SNES Top Licensees

16 months ago I started playing through all of the US released games in the SNES library on my other blog, Ziggyny's SNES Adventure. I've been assigning a personal rating to a game each week and I've been wondering which company is going to end up having made the best games for the system. And how would that even be defined? Average rating? Sheer quantity of games with a high rating? Percentage of games with a high rating? I wish I'd thought of this when I started up so I could have made some predictions before getting involved with some of the games.

I feel like my initial guess would have had Square end up at the top of the heap. I know of four incredible games they put out at least! Koei would have been next since I spent a ton of time playing some of their simulation games. Aerobiz, Uncharted Waters, PTO, Romance of the Three Kingdoms III... And more! Third would probably have been Nintendo since they put out some really spectacular games. But they also put out a lot of games and there's bound to have been some stinkers. So if I'd be using an average metric it probably falls down below Square and Koei. Then there'd be the other game companies I remember putting out lots of games. Capcom, Konami, Electronic Arts...

One company I wouldn't have put on the list is Enix. Why? Because my mind thinks terrible things about them from when they merged with Square. The internet likes to blame that for the 'downfall' of the Final Fantasy series. So those thoughts aren't actually grounded in fact, but in internet bias. That's not good!

The reason I started thinking about Enix is I've spent all week playing the next game to be posted: Soul Blazer. Which happened to be put out by Enix. The only other game thus far in the adventure put out by Enix? ActRaiser. The single game I was most psyched about playing again when I started running the adventure. Ok, so they had a couple good early games... They must have put out a lot of junk afterwards to justify my not liking them, right? Well, it turns out they put out 10 games total on the SNES according to my list. And the next one after Soul Blazer is EVO: the Search for Eden! Another game I really, really, really want to play again. Later on they have 2 RPGs my brother had growing up which I remember liking (Paladin's Quest and Robotrek), 2 hard/annoying games I finally beat after sinking a ton of time into them (The 7th Saga and BRAIN LORD), an ok sequel (ActRaiser 2), a game from a series I've heard good things about but never played (Ogre Battle), and a game I've never heard of (King Arthur & the Knights of Justice). That is quite a line-up. Depending on how I feel when digging into the frustrating games Enix could end up putting up a really high score in any metric.

Enough to pass Square? Well, looking at that list I have to say there's no way. Square only put out 7 games for the SNES. Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Chrono Trigger, and Breath of Fire. Yowsa! Soul Blazer is fun and all, but it is no Final Fantasy VI...

I ended up putting together a static page to go on my other blog listing the companies, the total number of games I've played thus far, how many got at least an A rating, and the average rating thus far. Most companies only have one game played thus far, so things could easily change, but the top two right now are Enix and Square. SunSoft is number 3, I guess because I really liked Lemmings. I don't recognize any of the other 11 game names though so they may end up tumbling down the list. Nintendo is far and away the leader in terms of A or better games with a full third of all good games coming from them. It's their forays into terrible sports games which are dragging them down in terms of average. Nintendo is also below Culture Brain, LJN, Acclaim, and Data East. Acclaim even has 3 games in the clubhouse and still average out to A-! Acclaim actually put out the second most games of any company to Nintendo, though I don't recognize very many of them.

Ziggyny's SNES Adventure

While recently playing Final Fantasy Mystic Quest I found myself thinking that perhaps it wasn't as bad, relatively speaking, as everyone makes it out to be. It certainly pales in comparison to the other Final Fantasy games on the SNES but how would it fare compared to other RPGs on the SNES. I thought the same thing about the soundtrack which I didn't think was all that great but people seem to love. Maybe my problem was that I spend my time listening to Final Fantasy music on YouTube and forget the general sound quality for your average SNES game.

I've always been oddly drawn to reading about people playing old games. In particular I've 'followed' two different blogs purporting to play through every NES game. Some of them die out after a couple of posts. One of the NES ones is already into the Ks (he's going alphabetically) which is more than 300 posts! That's a lot of terrible NES games to have played!

Personally today marks the 466th consecutive day with a blog post. Some days have come easier than others, and some posts have certainly been worse than others, but I've managed to stick to having a post up every day. A couple years ago I built up a stash of posts in advance (the bridge hand series) but since that experiment ended it's been basically day to day. Oddly enough I actually find it more difficult to get posts done on the weekend than I do during the week. Part of this is because I sleep 12 hours vs 6 hours so there's less time in the day. Part of this is I spend the ~2 hours of transit time either playing games, reading, or mentally writing blog posts. Part of this is a weekday has easy breakpoints where I can fit in writing a post (right after work, say, or right after eating). Part of this is my 'awake day' and the 'real day' sync up better during the day than they do on the weekend. Always writing things day-of also makes things tricky when it comes to going out or having people over. I need to budget in extra time in the morning or make sure I get home before midnight which is a little annoying.

I've decided to put those three things together in the form of a new blog series... I'm going to play all the SNES games and make a little post about them! Initially my thinking was to put one post up per week on Saturdays and to revive the Star Trek blog and post it on Sundays. Then I found out there were 715 games on the SNES list and realized that at one post per week it would be 14 years before I got through them all! And then I looked at how many Star Trek episodes there are and there are 726! Hmm...

At any rate, I've got a couple posts written up for this weekend and we'll see where things go from here. I'm sequestering the new posts in a new blog. I believe I've got my Facebook integration thing set up so they should appear there like a normal post. Here's hoping!