The 10 Best SNES Games to Play on Nintendo Switch Online

7

Panel de Pon

Image: Intelligent Systems/Nintendo via Polygon

Known as Tetris Attack in the West — where Nintendo of America jazzed it up with characters like Yoshi and a rather spurious application of the Tetris licence — Panel de Pon is an immaculate match-three puzzle game made by Intelligent Systems (Advance Wars, Fire Emblem). There’s nothing fancy about it, it’s just brilliant, endless block-matching action for one or two players.

6

EarthBound

Image: Ape Inc./HAL Laboratory/Nintendo

The SNES was home to so many great RPGs, it’s a shame there aren’t more of them on Nintendo Switch Online. But we do have this gloriously kooky cult classic from Shigesato Itoi and Satoru Iwata, which uses a traditional RPG framework to explore a satirical, child’s-eye-view world of contemporary Americana, alien invasions, and murderous taxi cabs.

5

Super Mario Kart

Image: Nintendo EAD/Nintendo

This incredibly influential 1992 racing game invented and perfected a whole genre at the first try. It’s stunning how all the key components of what became a world-conquering series are present here, but also how different Super Mario Kart is from what the series became; with its tight track layouts and grippy handling, it’s more precise and technical. It’s also brilliant in head-to-head two-player mode.

4

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island

Image: Nintendo EAD/Nintendo

The supposed sequel to Super Mario World is really anything but; it’s the first Yoshi game instead, as well as one of the funniest, loveliest things Nintendo has ever made. With graphics made of crayon scribbles and splashes of watercolor, stretchy, wobbly physics courtesy of the Super FX chip, and wild slapstick gameplay that just never stops rocking, Yoshi’s Island is a gorgeous, irreverent hymn to innocence.

3

Super Metroid

Image: Intelligent Systems/Nintendo

Super Metroid is, quite simply, the Metroid game. It might even be the Metroidvania. Fabulously atmospheric and labyrinthine, this game captures better than any other — even the first Metroid Prime — the series’ lonely, obscurely threatening sci-fi futurism.

2

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

Image: Nintendo EAD/Nintendo

After the dead-end detour of Zelda 2: Link’s Adventure, the third Zelda game returned to the original’s top-down layout, tempered its brutal mystery, and found a formula that would work for the next 25 years: an intricate clockwork fable of beautifully interlocking parts built around a stunning conceit — in this case, a dark mirror-world – that turns the game inside out and upside down. Miyamoto and Tezuka turned this game out less than a year after they made Super Mario World. Nobody’s ever done it better.

1

Super Mario World

Image: Nintendo EAD/Nintendo

The SNES’ launch game is its best game, which is saying something considering the competition. It’s also — sorry, Super Mario Bros. 3 fans — the best 2D Mario game, hands down. There’s Yoshi, there’s the power-ups, there’s the way the series’ trademark surreal non-sequiturs are somehow braided, more convincingly than ever before or since, into a contiguous universe so gloriously silly and strange you can only marvel at it. Platforming perfection.