My SNES sits proudly in my office as a reminder of one of the first consoles I ever played on. It's a fantastic system that only seems to get better with age, the fine wine of the retro gaming world, you might say. With an official count of 1,749 officially released games for the system, picking 16 of the very best was an incredibly tough task, but with our extensive experience and the opinions of the Retro Dodo readers, we managed to whittle it down to the creme de la creme, the best of the best to ever grace the Super Nintendo.
Donkey Kong Country, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario World, A Link to the Past; the SNES had so many games that shaped the future of gaming and cemented both characters and their series as gaming royalty for years to come. Making the brackets was an incredibly tough job, with so many potential winners going up against each other in the opening rounds.
But, after 30,000 votes and a lot of comments in favour of why the two finalists were the best two games in existence, it came down to A Link to the Past vs Chrono Trigger.
It was a very close call with just 300 votes between them, but A Link to the Past took the trophy as the best SNES game of all time. Many people in the comments on the Facebook post itself stated that ALTTP isn't just the best SNES game of all time, but the best Zelda game of all time, too. 25 years later, and it's still receiving so much love... I wonder if Nintendo would ever consider a modern remake like Link's Awakening?
This was such a close tournament on the whole, and surprisingly, big hitters like F-Zero and Earthbound went out much quicker than I thought. A special mention to Chrono Trigger too which, as you can see, still has a huge following in 2026. It's amazing to see so much love for the SNES in a world of 4K gaming where graphics more often than not outrank a game's narrative, and a brilliant reminder that the retro gaming scene is just as exciting and strong as ever.
Thank you to everyone who voted, and a huge congratulations to A Link to the Past. Wherever you work, take the rest of the day off to play it in celebration!
