The 8-Bit Revival & 16-Bit War · 1985â1994
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
SNES
Sought After?
Extremely. Sealed copies of EarthBound or Chrono Trigger regularly sell for thousands of dollars.
Downsides
The famously convoluted Nintendo/Sony CD-add-on deal collapsed publicly, souring relations and indirectly birthing Sony's own PlayStation as a competitor.
Why It Faded
A natural, graceful retirement as the market moved to 32/64-bit and CD-based systems.
Trivia
The SNES's "Mode 7" graphics trick (a hardware feature that scaled and rotated backgrounds) created pseudo-3D effects in games like F-Zero and is still cited as one of the cleverest pieces of 16-bit engineering.