire, recruiting monsters and mercenaries enough to topple the empress Endora and those who served her (or pulled her strings). The game offered players 13 different endings, based on their alignment and key choices made over the course of a lengthy campaign. The sequel, Tactics Ogre, introduced play mechanics that served as the basis for Final Fantasy Tactics, which probably explains why it was later remade, first for PSP and then with Tactics Ogre: Reborn for PS4. A return to the older style soon followed with Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber. After that, the series was mostly done covering new ground except for side stories, but what a legacy!

5

Star Ocean

Image: tri-Ace/Square Enix via Polygon

First released: 1996

A lot of people got into the Star Ocean series after playing Star Ocean: The Second Story on the PlayStation. It was, as the title subtly suggests, the second story in the series. The first story unfolded on the Super Famicom and never made it to North America until the remake on the PSP, Star Ocean: First Departure. Since its earliest days, the Star Ocean franchise has entertained players by combining brave space explorers with medieval settings on under-developed alien planets. Action combat and deep skill trees, along with “private actions” that add missable events to the story, keep fans coming back for more. Not every installment has been a hit. The more recent entries in particular have struggled to interest wide audiences. But the series is still going, at least for now. And some of us liked Star Ocean: The Divine Force just fine, thank you very much!

4

Mario Kart

Image: Nintendo

First released: 1992

Incredibly, more than 30 years have passed since Super Mario Kart launched on the Super Nintendo. Kids who grew up playing it have had kids of their own, who now play newer installments like Mario Kart World. Nine mainline games in, the series shows no sign of slowing down, even if it’s unlikely Nintendo will ever manage to outsell the various versions of Mario Kart 8, which has sold nearly 80 million copies on Switch and Wii U as of June 2026. People still love racing around the Mushroom Kingdom as their favorite mascots, dropping banana peels and firing off shells as they cheat their way to victory. For multiplayer mayhem, there’s still no peer, even after so much time has passed.

3

Chrono

Square Enix

First released: 1995

When it launched on the Super Nintendo, Chrono Trigger was a huge deal. It combined the creative efforts of key talent from Square and Enix, two of the undisputed kings of the RPG genre. The end result might easily have disappointed everyone, the way ambitious creative collaborations of that sort sometimes do. Instead, it set a new standard that few games have met to this day. With a vibrant world viewed in multiple eras, a twisting plot featuring 12 endings, beautiful visuals, and spectacular music from Yasunori Mitsuda, the game had just about everything a fan might have asked for. (It also introduced the concept of New Game +, where some of your items and experience carry over to a new playthrough.) Then it was followed by Radical Dreamers, which for years stayed in Japan, and finally the blissful Chrono Cross. One of the great injustices in the world of video games is the fact that we haven’t seen a new Chrono game ever since. That’s an awfully long time to do without a new entry in one of the finest series of all time, but somehow we survive.

2

Harvest Moon

Image: Natsume

First released: 1996

The original Harvest Moon game arrived in Japan in August of 1996, where it was known as Bokujou Monogatari. When it came to North America, Natsume’s US branch gave the game a new name: Harvest Moon. New installments continued to arrive regularly in the years since, until finally Marvelous Interactive began publishing its own output with a new series title: Story of Seasons. For its part, Natsume kept using the Harvest Moon name, now with different developers and its own ambitions. In that sense, Harvest Moon on the Super Nintendo served as the starting point for two franchises, and that’s not even counting Rune Factory spinoff series. Whatever you call them, the games involve turning failing farms into thriving operations near the edge of a village filled with lively townsfolk. In a world full of aliens, soldiers, ancient prophecies, and loud race cars, the simple life is difficult to resist, even three decades later.

1

Star Fox

Image: Velan Studios/Nintendo via Polygon

First released: 1993

If you were shopping for video games in 1993 and you saw a cover featuring a fox, a bird, a rabbit, and a frog, you might have thought you were looking at another mascot-based platformer. But actually, the game was about animals flying through space on their way to a showdown with a giant ape head known as Andross. A few years later, Nintendo followed up on the original Star Fox with Star Fox 64, which followed the same heroes on a new run through the Lylat System. Since then, the series has revisited that same general area numerous times, most recently with this year’s Star Fox on the Nintendo Switch 2. Fans of rail shooters, big explosions, and mutated scientists apparently can’t resist climbing into an Arwing, even if not everyone agreed when we said it’s a good thing the new Star Fox is just another remake.