Fourth generation of video game consoles
Nintendo executives were initially reluctant to design a new system, but as the market transitioned to the newer hardware, Nintendo saw the erosion of the commanding market share it had built up with the Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo's fourth-generation console, the Super Famicom, was released in Japan on November 21, 1990; Nintendo's initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out within hours. The machine reached North America as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System on August 23, 1991, and Europe and Australia in April 1992.
Super Mario 64
More than five years prior to the release of "Super Mario 64", producer and director Shigeru Miyamoto conceived a 3D "Mario" design during the development of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) game "Star Fox" (1993), developed by Nintendo along with Argonaut Software. He considered using the Super FX chip to develop a SNES game which would have been called "Super Mario FX", with gameplay based on "an entire world in miniature, like miniature trains". Instead, he eventually reformulated the 3D "Mario" idea for the Nintendo 64 - not due to the next generation console's substantially greater power, but because its controller has more buttons for gameplay. According to former Argonaut engineer Dylan Cuthbert, no game titled "Super Mario FX" had ever entered development, but rather "Super Mario FX" was the internal code name of the Super FX chip itself. According to Argonaut founder Jez San, "Super Mario 64" was influenced by a prototype of a canceled Argonaut game starring the "Mario" character Yoshi, which later became the 1997 platform game "".