History of the Nintendo Entertainment System
In the late 80s, Nintendo's dominance was threatened by newer, technologically superior consoles. 1987, NEC and Hudson Soft released the PC Engine, and a year later, Sega released the 16 bit Mega Drive. Both were introduced in North America in 1989, where they were respectively marketed as the "TurboGrafx-16" and the "Genesis." Facing new competition from the PC Engine in Japan, and the Genesis in North America, Nintendo's market share began to erode. Nintendo responded in the form of the Super Famicom ("Super Nintendo Entertainment System" in North America and Europe), the Famicom's 16-bit successor, in 1990. Although Nintendo announced their intention to continue to support the Famicom alongside their newer console, the success of the newer offering began to draw even more gamers and developers from the original NES, whose decline accelerated. However, Nintendo did continue support of the NES for about three years after the September 1991 release of the Super NES, with the NES's final first-party games being "" and "Wario's Woods".
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The SNES was a global success, becoming the best-selling console of the 16-bit era despite its relatively late start and the intense competition it faced in North America and Europe from Sega's Genesis console. The SNES remained popular well into the 32-bit era having sold 49.1 million worldwide (Comparative to the NES's 61.9 million). It continues to be popular among collectors and retro gamers, some of whom still make homebrew ROM images, in addition to its popularity in Nintendo's emulated rereleases, such as in Virtual Console environment.