 Hi there, I thought it'd be fun to take a look at some of the best arcade games of the early 90s that never got Super Nintendo ports for whatever reason. Now there are literally thousands of arcade games, and yeah, we can play these today thanks to the MAME emulator, so I have to keep this list somewhat short. I could make this video like 3 hours long if I really wanted to. Also yes, I'm aware that the idea of this video is a bit of a stretch. The arcade games you'll see here definitely would not look that much like how they would have appeared as a Super Nintendo port. I'm not that naive. Granted we did get some really good arcade ports on the SNES like Turtles in Time, but for every good arcade port there was a putrid one like Pit Fighter. Still, this is just a pie in the sky kind of idea video, so whatever. For me the most obvious choice of a game that should have appeared on the SNES is X-Men, one of the best arcade beat em ups ever made, whether it was the 4 player version or the gargantuan 6 player version, although I always felt bad for whoever got stuck with Dazzler. Anyway, what makes this game so good is how fast paced it is. The inherent problem with beat em ups is that it can get boring quickly while doing the same thing over and over. But there's so much energy in this game, it's really fast for a beat em up and the mutant powers are a lot of fun. I actually think this would have ended up better than mutant apocalypse on the SNES. Yeah, it probably wouldn't have been 4 player, but even as a 2 player beat em up this is still a great game. And of course there's also the Simpsons arcade game, one of the best games Konami ever made back in their heyday. This game really nails the classic Simpsons art style, and it also gets the Simpsons sense of humor, and represents the series as well as any game has. This is easily the best Simpsons game ever made and nothing else even comes close. Again I get the big appeal of this game as playing as the entire Simpsons family at once since it's a 4 player game, but again you're crazy if you think this wouldn't be as fun as just a 2 player beat em up on Super Nintendo. Next there's the cliffhanger, Edward Randy, and this is one of the most bat shit crazy games I've ever played. Just look at what's going on here. You play as a roided up Indiana Jones whipping bad guys as you try to balance yourself on a biplane in mid-flight, then you're fighting some crazy Terminator looking machine boss, then you're jumping between biplanes 5,000 feet in the air before you end up on a speedboat somehow. It's amazing. While the technical limitations might have diminished to Super Nintendo port I'm not sure it would have mattered that much because the ideas here are so strong. Even if you're able to capture some semblance of the insanity here that's more than enough. You want to get even crazier, then there's Ninja Baseball Batman. No, not that Batman. Batman as in actual, uh, bat guys. This is a baseball themed beat em up and this game is as absurd as it gets. It's like if Perodius were a beat em up and obsessed with baseball. You fight baseball bats fighting with baseball bats, baseball gloves, a freaking baseball stadium. Meanwhile the first boss is an airplane inside of an airplane. Sure, okay. Words don't do this game justice. It's utterly ridiculous and I wish more people had a chance to play it back when it first came out. There's also stuff like Armored Warriors from Capcom. It's kind of amazing to me that there are so many beat em ups back then and yet so many managed to stand out as something unique. The hook in Armored Warriors is the fun of being ridiculously overpowered. This is good old fashioned mech carnage using parts from your destroyed enemies as your own weapons, even stuff like tank treads. The amount of weapons you can equip here make this game worth it. And of course there's Metal Slug. This did get home console ports for Neo Geo, Neo Geo CD, Sega Saturn and PlayStation but this game was made in 1996, late in the SNES lifespan so it's possible that a Super Nintendo port could have been at least somewhat decent. Plus if you look at the side scrolling run and gun games on the SNES there's really only a handful of good ones before you're getting to stuff like gym power the lost dimension and that game sucks. So Metal Slug would have helped fill a need in a genre that was somewhat lacking on the system. Next there's Elevator Action Returns, a souped up sequel to the original Elevator action from way back in 1983. This is a really interesting blend of stealth, puzzle platforming and run and gun gameplay. You sneak around using the Elevator traversing huge buildings, shooting bad guys, collecting items while meticulously making your way around occasionally using the Elevator to hide and bide your time or even squash enemies. The level ends when you enter all the red doors. I really like how certain arcade games of the era weren't afraid to try new things and this game is certainly a bit different as is Nitro Ball also known as Gun Ball. What in the hell is going on in this game? Well it's a top-down eight directional shooter where you shoot football players and football related things but you're inside a pinball machine and you can eventually turn into a pinball and knock enemies over. What? The second level is kind of a military motif and the third level is some kind of ghostbusters sort of a thing I guess. And yes it's all pinball related for some reason. It's like they said hey let's take Smash TV and then pick the names of random stuff out of a hat and then build a game from it somehow. But hey as a game it's pretty entertaining you never know what you're gonna see next. Dead Connection is another Smash TV type game but you play as what look like prohibition era gangsters as you shoot up hotel lobbies, junkyards, restaurants. What I really like here is the damage you do to the property itself. That's pretty rare for the time. But yeah it's like a third person shooting gallery type game and it's well done. My only problem with it is that it's way too short but a Super Nintendo port could have potentially remedied that. Of course you can't talk about 90s arcade games without talking about one-on-one fighting games. My personal favorite back then was X-Men vs Street Fighter which served as a precursor to later stuff like Marvel vs Capcom and Capcom vs SNK. I remember as an 11 or 12 year old writing a letter to Nintendo Power begging for an X-Men one-on-one fighting game and maybe somebody heard me. Alright maybe not but still I've always loved this game and felt it would have been right at home on the Super Nintendo. Instead we got Street Fighter Alpha 2 which is a fine game but it didn't have mutants with adamantium claws or optic lasers and stuff. There are several dozen other fighting games I could also add to this list as well like Last Blade, Dragoon, Might, or Monster Maulers. Next there's NHL 2 on 2 Open Ice Challenge otherwise known as the Hockey equivalent of NBA Jam. This was also made by Midway and it plays just like you'd expect. Yeah I know Hit the Ice is the same sort of thing but a bit more cartoony but this game has real NHL players which means it has real NHL hair. Check out these mullets. But yeah this is a really fun game that didn't catch on as well as it probably could have back in the 90s. Finally I got to pick at least one shoot-em-up for this video and I might as well pick Aero Fighters 2. The great thing about Aero Fighters for SNES is that it's the rare co-op shoot-em-up that doesn't suffer from any slowdown at all. The second game looks every bit as good of course. There's a gazillion other shoot-em-ups I could pick for this video like Twin Eagle 2 or one of the 1940 games but hey Aero Fighters work great on SNES so it would have been nice to see a sequel. Anyway that's all for now. Thanks for watching and have a great rest of your day.