The SNES Classic Edition: How Close Did We Predict the Lineup?

Late last July a handful of us Gaming Rebellion contributors got together to brainstorm a 30 game line up for a hypothetical SNES Classic Edition to go with the recently announced NES Classic. It’s a video that’s been viewed a lot, and you can watch it below.

Now that Nintendo has finally announced that it’s doing an actual SNES Classic Edition that will be released this September I thought it’d be a fun idea to compare the list we came up with versus the actual list to see how we did. To change things up a bit, I’m going to seperate the games into three categories, based upon how obvious a choice it was. Let’s get to it.

Behold the Glory!

The Obvious Choices

Super Mario World

Super Mario Kart

Donkey Kong Country

Kirby Super Star

Star Fox

Super Metroid

Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

Super PunchOut!

Yoshi’s Island

Alright, so we got these all in our list, but again these were the obvious choices. It’s all classic first party software, with the exception of DKC, and would have to be included in any SNES Classic set. In our video we predicted having the full DKC trilogy, but in the actual release there’s only the original. I blame part of the lack of DKC2/3 on this system only having 21 games and part on them using the space for other games a bit more out of left field.

As for stuff we missed, we included Pilotwings, Super Tennis and Yoshi’s Cookie. Admittedly, those aren’t as popular as the list above but were fine first party games.

Let’s look at some major third party stuff.

Behold the PAL flavored (flavoured?) glory!

Third Party Games

Contra III: The Alien Wars

Earthbound

Final Fantasy III

Mega Man X

Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting

Super Castlevania IV

Super Ghouls N Ghosts

Super Mario RPG

We actually got this section pretty dead on.  We even predicted they would use Street Fighter II Turbo instead of vanilla Street Fighter or even Super Street Fighter. We did miss a few, and one was Chrono Trigger. I don’t know if was a lack of space or licensing or whatever but I don’t see why they omitted this classic. We also included Sim City, Final Fight 2, NBA Jam and Gradius III in our list but none of those made it. Sim City may not be listed as it’s actually not available for virtual console and hasn’t been since EA bought the rights to that franchise. Final Fight 2 would have been a great addition, and the only beat ’em up in the list. Considering the SNES was a fantastic platform for beat ’em up fans the lack of games in that genre is a bit weird.

Before anyone asks: No, there was never a chance of Turtles in Time showing up on either list. This is because Konami no longer has the rights to the TMNT franchise so they can’t release the game any more. If I remember right Ubisoft has those rights, which is why they did the remakes a few years back.

Let’s go to the out of left field games.

Don’t lie. Ain’t a one of you out there that saw THIS one coming.

Out of Left Field

Star Fox 2

Secret of Mana

Kirby’s Dream Course

We got none of these right, but in our defense I doubt anyone would have saw Star Fox 2 coming. Interestingly, Nintendo had the game completely ready for release outside Japan but held off due to the N64. The ROM that’s been floating around the internet was considered to be complete, but it apparently is not according to Nintendo. Secret of Mana is a classic RPG but I don’t know if very many people expected it on here. Kirby’s Dream Course is a really fun take on golf, and a personal favorite, but it’s a bit surprising to see here. It is the least surprising of the three, especially compared to Star Fox 2, but still unexpected.

Alright, let’s get to why you’re really here. All in all, how well did we predict the lineup?

Final Results

Out of the 21 included games we correctly guessed 18. That’s an 86% score, or a B average.  The only section we didn’t guess in its entirety was the left field ones at the very end. Admittedly, we had more games than what is in the final product but we assumed it’d have 30 games like the NES Classic. I haven’t personally scored any other of the predictions that came up before this thing was even announced, as they seemed to spring up from everywhere lately. I will say that if we weren’t the first to do this kind of prediction we were at least one of the earliest, and we had a pretty good score.

I’m interested to know what games you were surprised to see included, or excluded and what you think about our video and the SNES Classic in general.  Leave us some comments below.