Due to the prolonged success of the NES, Nintendo were under little pressure to release a competitor to the already established 16-bit Mega Drive (and the TurboGrafx in some regions). When the Super Nintendo finally hit the UK market in April 1992, it still had enough power to muscle into its rivals' market.

Although the SNES had a slower processor than the Mega Drive, it featured a superior graphics processor which made light work of graphics scaling and rotating - put to particularly good effect in games like Super Mario Kart and F-Zero. As third-party developers had already signed deals with the likes of Sega, there weren't as many SNES-exclusive titles as there were in the NES days. Nintendo, in conjunction with Sony, had planned a CD add-on for the SNES which was eventually scrapped and led to Sony's release of the Playstation.