The SNES Games I STILL PLAY all the time!
 

GAMES SHOWN:
The Legend of the Mystical Ninja
Donkey Kong Country
Zig Zag Cat
Isometric racers: Rock n Roll Racing / Biker Mice from Mars / Radical Psycho Machine Racing
Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past
Shooters: UN Squadron / Parodius Da! / Spriggan Powered
Shadowrun
Super Mario All-Stars

Great list. I still really enjoy some of these, especially Zelda and Rock n Roll Racing. UN Squadron was a cool game too, one of the few shooters I owned for the SNES. MJ, what are your thoughts on Axelay? I was kind of expecting it to make this list but I know not all shooter fans love it.

I think Axelay is a cool game, but I'm not sold on the mode7 stuff. It just feels weird but I guess you can get used to it...

I never actually owned it but my friends all did and they seemed to love it. And my brief experience with it back then had me blown away. But I just watched a playthrough on Youtube and I can see what you mean. That first mode 7 level doesn't really hold up well.

Good to see Rock and Roll Racing on there! Hawk lights them up!

If you are a fan of Legend of Zelda-esque games, I'd definitely recommend Terranigma. Its a great little hidden gem of a game.

You're showing it briefly at the end, but I feel it's worth an extra mention: Even today, "Street Fighter II" is still the pinnacle of its particular genre. In my opinion, "Street Fighter II Turbo" on the SNES is the best version (platform, including the original arcade game) of the best version (iteration, including the sequels) of the best 2D fighting game series ever!

We bought a used Super Nintendo console just for this game, even though the PAL version feels a tiny bit sluggish compared to the NTSC one. I'm glad the SNES Mini came with SF2T included... :)

New Wave Toys has a mini SF2/2Turbo available if you are a huge fan of the game.

It even comes with a second mini controller so you can do 2 player and it's on sale for black Friday.

They also have mini-Tempest and may still have mini-Centipede boxes for sale. I found out about them from their Dragon's Lair kickstarter (which closed hitting 2 of the 3 stretch goals) and took advantage of the sale to get Centipede and SF2.

Hah! That's awesome - and awful at the same time. I don't think I'd ever play on that thing myself. I need either a heavy arcade stick or a controller to jank around, not those tiny buttons in front of a tiny screen. Just look how the machine shakes in the Capcom video! How is the second player supposed to keep up with all that movement?

Besides, I've tried two of the regular-sized emulation cabinets before, and haven't been thrilled with the build quality. At Gamescom, I actually saw 2 machines (out of maybe 10) display graphical errors. One of them froze and had to be cordoned off, because the booth personnel couldn't get it to start up again!

Anyway, these miniatures look really cool, but between my original SNES, my SNES Mini, as well as my PS2 and PSP compilations, I think I'm good. :-)

How could the console version be considered superior to the arcade?

In my opinion, the hit detection has been cleaned up - or rather, the AI has been tweaked to not abuse certain moves. Blanka in particular had some standard attacks (low fierce, most of all) that "dodged" your attack and hit you instead - even though your move came out first. Same with E. Honda and his bloody headbutt. I'm not an expert, so your or anyone else's mileage may vary, of course.

However, over the last 30 years, I must have played the various iterations of "Street Fighter" for thousands of (or at least a thousand) hours. If you dialed up the difficulty in the early arcade versions, the CPU sometimes (not always) responded to your attack with a counter-attack within one frame (1/60th of a second), meaning: before it was even visible on screen. If I remember correctly, this actually blew up in Capcom's face with "Super Street Fighter II Turbo", because - probably due to an oversight - the AI read the player's input even on the lowest difficulty setting. I don't know if you play SF at all, but if you have access to any of the emulated arcade versions (most of the compilations, like the recent "30th Anniversary Collection", use the original ROMs), you should try it, just for kicks. The game is incredibly frustrating due to this, even on the lowest difficulty setting. I remember getting my ass handed to me by Dee Jay a lot, sometimes in the very first fight...

Anyway, SNES SF2T has (almost) none of these problems. You lose the backwards-walking animation and maybe (not sure about this) some single frames here and there, but otherwise, you get the full arcade game with more relatable (i. e. superior, in my never-humble opinion) AI. The music is great as ever, the game runs at 60 fps, it keeps track of your statistics in Vs. mode, and it gives you a neat ending screen for beating it on the highest difficulty setting (maybe even one star below that, I don't quite remember). Again, your mileage may vary, but I definitely prefer it to the arcade original.

This video has annoying music, but it illustrates what I was trying to say:

I think most SF2 vets were pretty aware of a lot of these (the charging and mashing ones were particularly egregious) but the rest were pretty bad and a lot more subtle. Still, I knew the CPU was cheating and I took it as a point of pride if I could somehow dominate anyway.

Anyway, great video. Thanks for posting it.