People just seem to ask me this all the time. I mean, my three favorite Super Nintendo games are an iron-clad held and unchangeable opinion (we'll briefly speak of them), but my FOURTH favorite SNES title? Now that's a tough one!
There were just soooo many good SNES games, I mean, like... it was such a good system. Possibly the greatest of all time. I still, to this very day, feel bad for the kids I knew back then who got a Sega Genesis instead of the Super Nintendo (most kids had one-or-the-other and not both)... and these innocent-yet-misguided Sega kids would really try and pretend, or more accurately blatantly lie-to-themselves, that the Genesis was better than the SNES...
...Those kids must've had it tough. To live a lie like that for the entirety of one's childhood... these kids walking around school really saying things like "Sonic is the best! It's the best game! It's so much better than Mario World!" ... I mean... I really must say... the sheer level of fantasy that these kids were living in just to pretend they got the best Christmas present of their lives that year ... almost is unfathomable to me. It truly is.
Even they knew, deep down, that they were lying to themselves each and every time they uttered absurdities such as that. A kid would be sitting around the school yard, or gym class, or whatever... and would really say nonsense such as... "Echo the Dolphin? It's so cool. It's so much better than anything on the SNES..." ... and normal kids would be dumbstuck by it... and you didn't get annoyed with the Sega kid or try and counter their ludicrous claims ... you'd just sort of feel slightly bad for them. They were Sega kids, not SNES kids... they were like mole people... just living underground in this bizarre fantasy world they were forced to create for themselves just because they asked their parents for a Genesis instead of something normal.
Don't get me started on TurboGrafx-16 kids. There were those too... and you had to feel very bad for them. Imagine you get one system, one 16 bit system... and you asked for that friggin' thing!? Poor souls. Those poor tortured souls. Those children must have lamented their decision for DECADES!
Those poor poor poor young souls. Forever tormented by the lament of their botched Christmas list. I think about them every now and then... and try to understand their pain and their lament.
Those poor tortured souls of Genesis kids, and even worse, those tortured screaming child souls of TurboGrafx-16 kids... I pray for thee. I offer up prayer on high for your sad and tortured souls, my friends. I pray for them. I hope you found solace and healing in your adult lives.
Oh my, like, going to your friend's house, back-then, and learning they were a Genesis kid? It was like something out of the Twilight Zone is what it was. You think, damn, I played ball-hockey and baseball with this kid for many weeks and they never said anything weird like "I like Sonic!" or "Echo is cool!" or anything that made me suspect they were a Genesis kid ... and now... I'm in this kid's basement... looking at their TV and right there... RIGHT friggin' THERE... is a Sega Genesis? You didn't even tell me..... and.... why? Why didn't you tell me you were a Genesis kid? How could you go through your life, at school, at the baseball diamond, n' shooting hockey balls into nets ... for weeks upon weeks... and hide this from the other kids? How did you hide it? You even laughed and nodded when we talked, at great-length mind you, about Super Mario World and Mario Kart... oh my word.... just seeing that Genesis in a kid's house was like being whisked out of reality and into a bizarro-land so ... uhhh.... bizarre .... that you really had to take a breath and be like... "Okay, this is a Sega kid... okay... it's okay... they're just like the other kids except they have a Sega instead of an SNES... it's Okay.... just breathe."
Just breathe....oooooooof. Okay. Yeah, they're cool kids its just they made one great blunder. One fantastic mistake. It could've happened to anyone. I could've asked for a Genesis instead of an SNES too...
....No. I can't tell a lie. Let's be real here. For I would have never done something as unwaveringly insane as that. I would have NEVER in my wildest nightmares have asked for a Genesis instead of an SNES. Sorry but maybe I lack much diction in many aspects of life, and I'll be the first to admit that I'm not wicked-smart but I'm not insane. I'm not a genuine crazy person.
I hope the torment of their screamingly incorrect childhood mistakes have healed. I do not scorn or pity the Genesis children... I simply pray for them... and hope that the inner-scars left by their mistakes of their forlorn pasts have since healed and they became functioning members of our modern society.
Anyways,
Me? Well, I had a great and cool childhood, you see. Why is that, you so humbly ask? Well, it is because I got a Super Nintendo as a kid. Oh. Yeah. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System... the S, N, E..... S.
....and my three favorite SNES games are:
Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy VI (known to us as III back then). To me, those are "The Big Three" as I like to call them. If in some month of our 12-month long year... I feel a little under the ol' weather as the old folks say... I might just hit The Big Three. Even though I've played these games many many times before ... I might just have to hit the three. They are, to me, the BEST Super Nintendo games of all time and most people who know me know that I consider them as such.
Yet...
What is my FOURTH favorite Super Nintendo game? Now, that....yes, THAT, question is a whole other matter. That is tough. I really actually don't know the answer to that. I could be on Jeopardy! or on the witness stand at a trial ... and if the question was....
"Kind sir, we are fully aware of what are your three most favorite Super NES games ... yet... the public-at-large wonders what your fourth favorite one is?"
To be frank with you gentle readers... I would be stricken with doubt and would likely be driven to a total and complete Loss of My Words!
My fourth favorite? I haven't even really ever thought about it. I mean, The Big Three, are like trusted friends and I would never hesitate to answer if a gentle soul was to ponder of me what were my three favorite Super Nintendo games...
...but...
My fourth? It's.... just something I've never explored inside of my own self. I've never contemplated, even for one second, what the fourth greatest game was. There's just so many.... like Mario World, and Mario Kart... and Mario All-Stars... and Mario RPG!
I'm growing confused. It's overwhelming. My thoughts are fragmented and... I have to say my mind is akin to a jigsaw puzzle whence I think of all the great SNES games.
You might as well ask me how many precious gemstones exist in the field of minerology and ask me to pick the most beautifullest gemstone of them all. It's ... almost impossible is what it is. What of all the finest pieces of art in all the museums of our long-and-storied society... could one just sit down and really pick the fourth best?
I think not.
Let's re-iterate and make clear that there is no real denying that Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy VI are the greatest SNES games. Now, if you ask me to put them in order from greatest to less-greatest... we could be here ... all day. I mean if you asked me this one hundred times on one hundred different days ... the answer would likely always be different than the last. I'd truly have to go through these masterpieces with a finely-toothed comb, gentle friend.
Monday I might say: 1. Final Fantasy VI, 2. Chrono Trigger, 3. Earthbound..
Who am I kidding? That can't be right.
Tuesday I might answer: 1. Earthbound, 2. Chrono Trigger, and 3. Final Fantasy VI....
Yet, no, that can't be right. Surely it goes differently the order.
Wednesday? Why...I might go on at incredible length on how Chrono Trigger is the greatest video game ever created by modern humankind.
Thursday? I might find a reason why Earthbound is even more greater than Chrono Trigger. Friday... I might overhaul the entire order and start again.
It's just not something I can put into any sort of order. Which is a better game is not something easily filed away stamped, sealed, and then delivered. They are, all three, masterpieces in their own very special ways. Incredibly special ways.
So let's just leave it at that, shall we?
My Fourth Favorite Super Nintendo Game
Okay, let's get real here, friends. I can't go through life any longer not knowing what my fourth favorite SNES title is. It is eating away at me like a small fish eats away at the even smaller fish in the mouth of a much-much-much larger fish.
It pains me.... deeply.... not to know this about my own self.
Every time I walk down the gentle road and listen to the wind sweep through the trees, it is almost as if the wind is whispering to my ear...
...."Whhhhhat? Whhhhhhhhhat is your fourth favorite SNES game?"
Then, at my abode, whence I face the mirror.... I see a piece of My Own Self... Missing. I know I am incomplete. I must sit down, right here, and right now.... and look deep within the catacombs of my own shadowy interior... and figure this inner-engima out... once and forever.
Alright, so please bear with me. Or bare with me? Like.... we are chipping away the layers of ourselves as we journey down this mental road... I'd say we at some point will chip away so many layers that all that is left is bare... so.... yeah. Don't bear with me.... bare with me.
I shall now go into a deep meditation. I can't divulge which youtube playlists I open up while I do this. This is my secret process, unknownst to others.
Okay.... I am going into Meditation. Okay? Okay.
Alright. Okay. Alright. Yes. Going to figure this all out. Trust me. I will. Don't worry......
Yes. Okay, yes. Alright, so, after much thinking, focusing on my feelings, and after much deliberation. I have figured it out....
....the fourth greatest Super Nintendo Game is:
Breath of Fire 2!
It is. It has to be. This game is soooooo goooooood.
I've gone through too much mental gymnastics to arrive at this searing and life-changing conclusion. I feel I should just end this article right here.
Conclusion
My fourth favorite Super Nintendo game is Breath of Fire 2.
Edit (May 13th, 2022):
I wait a day or two to check for errors, because, if you do it right after, the text is too much still in your "mind's-eye" to catch the errors. You'll just over-run your version of it, that's still fresh, while proof-reading.
I like how one paragraph here turned out. Re-reading it, it is very Shepherdian. Specifically when he would use George Antheil's "Ballet Mecanique" as sound for the background layer to his paragraph.
I like how that one "Ballet Mecanique" paragraph turned out. It should, if done right, feel, as the reader-writer-and-concept are confabulating. I think I got it right.
(Ballet Mecanique, Antheil, G., See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi53TfeqgWM)
....though also, I'd also even refer to it as a Gottfriedian paragraph to some extent... reading it a third time. Both of them were influences on my writing so it would make sense.
