25年前，一样产品令任天堂成为视频游戏的王者，至今无人撼动

1991年8月23日，任天堂面向北美消费者推出超级任天堂娱乐系统（SNES）。虽然日本和韩国消费者在1990年就可以买到这款分别名为Super Famicom和Super Comboy的主机，但进入北美市场依然意义重大。这款产品带来的巨大销量，一举奠定了任天堂在全球游戏主机和视频游戏制作领域的龙头地位。

在它的生命周期中，SNES成了所有严肃玩家的必备之物。作为16位游戏机，SNES的机能是其前身任天堂娱乐系统（NES）的两倍。虽然销量比不上NES，但SNES让《超级马里奥兄弟》、《塞尔达传说》等任天堂核心产品变得更受欢迎。

SNES代表着视频游戏行业有史以来最残酷的“主机之战”，这一点可能最为重要。

On August 23, 1991, Nintendo launched the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) to customers in North America. While the console had previously been available to Japanese and Korean customers in 1990 as the Super Famicom and Super Comboy, respectively, the move to North America was a significant one. It helped unleash sales that solidified Nintendo’s position as a leading game console and video game maker worldwide.

Over its lifespan, the Super Nintendo—or SNES as it was often called in the U.S.—became a must-have for any serious gamer. The console was of the 16-bit variety, doubling the 8-bit power offered by its predecessor, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). While it didn’t sell as well as the NES, the SNES solidified the popularity of Nintendo’s core franchises, like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda.

Perhaps more than anything, the SNES is synonymous with one of the most vicious “console wars” the video gaming industry had ever seen.

1983年在日本推出NES时，任天堂进入了一个几乎没人愿意涉足的边缘领域。游戏巨头雅达利公司倒闭后，人们认为家用游戏机市场已经走到了尽头，几乎没有哪家公司认为跳进这个“火坑”是个好主意。

但任天堂这么做了，它承担的风险带来了相当亮丽的回报。NES的总销量接近6200万台，将其他愿意在家用机市场冒险的厂商远远地甩在身后。

追踪任天堂公司的Wedbush Securities分析师迈克尔·帕赫特在接受《财富》杂志采访时指出：“SNES很重要，因为它巩固了任天堂家用机龙头的位置。拥有NES的任天堂只是游戏机厂商之一，SNES则让它脱颖而出。”

When Nintendo launched the NES in 1983 in Japan, the company was edging out into a frontier that few others wanted to explore. The home console market was believed dead after Atari’s fall, and few companies thought it a good idea to jump into the fray.

But Nintendo did, and the risk paid off handsomely. Over its lifetime, the NES sold nearly 62 million units and was able to break out from the stable of other companies that were willing to take a risk on the home console market.

“[The SNES is] important given that it cemented Nintendo as the home console leader,” reflects Michael Pachter, a Wedbush Securities analyst and Nintendo tracker, in an interview with Fortune. “[Nintendo was] one of many with the NES, and broke out from the pack with SNES.”

任天堂拒绝置评帕赫特的观点。

看到任天堂在游戏市场获得成功，而且几乎不用担心竞争问题，其他公司也决定进入这个领域，为首的就是世嘉。

作为另一家日本游戏机厂商，世嘉和NES的竞争以失败告终。世嘉曾推出最终定名为Genesis 的16位游戏机，这是它挑战任天堂的最佳机会。世嘉还把自己定位为“很酷的”游戏公司，面向成熟玩家，他们已经不再需要NES上那些迎合小孩子的游戏。

为应对这个威胁，任天堂于1990年在日本推出了Super Famicom，售价约为210美元。虽然这款产品一炮而红，但要真正击败世嘉并赢得主机之战，任天堂需要再次走向全球。第二年夏天，任天堂通过在北美发布售价199美元的SNES，完成了这项任务。

现在，战斗仍在继续。世嘉坚守更酷游戏公司的策略，并且努力争取第三方开发商，以便为自己的硬件吸引更多游戏，进而捕获更多玩家。任天堂则试图自行把握命运。事实也证明，任天堂自己的游戏，比如《超级马里奥世界》和《超级马里奥赛车》，都跻身SNES上最受欢迎的游戏之列。

Nintendo declined to comment for this retrospective.

As other companies saw the success Nintendo was enjoying in the gaming market with little worry of competition, they decided to jump in. Sega was chief among them.

Another Japan-based console maker, Sega, which had tried unsuccessfully to compete with the NES, thought its best chance at challenging Nintendo was by launching a 16-bit console, eventually named Genesis. Sega also positioned itself as the “cool” game company that was for the mature gamer who had grown out of playing kid-friendly games on the NES.

Needing to respond to the threat, Nintendo unveiled the Super Famicom in Japan in 1990 for approximately $210. While it was an early success, to truly take on Sega and win the console war, Nintendo again needed to go global. By the summer of the following year, Nintendo achieved that mission with the $199 SNES it deployed to North America.

Now, the fight was on. Sega stuck to its guns as the cooler game company and fought hard to win over third-party developers to attract more games, and thus, more gamers, to its hardware. Nintendo tried its own luck at that, but its own games, including Super Mario World and Super Mario Kart, proved to be among the console’s most popular titles.

无论如何，SNES和上述游戏让任天堂成为家喻户晓的品牌，这正是任天堂在和世嘉的缠斗中迫切需要的东西。

帕赫特说：“SNES有很棒的16位画面，因此，玩家有可能首次真正弄明白自己在做什么。我要说，最重要的是SNES真的把任天堂的经典品牌投射到了人们的意识之中。”

与此同时，世嘉继续迎难而上，尽管此时大多数分析师都说任天堂已经赢得了16位主机之战，因为任天堂游戏机的销量超过了Genesis。实际上，任天堂公布的全球销量为4900万台以上，这和NES或者任天堂历史最畅销主机Wii（销量超过1.016亿台）相比还有差距，但足以击败Genesis。据估算，Genesis的总销量为3000多万台。

其他公司并非没有注意到SNES的成功。多年来，索尼一直在认真研究视频游戏市场，甚至还主动接触任天堂，提出联合生产主机的建议，但双方最终分道扬镳。

Regardless, the console, coupled with the games, provided something that Nintendo desperately needed in its dogfight with Sega: a household brand.

“The console had decent 16-bit graphics, so it was the first time gamers could actually figure out what they were doing. But it was far from realistic,” Pachter says. “I’d say the most important thing is that SNES really catapulted Nintendo’s iconic brands into people’s consciousness.”

Meanwhile, Sega continued to soldier on, though most analysts now say that Nintendo won the 16-bit battle by squeaking out more console sales than the Genesis. In fact, worldwide, Nintendo says that it sold more than 49 million units. That didn’t quite match the NES or Nintendo’s best-selling console of all time, the Wii, which had more than 101.6 million unit sales, but it was enough to beat the Genesis, which is estimated to have notched more than 30 million in unit sales over its lifetime.

The success of SNES wasn’t lost on other companies. Although Sony had been thinking seriously about the video games market for years and actually approached Nintendo with the idea of collaborating on a console, the companies ultimately split.

1994年，索尼PlayStation上市。

在一定程度上，PlayStation针对任天堂和世嘉带给游戏市场的部分缺憾进行了调整。PlayStation采用32位图像，SNES则只有16位。任天堂的硬件依赖于卡带，对游戏厂商来说制作成本很高，PlayStation则采用了成本较低的光碟模式，而且最终帮助索尼吸引了更多消费者。

可能有人会说，PlayStation的出现打压了任天堂及其主机业务（而且确实让世嘉的硬件业务开始走上末路）。

本打算用来对付PlayStation的任天堂64在全世界只售出了3300万台。作为PlayStation 2的竞争对手，任天堂的GameCube表现更差，销量接近2200万台。直到2006年推出的Wii创下逾1.01亿台的全球销量后，任天堂才重新站稳了脚跟。

但SNES算得上任天堂历史上的关键一环。它也许不像Wii或者其前身NES那么成功，但应该说，它是家用机市场实现飞速发展而且变得更加有利可图的关键因素之一。

帕赫特指出：“当时的家用机市场仍然相当小。但SNES是那个周期中最成功的家用机，任天堂对家用机市场的主导也从它开始。

By 1994, the Sony PlayStation hit store shelves.

The PlayStation was, in part, a response to some of the shortcomings that Nintendo and Sega were bringing to bear in the gaming market. Whereas Sony’s console offered 32-bit graphics, Nintendo’s SNES could only muster 16 bits. While Nintendo’s hardware relied upon cartridges that were costly for game publishers to produce, the PlayStation ushered in a cheaper, disc-based model, which ultimately helped it attract more customers.

Some could argue that the PlayStation’s launch put a damper on Nintendo and its console business (and it most certainly led to the beginning of the end for Sega’s hardware business).

The Nintendo 64, the console that was supposed to be the answer to the PlayStation, only mustered 33 million unit sales worldwide. The GameCube, Nintendo’s competitor with the PlayStation 2, performed even worse, with nearly 22 million units sold. It wasn’t until the Wii’s launch in 2006 that Nintendo finally regained its footing with more than 101 million units sold worldwide.

Still, the SNES can be remembered as a critical part of Nintendo’s history. It might not have been the success that the Wii or its predecessor the NES was, but it was arguably one of the linchpins that turned the home console market into something much bigger—and more profitable.

“The home console market was still pretty small then,” Pachter says. “However, the SNES was the most successful home console during its cycle, so it was the start of Nintendo’s dominance in the home console market.”

SNES还帮助任天堂成为流行文化的一个重要组成部分。

在8月21日的里约奥运会闭幕式上，国际奥委会把举办权移交给了东京，也就是2020年夏季奥运会的举办地。安倍晋三的出现让世界大吃一惊，因为他的身份并非日本首相，而是任天堂众多角色中的佼佼者——超级马里奥。安倍登台前，闭幕式上先播放了一段视频，动画中的马里奥奔跑在东京街头，并且找到了一条通向里约热内卢的捷径。当他跳进游戏中人们熟悉的绿色管道后，安倍在会场中现身，并且摘下马里奥的标志性红色棒球帽向观众挥舞。

The SNES has also helped Nintendo become an important part of pop culture.

At the Rio Olympics closing ceremony on Sunday, the International Olympic Committee handed off the games from Rio to Tokyo, where the next Summer Olympics will be held in 2020. Japan prime minister Shinzo Abe shocked the world by popping up not as himself, but as Super Mario in an homage to the chief character in Nintendo’s many franchises. Before Abe popped up, a video was aired depicting a CGI version of Mario running through the streets of Tokyo to find a warp tunnel to Rio de Janeiro. After he jumped into the game’s familiar green tube, Abe sprung out while wearing and then waving Mario’s signature red baseball cap.

有意思的是，安倍还拿了一个红色的球，代表着《Pokémon GO》，这款手机游戏今年大放异彩。

很难相信，如果没有SNES，所有这一切会成为活生生的现实。(财富中文网)

Interestingly, Abe also held a red ball, referring to Pokémon GO, this year’s mobile smash hit of which Nintendo owns a stake.

It’s hard to believe that without SNES any of that would’ve happened.